PHB only PCs?

[Black Knight Irios]

Wizards can do fairly good damage.
Pick up Hunter's Quarry and you can do striker damage for 2 rounds.
Weapon Focus(staff) lets you add +1 damage to all your spells (it sounds strange, but it works and is backed up by FAQ).
The Wizard daily powers also pack a punch that will do gobs of damage (Flaming Sphere, Stinking Cloud, etc).

You should have said she can apply a striker damage feature to two damage rolls over two rounds. Which is not the same as doing strikerlevel damage.

 

[draquila]

Maybe you can convince her to go Fey lock instead which is a Charisma focus, or Starlock and concentrate on the Cha powers?

Again, I think we've invested too much into the backstories to change that now. Making deals with "faerie powers" just doesn't sound as cool as with lovecraftian cosmic horrors.

Wizards can do fairly good damage.
Pick up Hunter's Quarry and you can do striker damage for 2 rounds.
Weapon Focus(staff) lets you add +1 damage to all your spells (it sounds strange, but it works and is backed up by FAQ).
The Wizard daily powers also pack a punch that will do gobs of damage (Flaming Sphere, Stinking Cloud, etc).

I'm not too concerned about the wizard actually, she was pretty pleased to have cleared a roomful of minions with a single cast of burning hands in our first session. I think she will be fine with being able to do more AoE damage than others, but not single target like a striker.

 

[MadLordOfMilk]

It's only after we started playing that I realised everyone (except for the ranger) is kind of an off-spec. The defenders want to be striker/leader, the striker (warlock) wants to be a controller, the controller wants to be a striker... and we have no proper leader.

To be honest, the classes kind of play out that way already. Wizards are primarily controllers, but they have a solid splash of striker in them. Warlocks are primarily strikers, but they've got a big chunk of control in them (actually, I'd argue they're more control/status effects than damage, their damage is a bit lackluster with ten bajillion conditions to make up for it).

The paladin, if trying to focus on healing, should honestly probably switch to melee Cleric, though.

The fighter can be tweaked for some pretty intense damage as far as a defender goes, though it'll probably require Martial Power to pull off particularly well. Tempest fighters and Battlerager fighters work pretty well at dealing decent damage while still backing up the PCs on the defensive front.

Fixing up their choices a bit might make things work out better, though, but part of it might be on the GM side! For example, wizards can do solid-ish damage, but it requires there being a lot of opportunities to hit multiple targets, and many, many GMs tend to put a few stronger creatures in rather than a bunch of weaker ones.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I'd really like to see that warlock build so that I can see that heavy damage - maybe our understanding of heavy damage differs greatly.

Enough that he's noticeable as a striker compared with the non-strikers. At a guess I'd say that his eldritch blast is somewhere around 1d6+1d10+8 (with an extra 1d8 when he hits an unharmed foe).

Now I realise that's not competitive with anything from the charop boards, but for normal play, it's fine.

 

[Dr_Ruminahui]

Having also played a charisma focussed starlock as my first 4e character, I can second your GF's frustration regarding her pact at will... especially in the early levels were aside from one encounter power and maybe a daily, that's all you do.

So, yes, I would highly recommend house ruling the pact at will to use cha OR con, which is really what WotC should have done to begin with.