One thing I dislike about the combat is too many long-range battles.
Dspite walking up to the monsters, my priest frequently cannot use his mace in battle. Should I move him from the rear to the front during battles or do something else?

If he cant reach the monsters how is he supposed to hit them? If you have him anywhere but the front rank you need to give him an extended range weapon...say for example a quarterstaff or monstrance...the mace is short range only.

I got this idea off someone else on this board, and it seems to work pretty well. Change your party formation as follows: Take everyone out of the front rank. Leave it empty. Put your casters in the rear, and everyone else in the middle and on the flanks. Doing this seems to give your party 2 "extra" melee-range slots. Maybe it's just my weapons config, but it works for me!

Hmm, I haven't tried Werdna's suggestion, though I will tonite. But, If you put your melee's in the front and one of the side ranks, you can turn your formation so that monsters are placed so that they are in front of the middle of the front and side rank, instead of just in front, and sometimes(not always for some odd reason) you can get both ranks to been in short range. Only downside to this is you lose your initiative to do a walk and rotate your group.

Frosty