As a ranger, you can take anyone. My opinion (IMPORTANT: I PLAY HARDCORE RULES and it makes a difference) of the NPCs is:
Red Tiger - It must because he's a paper tiger and bleeds red blood. He just dies way, way too much for me.
Grimjaw - If you can stand his sick, twisted ways, he's the toughest fighter of all the henchmen. But he doesn't use missile weapons so area-of-effect spells will catch him as he charges into combat. Then, if he doesn't save, he'll try to kill you because he thinks you're going PvP on him.
Linu - Average fighter. But some of those cleric spells are terrific. Poor AI scripting, though. My advice for anyone is to set her to "missile weapons" and have her stand-off. She can be improved by using an add-on script. I find her the most "interesting" of the NPCs.
Sharwyn - Good support character. I think the best for all cleric/fighter types. Set her to missile because she's too lightly armoured to go toe-to-toe, despite what she thinks.
Tomi - He's really good in the early game, but fades mid-game. Too bad I've never had the stick-to-it-ness to see if he multi-classes to fighter or mage to improve his usefulness.
Boddlyknock - The knock
on him is that he dies. And he dies. And he dies. Oh, and did I mention that he dies? He's like a canary in a coalmine. Plus, he shoots his wad on the "spear carriers" and is spent when you face the "boss." Not amusing.
Some links that can help your henchmen:
The descriptor link:
http://snow.prohosting.com/wperpo/
The file link:
http://snow.prohosting.com/wperpo/oc.htm
Another good link for that stuff:
http://www.sorcerers.net/Games/NWN/index_editors.htm