[Aerich]

Just a few quick comments, since I need to get to bed.

1) Character 1 and Char 5 are going to take a serious XP hit. I'd use wizards (favoured class for drow males) instead of specialists.

2) With Char 4, you may wish to take a couple of Paladin levels at some point. A sorceror's spell progression levels off at higher levels (20+), and 2 levels of paladin and the consequential saving throw increases and Aura of Courage may be worth a spell slot or two. If your bard or rogue does all the talking, there's really no barriers to adding paladin levels.

3) With Char 5, I'd take a second level of rogue fairly early on, for evasion and better rogue capabilities.

4) With Char 6, a deep gnome monk tank/decoy can be risky in HoF - particularly before it hits lvl 20 and acquires Perfect Self. You can get very good AC, but very good is often not enough. A monk is dominant, if adequately supported with spells, in the middle-to-late stages of a normal game. For games going to HoF, casters offer you more options. That's not to say that a pure monk is a true liability at any stage of the game.

A deep gnome monk should not be multiclassed, IMO, not so much because of the XP hit, but because of character progression and stat distribution. Unless you are multiclassing from monk to the favoured class of your monk's order, you cannot multiclass back to monk. That means, to get other classes (e.g. such as illusionist, which is otherwise a natural fit for a deep gnome tank/decoy), you have to take those classes first. This is not a good idea because the monk will have few monk levels in the middle stages of the game, and will be useless to tank/decoy against the quality of opponents the party will be facing. You are behind from the start with the 3 ECL penalty, so you are that much further behind if you, e.g. take 5 levels of illusionist. Secondly, you might have to allocate your stat points differently depending on what other class you want to use. It's not a problem if you want a couple of rogue or clerical levels (fits with high Dex, high Wis, and the monk orders), but it's a problem if you want to be an illusionist (since a deep gnome monk must be drained of its Int at character creation to get the most benefit out of the character).

[ 01-13-2007, 03:49 AM: Message edited by: Aerich ]