What would you play in this group?

[MarkB]

Consider a Dragon Shaman. By 13th level, your Touch of Vitalty covers almost all the specialised clerical healing (the exceptions being ability drain and death), and with a decent CHA you can provide a significant portion of party healing. Auras support the entire party in combat (and the larger the party, the more useful they are, so with 6 characters you're doing well), and you'll be decent enough at combat to support the front-liners. Draconic adaptation and breath weapon are just icing on the cake.

 

[Stalker0]

I was also going to give a vote for the dragon shaman. Decent healing, and by level 10 many of the auras become quite nice. With a large group, its a lot of bonus to pay off. I like adding +3 to everyone's initiative at the start of the fight and then switching it so that every time the party member takes damage from an attack, the enemy takes 6 points of energy damage.

One of the advantages of a dragon shaman over a bard, is all of their support is a swift action...so you can still get in the fight and help the party at the same time.

And their breath weapon isn't all that bad when you start fighting a few enemies. 5d6 damage is roughly equivalent to 2d6 + 10 damage from a fighter, and if you affect multiple enemies you can do decent damage. You also have good hitpoints and 2 good saves.

That said, you can never have too many clerics...ever

 

[MarkB]

One tactic I came across when building my current 12th-level Dragon Shaman was to take the Entangling Exhalation feat from Races of the Dragon (breath weapon deals half damage but entangles those it damages) and combine it with the Resistance aura. The halved damage, on average, is well below the resistance bonus you're granting your allies, so you can use your breath straight into a mixed-up melee, and damage-plus-entangle your opponents whilst leaving your allies completely unharmed.

Unless you happen to roll really well on damage, of course.

 

[Sandain]

I would play a Favoured Soul with a level of Marshal or 2 of Pally - or else go for a Cleric/Divine oracle/contemplative type char - with the domain that lets you cast Time Stop

 

[Slife]

Was the GM's custom class the summoner?

If it was, he might let you try Aramek's Blue Mage? It's been revised sixty-two times, so it isn't overpowered. You'll be able to use your spell list to fill in any major gaps in the party's spellcasting and have some stuff left over to play around with. (Intelligence mod + LevelX5 spell levels known and a Wizard's spells/day mean you won't be able to cast everything you know in one day). Too bad you won't be able to use illusions or summoned monsters for a few levels.

It's different enough from the rest of the party that you should be able to have your own schtick, and you have the option of changing out your spells if you start stepping on someone's toes too much.

Of course, it's very non-core, so it might not fly with your DM.

 

[Ragnar69]

Is your rogue good enough to handle all the traps and locks? If not, try out my dwarven tunnelfighter build

Dwarf Rogue 8/ Fighter 4 PB32
Str 14
Dex 16 (1 from level)
con 18 (2 from level)
int 14
wis 12
cha 8

Able Learner, improved toughness (there's no such thing as too many skill- or hitpoints)
shield specialisation, shield ward
weapon focus and spezialisation (dwarven waraxe) (or improved crit)
mithral shield and armor

That way you can do some scouting/trapfinding and melee, using the paladin to flank and deliver sneak attacks. This should be differnt enough from your groups rogue to not step on his toes too much.

 

[amazingshafeman]

Dread Necromancer from Heroes of Horror, and grab a reach weapon with your martial weapon proficency. I have a thri-kreen dread necro (uses a guisarme) that's a blast to play. I keep his minions intentionally low so as not to hog all of the combat time but between his skeletal minions and the undead he can summon the party has no shortage of meat shield to keep everyone else safe. We've got a wiz/archivist, bow happy satyr, and an assassin in the group, so like your group the disposable defenses are huge boon. Animate a couple of climbers (I have driders) and burrowers to add to the party's versatility. Once you gain Undead Mastery, grab a cloak of charisma and a few bags of holding. When you can control 90+ HD of skeletons, you'll need some storage room.

Oh wait. There's that paladin to consider. Hide your necromantic actions, pretend to be casting something else when you use summon undead, or better yet, pretend to be a cleric, and pretend that you're casting control undead because you sensed an enemy caster summoning the very servants you summoned. It'll be fun roleplaying and won't be a problem until you hit level 20 and turn into a lich. Or could be a problem, but a fun problem, depends on your group though. You'll have to hide your uses of animate undead, though.... I can say that the class is decent even without the undead minions, as we just recently hit a few dungeons primarily made up of 5' halls and 10' square rooms. With mostly Large undead in my service, the character was gimped, but even then saved the day with well timed uses of hide from undead and undeath to death. And it's unbelievable how effective a well place Ray of Enfeeblement can be. I was surprised.

Regardless, that's what I'd do, but it would really depend on the paladin's player. Our resident paly man would be hip to the idea of a little mystery in the group, and we'd most likely work out what would happen when/if the paly caught onto things ahead of time. My money goes to the necro changing his ways after some good evangelism from the paly, or more likely, going out in a fiery heroic bang that saves the rest of the group. Probably involving a portal to the Abyss and his skeletons versus a horde of demons while the rest of the party used the distraction to close the portal.

 

[Jolly Giant]

I don't want to play a straight wizard as I am playing a wizard/loremaster in that group (set in the same world with the same DM, running parallel to this one).

I was gonna suggest a diviner specialist wizard, with little blast and plenty of utility. Then I noticed this... :\

Since your group seems to have all the classic bases covered, why not take the opportunity to try something different? Don't think too much about what the party needs, figure out what you want to play instead.

Spell-thief might be a cool idea, though. Make friends with the casters in the group and persuade them to let you 'borrow' a nice mix of spells.

 

[Shadowdancer]

Try a Duskblade. Or as I call it, the Arcane Tank. You'll be a good melee fighter to support the paladin (maybe better than him in a stand-up, face-to-face fight), and your spells won't outshine the warmages since they will mostly be touch-delivered or weapon-delivered. Plus you get some bonus low-level utility spells that come in handy (detect magic, read magic) and no one will have to waste spell slots on them.

 

[Satori]

I've got a few suggestions.

1. Dervish
-You aren't a charging, smiting, Divine Might killer...but you can unload 193x13 attacks in one round. You won't be an armor clad knight like the Paladin, but more of a swishy/swirly/swashy finesse fighter. Your job in combat is to move around the battle field with Spring Attack and Dance of Death, tying up the enemies while the Paladin surgically takes out one at a time and the Stalker/Warmage attack from afar.

2. Binder (from Tome of Magic)
-Can't make up your mind on a character class? Why not play all of them when needed?! The Binder lets you fill any niche left open within your group...and you get to change it daily as needed! The Cleric/Rogue gets tired of healing? Slap on the healing vestige and keep everyone fighting! The Paladin takes heavy damage and wants to hang back a bit? Slap on some damage resistance and heavy armor and you're set! The Binder is the ADHD player's soggy dream.