Been playing around with this a little bit. My first party lost its mage and priest when I went in the wilderness and got jumped by giant wolves, and I hadn't caught on yet that you could revive so I wound up burying them. Then when I realized I could have just ressed them and that all the adventurers in the recruitment sucked I restarted.
My little party of 4 archers and a priest (also using ranged) are doing well, they're all level 4. I had my heart set on a dwarven sniper squad with crossbows, but I'm disappointed that I can't find any crossbows in the shops around here (visited 5 towns so far, bolts but no crossbows). So I've settled with using longbows that I spent money upgrading the damage of (to 11, 11, 11, 13, and 14). Not quite sure how a blacksmith upgraded a wooden bow, but if it works it works.
I keep finding platemail in chests, so 3 of my guys are in plate and the other two are in scale mail. So far none of them have died, the priest has proven much sturdier than my old one (probably due to her having plate, heh).
I named all my characters and party with a Dwarf Fortress theme. All my dwarves are named after random DF dwarven names from one of my forts that sounded good without translation. I have:
Nil Berosod - Hammer Earthbones - the dwarf archer, male
Athel Kersodel - Ring Eyeshield - the dwarf archer, female
Fath Istamkel - Sack Lightmetal - the dwarf archer, male
Ustuth Dakonkel - Fence Omenmetal - the dwarf archer, male
Rith Emenaroth - Bell Strongmagic - the dwarf priest, female
Party name is "Etar Udos", which was the random name of one of my old DF groups when making a fort. It could mean one of: King Man, King Men, King the Men, Kings of Men, Kings the Man, etc (apparently dwarvish is very complex, and the exact same phrase can mean many things, lol). The actual group's name in the DF game I based it on was Kings of Men, so I guess thats what it means in this context.
I totally need to conquer a kingdom to live up to my party name now.