I am dying to Moose Rats with the default party. i remember playing this a long time ago but I cannot for the death of me keep my party alive. please any suggestions?

Is this in fountainhead? Those rats are killers. I found getting out of town and heading away on the path towards Castle Whiteshield and Baywatch (taking care to avoid the Orc meadow). On that path there's quite a few lower level enemies that I could take on with the default party, and rest up/train back in Fountainhead where necessary. Sort of repeat until you get a few levels and increase in hit points.
But I'm a learner and probably painted myself into a corner with this tactic!
This is quite a nice link with a guide to weapons/armour... not sure if this is a spoiler ot not but I'm using it:
http://www.the-spoiler.com/RPG/New.World.Computing/might.and.magic.3.2.html

There's a reason why the areas with rats are seperated from the rest of town by doors you have to bash. They are too powerful for low level characters. Just leave the town and kill some goblins and orcs and destroy their lairs for equipment and XP.
If you roll better characters in the inn the game will also be easier.

Might be a bit cheat-ey but I press 'tab' and save after every battle so when I lose a character early on I can get them back again without too much interuption. I found the game a lot fun if I did that.
But I am shit at it.

If you're referring to the storeroom in the upper right of Fountainhead here is what I did after dying too many times. I went into the room backwards and then ran out and took the first right and ran down that corridor to the first intersection. Then I turned around to find only a couple of those monsters chased me. I killed them, healed up, saved the game and did it again. That was the ONLY way I could see to beat all the monsters in that room. And my characters were still level 1 BTW using the pre-built party. Good luck!