Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Help/Tips/Tricks best starter party?

In addition to the above:

Tanks would require skills to reliably taunt enemies with, and these don't exist in this game.
Healer alone is worthless. If you want, make a healer / supporter / disabler type magician.

Incarnates are good, up to the endgame, so taking summoning early with at least one character will help you immensely.

As it was said before, make sure that everyone has some form of fast movement (tactical retreat and spread your wings are available at lvl 4 in Fort Joy, the rest comes later)

I prefer taking Aero 2 with all my characters regardless of other skills, for Teleportartion, Uncanny Evasion, Nether Swap (the latter IIRC is not immediately available at lvl 4)

Make sure all characters have a way to CC enemies after they have been stripped off physical / magical armor. There are several magic spells, warfare skills, scoundrel skills etc. for this. Craft / buy / steal knockdown arrows for your archers, these are the most important special arrows in the game. Give any archer type character some shocking / charming arrows for the rare occasions where they have to deal with a no magic armor enemy.

The nicest early cc skills are Battle Stomp, Battle Ram, Chicken Claw for enemies w/o physical and Fossil Strike and chloroform for enemies w/o magical armor. Fossil Strike is good in general because oil will slow enemies no matter what.

Physical damage dealers will be superior in this game on the long run, because of generic weapon damage and elemental resistances. To be honest, I'd go with three archers and a summoner / melee type character as an initial setup, steal enough stuff to set them up (items boosting warfare and aero, also summoning on my summoner).

Unless you use mods, be prepared to return to the traders every hour. Stealing helps immensely early game, however you can only rob every character just once. So get Thievery to at least 3 before starting to steal. Either take thievery with your main character or take along Fane (if you're not using mods: the shadowblade class will start with thievery).

Bartering and bribing traders is also very helpful. Ifan or Lohse can be your barterer (there are a number of classes that come with this skill - e.g. warrior, cleric, wayfarer).

You will be able to respec later on as often as you want, with all characters at no cost and no penalties, but the early game might be tricky at first on a higher difficulty.