[Bozos of Bones]

Well, first off, the Dog should be nerfed to hell and back. He becomes a dodge and melee master at level 45, and nothing can harm him from then onward.
Secondly, the game is very easy if you go the harm-athon route. Harm is madly effective. Madly. No other single skill does has as much bang for buck as Harm. But, when you need to take care of loads of enemies, using combinations pays out a whole lot more. For example, set up a wall of force behind some enemies, wall of fire infront of that, use the push spell to bang the enemies into the wall of force, make them burn in the fire, and then close the wall from the front with a wall of stone. This sequence can get rid of several strong monsters, monsters that would require 15+ Harms to kill, and it does them all at once, if you position yourself good. I recommend you download any of the latest official or unofficial patches there are, to balance the game a bit. Also, once you beat the game, feel free to download the 128 patch, which will allow your character to reach level 128 instead of 50. Maxed out mages at level 128 are... Let's put it this way: if all the monsters in the world spawned in your room, you could kill them before falling below 50% hp.
That's why I prefer to play with techies. The game is much harder when you play with a technologist character. Even their uber weapons(machine gun) require you to have 6 companions just to haul the damned bullets. It's just much more fun to play with a techie than a mage...
Now that you've got me thinking about he game, I might go through it one more time...