Ckeric Evangelist. Even with any of the rest of your party, your going to need a healer. Give him/her the Luck Domain and send them on in to battle. You'll live.
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Paladin and either Cleric or Bard or Oracle or Druid, I suppose.
The Paladin and Ranger can cover the front line, the Witch the arcane casting/debuffing, and the divine caster or bard can do buffing and yet more healing. (The Witch, Paladin and, eventually, Ranger, can also contribute to the healing, depending on what spells and / or hexes they go with, even if the Ranger's contribution rarely gets better than holding onto a spare cure light wounds wand.)
Hey, I'd always vote for a Dragon Disciple if I had a chance, but your party could use a dedicated front liner. A paladin (I'd recommend Shelyn for a glaive for some battlefield control, also not a bad entrance into DD...) has more tricks and some cool abilities and a Bard can really help do some party buffs.
My home group that is currently going through RotR is a Gnome Monk, Gnome Druid, a Human Sorcerer and Elf Sorcerer using core rules only. Other than a little cheating at the end of book two, we have made it thus far without losing anyone. I say that to let you know that even though some choices are better than others, it is best to pick what you want to play and do your best to make it from there.
Paladin and Master Summoner.
In my opinion those are the two best classes in the game and would compliment what you already have going for you well. If you want any advice on specific builds feel free to drop me a line.
Paladin to front line, heal, and handle face duties.
Either Flame Oracle or Blaster Arcane Class. My experience is that a dedicated blaster is very valuable in RotR.
Our RotR group is comprised of:
1 Half Elf Summoner
1 Half Elf Cavalier/Fighter (who despite warnings is optimizing for mounted combat).
1 Human Barbarian
1 Half Elf Archery Ranger
1 Half Orc Cleric of Caiden Cailen
So far we have had only a 2 really tough fights (one at the end of the first book nearly resulted in a TPK).
We are about level 4 now and so far have not really suffered for having no REAL arcanist (I play the Summoner and just got haste since we are so martial class heavy but have not been in combat since I got it) but that may change as we level.
The eidolon has been invaluable so far as both assault unit and guardian since I put an evolution and a good amount of skill points into it's perception (+13 now I think at level 4 IIRC) so it almost always spots the dangers to us before we can and alerts us.
With that many hard core martial types, my Eidlon and the Cleric we've been easily handling almost anything we run into.
Hope that helps?
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I didn't recommend Master Summoner just because I was thinking of having all four members of the party able to handle a wand of cure light wounds (in case you wanted to go cleric-less, and have a Paladin and Bard or Paladin and Druid or something), but the Master Summoner is really good at damage prevention, if the map allows for it, as he can, as a standard action at 5th level, plotz 1d4+1 Augmented Celestial Hounds down on the board, in any spaces he wants within 35 ft. or so, blocking off charge lanes for bad-guys, and ensuring that if a bad-guy wants to advance towards someone at speed, they have to eat an AoO (that comes with a free trip attack) or three. Every hit point of damage one of your summoned creatures takes is as good as a heal on an ally, since it's damage they *aren't* taking.
So, yeah, if you feel the party has at least half-arsed healing taken care of, a Master Summoner can be pretty hot.
I'll avoid spoilers, but I can think of at least one encounter where I would have loved to have been able to put a wall of dogs between me and some bad-guys, to avoid the bad touch.
There's so many corner cases as to how to adjudicate things with a Synthesist that I'd skip it just to save both myself and my GM the hassle of figuring out how it works in various funky situations that adventurers invariably get into. Your GM might be fine with it, and not mind 'though. There's degrees of what's crossing the line, depending on your GM. With some, it's Summoners, full stop. Even with those who are totally cool with generic Summoners, the Master Summoner might be a step closer to a squinty look of displeasure, and a Synthesist might be a step past it...
I didn't recommend Master Summoner just because I was thinking of having all four members of the party able to handle a wand of cure light wounds...
Summoners are Charisma based. Depending on how you build it a Summoner could have a Decent UMD and be able to use a lot of wands. If you go half elf and stick their racial skill boost on UMD they are pretty good. If you get a decent Int you can even do some face skills. And of course the half elf favored class option lets you get more Evolution points every 4 levels.
RotRL is intended to invoke an old-school RPG feeling, so I'd strongly recommend old-school Core classes, with a minimal use of archetypes. In other words, go broad instead of narrow.
The original version used four iconics as the pre-gen characters...
Valeros the (male human) fighter.
Seoni the (female human) sorcerer.
Kyra the (female human) cleric of Sarenrae.
Merisiel the (female elf) rogue.
Hard to beat the "fighter/cleric/magic-user/thief" combo for this AP.
Also... the original pre-gens used the "Heroic Array" for stats (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8), which is roughly equivalent to a 15-point buy.
[Edited to add...]
Oh, and I'm running a six-character party consisting of...
Charrone the female human (Chelish) paladin
McGregor the male human (Chelish) wizard (universalist)
Declan the male human (Taldan) cleric of Sarenrae
Halfred the male human (Ulfen) barbarian
Zandu the male half-elf fighter/rogue
Durrok the male dwarf ranger (crossbowman)
We used a 20-point buy, but in retrospect, I wish we'd gone with 15-point instead.
@Gerald : Interesting Point of view, what makes you think so?
I can think of several encounters with monsters at range, with poor reflex saves, without too significant of an elemental resistance.
Our group's blaster romped through quite a few of those...
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Thanks for all the inputs.
Finally, it looks like :
Urban Ranger
Witch
PaladinAnd ... don't know yet between Cleric, Oracle Or Druid hehe.
As you progress, Cleric is excellent for magic item crafting, having access to more of the 'big six' creating spells than a Druid. The Oracle, as a spontaneous caster, isn't quite as optimal for item creation, having to either buy scrolls, eat the +5 DC or take some less-than-sexy spells as 'spells known.' If you plan on going this route, be sure to take a trait or feat (Cosmopolitan) or domain (Knowledge) that grants access to Knowledge - Arcana as a class skill. Failing item creation rolls sucks!
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I think Witch's got Knowledge Arcana too. Are they bad for crafting?
You've got resistance for cloaks of resistance, and mage armor for bracers of armor, but no bull's strength, cat's grace, fox's cunning, etc. for stat-boosting items, and that's a popular category, so you'll be eating that +5 crafting DC for not having the spell for a fair number of popular items.
On the upside, as a Witch, you'll have a higher Intelligence than a Cleric, and won't have to do anything special to get knowledge - arcana as a class skill.