Played through the game for the first time maybe a year ago, so I know the general story, but am now starting another playthrough with a more fighter-heavy party. Last time round I went with mostly pure classes. However, will this group have too much emphasis on fighters, and will the lack of magic get me in huge trouble in the early to middle game?

The idea is to dual at level 9, but will this be too late, especially for the protagonist, who will become a mage?

Pangaea
Human Fighter (dual to Mage)
Str 18/81
Dex 18
Con 18
Int 18
Wis 3
Cha 16

(Yes, I know, yet another min/maxer :| )

Sansa
Dwarf Fighter/Cleric
Str 18/31
Dex 17
Con 19
Int 10
Wis 18
Cha 4

Brandon
Human Fighter (dual to Druid)
Str 18/40
Dex 15
Con 18
Int 10
Wis 18
Cha 3

Robb
Dwarf Fighter (pure)
Str 18/41
Dex 17
Con 19
Int 13
Wis 10
Cha 8

Arya
Halfling Fighter/Thief
Str 17
Dex 19
Con 16
Int 12
Wis 12
Cha 3

Jon
Human Ranger (pure)
Str 18/89
Dex 18
Con 18
Int 10
Wis 18
Cha 3

I may have messed up a little with the proficiencies, so how will this work out when I dual them? I don't remember the rules. I have longswords and crossbows on the Fighter (to Mage) character, and Maces and slings on the Fighter (to dual to Druid) character. Will this work okay? Could I for example have selected bows on the fighter to mage bloke, or would that not have been allowed, and thus wasted?

Three people ended up with longswords, so maybe that was unfortunate too, but there tends to be many of them, and fewer clubs and flails and such, so it should still be okay, and IIRC thieves can backstab with longswords (not that I use hiding much as it's a bit of a PITA, but still...)

Yes, this means I'm going with a paladin this time, as I did last time, and I wanted to try without the Weapon of OP now.

In short: Will dualing at level 9 be too late for comfort for the Fighter (to Mage) and Fighter (to Druid) characters? Also, hopefully a multi'd cleric won't be too much of a pain.

Exerience gained depends on the difficulty level you choose. Hardest difficulty means tougher monsters, but double the experience. "Normal" difficulty might actually mean it takes much longer to level, thus actually making the game somewhat harder for you.

It is also going to matter whether you stick with all 6 characters through the whole game, or whether you add/delete members to your party as you go. For example, if start the game solo on max difficulty, you would have a lvl 6 fighter by the time you get to Shadow Vale and a lvl 10 fighter by the time you finished Shadow Vale. If you clear Shadow Vale with all 6 characters, you probably will all be around lvl 6-7 by the end.

On maximum difficulty, by dualling at lvl 10 with such a large group, it means you will be probably in the lower levels of Dragon's Eye or beginning of Severed Hand. Your Cleric will thus be your only spell support to fight through all those Trolls and Cold Wights. You will need lots of flaming oil or magic flaming arrows for the trolls. You can always grind experience on the Cold Wight level I guess, so your goal should be to get there and camp out I think.

Doing the Yuxonomei boss fight with only 1 cleric to buff your party might prove pretty tough/slow.

Your dual mage will eventually be able to use any weapon, but won't be able to cast spells while wearing anything other than elvish armor (shouldn't be too much of a problem). The druid won't be able to wear armor nor use any restricted weapons to his class, but will fight using his fighter skills/thac0.

You want your Paladin to specialize in Large Swords, so he can use the holy sword found in Lower Dorns Deep. Otherwise there is a fairly even balance between large and great magic swords in the game. There is only one mediocre magic scimitar iirc, until you play the HoW expansion. There are a few early magic maces, but later a fairly even spread between maces/hammers/flails. There is also a fairly even balance between magic bows and crossbows and even slings.

To power-game, you want all your characters to be the same alignment, so you get full benefit from Righteous Wrath of the Faithful spell.

I would dual at level 7. As a fighter/mage you don't need that extra proficiency point that waiting 'til level 9 will get you, especially since you have so many fighters. Level 7 will get you that extra half attack, and that's the most important boost for your character. This way you will only have to accrue 90,000 XP before you get your fighter class back.

Personally, I would also make Brandon either a pure druid, pure cleric, or only go for 3 fighter levels -- for the HP boost and the 1 extra proficiency point.

Yes, it should be fine. Sansa will be pressed hard (spell-wise) initially, at least until you get Brandon's spells going to help out, but if you only have to wait 3 levels it's not so bad. My main worry would be a lack of arcane spells until Pangaea dualed, but again, early on it's not such a big deal. So yeah, go for the 7 and 3 and you'll be fine.

Cheers, good to know. Lack of a mage for that long may suck, but hopefully the fighters will pull through.

However, I discovered there were several faults with Brandon, making it impossible for him to dual to a Druid. He wasn't True Neutral, and had WAY too low Charisma. He needed 17 there, so I had to shift everything around basically. This also means I had to try Dale Keeper after all, but hopefully nothing is mucked up (I got some error messages when opening the save in DaleKeeper, for items I have legitimately bought and picked up in the game, which I found odd).

Brandon now looks like this
Human Fighter (to dual at level 3)
Str 16
Dex 15
Con 16
Int 3 (hello Hodor)
Wis 18
Cha 17

Dalekeeper is an incomplete port of Sword Coast Keeper / Shadowkeeper, and it does NOT like any items not in the vanilla game, and that includes expansion pack items. You will get errors for even trivial things like icon size. Be VERY wary of using files saved with Dalekeeper! Make sure you have backups.

On Brandon: personally, I would have gone for 14 STR and 17 DEX. His AC is more important than his raw fighting ability, which will only be needed for 3 levels. With 16/15 STR/DEX you will be getting +1 damage adjustment and +1 AC, whereas with 14/17 STR/DEX you will be getting 0 damage adjustment and +3 AC. A better trade off in my opinion.

NB: why 14 STR and not 13? Purely for the extra 30 lb carry capacity.

Good point on STR vs DEX. I'll change it as I haven't played further yet. A bit extra AC would be good. Can he even wear proper armour while casting spells once the fighter class is back? Yeah, I'm not sure at all on this multi/dual class business :D

Icon size is one of the errors I got when opening the save. Icon width for a scroll and for a helmet. Hopefully nothing serious, and I'll take my chances, as I'm not too keen on starting over from scratch, and making all the characters again.

Yes he can. As a Druid he is a divine caster. Only arcane casters -- your main character -- have armour restrictions while casting.

Ah yes, that's right. Been a while since I had a whirl with these games now.

Mace proficiency is wasted for your druid since druids can't use them. I'd master scimitars instead since scimitar proficiency grants bonuses to hit and damage in polar bear form and a shield helps even while shapeshifted.

Can't he use it once the fighter levels come into play though? That is how I thought these things worked. Otherwise e.g. the longsword proficiency on the mage is a waste too, and probably others as well.

Sounds like polar bear form is a bit buggered if shields and weapons come into play too, but in any case I've probably mucked around enough in DaleKeeper already, and don't want to push my luck if it's unstable. Scimitars also go under Longswords IIRC, and three people are already proficient in that, so I probably shouldn't add another one.

I'm already ahead on the first time I played through, as this time I got that broken Aihonnen blade, so there is that :p First time I didn't have the patience and either chased off that woman or forgot to go back to her.

The initial goblins and whatnot is a bad grind though. The Vale should be better. The Broken Hand was probably my favourite place first time through. Tough as nails in places, but wonderful design and story, and such an atmosphere.

Dualclass mages can use weapon types from the second class, dualclass druids (or clerics) can't.

Damnit, that sucks. I'm now getting the error message "Seek failed on an unnamed file." on two characters when opening the save in DaleKeeper, so I guess doing anything there is risky as f*** now. I'm not too keen on starting over, so I suppose that just leaves some proficiencies being a total waste :(

Or is there any other program that does this better than DaleKeeper?

Edit:
Bloody hell!!! All these rules can make you go nuts. On advice I had changed the strength earlier, but now I noticed that the Dual Class button was greyed out... Turns out the bugger needed 15 strength to even dual class. So I had to change him AGAIN. But after having dropped all their shit to the ground, DaleKeeper at least worked without two thousand errors.

Hopefully everything works now, with 15 strength and 16 dexterity, and longsword proficiency for the scimitar.

Crikey!!!!!

Yeah, don't worry too much about the error you got. It has to do with the gear. If you drop it all (as you did), you'll be fine.

I do, however, have some bad news. If you want to dual that character to Druid he'll also need a minimum of 17 CHA.