I'm on a quest for the perfect powergaming party, for me. I won't bore y'all with the details, but I wanted to talk about a strategy I'm trying and it's working great so far.

I started the game with my three most important characters (two tanks and a sorcerer). I did this so that they'd advance in level a bit faster. The two tanks need a lot of micromanagement to and a few different base classes to get off the ground, so they can reach these base classes faster with fewer party members.

When I started chapter 2, character #4 came in.

When I get to the Iron Golem fight, I plan on adding the final two characters into my party.

This is kinda like the muling strategy, except that I have real roleplaying reasons for adding the next few characters (#4 is a Druid coming to the crash site of the airship, and 5 & 6 are both Drow, and are added in the Underdark). It differs from muling as well because I actually plan on keeping these characters.

5 & 6 being added so late gives me a tiny bit more XP when dealing with the dueregar (and monks also, if I powergame it). Both of these enemies tend to give little or no XP to me when I usually fight them at this point in the game.

This method has also proven to be a bit more fun for me, which is the most important thing, really. I get a bit more variety in my game, as the party tends to evolve as the game progresses.

[ 04-30-2007, 01:00 PM: Message edited by: Klorox ]

I've tried this. I started with four, then added the other two around the Ice Temple. It worked fine. It's a good compromise between muling and levelling at every opportunity, to name the two extremes.

I haven't done a chapter-by-chapter analysis, but I don't think it's noticeably better for XP gain than squatting. Paying attention to total party levels is the easiest way to "obtain" more xp; don't level until you can go up n total levels where n is the number of party members, and don't level until before resting, when you can take best advantage of additional spellcaster levels.

A key to maximizing early XP gain is to have an average party level of 5 (more accurately, 1 level under 6) while you do the Ice Temple. Golems are key xp mines.

My latest experiments with levelling involved staying at APL (average party level) 5 until I finished the temple, then levelling up everything except a bard, who squats at 5 and levels when it has enough to jump to lvl 11, then squatting until I feel like levelling again. It can stay a bard or multiclass to something else - like a wizard.