Hmm. As far as party size goes, you may want to reconsider; for mostly melee-oriented characters, 6 characters is indeed too much, but when it comes to magic more is most always better. Still, 4 is quite doable and is probably the better choice if you're doing the hybrid thing instead of staying as straight casters.
As for switching to hybrid... it depends. If you want to switch without taking a very significant hit to your casting ability, you have to wait until you're well into the 20s (although priests can generally get by with switching sooner). On the other hand, in a party of 4 you may be relying more on melee power than a 6-caster party would, so you may want to switch early (level 9 if you want to get most of the buffs covered, level 12 if you want portals) and focus on being powercasting hybrids for most of the game.
Not sure about stealth training. Again, my experience is with 6+ caster groups, which generally do fine without it. But taking a 4-man group means more time spent in melee, fewer party members to take damage, and more spare experience levels to go around. So... I'd probably say yes.
I'm partial to INT/SEN/SPD for casters (in order to boost initiative as much as possible), but again a 4-caster-to-hybrid group means more melee time than a 6-caster group. 4-man groups are not my area of expertise, but I would probably say just go for intelligence and speed, and then just build them as you would any other hybrid. You may find it worthwhile to make a designated tank, though. In larger caster parties I usually drag around a dracon priest with a VIT/PIE/STR build to get the most use out of their breath attack, but this is probably not such a good idea if it's going to be your only priest caster. If you're doing one of each of the four specialist spellcasters I would recommend a mixed vitality/speed approach for a priest tank, but if you're throwing in a bishop too you could do an all-out tank priest and an all-out speed bishop. Priest, bishop (staff, switch to monk), mage, alchemist would be a good lineup for this; you could also do bishop (maces, switch to lord), bishop (staff, switch to monk), mage, alchemist if you wanted all-out casting power, but then you would really be vulnerable.
Saving spell picks is mostly something for bishops. For other spellcasters you do want to save some picks but it's more of a short-term thing; you want to save up between levels, soavoid spending spell picks except when you reach a new spell level and you can fill up your spellbook by level 18. But if bishops want to get all the level 6 and 7 spells (or even most of them) at a reasonable level, you have to save as many lower-level spell picks as possible so you can use all of them on level 6 and 7.
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