Someone suggested I check out the Warlock class and I found it a lot more to my liking, so she is now an Unaligned Elf Warlock (star pact) multiclassing in Cleric of the Raven Queen and looking at the Divine Oracle paragon path. Even if the flavor for the rules aren’t totally in synch, I think I managed to keep some of the feel of the character. Reading the most suitable powers, it sounds liek she ought to be scaring the crap out of anything that opposes her and she has plenty of options to make opponents feel their own mortality and fear it’s end on this earth :D

I rarely used anything outside of the Players Handbook in 3.5. Once I got used to it, I could find a lot of possibilities in the one book. I feel a bit more constrained in 4e (what do you mean my cleric has to heal?) but I suspect that I’ll be able to find just as many possibilities, in time, even if I can’t translate all of my old favorites exactly.

Indiana Joe: With how simple they’ve made running all the other classes it looks like the Wizard is still going to have to deal with picking spells on a daily basis. Also they will need a lot more bookkeeping than other characters. It’s just as well they did this however because if they didn’t they may as well have called the class the Sorcerer. I did the Wizard thing in 3.0 and always hated taking session time prepping my spells so I may just be reacting thru that.

MetalJim: The Dwarven Ranger still has a lot of merit to it. I may put off the Thief part for a while. That is the part that doesn’t mesh that well. All the thief powers are based on using light blades and such which puts it at odds with the Rangers ability to use 2 full size weapons. Part of my problem with it is that I like working something major like thief training into my characters background which is why I want to take it at first level. It always feels odd if you develop something that major on a level up moment.

Now that I think about it I could do a dagger wielding Ranger who takes Sneak of Shadows and follows the Daggermaster paragon path. Kind of like a Riddick style fighter. That could be cool.

You can swing TWO battle-axes with the 2 weapon fighting abilities. Your fighter buddy next to you will draw most of the big attacks, so you won’t get punished too hard for your low armor. You can take Dungeoncraft as a starting skill. Keep you dex high enough (maybe a dwarven CROSSBOW ranger?) and you can multiclass into rogue for a few more skills.