The party has finished the Wandering Village prior to taking out the dark treants, and has returned to take out the last 5 ranks of Battle Squares (normal game, will go to HoF). Composition is as follows ('+' denotes may level up):

Deep Gnome Monk[9] (+1)
Shield Dwarf Fighter[1]/Battleguard of Tempus[11]
Drow Rogue[2]/Ranger[1]/Paladin[2]/Wizard[5] (+1)
Drow Dreadmaster of Bane[10]
Aasimar Sorceror[11]
Drow Druid[7] (+1)

The drow druid was added at the Crash Site before the Ice Temple, and squatted until I wanted more contributions. The party dominates, btw. ;)

My goals are as follows:

1) Average party level preferably lvl 16 or better by the last level of the Severed Hand (I'd say higher, but I have a lot of ECL penalties to overcome)
2) Druid up as high as she can go by Guardian fight
3) Monk to hit lvl 20 ASAP for HoF
4) Preferably hit lvl 30 by the end of HoF

What suggestions do you have for optimal level-squatting to achieve the above goals? I am considering squatting the druid until the Guardian fight and squatting the monk once it hits lvl 13. I'd prefer to keep the Battleguard and the sorceror levelling up as I go along.

For further reference, what have been your best strategies for achieving goals 1 & 4 (from the beginning of a normal game)?

Sorry, I really have little ideas about level squatting, but I'm curious about your third character. 2 levels of rogue, 1 ranger, 2 paladin; why? Only reason I can think of ranger is dual wield. Why for a wizard?
Also why not dual class (fighter?) the druid?

Well, the drow rogue/ranger/paladin/wizard is Marty's favourite character (where's he been lately?), and I thought I'd give it a try. Realistically, having played it as far as I have, it's a build that probably needs HoF to show how effective it is. It got a lot of kills early, but now is definitely a step behind characters 1 & 2 as a tanker. As for why, think versatility. It's a high Dex, high Int character, so it takes care of my thievery duties, the ranger level is for dual wield as you speculated, and the pally levels are for Aura of Courage, a few more HP and BAB, and later, Cera Sumat. It's got mediocre Str, so dual wield is more effective than a two-hander - currently using the Wight Blade and Sulo's Hook. With Expertise and wizard buffs, it's fairly hard to hit, although it doesn't hand out a lot of damage. It's also got magic resistance and evasion, which is a combo I like. Stat distribution was tough.

I'm conceptualizing the character as a light tank with options. I figured this was a decent party to test it out, since the others are, to this point anyway, fully capable of carrying a dead-weight character for a dozen levels or so, and the character is not so ineffective by any means. The sorc and increasingly the druid hand out the AoE pain, the Dreadmaster heals, curses, and holds, the monk plays unhittable meatshield, and the Battleguard hands out the melee damage after buffing. The ro/rgr/pal/wiz does whatever he needs to, which is often archery.

The only advice I can give in my limited experience is to only level-up your characters when you're having trouble in an area.

Only level up spellchuckers when they are going to gain more spells, and even then, only right before you rest (you won't get the spells until then anyway, right?).

Yes. I often will squat one or two levels with a caster, as well (e.g. only leveling up when the character will gain another level of spells). Another trick is that the "average party level" is always rounded down - so a 6 character party with 59 total levels (5 x 10, 1 x 9) has an average party level of 9, not 10, thus being slightly more advantageous in terms of XP awarded for kills.

However, my level squatting doesn't have a lot of science in it, hence the questions I posted originally. I may just squat everybody until the 8 Chambers (at which time I will level up the monk), and then try to hold off with everybody else until I get to the yuan-ti.

If anyone wants to take a stab at the questions...

[ 02-11-2007, 03:25 AM: Message edited by: Aerich ]