Kunovski: ok, thanks to you all for your information... I started the game with two characters on normal and got massively smashed :P
so a new game for me, full four characters band and I'll make each member as diverse as possible - 1. leader with high charisma and intelligence who can talk smoothly, possibly a sniper; 2. a melee fighter (sword!) with high strength to carry all the junk, and a healer; 3. a tech savvy who can repair or hack anything, energy weapons; and 4. a slick unlock/trap/alarm expert with a shotgun/rifle...
I hope this one will be viable :)
PS: don't you hate how the weapons' hit chance is just... bad? sniper rifle which is only usable when on HUGE distance, but when the monster is closer it's almost 0%? what the hell, you just poke the enemy with your rifle barrel, how on earth can you miss???
The sniper rifle close range penalty is just a way to balance the weapon types against each other. If assault and sniper rifles were good at close range, there'd be no reason to use anything else, except to spare ammo.
If one of your characters is a sniper, you should either get him a backup weapon like a pistol, or put him way behind your close range characters so enemies can't get close to him.
Also, attributes have no effect on skill effectiveness, and the speech skills, while quite useful, aren't used that often. So it's best to give a high charisma character skills that are used more often, like demolition, lockpicking or computer science, so he gets more xp from those.
Then again, you don't need to min-max on normal.