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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Unwise" data-source="post: 6139091" data-attributes="member: 98008">Here are some initial thoughts on the characters:- Dragonborn warlord - really hard to get wrong I think. A warlord is best when giving up their at-wills to let a striker with a great basic attack have a go. You might want to check with the player if he is OK with that, or if he wants to avoid that. - Human rogue - I would definitely go for the essentials Thief rather than a rogue. It is far more straight forward and easy to play for this type of player. It also has the advantage of not using a second stat, so you can afford to make the character charismatic and intelligent if that fits the character concept well. A Thief also does great damage with a basic attack, which ties in well with the warlord. Other than that, if you really want to use a rogue, I would make the character and artful dodger for the charisma stat if they want to play an agent.- Human Paladin - I would suggest that if you want to have this character doing damage anywhere near approaching a striker, he will have to be far more optimized than the other characters. There are ways to make a paladin hit hard, but they are deeply into optimization and often require specific items to make them excel. If he wants to be doing damage as a knight, he could consider a Blackguard instead, taking the Vice of Fury and being the 'savage northerner' knight. An essentials Cavalier can do great damage when mounted, but only average damage when not.- Eladrin Wizard - I would seriously consider looking at a Warlock by the description you gave. Some varieties do a lot of teleporting. They are bad Strikers but competent Controllers. A rather weird class that is better at their secondary role than their primary in some ways. For a more martial arcane flavour, a Swordmage does a lot of teleporting and combined with being an Eladrin has amazing feat support (White Lotus, Eladrin Swordmage Advance, Fey Charge).- Dwarf Crossbower - So your options here are Ranger, Rogue Cunning Sneak with training in Nature, Hunter, Seeker, Artificer. Given that the Artificer is an odd concept and the party has a rogue I would lean towards the others. The Seeker would match his dwarven stats well, but quiet frankly are awful. You would have to optimise the character very heavily to not be overshadowed by any other controller. The ranger is always a good option and the hit to Dex will hurt but is workable. Does he want to be able to fight up close too? He could be a Dex/Str ranger, get Quickdraw and make full use of Twin-Strike both in and out of melee. Hunter is an interesting option, they are amazing controllers at lower levels, they have so many good options. As the game progresses though, and the wizards etc get more daily powers, their control becomes rather overshadowed. In my experience the best hunters at later levels are the ones that can double as a backup Striker. This is much easier if they are a humans so can pick up Twin-Striker.  Also in paragon, they multi-class to seeker and get a feat that lets them add their Dex onto every basic attacks damage. As all of their attacks are basic attacks it works very well and helps make up for the fact that their controlling is no longer as impressive. One major thing to remember about hunters is that they are applying their controlling effects  65 squares away. Lets see a wizard do that! The thing is, as a DM, don't get too married to your battlegrid. Let him use his character to the fullest. Let them whittle down the enemy before they even close. I once had the hunter bloody a dragon by the time the poor thing managed to close with the group.My final suggestion would be to have the first adventure take place in an area with a lot of other adventurers around. In 4th edition of they are not familiar with it, players often find that they don't like the roll that they have taken on. You may want them to be able to swap a character out without having to completely restart the campaign.</blockquote>

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