I'm finally getting around to playing all the gold box games. Currently have a curse of the azure bonds play through going and wanted to start on champions of krynn. Just wanted to get some basic feedback on my party is all. Any tips or comments are welcome. Thanks in advance...

1. Male Human Knight
2. Male Qualinesti Elf Fighter/Thief
3. Male Silvanesti Cleric of Majere/Ranger
4. Female Kender Cleric of Mishakal/Thief
5. Male Qualinesti Elf Fighter/Red Mage (Melee)
6. Female Qualinesti Elf Fighter/White Mage (Primarily Bow user)

I've got 2 thieves because I love backstabbing. ;) Didn't go with any triple classes simply because of slower leveling.

Petrus! Does it matter which one of my mages is single class? Red or white?

One thing to note: In Champions of Krynn, as well as its sequel, Death Knights of Krynn, the level cap is unfair to Rangers, giving them 1/2 an attack fewer than what other fighter-types get. In CoK, Rangers, unlike other classes, can only reach level 7, and the first extra 1/2 attack would come at level 8. In DKoK, Rangers can reach level 14 like most classes, but they would only gain the second extra 1/2 attack at level 15. In other words, they only get 3/2 attacks when other fighter-types get 2 attacks.

In Dark Queen of Krynn, on the other hand, Rangers don't have this issue, but elven Fighters are limited in level.

Also, you probably do not want to promote your Knight a second time, as Knights of the Rose level up extremely slowly. I believe the chance of breaching enemy magic resistance doesn't improve at the levels accessible in Champions of Krynn.

When choosing the alignment for your single class mage, note that Red Robe Mages level up faster than White Robe Mages at high levels, and the important spells that target all enemies (including Fireball, Cone of Cold, and Delayed Blast Fireball) are available to both types of mages.

I used a White single class myself, since the Red Mage gets better protection spells IIRC. But OTOH the Red Mage advances in levels quicker.
And of course it's mainly an issue in Dark Queen, but I always assume people will transfer their parties.

Your party is fine. If you like them, keep them. No need to optimize everything, it's already better than average.

You'll get over 200,000 XP per character during the game so single classes will max out.

It's your decision if you prefer fighter/mage 7/7 or mage 8 at the end of the game, both work (single class has one mage level more but is quite useless in physical combat), my party even had only triple class mages. If you want to replace exactly one of your fighter/mages with single class choose the white one, she levels a little more slowly.
Since the ranger class doesn't grant extra attacks you could make make your cleric pure class for faster leveling.
There's no need to change the knight's order, extra levels are more valuable than low level spells.

No need to optimize the party for later games, simply create new characters at the start of DKoK (you can import the old party for transferring items) to use in DQoK which is quite hard if you don't import.

Knight, cleric/ranger and fighter/mages work well in DQoK if you want to keep one of them through the trilogy, but cleric/thief and fighter/thief are maxed out early because of the racial level limits. It's better to replace them at the start of DKoK with a fighter/red mage/thief (will still max out as fighter in the middle of DQoK and fireballs will speed up some combats) and another character.

Last playthru I used this crew:

* Human Knight (decided to go Rose, reached level 19)
(Agree with dtgreene, Rose is disappointing - it would be better if the BG level up system were used, as the chief problem is the Gold Box training rules that result in something like half the XP available in Dark Queen being thrown away due to being well in excess of a second level up by the time you get back from the Flame Tower, which has no training ... *sigh* I'd just as well go Sword next time and have level 18 that much sooner)

* Human Neutral Cleric (Shinare, reached level 29)
(Single class Neutral Cleric is very useful in Death Knights, because only Neutral clerics can get level 7 spells in that game, and the amount of level draining undead makes Restoration in the field extremely desirable. I suppose it need not be single class, but that makes it easy to reach level 14 in Death Knights. This is a good thing because it means you can take two levels of draining in an emergency and still remain with the level 12 required to cast Restoration, plus you hit level 12 all the sooner)

* Qualinesti Fighter/White Mage (reached level 19 as mage and the cap of 14 as fighter)
(Double class mage is good for the quicker advancement than a triple, *but* single class mage, IMO, is poor policy. the low HP and lack of physical combat prowess is likely to prove troublesome. Keep in mind dragons other than red and white - i.e., which you cannot simply put up buffs to mitigate - and a particularly nasty fight in Dark Queen where magic does not work at all, for starters ...)

* Qualinesti Cleric/Fighter/Red Mage (Sirrion, reached level 16 as cleric, 17 as mage, and the cap of 14 as fighter)
(Which isn't to say mage HEAVY is a bad thing. In fact it's virtually a survival necessity to have several mages in Dark Queen, as Fire Shield is the only way to survive a Delayed Blast Fireball and *also* be able to mount a counterattack of any significance, and even then it's not a guarantee that any given mage will escape scot-free and thus still be able to cast ...)

* Qualinesti Cleric/White Mage (Majere, reached level 19 in both classes)
(Ideal to have the Majere Cleric be a 2 classer; as noted above, single class cleric should be neutral for readier access to Restoration - however, Majere is all about levels for that undead turning boost so you don't want to dial things down too much by going triple class)

* Kender Good Cleric/Thief (Mishakal, reached level 24 as thief and the cap of 12 as cleric)
(It feels like you're expected to have a Kender. I'm not really quite sure how useful Yell actually is, but surely it's better to maximise your array of abilities? In any case, this remains a pretty sturdy character throughout, 12 is not too bad a level cap and you do at least have level 5 spells to work with, which means you've got Flame Strike, Dispel Evil, etc. Mishakal is a good fit with a lower level cap because her bonus is only effective on heals that have a dice roll component, i.e., it doesn't help Heal anyway)

A few other bits -
* Silvanesti Elves sadly aren't that great, because their level limits are unfavourable compared to Qualinesti
* Half-Elves are even less favourable (otherwise it would be sound strategy to avoid the non-resurrectability feature)
* Dwarves of any sort are sadly pretty much garbage. Despite the strategic advantages of high HP with all the AoE going around, the point of AC is MUCH more important (consider it's a 5% increased chance to suffer Level Drain; an additional HP per level for fighter levels is nowhere NEAR enough to make up for a 5% increased chance to suffer Level Drain!).

Thanks as always for the all the feedback. It's much appreciated. I gotta question, well two questions actually...

1. How does HP work for multi class characters when leveling? For example: My fighter/thief started with a max of 22 HP. He just gained level 3 in fighter and thief. What is the maximum HP he should have? My math gave me 36. With an 18 constitution, he would get 5 HP from thief and 9 HP from fighter. Is my math correct?

2. What is the deal with the copyright questions in the game where you have to look up a word in the manual? Is there anyway around that?

Assuming you bought the game here, try just typing a letter (doesn't matter which) and then pressing Enter.

No, it's different.

For double classes max HP are simply half the HP they'd get as single classes.

fighter/thief with 18 con: 7 at fighter level up ((10+4 (con bonus)) /2), 4 at thief level up ((6+2(con bonus))/2)

If you level up both classes together you get +11 HP (7+4) maximum.

Hey K, is this the same with all the gold box games?

It was the same in all the gold box games (PC-version) where I had multiclasses at low levels except Pool of Radiance. (CoK, DKoK, FRUA, GttSF, TotSF)