I agree, I grew very fond of my Duergar Bard/ranger/wizard Tav in my 3rd PT.
For my 4th PT, I wanted to explore more races and classes that I had not yet tried before and I've installed the "Party limits begone" mod and the "CustomCompanion" mod.
The latter allows you to create hirelings using the player character creation sheet.
So I 'm now running a small army against the absolujte, with a half-drow wizard Tav, Karlach, Lae'zel, Shadowheart, Jaheira and Minthara, together with a Halfling bard, a Gold dwarf ranger , a human rogue/assassin, Forest gnome monk and a Deep gnome warlock as hirelings. More time to spend on the party than on exploring and fighting. I wouldn't recommend this for a 1st or even 2nd PT, but it's great to explore missing race/class dialogue options and feats once you've done all the quests in the normal way.
I still don't understand, why none of the companions was from the short races. As i said, apart from Lae'zel and Karlach, none of them were defined by their races.
Gnome is very good imo, they have advantages on the mental stat sves. Halflings are among the best because they never see a natural 1 in a game. Halfing bard is so great.
