With an 18 in your casting stat post-racial, Witch can work nicely. You guys are lacking in the Arcane Spellcaster department, which is basically required for any game you play (after all, the game assumes you have at least one full Arcane Spellcaster in your party). However, no Skill Monkeying or Face characters means you're going to be hardpressed to make good on any clues, information, and so on.
Human for the bonus feat (Extra Hex is always useful) and +2 to Intelligence. Skill Point can be substituted with Darkvision via the Dimdweller racial trait. You'll also have decent sub-stats. Put a 15 into Dexterity and Constitution so you'll have some decent survivability (and ranged competence via touch spells). 14 Wisdom for Will Saves. 13 Charisma for any Charm spells you may want to throw at goodies. 11 Strength because it's there.
Can switch the Charisma and Strength scores around if you think you'd appreciate the carrying capacity more. The increased Strength will also make any Melee Touch effects more likely to hit as well, so there is that to consider.
For Skills, be sure to pick up Perception, Spellcraft, Fly, and Knowledge (Arcana). Craft (Alchemy) doesn't hurt either if you decide to pick up some associated hexes along the way, but after those four subjects, the rest is your volition. You should have 7 Skill Points to play around with (8 if you factor in Favored Class Bonus).
Even a feat for Additional Traits (maybe make it the Human one) so you can pick up some of the Skill Monkeying required (such as Disable Device) or Facing required (such as Diplomacy, which is really big in this campaign).
As for Hexes, you may be able to skirt from the healing hexes, unless your Monk plays stupid or has crap for defenses. (Cleric should have no issue, since he can heal and buff himself.) Evil Eye, Misfortune, all that fun stuff is awesome to take. Slumber is definitely a biggie, especially starting out. (You might want to take it as your first level hex, to be quite honest with you.)
Other than that, should be good to go. Good luck, friend.
Witches are fun. If you go elf, you can also be an archer if needed. Although you'll always have fun hexes to use. I played a half-orc one (non-Scarred Witchdoctor) once, and it was really fun. I played him up like Conan the Barbarian, but with spells and hexes instead of swords and axes.
One thing you might want to ask your GM is to let each PC control an NPC/henchman Warrior. Especially if it is a tough campaign, having those extra bodies on the field will help. Also, you have no Full BAB PCs. It gives it an old school, 1st Edition feel, too.
If your GM DOES allow you to run henchmen warriors, remember to design them so they're really efficient in combat. Lots of static feats (Iron Will, Improved Initiative, Weapon Focus, Skill Focus, Precise Shot, Weapon Finesse, etc.). I ran one that used a heavy crossbow, so every other round, I just reloaded. It was really fun and quick.
There is a place in the second book where therethere are a loooooot of skeletons.
My players are worried because they cant Animate them and they'd want to.
So go for Animate Dead and turn them into bloody skeletons. It will be cool.
Follow the "Forge of Combat" model. You have a Cleric (arm/hammer) and a Monk (hammer). Your best bet would be to fill the "anvil" role as a full arcane caster. Witch almost seems unnecessary, since you don't need the wizard/druid fusion list the Witch inherits. Rather, you need a bit more arcane "oomph." Play something with access to the Wizard/Sorcerer list. Necromancer's not a bad idea to shore up your ranks a bit (action economy, and all). You could also style yourself as a Diabolist, specializing in Conjuration and summoning fiends. It just depends on if you prefer your minions to give you a little lip ;D
You'll need to provide the ideal circumstances for your party to succeed. The monk wants to full attack, so you need to arrange the field so that they are next to the enemy at the start of their turn. A horde of zombies is great for this, by preventing enemies from sharing their squares ("wall [hall] of horse" logic). You can create walls, disable some foes to take on the hordes piecemeal, make holes or difficult terrain, etc. Here's where a witch would end up with problems. The witch spell list is better at doing utility magic and ending the encounter against mostly single-targets with minds (lipstich, hold person, insanity, Slumber, etc.) The wizard list is better for battlefield control, since they have more spells designed for multiple targets and more spells that offer no saves.
Focusing on necromancy can be fun if you don't just stick to creating undead.
A character focused in curses, negative energy, etc. can be interesting too. You could combine that with creating undead.
And if you really wanted to play a Witch it's still not a bad choice either.
I think it could work and it would be fitting for a WotW campaign.
To cover for the face role, make sure you have at least one social ability (hex or spell). Try to convince the cleric to also do a bit of social investment.
There are some "undead friendly" oracle mysteries and archetypes, too.
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Don't worry about being the "most effective" choice... if you like the witch archetype, do it. In the end, you'll have more fun playing a character you want to play, than one you have to play.
I'd suggest trying to find a fourth player, but I assume you've already thought of that.
We have only three players at this time and they're doing fine.
Better than when they were 5 with 2 problematic players.
Cool. I mostly suggested the oracle because it gets more skill points and uses Charisma as its casting stat, so that would synergize with being the party face.
But now that I think about it, a 2+Int casting stat is going to have more skills than a 4+ with Cha casting stat. :-P
Give the skeletons some unbroken weapons and some unbroken armor, and they might a bit more of a threat. Maybe morningstars, scale mail, and heavy wooden shields? AC 20, +2 to hit for 1d8+2. Probably +4 from (usually) flanking, maybe some more +2s from Aid Anothers?
But running hordes of minions takes WAY too long. Maybe allowable with a party of 3, but with 4 or more PCs, it's going to eat up WAY too much time.
Flanking and aids would be a bit more advanced tactics than I'd personally allow for mindless undead, but GMs will vary widely on this point.Give the skeletons some unbroken weapons and some unbroken armor, and they might a bit more of a threat. Maybe morningstars, scale mail, and heavy wooden shields? AC 20, +2 to hit for 1d8+2. Probably +4 from (usually) flanking, maybe some more +2s from Aid Anothers?
But running hordes of minions takes WAY too long. Maybe allowable with a party of 3, but with 4 or more PCs, it's going to eat up WAY too much time.
Flanking might happen by crazyrandomhappenstance, but can a necromancer command his mindless undead to Aid Another?
There should be a necromancer PrC that lets you grant bonus Teamwork Feats to your undead minions.
Remember we are talking about WotW. Having hordes of weak minions is not so bad because of the specifics of the second book.
In other parts of the story he'd probably have to go for a different strategy, but it works there and it's really cool.
If you want hordes, I'm partial to simulacra. Get a couple of simulacum succubi - they can shapeshift, buff, be the party face, do long-range telepathy, and cast high-DC enchantment - and then use those fully loyal enchanter minions to keep a handle on your super cheap lesser simulacrum mooks. Plus - fully loyal succubi minions, I shouldn't need to say anything more.
Or buy a clonepod for 60k! Granted, your DM will almost certainly not be ok with it. But it would let you churn out really beefy corpses to animate as often as you wanted.
On the henchmen front you definitely want Mysterious Stranger gunslingers. It's a super front-loaded archetype and they target touch, so they'll be able to consistently damage way higher-CR enemies. Makes no sense thematically though.
The last option is leshies I guess - which basically means being a ghoran. A bunch of flytrap leshies in their super-Voltron form can be terrifying, and if you make a lotus leshy with high HD and give it a Con boosting item it'll be throwing around high-DC sleep attacks all day long. WotW is pretty jam-packed with sleep-immune stuff though.
At the risk of pushing you in a different direction, have you considered Arcanist?
Requires a broader set of stats than a Wizard, but you've got a good spread for that. A little less flexibility than a wizard in terms of spell prep, but I think the exploits make up for it (Potent Magic allows for some pretty sweet spell DCs, Dimensional Slide is nice for mobility, School Understanding can give some nice perks, etc etc).
Overall, its arguably less effective for a Necromancer who raises undead, but for a caster using battlefield control spells, debuffs, etc., I think it could be a great fit.
On the simulacrum character topic, you really have two options. The first is alchemist, the second is Samsaran wizard.
If you go the alchemist route, it's as simple as taking the alchemical simulacrum discovery at level 8 and then the greater version at level 13. Besides that, you can pretty much be whatever sort of alchemist you want to be. Avoid the clone master archetype - it's supposed to specialize in simulacra but really doesn't give you anything the discoveries don't.
The advantage to alchemist is that alchemical simulacra only cost 20% as much to create, and count as creatures rather than spell effects.
If you go the wizard route, use your Samsaran racial ability to take from the summoner spell list. This gives you the simulacrum spell as a 5th level spell, allowing you to make full simulacra as early as level 9. These are the more expensive spell effect simulacra though.
Either way, making a simulacrum character requires very little investment and can generally be done alongside other character builds. I certainly recommend making a succubus simulacrum as your first priority, the utility provided by one is incredible.