Thanks for the friendly admonition!@Ourchair: 4th edition character building works best if you do one thing and stick to it.
If you decide on Fighter Sword + Board, grab a big weapon and a shield, and pour all ressources in smacking things, and smacking things especially hard if they try anything you don't want (move away from you, shift around, attack your allies). Second, you invest in laughing into their faces when they try to attack you (thick armor, shield, stuff to shake off conditions).
Don't be distracted by all the other things you could do. Yes, you could use a rapier, yes, you could multiclass into one of 35 other classes, you could do this, you could do that. Don't. If it doesn't help with the stuff in paragraph 2, you don't need it. Let someone else in the party do it.
(If you wonder why all these options exist, then, they are for people who have too much time on their hands to check the synergy of all kinds of classes and powers to turn their characters up to 11. However, in your group 10 is loud enough.)
I would ordinarily stick with that --- I'm a fan of just taking a class and sticking with it --- but I guess I'm just obsessive simply because this is my first time multi-classing and I want to also find ways to add a flavor to the character that has relevance to the campaign. A plain fighter works, but perhaps I'm just too jazzed up about trying to ensure he's integrated into blood magic zombie hoo ha.
mkill[As for the swordmage said:I've tried explaining it to her, and in that moment it's been explained to her she gets it, but she doesn't do it at all. I imagine a few sessions will learn her. I'm thinking we should just ask, in character, for her to mark an enemy and then when she says, "OK!" we'll trigger the Aegis automatically.
Also, awesome sig.