Even though I was prepared for the Fangberry quest, I still had trouble with the swarms. Most AOE options will hit your party members too, and the str/dex damage is pretty killer.
I tried camping just outside the cave and... that was a bad idea. Got attacked by more spiders.
At least my aasimar can lesser restoration 1/day, so that cuts down on some of the str damage.
My MC, a wizard, still isn't all that useful at Lv2 (except on skill checks), but I think that's supposed to happen. He has 5 spells a day, so once he's cast enlarge person and mage armor that's almost half his "usefulness" gone (at least the mage armor lasts a long time). Burning hands is powerful, but hard to avoid hitting your friends with. Looking forward to later spells that will make him more useful.
I've seen people recommend dual-classing with some levels of Rogue to get sneak attack dice on touch attack spells. I might do that in place of Lv4. It does seem that unlike other classes, there isn't a huge benefit to pushing wizard all the way to 20.
Yeah I started with sorc. The early level CC spells are way more useful than the dps spells. Being able to use sleep/stun cuts down on so much damage your party takes. I just go pure sorc though I'm not a multi-classer xD There's a spell later on that gives you sneak attack for a short amount of time anyway.