I have found that creating my party to compliment the NPC's currently available has been very helpful on hard difficulty, And Hybrid seems to gimp you later on due to their being only 15 ability points available that I know of from 1-20. I had a nightblade I made it to level 10 with, then suddenly she started dying constantly. Second play through with a pure ranger and a pure mage have shown me the power difference, lesson learned.
