An Inquisitor with the Conversion inquisition gets to use Wis instead of Cha for several Cha skills, which makes for a good face.
Bards can absolutely keep up with everyone else in combat, especially in a party like yours with multiple other martials.
Summoners are quite fiddly and tend to outshine other players, especially new players.
For your other undecided players, I'd recommend barbarian over monk and paladin over fighter. Fighters are a serious one-trick pony class where the "trick" is "I get +1's to hitting people with one specific type of weapon", and Monks fall behind in power quickly unless you minmax the hell out of them with several non-core sources.
I would recommend either bard of inquisitor. Summoners are genrally trouble for both players (who make a LOT of mistakes) and GMs (who dont know the limits of summoners well enough).
Bard: Great face, best skill monkey in the game, and always appreciated in combat. If you want to be more combat-focused, the "dawnflower dervish" or "arcane duelist" may be archetypes for you.
Inquisitor: Also a great face (with the conversion inquisition), decent skill monkey, great in combat. Very flexible class.
Both are nice, but you might get more of what you want with inquisitor.
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Inquisitor and especially the bard make excellent 5th party memebers. Both classes have a variety of ways to be played with excellent archetypes.
The summoner can be complex and often folks get the Eidolon wrong. Another factor is that the summoner will have many options and have long combat turns. In a 5+ PC party this can slow things down for everyone. The summoner might not be the best choice for a newbie. Not trying to talk you out of it but bard or inquisitor might be better places to start.
While the summoner doesnt HAVE to be more powerful then other classes, they are by far the easiest class in the game to make so. So for new groups they are often a problem. Not to mention they have the most specific rules and exceptions to existing rules of any class. For a new group I wouldnt recommend it. If you do decide to go with summoner, know that you will likely have to take deliberately less powerful options for your eidolon to not outshine the rest of the party.
As for bard or inquisitor both are great choices for your group. The characters as listed are lacking in skills and both those classes will help with that. The inquisitor happens to be one of my favorite classes in the game, it can fight, has skills, and has divine magic. It can add alot to any party.
The bard is the game's best buffer. With so many potential combat characters, the bard's song will have alot of impact in your party. So it could definately add quite a bit. It too has lots of skills to play with and an interesting spell list. Both bard and inquisitor would be good choices.
Being neutral evil limits which gods you may worship (so does being neutral good). I haven't played a divine character in a while, but I recall that you must be within one "step" of your god's alignment. This means that a neutral evil character can worship gods that are neutral evil, true neutral, lawful evil, and chaotic evil.
There are many evil gods that give access to good domains/inquisitions. you may either pick a cool god you would like to worship, and pick an appropriate domain, or start with a domain you like, and pick a god that gives the domain.
For guidance on creating an inquisitor, "Bodhi's guide to the Optimal Inquisitor" is good, and very comprehensive (and thus super long).
As far as spells go, you may still cast "Cure" spells even if you are evil. I believe the rule is that you cannot cast spells with the [good] descriptor if you are evil. Examples of these are Detect Evil, Consecrate, Bless Water, and Holy Word. I wouldn't worry about missing out on these spells if your party is evil.
Ahem. I meant that "There are many evil gods that give access to good effective domains/inquisitions." Just realized how unclear that statement was, sorry.
Ok, thank you all very much for the help.
One last question: will it hurt our party if none of our characters have disable device as class skill? Not being able to pick locks/disarm traps seems like a severe handicap.
It's a shame only rogue, alchemist and ninja have this as class skill.
Depends on how many traps you expect to face. At higher levels, there will be spells that can substitute for a lack of Disable Device skill. And of course any device can be disabled by sufficient application of force.
Just because it's not a class skill doesn't mean you can't take it.
Agreed. It depend greatly on the number of traps in your adventure. It's good to point out that someone can still put skill points into Disable Device even if it's not a class skill.
If you are very concerned about traps, someone in the party may choose a trait or feat that gives Disable Device as a class skill. For example, perhaps one character has the trait "Vagabond Child."
Benefits: Select one of the following skills: Disable Device, Escape Artist, or Sleight of Hand. You gain a +1 trait bonus on checks with that skill, and it is always a class skill for you.
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Also, welcome to Pathfinder! It's a lot of fun, and the community here can be very helpful. I really enjoy it, and hope you do too.