I'm not sure if making your own team is a good idea. You start of with too much power and you have to get rid of some of your players to do most of the quest. I prefer to play it in single player with me as a Paladin of a scorcerer or mage. Monks are also good fighters I've found. Half-orc fighters are best with 2 handed swords.

Warby

In my experience, multiplayer parties are much better. The main disadvantage is that you miss out on romances and side quests, but in my last game, I created four characters:
Kensai lvl 18 dueled to thief
Swashbuckler lvl 20 dueled to fighter
Berserker lvl 13 dueled to Cleric
Necromancer
This party of four covers all areas needed to play, and I had room to pick up and drop NPC's on the way to complete all the side quests, and with there only being 4 of them, I could hit the 8 million cap in ToB. IMO self created MP teams are much more effective.

[This message has been edited by Jim (edited 09-08-2001).]

But without NPC's, the game losts its soul. Last nite, I played multi-player with a friend. He's a bard and I'm a fighter we're both evil or neutral. He got jaheira as romance and I got Viki drow girl. Our party will be completed with Ed and Jan.

It's very enjoying, playing on-line.