I personally swear by the following combination:
- Human Paladin
- Human (or whatever) Ranger
- Dwarf Thief (a Dwarf just for laughs)or (rarely) Thief-Mage or Fighter-Thief
- Human Fighter who changes class to an Evoker at level 3 or 4 -- specializes in bow at the start and adds all additional proficiencies to bow, and ends up being a fine archer with both magic missiles and normal ones.
- Human Cleric who changes class to a Conjurer (or other specialist) at level 3
- Half-Elf Druid or sometimes Cleric
This ends up working very nicely, since the Paladin can serve as a classic tank and the ranger and Thief can combine to form a lethal bait and kill team. (The method is simple: the Ranger takes off his plate mail and moves silently and the thief hides in shadows. The ranger goes out and finds a likely enemy. The thief moves part way between the rest of the party and the ranger, who fires an arrow at the enemy and flees using the classic method. The twist of course is that the ranger stops just after passing the thief, who launches a lethal backstabbing attack. If the enemy survives, the ranger finishes him off in hand-to-hand. Repeat as necessary. Also note that you can take off heavy armor, hide in shadows, and put the heavy armor back on without immediately leaving the shadows.) The biggest advantage of course is that you avoid having your low level mages dying left and right. It's a real blessing to start a first-level mage out with 30-40 hit-points, and the four cure light wounds and three cure moderate wounds of the cleric/mage are also a real help in tight situations. In the later game, I'm always very happy to have two powerful mages -- the 3 to 4 thousand experience points you lose by changing class are meaningless by the time you get to mid-levels. The only sticky part is just after the two mages change class -- you basically have a four-person party with two guys along for the ride -- but it doesn't take long for them to progress since you are fighting moderately high-experience value enemies and getting big bonuses by that point. The big downside is the lack of undead turning potential (I find that the Paladin is rarely successful, since the two level penalty basically means that you can't turn whatever it is that you are fighting in vast quantities at any time.)
With this party, I managed to get as far as the bottom level of the Dragon's Eye before I first had a death in the party (the thief, after a failed trap detection and then some bad luck hiding in shadows). If I play again with a similar party, I might wait a bit longer to change the class of my cleric, since there are so many undead floating around -- #$%#@@%# Cold Wights!)
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