I hope you have fun and you may already be too far in for this advice, but for such a small party, I'd prefer adding mythic ranks rather than gestalt. Gestalt does very little to increase your survivability and action economy. Gestalt is pretty good for adding versatility, but versatility won't do much to keep you alive at low level. Meanwhile, adding a mythic rank will give you more hit points and better action economy.
I agree that adding Mythic rules can help shore up the weaknesses of such an undersized party, instead of or in addition to Gestalt.
In either case, one of the biggest weaknesses of small parties is action economy. It doesn't matter how optimized you are for a given role, you still only get one standard action in a given round.
To that end, if you do go the gestalt direction, consider classes/class combinations that both increase your action economy and help cover your weaknesses. Evil campaigns add the additional complication of making healing harder to manage without utilizing arcane healing or playing something like a dhampir to make negative energy heal you.
To that end, you could do something like, say, a Summoner/Oracle to cover a lot of spellcasting while putting another body on the field, and maybe something like an Antipaladin/Rogue to get a durable frontliner with a lot of skills for out-of-combat usage.
If you are playing an evil character don’t play the paladin. The only thing I can think is that you are playing a antipaladin.
Overall the Druid/Ranger is going to be more powerful. Both the Summoner/Nightblade are 2/3 casters with medium BAB that can wear light armor, and have bad fortitude saves. You do get a lot of special abilities but both your magic and combat is weaker than the Druid/Ranger.
The other thing to consider is both the druid and ranger are prepared divine spell casters. This gives you access to every spell on both lists as soon as you are able to cast them. Many of the spells on their lists are very situational which means when they are useful they tend to be stronger in that situation. The druid also gains higher level spells earlier than either the summoner or nightblade.
The fighter/rogue is going to be the weak character. The low will saves makes him a lot weaker than the other party members. His complete lack of magic is also going to make him much less powerful than the rest of the party. Going with unchained rogue and using an elven curved blade will allow him to get 1.5 DEX bonus to damage.
The Cleric/Monk should be fine, though I would suggest going unchained monk to get full BAB and extra HP. The cleric puts his Will save back to where it should be.
For the Fighter, get Iron Will and take the Eldritch Guardian archetype to get a Hedgehog familiar (+2 to Will saves). The Hedgehog then takes the Decoy archetype, eventually granting it the ability to turn into a copy of it's master, which gives it arms enough to hold weapons.
Steel Will also covers most of the threatening Will saves you'll have to make.
You could also go with a flying familiar and give up the +2 to Will saves from the Hedgehog and make it a Mauler instead.
The Two-Weapon Warrior archetype also stacks with the Eldritch Guardian archetype, which would give you done really nice bonuses to two-weapon fighting, allowing you to almost completely dump your Strength score entirely. Teamwork feats are prime for Eldritch Guardians as their familiar also gains these feats.
As far as the Rogue side of things go, go Unchained, pick up the Scout archetype and charge a lot, and enjoy a lot of extra skill points.
Are you going to be playing 4 characters all the time (with his 2 being DMPCs) or are you playing your 2 characters when he DMs and his characters are off-screen? If you are playing all 4, gestalt is going to be overkill. If you are playing 2 characters I would definitely recommend a summoner somewhere in the mix. The biggest complaint about summoners is they break the action economy. The biggest weakness of 2 characters is lack of action economy.
The sorc/paladin is an antipaladin. I've actually got him as a Dhampir with the undead bloodline. I'm considering making him into a Bloodrager/Antipaladin. I know that there is a line where a bloodrager can use heavy armor.
What about a druid/summoner (unchained)? What about a Hunter/Summoner? Let's see how ridiculous this can get.
On another note... Earl is changing his to an Inquisitor/Swashbuckler and a Warpriest/Monk.
I'd actually go with a Sorcerer/Oracle, into Mystic Theurge/Antipaladin. Grab Sorcerer spells that don't have Somatic components and still use heavy armor, plus have great spellcasting from two 9th level lists.
Druid/Summoner is a great idea as long as you have a few days to play a single combat. Summoner summons using his Summon Monster SLA, plus Druid summons with SNA spells for half a dozen or more creatures on the field, in addition to her animal companion.
For spell casters you want have the same casting stat for both classes. The summoner is a CHA based class and both the druid and hunter are based on WIS. Both of those classes also need decent physical stats so mixing them with a summoner is going to be difficult. The ranger not only increases your combat ability, but gives you decent skills.
Keep the sorcerer/antipaladin but maybe go for a draconic sorcerer and then go antipaladin/dragon disciple. A demon spawns Tiefling works well for this.
The swashbuckler has almost no synergy with an inquisitor. A better combination would be unchained monk/inquisitor. Flurry of bane is too good to pass up.
For Ear’s other character go swashbuckler/Archeologist bard. Use spells like heroism and other buff spells to boost your skills and combat through the roof.
Are you going to be playing 4 characters all the time (with his 2 being DMPCs) or are you playing your 2 characters when he DMs and his characters are off-screen? If you are playing all 4, gestalt is going to be overkill. If you are playing 2 characters I would definitely recommend a summoner somewhere in the mix. The biggest complaint about summoners is they break the action economy. The biggest weakness of 2 characters is lack of action economy.We each will control 2 of the 4 members of the party, and whoever is running DM at the time will also run other NPCs. I regularly run members of the party, b/c we each have had to run PCs for players who weren't able to make it.
So it will be a 4 member party, just controlled by 2 people. I would stay away from a summoner. With 2 characters to control, you will have enough to deal with. I would suggest try to go with simple builds. Running 2 gestalt characters is going to be complicated, especially when you are also dming. If you go with simple you will be less likely to forget things.
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You'll be fine. APs were meant to be played with 4 single classes, no gestalt. Gestalt already adds to your power level, so just play what you want for fun. If you want to know everything about the AP, I suggest that one of your characters becomes a knowledge monkey, maybe a dex based investigator/wizard?
Yeah no worries you will be overpowered for the AP anyway. Just have fun with your builds.
In case you aren't as familiar with gestalt keep in mind there are two paths to take with such a character; the Versatile path and the Synergy path. In the Versatile path you vastly expand your available options during a fight think Wizard/Cleric where your combat ability isn't much better than a single class BUT you have two classes worth of spells to draw from at any time. On the Synergy path both classes are complimentary the abilities of one class enhance the abilities of the other, these creative synergies can lead to a vastly more powerful character than a single classed one like a wizard/rogue who can self enhance or alter the battle field to always be able to sneak attack in nearly any fight.