Thanks for all the input! Only a few additional add-ons.

1.) I thought SK's like Necro's had KoS issues?

2.) What happened to Wizards? I thought they were excellent DD, easily out pacing Necro's in burst?

TBH if a Necro can keep pace I'll just go back to that LOL. I remember people complaining about Necro Burst

I'd play the classes you want like everyone said. But, if you went Druid you'd really help the leveling, what with the healing and damage buffs, SoW is sweet too, especially for the impatient.

If you could talk one of them into being more tank like, say SK/Pal/War/Monk and the other to have any kind of CC ability like a necro/ench or even pulling speicalties like a ranger or monk you'd have a great trio.

Ench might be hard to play, but at low levels it plays like a wizard and the charms and pets are cool.

Yes SK are KoS in a lot of places. But there is tons of them playing on here and they seem to do fine. Do not waste your time trying to get faction on one. Just too time consuming and you may kill something and bam back to KoS.

A Wizard is probably one of the most disliked classes on here other than a few needed for raids and Sky ports. They are always it seems OOM and AFK. I hate them myself in groups. 3 quick DD spells and forget about them for 10 minutes. They can crowd control pretty decent higher up, but so can a Druid, Ranger, Enchanter, Shaman etc. YMMV. :)

From a technical perspective, none of your concerns are going to be a real problem. Starting city and race/class/deity faction issues are easily worked around. Ports are readily available on P99 and if you mention your situation starting out nobody is going to mind offering a free ride. Faction can be largely fixed in a great many places: Highpass, Freeport, Qeynos, Rivervale and even Cabilis, Firiona Vie and Overthere. Also consider that FD classes can bank while FD, sneak classes can do almost anything while sneaked, and anybody can bank if they stand behind a corner and pan their camera around to click the banker.

You don't say how old your kids are, or what their attitudes are. If you just want to play and run around and kill stuff and do some quests, virtually any 3 classes will work for that until you get to epics; somebody suggested 3 clerics which while not being the most practical solution would still work. If you want to be able to progress everybody to 60 and do some higher end stuff, you can go trio Howling Stones or Sebilis Crypt without additional people, but you'll need to be a little more selective.

If you're just casually trio-ing, you're probably not going to kill stuff that really requires a warrior to tank. A paladin, SK or monk will probably be fine. Just consider that you'll need something tank-ish, you'll need some DPS, some heals and some slow for long-term viability. Paladin-Shaman-Monk would give you a lot to work with; Paladin can LoH, heal some and rez later. Shaman isn't a great healer til 60 but offers tremendous utility with root, slow, DoTs, buffs and SoW. Monk gives you some pulls and DPS.

Like others have said, you can min/max this all day long!

Webrunner's comments about wizards are mostly spot-on. They're not desired by groups. Wizards are an excellent crowd control class after enchanters, provided they have a little room to work with (once snare and root can stack [whenever that happens?] the druids and rangers get a massive boost).

I disagree that faction isn't worthwhile on a SK. I've played one here for over four years, and even though I don't really need faction any more for anything, I still think all the ones I worked up were worthwhile.

As long as nothing is a hybrid you'll be good. That is a solid suggestion.

Welcome to the server; hope you enjoy it as much as all of us have!

are hybrids really that bad? would you really advise a warrior over a knight? just wondering.

If you guys are in the same house than start working for IP exemptions now too.

I can't help but feel that you fell into your own "powergamers" trap. Wizards are one of the only two classes in the game with ports - an invaluable non-combat utility that can't be understated.

It can be understated by the fact that druids can do it too WITH heals, WITH buffs and WITH only 12% less nuke mana efficiency than a wizard at level 60.