[andrewas]

Paladins are nice.

But pure arcane casters are good as well. Dont melee with them. Well, equip for melee as best you can, but its a last resort. You gain two levels in the prologue, so you have a few spells to hand before things get tough, and since NWN is patheticaly generous when resting, you shouldnt have too many problems. The game may be hack and slash biased, but arcane characters can deal more than enough damage to deal with it.

If you must take fighter levels, watch out that you take enough INT(for wizards) or CHA(sorcs, bards) that you arcane class will be useful. Personaly, I am not fond of melee/caster multis since you have to boost so many of your stats to be really effective with both. (Exception - Paladin/Sorceror, where both benefit from CHA. But that ones cheesy enough that I avoid it most times).

As for NPCs, in the official campaign you can only have the one henchman, although you can use a summon and a familiar as well. (For most players, the Pixie familiar is best, for its theiving skills. Its not terrible at combat either, but dont risk it since it hurts you when it dies.) In the HotU campaign, you will be able to get 2 henchmen at once.