I don't think there's a specific bow-based Divine class, though
The Neverwinter Campaign book has some bow at-wills for clerics. (And maybe some encounter powers too - they're presented in the Essentials cleric domain format.)
I haven't tried to work out how far that goes towards making a bow cleric viable.
It may be that Hybrids cause problems, I've never used the Hybrid rules.
One of the PCs in my campaign started as a ranger, multi-class cleric, but when the hybrid rules came out was rebuilt by the player as a hybrid ranger-cleric (in the aptly named "Operation Have My PC Do Something Other Than Twin Strike").
At least with that build, the tricky thing is that only ranger powers can carry a hybrid ranger's quarry damage. So he has the minimal permitted payload of cleric standard action attacks, and the maximum permitted payload of ranger encounter interrupts/reactions, so that he is always able to get his quarry off once per round. In play he is definitely a ranger, with a few cleric-y tricks (healing, a handful of bursts and blasts) to pull out in the right situation. No rituals, so not quite the same as an AD&D cleric/ranger, but not a million miles away either. (Also, his paragon path is Battlefield Archer, and we treat the +1 to hit vs quarried targets as him cursing his enemies in the name of the Raven Queen.)
Of course you can refluff powers in a lot of ways. That doesn't mean that the game isn't mostly built around playing fairly standard archetypes.
I agree with this. 4e is clearly aimed at supporting, in the first instance, conventional fantasy tropes, plus some of the more comon D&D tropes that have grown up around them.
That's not to say it can't do some suprising things, and hasn't been pushed in new directions (Avengers seem new to me, for instance, though mabye they build on some part of 3E I'm not familiar with). But I think it's going to be very hard to use the game to deliver the same sort of stories and tropes as you'll find in (say) Over the Edge, or even Cyberbunk.
Behaving like a Paladin has nothing to do with your combat style but more about how you RP your character. Why should a paladin be hardcoded to fight a specific way.
Because the paladin is intended to model chivalric knights? As [MENTION=463]S'mon[/MENTION] has alluded to in his posts, 4e's paladin build achieves something like the same outcome as the chivalric strictures in Gygax's Unearthed Arcana, but in a way that makes the PC viable and rewards the player, rather than in a way that hoses the player and encourages gaming the code.
Except when you look at editions before 4E a fighter could fight in any way he wants.
No. There was no way to make an effective unarmed fighter before Oriental Adventures (in the AD&D PHB you had to be a monk to have good martial arts damage). And a paldin has always laboured under restrictions of the chivalric code, which in Unearthed Arcana precluded ranged weapons altogether.
Sword & Shield? He can do that. Two handed polearm? He can do that. Mobile skirmisher? He can do that. Archery? He can do that. None of those fighting styles were more effective than others because of being hardcoded by the rules.
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4E started to hard code fighting styles for every class where you are actively penalized by not fighting the way the game designers envisioned your class to fight and that I heavily dislike.
As LostSoul noted, a 4e PHB fighter can be built as a two-handed polearm wielder or a mobile skirmisher (DEX secondary, light armour if desired, probably sword or spear as a weapon). Or as a sword-and-shield fighter. Archery is the only limitation, having been given to the ranger.
[/QUOTE]What about a paladin to Corellon? Why does he have to wade into melee instead of using a bow? Or what about the paladin of a trickster god? Because that is your vision of a paladin?[/QUOTE]The "paladin" of a trickster god would, in 4e, be an Avenger. As S'mon has noted, building a bow-using Divine PC is tricky, though there are some workarounds in later releases. The hybrid ranger-cleric in my game serves the Raven Queen, but could work equally well as a paldin of Corellon, I think, with a bit of tweaking to background and a few feats.
They wanted the Paladin to exemplify a specific set of virtues - valiant, self-sacrificial, that sort of thing. I don't think the Paladin from the PHB is a good fit for all the different sorts of gods out there (or the Cleric, for that matter), and I agree that this causes some dissonance - why does my Paladin of Zehir (god of darkness) shoot light and colour?
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(For me, the issue lies in the definition of "Radiant" damage. I have changed "Radiant" damage in my game to be a manifestation of the divine character's belief system - so your Paladin of Zehir would inflict "blinding darkness" (0 HP = permanently blind). This requires me to work out exactly what each power is doing with the player of that PC, but I enjoy that. I do the same with the other classes anyway.)
The PC build rules take for granted that, unless you're building a blackguard, your paladin worships a non-evil god. This is clear from the list in the paladin entry (though the cleric entry has the evil gods too), and also the discussion in the DMG of reflavouring radiant as (eg) necrotic or acid for divine NPCs serving dark gods.
This is another way in which I think the game is fairly conventional in its approach to heroic fantasy gaming (warlocks and the like notwithstanding).