On the topic of the sling - it's a pity that they do piercing damage. I think that crushing would be more realistic, and be more useful in general. Even the extra strength damage looks like it goes into piercing as well.

Playing all ranged is just killing everything before it gets close.

Coelocanth thx for the information. You're right, the 3 classed character is levelling really slow, but not much slower than the 2 classed characters. The single classed characters easily made level 4 in the prologue, whereas the 2 and 3 classed characters are level 2s. It's like having 2 parties - one really good single classed party of 3, and one weak party of 3 that I'm waiting to become useful - still good at ranged combat though.

On that topic of difficulty and experience: The fighters at level 4 already does make the game a lot easier. I'm considering switching the difficulty to insane for fights and to normal for quest rewards for the ultimate difficulty balance. That would be a bit of a pain, but worth it for the extra accomplishment.

The 2 attacks with the ranger is something I didn't know about, so that's a bonus in melee, especially if he uses a quarterstaff or something for long reach and stays back from the fray like the druid will. Especially with the Cleric and Druid's lower HP due to slow levelling. Good information.

Axe proficiency - the gnome would be the best choice like you say. I won't ask why, but I assume that there's a nice axe at the end of the rainbow for him? Okay, I guess I just asked why ;)

Just a minor spoiler: there are a couple nice axes in the game (I won't give details, and this really isn't a huge spoiler since there are a couple nice examples of almost any weapon types), but there's also a returning throwing axe, which you can find reasonably early on, which is a really nice weapon for an axe specialist.

If you're going to go the staff route for your ranger, I hope you have better luck than I did with random drops. In my last play through with 5 ftrs and 1 ftr/thf, the fighter proficient in staves ended up keeping the staff provided at character creation until well into the TOTLM areas and even then, I only replaced the starting staff with a quarterstaff +1. The only other staves I found were the one sold by Conlan, 1 only usable by a druid and the other only usable by a cleric.

I had the same problem with halberds too. My character proficient with halberds kept an ordinary one until HOW.

When playing the Infinity Engine games I used Infinity Explorer to change the sling stones' damage from piercing to crushing since none of the fix mods bother(ed) to do it.

Coelocanth I have to at last give credit where its due.

The fast levelling of insane difficulty does make the game easier like you said, especially when you're using 6 ranged characters so it's rare that you receive the insane damage, so yeah... you were right all along on that score.