I have already played this game with the pre-generated NPCs rounding out my party. I have been thinking about rolling 5 NPCs to create a custom fitted team. I know I'll miss out on the in-game NPC dialogues, back-story, and personal quests but I want to try something new.

Anyone do this and what was your experience like? Thanks.

Yes, I have. The Only Correct Way:
1) Create a party of 6 rangers
2) spec 2 for meele and 4 for ranged, grab whatever animal companions you feel like
3) Steamroll opposition with your 12 member party

6 paladins/chanters buffing each other are also kinda insane. Combining a party of 2 pallys, 2 chanters and 2 whatevers could be a lot of good fun. ... Pillars is great with custom-made parties, it really makes me wish Obsidian to have dropped the whole Watcher story arc and allow any of our characters to interact with NPCs and just keep it open like Icewind Dale did.

Yes! I was thinking about the same thing concerning IWD as I was asking my question. What mode/setting did you play on with your 6 rangers? Thanks for your reply.

Normal, I was mostly just messing around. But I'm pretty sure that with a bit of optimization and right selection of animal companions, party could work rather well even on PotD. I'm actually getting into a mood to try to get the 10 rests achievement by only using animal companions on majority of encounters in order to keep rangers from getting fatigued.

How did you spec the Rangers for melee? In other words, what did you concentrate in stats, abilities, skills? Did you give each Ranger a different companion? What races did you employ?

The reason for my questions is because what you did sounds like a lot of fun. :)

Oh it was back in version 1.0somethingorother so the builds are outdated and I don't remember them too well anyway. However... Obsidian forums to the rescue! Of course, you may only use that as a basic guideline and start off of that.