Has anyone tried playing with an NPC party?

I sort of did an all NPC party. I had a dual cleaver wielding fighter, monk, riana, serena, meleny and kella. It sucked. Even after altering the thieves stats to 18 dex and reasonable con, they were the worst crossbow users I have ever seen. Meleny and Kella weren't much better. Best NPC's are really Zert, that horrible trader man-at-arms, that hill giant guy and Zaxis. Zert and his buddy got the console cheat treatment, and turned out ok as longsword specced cleave machines. The inn wizard is ok, but stay away from Darley. By the time you get her, she will have 0 useful spells. Had to disable level cap so she could get chain lightning, at which point she was good at clearing Zuggy summoned fungi.

 

Most people probably make a full starting party and then take as many NPCs as you can get, compared to that it's probably harder. I don't use NPCs much but I noticed the few I used are higher than level one, so really I don't see why you wouldn't do well. I've tried it with just one PC and Elmo and didn't die that often though I only did the moat house. If you built a character intending to "solo" it like that, I think it wouldn't be as hard as it sounds.

 

I've found that the NPC's can't have a conversations with anyone or click on the blue change area transitional doorways and apparently they can't use the quick item configuration tabs.

Can NPC's make use of the "Quick Item Configuration" tabs in the inventory screen on page 19 of the manual? I guess they can't. No matter as I haven't used it much in the past.

"The five tabs along the top allow access to different equipped-items configurations,
which you can set up in advance and then quickly swap configurations
using the tabs. To create a configuration, simply drag items into their positions.
When you switch away from a configuration, all equipped items return to your
Inventory. When you switch back to a configuration, all of its previously..."

This is how you play TOEE with 1 or 2 PCs and up to 7 NPCs