So, I've finally made it to the end of Fort Joy and have a chance to respec my team. I'm playing on Classic mode, on PS4. I've died a lot, read many guides, and finally made it through to the point where I can respec my team and hopefully make some more informed choices.
My team up to now is :
Beast as main character: Rogue with dual daggers. With attributes almost entirely in finesse and points in scoundrel and dual wielding and the talent that gives a free move. He's very mobile, can do a lot of damage with the use of backlash and running around backstabbing people. Lots of his skills and racial bonus talk about dodging, but I can't say I've ever noticed him dodge much. In general he's a good damage dealer, but also very squishy. He's also got teleportation gloves and the cat summon that has the position swap skill, which I use to move things around the battle field. My main problems with him are that he's often in the firing line without much defence, and I also frequently end up with one AP to use, and the only skills are chloroform and petrifying touch, neither of which are effective alongside all his physical skills.
Lohse: Summoner. With wand and shield or with staff, depending what equipment I find that gives stat bonuses. Has all her points in summoning. Her attributes are a 50/50 split between intelligence and constitution as none of them really benefit the summons. Her incarnate is very effective, as are all of her totems, and they're usually invaluable in battle. Once the incarnate is live in the field her usual turn involves putting down one totem and then either using the random-element blast which is usually not very effective (again as nothing else in my team really breaks down magic armour), or Encourage which I feel is useful but I don't really know how much of a difference it makes
Red Prince: Fighter. One handed weapon and shield, and pretty much all his points in warfare and in strength with a bit of constitution. I find he lacks mobility and often a lot of his AP is wasted on movement. I tend to lean heavily on throwing shield and battle stomp as they have a little bit of range so he doesn't have to move so much. His fire breath is rarely useful as Beast is often in the firing line and even if not it's rarely effective on enemies. He's got a couple of helpful buffs like clear mind, fortify and haste which I use a lot.
Sebille: Ranger with bow or crossbow. Lots of points in ranged, a few in huntsman, and lots of points in finesse attributes. She's a very effective damage dealer from the back, providing terrain allows it. I use blood sacrifice then rarely use any of her skills other than straight attacks and ricochet where possible. Adding an element to her arrows sometimes seems to do more harm than good. She's got first aid when needed, but is very squishy when enemies do get to her.
I've chosen the specific characters based on playing through the first bit of the game a bunch of times and made my choice entirely based on their personalities - I know Beast is a bit bland in some ways but that allows me to project onto him more as my main, and I've enjoyed the conversations with the other three. I then assigned them roles based on what I thought suited their starter attributes best, and I felt would be easiest for me to handle as I didn't have to worry too much about different magic schools conflicting and all that.
My main issue is the lack of healing first of all, then the fact I don't feel like I'm getting the most out of Red Prince as he's usually caught in no mans land between Beast and the summons at the front of the fight, and Lohse and Sebille doing their thing from a distance. Lohse is the only one with any intelligence so would it make sense to add healing to her? I don't want to compromise her summons though as they're doing the business for me. Maybe if Red Prince isn't actually doing much hitting I could drop some of his strength points and multiclass him?
As Beast is my main, I'm putting all my persuasion on him and he's the one who's there for conversations that turn into fights, meaning he's always at the front where the fighter ought to be, and that might be why he's up getting squished while Red Prince is still trying to run to combat. I don't really want to move my formation around before each battle though, as I feel it cheapens the role playing a bit and makes it more unnatural than just walking up and having it play out properly. I think playing on classic mode with a decent team I should be able to just go straight from a conversation to battle naturally without setting it up in advance.
I'd be open to making beast a fighter and Red Prince something else if it made more sense, but I would miss that backstab DPS.
My other issue is that I'm a 90% physical damage team but I frequently end up in the position where Beast, Lohse or Red Prince only have a magical armour attack with their last 1 or 2 AP and it is almost pointless even doing them because you make a small dent in magical armour that helps nothing. I don't know if I should diversify more into magic and physical attacks and go for 50/50, or try to get up to 100% physical, but a kind of 90/10 split is pointless I think.
So thanks to anyone who's read through that wall of text, I know there are many guides on party builds out there and I've read a lot of them, but I'd love to have some advice based on my play style that I described. I'm loving the game but I also know I'm unlikely to be able to make time in my life to play through it more than once so I'd like to get it right.