A bishop from the beginning might be a challenge in a small party, but rewarding since all the magic "schools" (wizardry, psionics, divinity and aclhemy) can be practised from the start. Also you don't get the 8 level punishment from being a mage to the other magic schools, so it's possible to have access to all 7th level spells at level 18, not just wiz at 18 and the rest at 26. On the downside you'll need more xp to get to those levels
I'm running a 3 man party (faerie ninja (rules the world with CoC), human samurai and elf bishop) currently at around level 19. I just love getting over 200k xp from one fight, and 60k xp from the easy ones, each ofcourse
