Orryn Emrys said:
I don't mean this to seem a judgement against the system in any way... just a recognition of different goals built into the design of the game.
My wife, for example, once wrote up a wizardess who was woefully inadequately prepared for adventuring.
I definitely cannot disagree here. The 4E paradigm seems to be to make all characters ready for adventure, because that is what the game is about. Perhaps into a dungeon, or into ruins, or into a city, but adventuring is where it is at. So, you're without a doubt correct, but I see no folly in the game essentially forcing you to be able to do what you're supposed to be able to do in the game: overcome challenges. (The game forces you to take combat abilities and skills, for the two most common types of challenges.)
However, if you still wanted to play this kind of character in fourth edition, you would have to make the descriptions of damage and hit points very abstract as a DM. The utility spells of the past like grease say could now do damage and knock prone. The damage just needs to be considered as whittling away at the opponents overall vitality and will to push on. The attacks that bloody and kill your opponent could be considered physical damage. A grease that bloodies, the opponent falls prone and you hear bones crunch, the grease that kills the opponent falls backwards on its head and is knocked out to bleed to death or breaks its neck et cetera. Grease might not be a good example since physical damage is easily described from falling prone, but you get the idea.
Having damage and utility mutually exclusive in 3rd edition I believe led to very swingy fights, where as in 4E every class is expected to contribute damage and eventually take down a foe with that damage. I guess an example could be a wizard at the beginning of the day choosing between major image and fireball. A major image could completely defuse an encounter before it begins, where as fireball could decimate an encounter after it begins. The idea now is that both could do damage, essentially weakening the differences between the two, so that the wizard contributes a steady flow of damage to counteract the relatively high vitality of 4E monsters.
Orryn Emrys said:
And, perhaps most interestingly of all, he used his sorcery to try to make himself a more effective fighter (which he had all of one level of...), in "true dwarven fashion". He was one of the most entertaining and extraordinary characters we've ever seen.
Sounds the like the dwarf is mostly independent of the rules of the edition, but for being a sorcerer with a smattering of fighter be a wizard with the student of the sword multiclass feat.