D&D4: Olafine, the Dwarven Mountaineer

I try to come up with a back up characer in case my Eladrin Druid Hadalis bites the dust. (He did not loose a single hit point the last session though and I don't remember him ever going down to 0 HP.)

Anyways: back in 2nd Edition AD&D I was puzzled that next to all the archetypes for fighters the German edition pointed out that you could play a "Bergsteiger" (literally "mountain climber") as a fighter variation without needing a special class for it. Actually the paragraph was more or less explaining why there were no more assassins and chevaliers in 2nd Edition any longer, but they also came up with some pretty obscure further examples. The English language version was actually talking about a mountaineer, but the German translation sounded very anachronistic to me, because "Bergsteiger" is a concept that I imagined (and still imagine) to be only invented in the 19th century. I always liked stuff that does not fit in and so I never stopped wondering what a "Bergsteiger" would do in a medieval fantasy party.

Last year when I talked with a friend about playing a 2nd Edition AD&D game (I actually think very low about this specific rule set), it was pretty obvious from second 1 that I would play a "Bergsteiger"/mountaineer. The game never happened, but the idea stuck in my head.

When thinking about a second character for my D&D4 game, it was pretty obvious for me that I wanted to try a defender. Initially I was toying with the idea of a swordsmage (I really despised that concept as a teen btw), but we already got a dwarven one in our game since last session. And because I currently play the paladin Rius Divorie in my D&D3.5 game and Hadalis is a primal, only the Fighter was left.
I actually like fighters. I don't normally like dwarves, because I don't like beards, but then I thought a female dwarf could be fun to play, because D&D4 did pretty interesting things with them graphically and they are half male anyways. ;)

Now I have the problem that a I imagine a mountaineer to be much more like a ranger than like a fighter. It probably should have been that way in 2nd Edition as well. Stupid book! Not only is the concentration on the environment part of the deal, even the dual weapon concept fits a person who is working with multiple hooks.

So in the end I will play a martial striker (next to our half orc barbarian and our eladrin avenger), but hopefully a dwarf has some defenderish qualities after all. And don't complain we will have no leaders or controllers. :P