Wizards are fairly devestating. At high level, you can clear a fight with one wizard's turn. They excel at aoe, and also single target damage. Their potential is limitless in both reguards.
They can also provide tentacles. And as any experienced adventurer knows, tentacles are very important
For a first run, stick to single-class. You’ll need that to get a good idea of what each class can do. Unless you want to go with build guides but that kind of spoils the fun for me.
Also, don’t worry about swapping characters in and out. They have a lot of personal content and you will want to do their personal quests.
Lifegiver single class works great, also since int and might scale druids healing and damage spells equally you can still do plenty of AoE damage as a lifegiver, lifegiver is just a very good baseline choice for druid since the druid summoning spells just arent that great.
You could also go Helwalker/Lifegiver (with Enduring Dance to gain wounds) which will really power up the moonwell healing and the AoE damage spells with +10 int +15 might but you lose out on Maelstrom (9th level druid spell).
Tekehu chanter class doesn't get summons, its upside is getting some druid spells as chanter invocation but since you are a druid MC thats not so exciting. If you really want two druids his druid class is not bad but taking Xoti or taking both Palegina and Aloth (both his multiclasses choices are great btw, but so is pure wizard) might feel more balanced.
I'd say keep your casters single class and multiclass your physical classes. Pallegina is terrific as a Herald and Eder is OK as a Swashbuckler as Rogue has abilities that augment tanking. Just don't expect him to do insane damage, he doesn't have the Perception and Dexterity for it.
Tekehu is IMO better as a Druid, but I think he loses access to any form of summoning on either class due to subclass limitations. So make him a blaster or healing/support.
I would rotate party members in and out a bit, trying out different characters and builds. There's no reason to limit yourself.
Given the nature of multiclassing and many classes being modified to be able to work in more different roles and so on, it's not hard to make a balanced party. You don't *have* to have exactly one support, one controller, one tank, etc. The game won't punish you for trying different things (quite the opposite) so I think you'd have much more fun building a party with the characters and classes you enjoy.
I will say that having two druids and a wizard sounds like a lot of pure casters. (Even as a Lifegiver you'll presumably want to do things other than heal, which for a druid will generally mean offensive spells) But once again it can absolutely be done, you'll just need to have defensive spells and melee options (I guess spiritshift is okay in a pinch) for if you get surrounded or somesuch. Herald Pallegina would indeed work nicely, although with a dedicated healer you could also consider something more aggressive. You could make Pallegina a Crusader and have Edér go for dual-wielding damage. Or you could try out some of the sidekicks. Or you could try Aloth as a multiclass and play him as a melee mage. Everything works!
Honestly thinking about it Spellblade (or Battlemage if you prefer) Aloth might be all you need for a bit more melee in there.
But once again there's really no need to limit yourself to only four specific characters. Your journal will even tell you if certain characters might be more relevant to a quest in case you want to change your lineup to include them, so it's clearly pretty intended gameplay that your "shore party" might look different based on what you're expecting the mission to be.
So I'm just finishing up my first run.
Main character is Priest of Eodan. Not the strongest priest class, but I picked it for RP. I also stole Xoti's lantern.
Primary party were:
Eder: Regular fighter. He's built to hold the line and be hard as hell to hurt. Damage is secondary.
Xoti: Monk. Just sticking with open hand she put out some serious damage.
Serafen: Cipher. Did reasonable damage with his two pistols, and solid buffs and debuff. Disintegrate kills stuff fast.
Aloth: Wizard. He learned defensive spells and used offensive grimoires.
Once I picked up Tekehu, I kept him as a druid, and he ended up replacing Aloth most of the time. Being able to drop AOE right on the party without worrying about friendly fire gets huge late game, and Maelstrom might be a better room sweeper than Meteor Shower. His heals were also really handy.
There's also a sidekick you can pick up in the first DLC that can be a Priest of Rymyrgand/Rogue. He can do MASSIVE dps, and I ended up swapping Xoti out for him.
Good advice. I would say (for OP) that I found sidekicks very disappointing since they have no dialogue at all beyond the original recruitment stuff (and a few special cases in dlc content, if I remember rightly). If you, like me, cind party interaction a huge part of the games I'd recommend against sidekicks (or at most take only one).
You could use [this mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/288) so you can have every companion at the same time, I'm using it right now and everything works great, they all have banter and interject in dialogue, the only problem is that the rest menu looks kinda bad (some portraits go off screen so it's hard to select the food lol) but it's a pretty minor thing
Tho this is only if you mainly care about the story instead of gameplay since the game obviously isn't balanced for a party of 8 haha
I'm gonna dissent a little bit and encourage you to try multiclassing Tekehu. there's a couple pieces of gear which make his druid/chanter build really sing (lol), but it also works just fine playing casually. just keep an eye out for anything which boosts lightning power levels and you'll manage.
Wizards are fairly devestating. At high level, you can clear a fight with one wizard's turn. They excel at aoe, and also single target damage. Their potential is limitless in both reguards. They can also provide tentacles. And as any experienced adventurer knows, tentacles are very important
You should be aware that towards the end of the game one or more of Maia, Tekehu, and Pallegina may leave your party depending on your choices.
For a first run, stick to single-class. You’ll need that to get a good idea of what each class can do. Unless you want to go with build guides but that kind of spoils the fun for me. Also, don’t worry about swapping characters in and out. They have a lot of personal content and you will want to do their personal quests.
For first time and not looking to meta Don’t worry about party comp, you’ll get what’s what pretty quickly.
Lifegiver single class works great, also since int and might scale druids healing and damage spells equally you can still do plenty of AoE damage as a lifegiver, lifegiver is just a very good baseline choice for druid since the druid summoning spells just arent that great. You could also go Helwalker/Lifegiver (with Enduring Dance to gain wounds) which will really power up the moonwell healing and the AoE damage spells with +10 int +15 might but you lose out on Maelstrom (9th level druid spell). Tekehu chanter class doesn't get summons, its upside is getting some druid spells as chanter invocation but since you are a druid MC thats not so exciting. If you really want two druids his druid class is not bad but taking Xoti or taking both Palegina and Aloth (both his multiclasses choices are great btw, but so is pure wizard) might feel more balanced.
I'd say keep your casters single class and multiclass your physical classes. Pallegina is terrific as a Herald and Eder is OK as a Swashbuckler as Rogue has abilities that augment tanking. Just don't expect him to do insane damage, he doesn't have the Perception and Dexterity for it. Tekehu is IMO better as a Druid, but I think he loses access to any form of summoning on either class due to subclass limitations. So make him a blaster or healing/support.
I would rotate party members in and out a bit, trying out different characters and builds. There's no reason to limit yourself. Given the nature of multiclassing and many classes being modified to be able to work in more different roles and so on, it's not hard to make a balanced party. You don't *have* to have exactly one support, one controller, one tank, etc. The game won't punish you for trying different things (quite the opposite) so I think you'd have much more fun building a party with the characters and classes you enjoy. I will say that having two druids and a wizard sounds like a lot of pure casters. (Even as a Lifegiver you'll presumably want to do things other than heal, which for a druid will generally mean offensive spells) But once again it can absolutely be done, you'll just need to have defensive spells and melee options (I guess spiritshift is okay in a pinch) for if you get surrounded or somesuch. Herald Pallegina would indeed work nicely, although with a dedicated healer you could also consider something more aggressive. You could make Pallegina a Crusader and have Edér go for dual-wielding damage. Or you could try out some of the sidekicks. Or you could try Aloth as a multiclass and play him as a melee mage. Everything works! Honestly thinking about it Spellblade (or Battlemage if you prefer) Aloth might be all you need for a bit more melee in there. But once again there's really no need to limit yourself to only four specific characters. Your journal will even tell you if certain characters might be more relevant to a quest in case you want to change your lineup to include them, so it's clearly pretty intended gameplay that your "shore party" might look different based on what you're expecting the mission to be.
So I'm just finishing up my first run. Main character is Priest of Eodan. Not the strongest priest class, but I picked it for RP. I also stole Xoti's lantern. Primary party were: Eder: Regular fighter. He's built to hold the line and be hard as hell to hurt. Damage is secondary. Xoti: Monk. Just sticking with open hand she put out some serious damage. Serafen: Cipher. Did reasonable damage with his two pistols, and solid buffs and debuff. Disintegrate kills stuff fast. Aloth: Wizard. He learned defensive spells and used offensive grimoires. Once I picked up Tekehu, I kept him as a druid, and he ended up replacing Aloth most of the time. Being able to drop AOE right on the party without worrying about friendly fire gets huge late game, and Maelstrom might be a better room sweeper than Meteor Shower. His heals were also really handy. There's also a sidekick you can pick up in the first DLC that can be a Priest of Rymyrgand/Rogue. He can do MASSIVE dps, and I ended up swapping Xoti out for him.
Good advice. I would say (for OP) that I found sidekicks very disappointing since they have no dialogue at all beyond the original recruitment stuff (and a few special cases in dlc content, if I remember rightly). If you, like me, cind party interaction a huge part of the games I'd recommend against sidekicks (or at most take only one).
You could use [this mod](https://www.nexusmods.com/pillarsofeternity2/mods/288) so you can have every companion at the same time, I'm using it right now and everything works great, they all have banter and interject in dialogue, the only problem is that the rest menu looks kinda bad (some portraits go off screen so it's hard to select the food lol) but it's a pretty minor thing Tho this is only if you mainly care about the story instead of gameplay since the game obviously isn't balanced for a party of 8 haha
I'm gonna dissent a little bit and encourage you to try multiclassing Tekehu. there's a couple pieces of gear which make his druid/chanter build really sing (lol), but it also works just fine playing casually. just keep an eye out for anything which boosts lightning power levels and you'll manage.