If you have a character with thievery (Fane) I'd suggest you focus on persuasion and skip the bartering on your avatar (Lohse). Thievery both reduces your need of money and is quite a good source for valuable items you can sell. It also eases the access to loot in locked chests or behind locked doors. I didn't have a barter character and nonetheless ended up with way more gold than I could ever spend.
All characters are almost indifferent in terms of who's suited for which kind of build. But if you really want to squeeze the maximum out of it, keep the
racial bonuses in mind.
The racial civil skill bonus should be able to bypass the limit of 5 on the civil skills.
- Lohse/Ifan could have an even better maximum barter skill. Barter is useful, but not necessary.
- Beast will have a sneak bonus, but sneak is not a skill I'd consider worth using.
- Sebille will have a loremaster bonus, which is not interesting for maxing it out but should be considered when chosing who in your team shall be the loremaster. In your case it's obviously not Sebille as you're not planning to have her with you.
- Red Prince will have a bonus on persuasion. Afaik persuasion attempts are in most cases dependant on your dialogue choice and persuasion skill, barely on the attribute governing the dialogue choice, though. (It's usually about what makes sense: Don't try to intimidate a giant troll with your strength.) Therefore a skilled rhetor will be quite useful indeed if you like to talk people to death! But as civil skills don't work party wide you won't really benefit from this given you'll most likely have Lohse do the talking.
- Undead replaces the civil skill bonus for Fane. Combines well with geomancy party members and necromancy.
I conclude: Because you want to have Lohse as your main character you can pretty much ignore the racial civil ability bonuses. :p Now let's take a look at what we can derive from the other passive racial bonus.
- Lohse/Ifan/Fane will get the Ingenious bonus. You gain a tiny Initiative bonus and a small additional critical hit chance. The initiative bonus will only be of use if you invest a lot into Wits as it will else be redundant. But you do have the critical hit chance bonus - that's good for everyone who's attacking people with weapons or direct damage spells (savage sacrilege perk will give your spells a critical hit chance). So if you don't want to waste this small bonus, don't let them play healers, dedicated supporters, necromancers or summoners.
- Beast gets some more vitality and 5% dodge chance. While the vitality bonus is not that strong (armor>>>health) the dodge chance can be part of a dodge-heavy (team) build featuring leadership. Without leadership, dual wield and according perks may still add some dodge chance, so you'd end up with a scoundrel build.
- Sebille would be able to eat corpse parts, allowing for some free skills, a lot of extra narrator lines and some quest advancements. But you won't be able to take advantage of that, eh?
No impact on build choice anyway. - Red Prince gets small fire and poison resistances. Not really worth it, although maybe useful for a pyro/geo mage build resulting in yourself getting hit by ooze and flames – or some suicidal self-damaging fire spells.
- Mask of the Shapeshifter will apply the above mentioned bonus from the race you mimic.
The passive bonuses are, again, quite uninteresting, although they give very small directions who'd be better for which build. Now take a look at the racial skills!
- Lohse/Ifan can encourage allies in range giving a minor attribute bonus. Nice to have, well-suited for people standing in the very middle of the team, that is: Rather not an archer (standing apart for high ground) or melee (standing too far away from non-melees) unless your team is focused on playing point-blank.
- Beast gets petrifying touch, which is a small CC skill. Iirc it bypasses magic armor. If that's true it's a really nice point-blank CC. Would be useful on any melee or point-blank mage.
- Sebille would get flesh sacrifice, which gives you a free AP and a small damage buff but cuts down your own health. Health, on the other hand, is to be neglected if your CC is well-placed and your damage is good. Great skill on any damage dealer. Good skill on supporters and summoners as well. But you miss it out. ^-^
- Red Prince gets a short-range cheap fire spell which applies burning as well. Should benefit from pyromancy and intelligence, so if he was a mage that'd be a free extra spell for him. Not quite the strongest, but definitely useful.
- Mask of the Shapeshifter will grant the above mentioned skill of the assumed race.
- Undead can play dead, resulting in foes losing interest in you until you take damage or do something. Best to be used when you're about to die, used adrenaline in your turn or are shocked, so you'll both avoid being killed and be able to take advantage of sitting out one turn (if you like to, the skill doesn't force you!) to accumulate action points.
Final conclusion, skipping the origin source skills as all but Fane's are not worth mentioning:
- Ifan/Lohse should play any damage dealing build, preferably none which is going to locate them far off their allies. In melee heavy teams they should be melees or short-range mages.
- Beast fits best into a full-melee leadership team, playing a scoundrel himself to maximize his dodge ability. Give him mage armors as he's unlikely to ever get hit by physical attacks anyway. ^-^
- Sebille is not going to be part of your team.
- Red Prince might benefit from being a point-blank pyro/geo mage.
- Fane will not benefit from healers in the team, should be dealing damage himself and consider using necromancy to get healed. If Red Prince is to be a geomancy mage that will allow for some healing on fane. This way you'd turn Fane into the one getting most of the healing in the team.
- If you plan to combine all those racial bonuses into a working team build, leave Ifan and Sebille out of your team, turn Fane into a corpse eating strength based warfare/leadership elf with thievery, beast into a finesse based scoundrel/warfare scout with sneaking abilities, Red Prince into a point-blank pyro/geo mage with lucky find, Lohse into a (any direct damage spell school)/leadership avatar with persuasion. Chain Red Prince to whoever is going to loot stuff because of the most recent gameplay change to lucky find.
However, the race bonuses are so small that you shouldn't design your whole teambuild based on those tiny advantages. There's more important stuff to consider.
- Because of the armor system you want to focus on either physical or magical damage.
- Many foes have elemental resistances or even benefit from certain elemental damage.
- Physical CC is more straightforward. Combined with elemental damage's weaknesses this means it's most useful to focus on physical damage only.
- Warfare>Polymorph>weapon skill lines. Warfare and Polymorph grant powerful skills. Warfare's way to calculate damage is superior to the weapon skill lines. You can change weapons at will and not lose the skill's bonus, when you find excellent new loot. (I.e.: If you spent skill points into two handed weaponry but find a lovely one handed axe which is way better, you would lose the two handed damage bonus when changing to the axe - but the warfare damage bonus always remains the same. Also, if need be, your archer can switch to a spear or dagger.)
- Warfare>Huntsman>Polymorph>ranged for archers.
So, if you want an excellent instead of a synergizing, balanced team, go for 4 physicals.
