That NPC project seems cool, I might try it.
As for my party, my initial party was a horrible excuse of a working group composition. The second party, however, was a lot better, in the sense that I had all archetypes represented, yet had a some decent variety and unique feel to the thing. The party was lead by a human Banite priest, had a wild elf sorcerer as a support(magic-machine), a thiefling wizard/rogue to perform some light swashbucklery and a pure barbarian to drive the point in. After this I usually had a druid in the mix as well, since I felt that the class had easily the best and most interesting spell list in the game(+ shambling mound <3).