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Message: <blockquote data-quote="amysrevenge" data-source="post: 4873752" data-attributes="member: 61298">I think that uniform ability scores is just not the way to be a generalist in 4E.You can broaden your scope in so many other ways that don't make you totally suck.  Training in a wide variety of skills.  Feats and/or backgrounds and/or magical gear to provide bonuses to skills for which you don't have the best of stats.  Utility-type magic items that do unusual (for your class/role/race) things.I mean, you could build a reasonably good ranger that can switch ably from ranged to melee, and who has plenty of skills of all types (knowledge, physical, and social) with bonuses high enough to be of use.  Although frankly I think that there are some builds that do not lend themselves well to the notion of the generalist, and the STR + DEX Ranger is one of them.The way to do this is NOT to put 14s in your starting STR and DEX.The way is to put 16s (before racial bumps - hopefully you have at least one of STR or DEX, but you can get by without) in your starting STR and DEX, grab a nice background that gives you access (and +2) to a skill not normally on your class list, bump both STR and DEX at every 4/8 level, and spend about 1/3 to 1/2 of your feats on skill training/focus.  Because you are deliberately spreading your focus, yes Expertise starts to become a bit more necessary.  You do get stacks and stacks fo feats though.  As for defense, since your STR and DEX are pretty good, Will is the weak spot, so spend a feat to improve it.  As for other general use things, look for items like Hedge Wizard's Gloves, which add neat but unexpected abilities to a character.You still won't hit as often or as hard in melee as a melee-specialist, nor at range as a ranged-specialist.  You won't have the Diplomacy of a Bard, nor the Arcana of a Wizard.  Your AC will not be as high as the Paladin, nor will your Fort be as high as a Barbarian.  However, you can have reasonable amounts of all of these things, enough that you should really only be +1 to +3 behind the min-maxers in attack rolls, and succeeding on most skill checks at the DMG suggested DCs.Personally, I have more than one PC that I would consider "generalist".  These PCs can heal, can attack in melee, can attack at range, can do bursts and blasts, have moderate-to-good defenses, and are trained in lots of weird skills.  None of these PCs started play without at least a 17 (after racial bumps) in their prime ability score.Conclusion:1) "Generalist" has a much wider definition than "all ability scores are roughly equal".  It means "good, but not the best, at many things", and can be reasonably attained through many means.2) The PC in your group is NOT a generalist.  It is a badly built PC (this is not not a comment on the player - when I switched to 4E I built about 7 or 8 PCs that were terrible before I found one that I liked and was any good).3) There are some builds for which generalist is not a good fit.  Basically any class with two different "attack" stats, when you are tying to take advantage of both.  Clerics going for both STR and WIS, Rangers going for STR and DEX, star-pact Warlocks going for CON and CHA, and paladins going for STR and CHA.  I would personally never try to make any of these builds into generalists.  Any of the other classes though, or even one of these classes that focuses a bit more upon one or the other of the builds, can be made into something of a generalist.</blockquote>

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