What is with all this anti-tinkering HATE!? Hate. Hate. Hate.

Ranger has somewhat of an identity now, because of the whole DW/Track-at-first-level thing. However, they would have a further defined identity as the only current official class to have an animal companion, if I could figure out where my goddamn animal companion stuff went.

I will not play a Ranger if I cannot have a badger. It just can't happen.

I am interested in a sheet.

Ranger's so have an identity right now. I mean sure they are melee oriented for the most part but hey so are rogues. Rogues have stealth and thieving and right now Rangers have survival and the ability to assist in skill checks and remove surprise by warning the party. They also have several abilities geared to allowing them to move in and out of melee range while attacking and without being attacked. From the looks of most of their abilities a ranger would make a half decent striker at least as effective as a rogue but not quite as paper thin with the option of some range. Ranger's definitely have their own niche now and its probably a good thing since its a niche that used to be mainly covered in prestige classes.

Yeah my point is not so much that they don't have a niche that they aren't really effective at their niche. It comes through the odd mix of spells, an animal companion, focus on two weapon fighting, tracking, all these mean the ranger has a little bit of each ability but not enough of each one to be really effective at any. Actually I would like to see a ranger either as a prestige class or the option to change the way ones ranger works (so you could have a more melee orientated ranger, or a more spell one or a tracking one).

Actually, two of the builds that the PHB features are a ranged build, and a dual-wielding, melee-oriented build. I think race factors in a little more than it used to now, too; Elves have the encounter power that allows you to re-roll an attack roll you don't like, but you have to take the second roll regardless of whether it's higher or lower. On the other hand, Eladrin have their Fey Step ability (hellyesrogue), that allows some magical, 5-square teleportation. So you'd want to look at race at that point too, depending on how you wanted to play...hmm.

Personally, I'm playing with my friends right now as an Eladrin rogue, and the Fey Step ability is quite handy. Character building was a lot faster, too; I think the fastest person finished their build in about 20 minutes, and the slowest came in around 50. As opposed to the minimum of an hour it took me to make a character in 3.5 Edition.

I must be blind. I still haven't seen any Animal Companion stuff in the Ranger portion of the class chapter...but that's irrelevant, because I'm a Rogue. XD

EDIT: I haven't leveled, but I just noticed now that each class has a set amount of hitpoints they gain each level. This means I don't have to roll a die every time I gain a level to determine how many bullets I can take. Thank god.

Either you're confused and thought I was talking about 3.5 rangers, which are useless, or you haven't bothered to read through 4 edition rangers. By which I mean 4th edition rangers are very clearly focused on mobility above all else with a slight smattering of other things. Most of their multiple attack options involve moving before during or after the attack. They have a lot of interrupt actions based around moving and counter attacking when attacked and their higher level burst abilities even give them the ability to move before attacking. They also have a few straight up controller type status effect abilities but they are heavily in the minority. That is unless you go archer instead of dual melee. In which case its mostly about raining down arrows and status effects and keeping enemies away from you. Though even as an archer you are still geared much more towards simply hitting basically everything you can see with a single attack action and then moving around.

4th edition rangers are very effective in their niche, and yes the whole hunter's quarry thing is still there but its much less a part of the class. That and you get to designate any enemy as your quarry for the encounter and get bonuses for it. One paragon path even lets you have several quarries marked at the same time.

See, that's what I was trying to say, except I was playing and talking on Skype at the same time. :p

Still going to poke in and say that I think racial choices play a larger role in character creation than they did in 3.5, since in 3.5 it was really only languages and skill bonuses that came into thinking. Now suddenly we have powers to consider as well...which make it interesting. That's part of the reason my character took 40-ish minutes to build; I spent some time looking at classes, and narrowing down to Ranger and Rogue, and then went to races and was like "Oh, wow," because I had to genuinely thought out my choice. Fey may end up being my new gnome. :p

I'll post my whipped-up build later-ish and people can have a run-through-looks-y.

To those who want a construct class, there's always warforged. They've been super simplified now. You just don't get a selection of racial feats, which is true of all MM races.

Oh, and I, too, would enjoy a fillable character sheet.

I gotta say, I love the at will and per encounter stuff. Makes mages a whole lot more useful, as they aren't useless once their spells run out. Might have to pick up a few 4e books.

I'd personally like to play a Dragonborn Paladin. It might have to do with the fact that that was what I was on a MUD a while back, though.