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it doesn't have to worry about EXP penalties either, making it reach those lovely level 30's a bit faster.

As the need for the party's characters varies quite a bit, it is advisable to start the game as a duo, having only the decoy and the Cleric/Druid at the beginning, and add the remaining two characters when the advancement speed has slowed down too much. As they're both ECL races, the difference in EXP compared to two remaining characters will ensure that everyone should reach the higher levels at around the same time.

Even more than the Melee party , this party WILL have hard time during the early chapters as that's where melee is the strongest and pretty much the only way of dispatching monsters. The choice of having spell caster-heavy party starts to pay off gradually, and by HOF mode, the poor melee capability is hardly noticed anymore. The same applies for healing - during early game, no realistic amount of healing seems to be enough, while later on it's just a Heal here and there, no sweat.

As the basic strategy at designing parties doesn't really change that much,
I won't repeat the things that have already been said about the Melee party unless there's a significant difference.

So, let me introduce: JUPP party choice number two.

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4.1 - Decoy & utility infielder & bombardier

Deep Gnome Rogue( 2 )/
Monk of the Old Order( 1 )/
Sorcerer( 1 )/
Fighter( 2 )/
Paladin( 1 )/
Ranger( 2 )/
Cleric of Helm( 1 )/
Illusionist( 20 )
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NOTE: This character must be Lawful Good in alignment.

This character is the party's decoy and meat shield. He's designed as a spell caster that is designed to blast away at enemies while not being hurt in return, and also serving as a decoy, drawing the attention of large enemy groups into himself while the rest of the party bombards the living daylights out of the enemy. As a result, the melee capability of this character is just about equal to zero, but he's pretty much invulnerable.

As the spell tables don't really favor caster classes after the first 20 levels have been acquired, the remaining 10 levels can be used to make the character have as wide selection of abilities as possible via various mix-in classes. This character takes this approach to the extremes, having a total of 8 different classes by level 30. This allows the character to become a full-fledged rogue, backup healer and resurrecter (using scrolls) and a generic wizard without specialist limitations but with specialist bonuses.
Gaining the base saving throw bonus from multiple classes makes the saving throws excellent for this character as well.

For leveling up, I'd start this character as a Rogue to get the most benefit from the initial skill points. One level as a Paladin gives all the various weapon, armor and shield feats that this character uses in the early game plus a good amount of hit points to play with. This also enables the
Holy Avenger Quest awards so that we don't have to worry about it later.
From there on it's almost exclusively Illusionist levels until a desired level (most likely 11 to access Tenser's when needed) is reached. Adding a level as a Sorcerer removes the spell restrictions, allowing stuff like
Shield, Mind Blank and Wail of the Banshee being cast by this character.
Monk and second Rogue levels may be added whenever the need arises to gain the very valuable Evasion ability or to boost thieving skills. A level as
Cleric enables this character to use all clerical scrolls (most notably
Resurrection), levels as Ranger brings dual-wielding feats and a favored enemy and finally, fighter levels are there just to get a couple extra feats.
Specific order of getting the level-ups isn't really that important, but keep in mind that this character should concentrate on being a wizard and not a not-much-of-anything. For example, being able to toss Sunfires in the middle of enemies makes this character quite a bit more valuable than gaining some of the above mentioned bonuses. Going overboard with wizard levels isn't too wise either, as the party has three other bombardiers to take care of the enemy hordes and they'll get the various buff spells earlier in any case.

Starting statistics:
  --------------------
STR 6
DEX 20
CON 11
INT 16
WIS 20
CHA 1

If you don't want to min-max, use 6/20/12/16/14/6 instead.

Maxed DEX and WIS guarantee an excellent Armor Class, and high INT allows the use of the wizard spells. Alas, this leaves no room for STR, CON or CHA, so they had to be intensively harvested for points. If you wish to trade the extreme AC values available to this character for more safety through higher hit point count, feel free to take points from WIS and apply them to boost
CON. However, please note that being almost unhittable greatly reduces the need for high hit points, and sacrificing AC can backfire by bringing the need of hit points up really fast. This character is protected from (most) spells by having naturally high Spell Resistance combined with the bonus resistance gained by equipping the Holy Avenger.

As you level up, keep adding points to DEX as this will make the various rogue skills better, improve AC and reflex saves. Remember to buy the Ring of Hearty Strength for this character, it'll take the CON stat to its next breakpoint value, bringing more hit points. Late in the HOF mode, the Death
Shroud of Bankao can be used to bring this stat to 14, giving some extra breathing room to survive the last few areas in HOF mode that little bit easier. STR and WIS (plus some hit points) will be increased by the Holy
Avenger quests, and WIS can be boosted further with the Every God's Ring.
Adding one point into WIS in HOF mode takes the WIS AC bonus to the next breakpoint together with the second Holy Avenger Quest, and one extra point in INT makes it possible to reach 9th level Arcane spells without having to wait for the Xvimian Fang of Despair in late HOF mode. (The Xvimian Fang can be found in Normal mode, but it gives only +2 INT bonus.)

Here are the skills and Feats you should take for this character. Note that since this guide doesn't set a fixed order of level-ups, some of the feats may not be available at the point of being mentioned in this list. In that case, take the feat at the first available opportunity. There's not enough skill points for Search/Disable Device, so the Rogue/Wizard has them.

Skills : Concentration (keep maxed)
Spellcraft (to access elemental feats, lower priority from there on)
Pick Lock
Pick Pocket
Hide (initial points only)
Move Silently (initial points only)

Feats  : 1 - Dodge
3 - Expertise (keep always maxed)
3 - Subvocal Casting (Wiz extra)
6 - Spell Focus: Evocation
7 - Greater Spell Focus: Evocation (Wiz extra)
9 - Spirit of Flame
12 - Spell Focus: Transmutation
12 - Greater Spell Focus: Transmutation (Wiz extra)
15 - Combat Casting
17 - Spell Focus: Necromancy (Wiz extra)
18 - Greater Spell Focus: Necromancy
21 - Aegis of Rime
22 - Aqua Mortis (Wiz extra)
24 - Discipline
27 - Dash
28 - Lightning Reflexes (Fighter Extra)
29 - Iron Will (Fighter Extra)
30 - Great Fortitude


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

This character is a decoy. Use him as such and don't try to get smart by using him as an archer apart from some rather obvious scenarios. Besides, for the Expertise feat to work, this char needs to have a melee weapon in hand - a dagger or a short sword are the natural choices as they weigh almost nothing. Later on this character will use the Xvimian Fang dagger as a secondary weapon while holding the Holy Avenger on the primary hand. Remember that since this character is a monk, holding a shield will actually make the armor class worse, so dual-wielding costs us nothing but allows to gain bonuses from two different weapons.

For the ultimate AC boost, wear Chimandrae's Slippers (or cast Cat's
Grace), the Every God's Ring, Crow's Nest, Sunfire Talisman and Brazen Bands.
Cast Shield, Ghost Armor, Haste, Barkskin and finally Tenser's Transformation if needed. Keep Expertise maxed at all times as you aren't going to hit anything in melee anyway. With all this, your AC may rise up to 71 without even casting Tenser's Transformation, and 76-79 with it. Extra point of AC can be obtained by quaffing two potions of Holy Transference (otherwise used by the party's Cleric/Druid) and using the Cleric of Helm's special ability can further boost AC by two points, but only for a very short time once per day. It's up to you if you want to reach that magical AC of 72 without Tenser's, but I think it's better to use the WIS boost for the
Cleric/Druid to make those spells rock with higher DC values.

Spell selection:
  ----------------

Number in parentheses denotes take only up to this many, otherwise you can mix'n'match as much as you like. Spells within parentheses are needed for the "kill zone" tactic, but if you don't wish to use that, ignore these spells.

Wizard spells:

1: Mage Armor(1-2), Shield, Burning Hands, Magic Arrow (Grease)
2: Mirror Image, Blur(0-1), Aganazzar's Scorcher(0-2) (Web)
3: Ghost Armor, Magic Circle Against Evil(0-3), Fireball/Skulltrap
4: Spirit Armor, Emotion: Hope, Malison
5: Stone Skin(1-4), Sunfire, Cone of Cold
6: Mass Haste(1-3), Tenser's Transformation, Acid Storm (Acid Fog)
7: Delayed Blast Fireball, Mordenkainen's Sword
8: Mind Blank(4), Horrid Wilting (Suffocate, Incendiary Cloud)
9: Wail of the Banshee, Meteor Shower

Most of the spells are various buffs (even Mord's Sword is a buff in a way) because this character doesn't really have the INT to make the spell DCs up to par with enemies' saving throws. But on the other hand, having this character concentrate on the necessary buffs, the remaining characters in the party can concentrate on offensive magic. Once the desired level of buff spells has been acquired, the rest can be filled with offensive magic. During the HOF mode, this character can be made a dedicated Malison caster, helping the other characters to score big damage with their spells.

Note that some of the spells belong to Abjuration or Necromancy schools, and thus are unavailable to this character until the one level as Sorcerer has been taken.

Alternate Character Choices:
  ----------------------------
None, really, unless some changes to the remaining party were done as well.

It is possible to take better advantage of the Cleric of Helm's special ability by dropping both Ranger and Fighter levels and the second Rogue level and adding all the levels into Cleric instead. This would require level-squatting for 4 levels, as otherwise the EXP penalty would pretty much stop advancement altogether. However, this is hardly a good idea, as the extra feats from Fighter, not to mention extra HPs from warrior classes are a bit too much of a sacrifice for making a once-per-day minor AC boost last a couple extra combat rounds.

By noting that the AC reaches 77 with an average casting of Tenser's, it might be worth it to drop the Monk's AC bonus from high WIS (+9 AC) in favor of a good shield (+4 AC) and Chain of Drakka's Fury (+1 AC over the Shield spell) for a net -5 AC loss. This would also allow removing points from WIS to boost STR and CON. Boosting INT to 18 would also remove the need for having the Xvimian Fang equipped. Doing this would make this character a rather impressive melee tank - STR16, DEX20, CON14, INT18, WIS5 and CHA1.
This would also remove quite a bit of the hassle of having some other party member having to do melee, and increased hit points is certainly a plus.

However, this approach was NOT selected, mainly because using the Tenser's
Transformation spell makes also spell casting impossible. What would be the use of having massive amounts of spells if one doesn't even get to cast them?
Another and maybe even more important issue is that there's a lot of encounters that do not allow for pre-buffing, and protecting this character until all the buffs are up is by no means an easy task if the base AC lies heaps and bounds below what is needed to get at least decent protection. One needs to start with a Mirror Image to avoid spell casting interruptions anyway, and there's no guarantees that there's time for one extra casting before all of the images have been chopped up.

Another reason for tossing the non-monk option was the poor Will saves. Due to the way the AI is programmed, getting the decoy character charmed or controlled makes the enemies switch targets - which is not a good thing for characters that rely on having the decoy protect them. Also, as some stunning spells have Will saves (especially the Symbol spells), and a failed save means a dead decoy as the protection of high AC is suddenly gone.

The prior version of JUPP (0.03) had this character take the Druid levels and concentrate on the Druidic side. However, this approach caused a rather severe 40% EXP penalty, not to mention the WIS score wouldn't get the bonuses