I posted below about trying to make this party work without having to be a mage myself:

Yohshi
Keldorn
Anomen
Jah
Minsc

I wanted to keep Yoshi (even though he eventually dies) because I heard that he had some interesting interactions throughout the game. The same for Keldorn and Anomen because of their interactions together and I never played them before. Jah is for the romance, and Minsc is just because I like him.

I don't want to play a mage myself, possibly not even a spellcaster as that's all I played. I'm a chronic restarter that hasn't even finished chapter 3 yet so please no more spoilers of things to come (I found out about Yoshi on accident).

But I am considering ditching Yoshi for Jan (until I get Imoen back). This covers my mage bases. But what does that leave for me? I have 4 fighters, a cleric, and a druid, a thief, and a mage. Frankly this party is good enough without me. I'm thinking I want to be more of a frontliner for a change, but with the 4 that I'm going to have already, it won't be necessary and we'll all just get in each other's way. Any tips? Thanks.

You could try playing a fighter/mage, so you can go both ways. Otherwise, a monk is a very interesting-to-play frontliner, IMO.

Hi StarVid,

How about playing an Archer? Not quite a frontliner, but not a mage either. You can make it quite far without a mage...

-- Nifft

Jester, just for fun. Never tried.
I always play as Kensai or Mage just because of my obsession for them.

I am gonna go with Nifft, the elven archer I started seems to be hitting and killing everything. Its weird but even normal arrows do some serious damage behind a couple tanks.

Archers are AWESOME!!! They are the ultimate dragon-slayers!!! I ran a party with my PC as an archer. My archer did about 95% of the damage against Fiirkraag. Everyone else seemed to be there just to keep Fiirkraag's attention away from my archer.

I would suggest getting a mage however. You can probably get by for chapters 2 & 3 without a mage, but it does get a bit tougher later on. I've usually had both Nalia and Imoen in my parties later on in the game. I am not a heavy spell casting type of player. I tend to use offensive magic only when necessary. Mages are needed for dropping enemy mages' defenses, however.