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that benefits the most from it, and once you get into HOF mode, you can (try) to pickpocket the Ned's Lucky Knucky from one of Deirdre's assistants in her
Targos shop. Frankly, it's quite a bit easier to just kill that assistant just prior to leaving Targos for good. You can't kill her yourself, though, that'd make everyone in Targos hate you, meaning that you wouldn't be able to advance in the game. But a Gated Gelugon kills that assistant with no sweat, and no one should notice that it was YOU that gated in that beast. *grin*

Finally, as this character learns the Mirror Image spell as a sorcerer, the low AC of this character isn't such a big minus anymore. Being protected from the first 8 hits gives quite a bit of extra time to beat on enemies.
Just don't forget that these Mirror Images won't be available until very high levels. (Of course taking a detour for Sorc levels is a possibility, but I wouldn't really recommend it.)

Spell selection:
  ----------------

Number in parentheses denotes take only up to this many, otherwise you can mix'n'match as much as you like.

Cleric:

1: Sanctuary(1), Remove Fear(1), Bless
2: Draw Upon Holy Might, Delay Poison(0-1), Bull's Strength(0-2), Aid(2-4)
3: Magic Circle Against Evil(1-3), Prayer, Remove Disease (0-1),
Exaltation(0-1)
4: Defensive Harmony(0-1), Death Ward(0-4), Recitation(2-3),
Neutralize Poison(0-1), Holy Power
5: Champion's Strength(2-4), Raise Dead(0-1), Flame Strike,
Undead Ward(0-1), Iron Skins(0-2)
6: Heal
7: Resurrection(1-2), Greater Shield of Lathander, Elemental Barrier(0-1)
8: Mass Heal(1-2), Holy Aura
9: Gate, Summon Monster IX

Sanctuary and Remove fear are great backup spells, and Bless is the only good one after them. Draw Upon Holy Might becomes useful at level 12, before that the bonus is negligible. Delay Poison and Bull Strength become obsolete as better versions are learned, but Aid is required for maximal damage, so keep a few copies memorized. Magic Circle Against Evil is a good boost for its saving throws and a must if Gate is used, otherwise Prayer is more preferable as it also boosts damage. Remove Disease and Exaltation might be good to have as backups, but there are other ways of acquiring the same effect. Defensive Harmony might save the day during early chapters, but it becomes obsolete rather fast. Death Ward is a must against strong spell casters but otherwise useless. Neutralize Poison is needed only if you haven't bough potions for it yet. Holy Power is one of the important damage boosters, be sure to have it on as much as possible when doing battle.
Recitation is a nice generic boost/debuff, but Holy Power is more important.
Champion's Strength is a great help for the weak tank/decoy and also boosts our damage for a long time. Raise Dead becomes obsolete when you learn
Resurrection. Undead Ward is only useful in the Holy Avenger Battle. Iron
Skins reduces the threat from Slayer Knights when Stoneskin fails. If there are extra castings left, put them into Flame Strike.. but I wouldn't bother.
Heal is a must for almost any Cleric in the party, and Sol's Orb isn't any better than beating the enemy with your axe. Resurrection is a staple and
Elemental Barrier allows our tank to tank Will'O'Wisps, too. Use Greater
Shield of Lathander when getting hit just hurts too much, but don't expect to get it cast mid-combat too often. Surprisingly enough, Mass Heal isn't (or at least shouldn't) be needed too often, so we can use the remaining slots for the very important Holy Aura spell. Finally, the choice between
Gate and Summon Monster IX is between having more potent killers (Gate) or the ability to control your summons (IX). I'd vote for the latter.

NOTE: Don't forget that the Stormlord of Talos can use Wail of the Banshee as her 9th level domain spell!

Sorcerer:

1: Minor Mirror Image, Shield
2: Mirror Image, Blur

As the whole point of taking sorcerer levels for this character was to gain access to some protective spells, it would be rather stupid to not use them, right? Note that Shield is not used for its AC boost, but because it absorbs both Magic Missiles and Force Missiles.

Alternate Character Choices:
  ----------------------------

One could drop the Barbarian levels off and reduce Stormlord levels even further to gain enough Sorc levels for the ultimate combat boost, Tenser's
Transformation, but that would both reduce hit points and make our main healer & divine buffer a considerably weaker one. Also, having Sorc and fighter levels more than 1 apart would incur EXP penalties, so we'd have to increase Fighter levels as well or drop the Specialization feat altogether.

Depending on the wished amount of protection available at level 30, it might be worth considering to drop the Sorceress levels altogether, along with dropping CHA all the way down to boost DEX. This would net a +3 toHit bonus with ranged weapons and a somewhat better AC. This would also raise total Hit points, as the weakling Sorceress levels could be replaced with
Fighter/Barbarian levels. More Clerical levels are hardly needed, as the 9th level spells aren't that great. I personally like protecting my characters against lucky strikes, so the JUPP has chosen the version with
Sorc levels, but do as you please.

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3.4 - Diplomat & bombardier & buffer & debuffer

Drow Bard(11)/
Sorcerer(19)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

NOTE: This character needs to be of any non-lawful alignment in order to be able to later take levels as a Bard.

With three brutes in the group already, one has to be the brains. Ergo, say hello to our diplomat! With lots of INT and CHA, every imaginable dialogue option should be at our disposal, and high INT makes sure that we have good skill levels across the board.

However, having such mentally supreme character means that we're going to be physically weak. This character is just totally worthless as a melee warrior and couldn't dodge a turtle. However, a high CON makes sure that a single lucky hit (or two) from the enemy doesn't require a Resurrection afterwards. Plus, we're not concerned about this character's capabilities with conventional warfare, as we have a much more important role to play: being the heavy artillery of this group. If you find yourself using this character plucking away with a crossbow or trying to beat on enemies using any sort of melee weapon, you have to slap yourself and go back to blasting things. (With the notable exception of golems, as they're immune to magic.)
Rest if you're out of spells - the game doesn't require you to complete it within any set number of days.

As a level-up strategy, I would take only sorcerer levels all the way until level 19. This gives the fastest possible access to those necessary buffs and also avoids the multiclassing penalty which hits us as soon as we take a level as a Bard. While selecting a Wild Elf would avoid this penalty completely (Sorcerer is the favored class), we'd lose both CHA and
INT, and we'd lose the "all have spell resistance" advantage that this group has. If you're hell-bent at avoiding multiclass penalties, go ahead and play a Wild Elf, but it's going to hurt you in the long run. The option of keeping the Bard and Sorc levels even should be trashed instantly, as this would make reaching even Stoneskin spell a distant sigh. Multiclassing with spell casting classes is risky business, unless using spell classing classes as mix-ins.

Starting statistics:
  --------------------
STR 8
DEX 6
CON 16
INT 20
WIS 10
CHA 20

STR and DEX do not really matter on this character as it doesn't matter if we do -1 or -100 points of damage per attack when we simply are not going to beat on anything. (Maybe except helping others in Targos with that
Quarterstaff if surprised by a lucky goblin.) A reasonable STR figure is nice to have, however, so that we don't have to worry ourselves with stuff like what we're going to do with all the equipment. Maxed CON is an insurance policy against lucky strikes, but remember to run away from harm at the first possible opportunity as this character is dead within seconds in HOF mode.
High INT and CHA give maximal access to dialogue & other skills, and WIS, while neither good or bad, is acceptable to avoid being charmed that easily.

If you don't want to min-max, use 8/10/12/18/14/18 instead.

Level-up strategy is straightforward - put EVERYTHING you've got into CHA.
This will both give a hefty amount of extra spells and higher spell DCs (especially important since this is our only bombardier), we'll receive another set of extra spells as we start leveling up as a Bard. This will ultimately give us 15 castings of those very important 2nd level spells and
11 castings at 4th level. This is important since we need to keep on casting
Ghost and Spirit armors at regular intervals as their duration isn't way up there and there are other spells in those levels that we would like to use as well!

Here are the skills and Feats you should take for this character. Please note that when you start to take levels as a Bard, some of the dialogue skills become class skills and you can boost them up considerably.

Skills : Concentration
Spellcraft (only up to 5 to access elemental feats)
Knowledge: Arcana (only up to 20)
Bluff
Diplomacy
Intimidate

Feats : 1 - Subvocal casting
3 - Spell Focus : Evocation
6 - Greater Spell Focus : Evocation
9 - Spirit of Flame
12 - Aegis of Rime
15 - Spell Focus : Necromancy
18 - Greater Spell Focus: Necromancy
21 - Lingering Song
24 - Spell Focus: Enchantment
27 - Greater Spell Focus: Enchantment
30 - Aqua Mortis

Nothing seriously surprising here, maybe except for the first feat,
Subvocal casting. While the other characters aren't hurt much by being
Silenced, this character relies 100% on spells, and thus even the remote possibility that the spell penetrates our spell resistance AND we miss the
Will save, it has to be eliminated as then we'd be sitting ducks.

Evocation spells rule during normal mode, with a single Fireball removing a substantial portion of the enemy hit points in one go and even more with higher-level variants. Followed by damage-enhancing feats, these just make the spells cast by this character that one important bit stronger. Further down the list, Necromancy spells contain the ultimate killer, also known as
Wail of the Banshee, so it's only natural that we don't want enemies to make their saves against it. Lingering song is a must for any Bard (remember that our 20th level-up is as a Bard) and it also removes the need to keep this character tied up while singing. It does, however, leave something for this character to do when the rest of the team is doing mopping up or something similar. Finally, Enchantment spells contain another showstopper spell called
Chaos, greatly reducing the danger of large enemy groups as they concentrate pretty much on themselves afterwards. Another great spell is Emotion:
Despair, especially when we want to be absolutely sure that no enemy makes their saves. Finally, Aqua of Mortis rounds up the elemental damage boosters, as the Acid Storm spell does respectable damage with it.

Comments, strategies & notes:
  -----------------------------

This character needs to play coward during the early portions of the game, as taking it into combat not only is useless, but also ties up the other characters as they need to come to his rescue. Keep the tank trio buffed to gills and watch the enemies getting brutally slaughtered, helping with the occasional Chromatic Orb or Aganazzar's Scorcher whenever needed.

Spell selection:
  ----------------

As sorcerers don't have to memorize spells, this list has all the spells this character picks, with commentary as to where that particular spell might be useful. Please note that the order is important here - you only get to pick a couple few new spells at every level-up, so don't miss an important buff or killer spell by choosing the spell that is going to be useful a while later, not right now.

Sorcerer spells: 1st level:
Chromatic Orb (after level 7, stuns opponents for a long time)
Sleep (becomes useless fast, but helps the party through beginning)
Mage Armor (better than any armor found in the game for quite some time)
Burning Hands (to finish up trolls)
Ray of Enfeeblement (major STR penalty on tough monsters) 2nd level:
Aganazzar's Scorcher (best damage in early game)
Cat's Grace (necessary buff for a long time to come)
Protection from Arrows (significant help as there are lots of archers)