4th level party, all spontaneous

[Thurbane]

Just a hypothetical question – if you were going to have a 5 character party of 4th level characters, and they all had to be spontaneous casters (excluding psionics), what would you chose?

- Duskblade
- Favored Soul
- Bard
- Sorcerer
- Beguiler

[Pharaoh's Fist]

Sorry, misread the question.

Duskblade
Sorcerer
Favored Soul
Bard
Dragonfire Adept

[Night-breeze]

4th level?

Duskblade.

[Skyserpent]

Duskblade
Sorceror
Favored Soul
Shugenja, specializes in Air, Abandons earth.

Sorceror specializes in the skillmonkey spells, Favored Soul for heals, Duskblade fights in melee and the Shugenja has a nice spread of bombs and other utility as well as back-up heals.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

Psion, PsyWar, Beguiler, Favored Soul, Duskblade.

If there are any non-FS spont Divine casters, use them instead. Are the UA variants allowed?

[Thurbane]

Class variants are fine, but remember, it's a 5 man party, and no psionics are allowed.

[TheOOB]

Favored Soul, Duskblade, Sorcerer, Beguiler, Bard

Gives you a nice wide spell base. One healer with a back-up, two offensive casters, and a rogue-like class. Replaceing the Beguiler or Bard with a dread necromancer will make the party more front line combat oriented.(dread necros with tomb tainted soul are some of the most durable casters in the game.).

[Yuki Akuma]

Does Artificer count?

Because if so, seriously, Artificer. And I guess maybe a Favoured Soul and a Beguiler and a Duskblade. But mostly Artificer.

[Jallorn]

Warlock, plain and simple. At least one has to be a warlock.

[Lamech]

UA spellcaster, IIRC those guys are strictly better than a sorc.

[Thurbane]

For the purpose of this excercise, I'm specifically looking for spontaneous casters (arcane or divine), so no Warlocks or Artificers.

[Flickerdart]

Five Dread Necros and a small city of Undead should do the trick. Casting? Why?

[Chineselegolas]

Five man party...
Skillmonkey, Healer, Tank, Blaster and Buffer.

Beguiler fills skilmonkey
Shugenja or Favoured Soul can cover healing. Favoured soul can also hit tank.
Duskblade or Favoured Soul tank well. Sorcerer with the right build can tank against 3-4 opponents scarily well.
Blaster, well Sorcerer of course.
Buffer, Earth Shugenja or Bard.

Beguiler, Favoured Soul, Duskblade, Sorcerer and Shugenja
Two armoured up for tanking. Two with healing, skill monkey and three charisma based for social. And plenty of utility potential spread over the 5

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Dread Necromancer with two Lizardfolk Skeletons
Dread Necromancer with two Lizardfolk Skeletons
DFI Bard, will be taking Requiem at 6
Beguiler, handles skillmonkeying
Spirit Shaman, mostly because I've never tried one before

Everyone has Tomb-Tainted Soul so the Dread Necromancers can heal with Inflicts and top everyone off between encounters with their at-will touch.

[Gerbah]

Hm. Does the Spellthief count? That could be an interesting one to have for skills/traps/etc..

Other than that, I'd go with something like:
Favored Soul
Battle Sorcerer
Bard
Warmage
Duskblade

How useful is this: I have no idea, I just picked the classes that looked fun. Regardless, you have a healer, backup healer, fighter-type, a few backup fighter types, plus enough area control. I could probably find some fun prestige classes to go with the group too, might have to look into that. Ah, and maybe find a place for a Hexblade.

[Ponce]

Beguiler
Sorcerer
Favoured Soul
Duskblade
Dread Necromancer

[ZeroNumerous]

Factotum, Duskblade, Favored Soul, Sorcerer and Bard.

To clarify: Factotum does the skill monkey stuff, Duskblade and Favored Soul are beatsticks. Sorcerer is a utility blaster-caster. Bard backs up the Factotum and takes DFI to increase the damage of the beatsticks.

But if you mean for a dungeon crawl..

Warmage/Warmage/Warmage/Warmage/Warmage.

[Tempest Fennac]

I'd say Beguiller (for skills and mind-affecting spells), Duskblade (for fighting), Favoured Soul (for healing and as a secondary fighter), Bard (focusing on improving Bardic Music for support and acting as another secondary frontliner with Snowflake Wardance) and a Generic Spellcaster using Int (back-up healer/spells which other people can't handle).

[Fizban]

-Sorcerer
-Duskblade
-Beguiler
-Spirit Shaman
-Favored Soul

The first three are obvious, the Favored Soul is to get important cleric spells earlier than the Spirit Shaman. The Spirt Shaman is there because he has access to the entire driud list, and changes his spells known from it each day. It's like having a wizard, except he uses the driud list and already knows all the spells. Dunno if it's actually that effective, but when everyone else has 5-10 spells known, the man with all of them reigns king.

Or something like that.

[Kaiyanwang]

Beguiler - control + skill & trapfinding, a must
Duskblade to frontline
Favored Soul to beat things, buff and heal
Sorcerer because Sorcerer
Shugenja, first talk with FS and sorc then select school to fill gaps.

Otherwise, 5 bards, maybe each one with 1-2 different PRC.

And different instruments!

[Devils_Advocate]

Rough count of votes so far (It's probably slightly off):

Duskblade 13
Favored Soul 13
Beguiler 11
Sorcerer 9
Battle Sorcerer 1
Bard 7
Dread Necromancer 7
Shugenja 3
Spirit Shaman 2
Generic Spellcaster 2
Dragonfire Adept 1
Warmage 1

It shouldn't be too hard to get a reasonable DM to house-rule the Healer class into a spontaneous caster. So I'd stick a Healer in a party with a Dread Necromancer, just for lulz potential. Add to that a Duskblade for tankng, and a Bard and a Beguiler to cover Enchantment, Illution, misc. other magic, and various skillz.

[kjones]

But if you mean for a dungeon crawl..

Warmage/Warmage/Warmage/Warmage/Warmage.

I would play in that game. We'd just keep hitting things with fire until they didn't exist.

If that didn't work? More fire.

[Epinephrine]

Duskblade
Spellthief
Sorcerer
Favoured Soul
Spirit Shaman

Spirit Shaman covers wilderness-type stuff, as a spontaneous druidic caster, favoured soul for buffs/heals, sorcerer with utility, Duskblade and Spellthief do the fighting, with the Duskblade's huge number of spell slots powering the Spellthief's spells as needed. Spellthief covers sneaky/rogue jobs.

I can't believe I'm the first to suggest a spellthief. With that many casters to borrow spells from it'd be great fun!