pacman

Sorry but I completely disagree. Custom companions are quite a lot stronger than the ones you get for free, and starting one level below doesn't really matter. You can easily fill up with custom characters very early on if you don't buy things. Magic classes are very strong. Put them behind the tanks, and have them wear some decent armor if they are getting hurt. Ciphers are absolutely straight up ridiculous if you know which powers to use.

I have previously fixed Pallegina's bugged DR bonuses using Cheat Engine. You need to strip your character, then equip and unequip an item that gives a DR bonus to find the addresses. Unenchanted armor doesn't change the DR bonus, but enchanted armor does, or you can use something like that belt of blunting. DR bonus values are 4-byte floats, not integers. There are seven values for the seven damage types. If you are having trouble, maybe I can figure out how to make a cheat engine table file for you.