Sly come-hither stare sold separately.

Whoo. I hope everybody had a frank and productive fourth of July. I had a pretty busy weekend... apart from celebrating with family and friends, I got caught up on some much overdo record-keeping. I'm way behind on my email right now, but I'll have time to catch up on that in the next week.

I'm about to start in on some Void Dogs, but I just have to throw out a brainstorm I had that came out of an ongoing conversation with a friend about how to do a witch character in D&D 4E.

Wizards of the Coast isn't very likely to come out with a core witch class, because that's asking for trouble from multiple directions. But you're not exactly strapped for options as it is.

The Warlock class is basically based on one of (or a few of) the more common conceptions of what a witch is: someone who bargains/deals with demons, dark forces, fey spirits, astral intelligences, or or old and forgotten gods to work magic. Ask all the people who think D&D teaches children witchcraft what a witch is and you'll probably get a concise description of the Warlock class, except they'll tell you that all the pacts are dark and infernal. Warlocks have quite a lot of powers that involve hexing and fortune, to boot. Even though "Warlock" actually has darker connotations than "Witch", they probably only called the class "Warlock" because the term "Witch" is such a lightning rod.

If you want to go on the model of "witches are people born with natural magical ability", there's Sorcerers. Spend a feat on a familiar (cat, raven, owl, spider, rat) just so people get the point.

For a more nuanced view of witchcraft, you can always go cleric, invoker, or shaman. You'll convey the witchiness through characterization and roleplay.

But for my money... if I were going to play a character and say they were a witch, I'd split the difference between the "as in wicked" style and something more post-modern and play a Druid.

Druids begin the game with three at-will attack powers instead of two, because they have to split them between a beast form (the specific beast is purely a cosmetic special effect... the powers you channel through it can change its nature and statistics, but otherwise, it's basically "melee mode"). You can choose whether to have two beast form powers and one spell-like power or the other way around... for a witchy character, obviously, you want more magic. If you're human, you can take another at-will power and give yourself three spells to throw around for maximum witchiness. Likewise if you're a half-elf who can borrow a power from another class... take a wizard or warlock or sorcerer spell to add to your repertoire. Heck, spend your first level feat (or one of them, if you're a human) on the Wizard multiclass feat that lets you take a wizard at-will attack as an encounter power.

Let's say you go human, for sake of argument, and you do spend a feat multiclassing and you gain a really useful Wizard spell like Thunderwave. You can turn yourself into a sleek hunting cat or she-wolf or mother bear (any of which could be moderately witchy in and of itself), and that form has some kind of special attack (the Pounce one seems like a good one for someone who's going to be primarily attacking at range, since it can be combined with a charge)... Flame Seed, which lets you throw a small fireball that leaves behind a brief burning zone, Chill Wind, which lets you push everyone around who's in a small burst besides doing some damage, and Storm Spike or Thorn Whip depending on whether you'd rather be able to throw lightning to keep your opponents moving or wield vines to pull them in.

I'm using these as examples because they're "elemental", but really, any combination of three of the at-will non-beast-form powers available work. It gives you three at-will attacks that are all pretty good representations of something a witch might toss off.

For your encounter power, you can either take a more powerful attack for your beast form, since it's been neglected so far, or Twisting Vines or Frost Flash for more witchy goodness. A good way to broaden your elemental base.

For your daily... oh, what's this? According to the character generator, Dragon has released a set of summon powers for druids. It doesn't get much witchier than being able to summon a giant toad to fight for you. But if toads aren't your thing, they also have a wolverine, boar, and wolf option. Or you can take another spell-like one, such as Fires of Life. But being able to summon a wolf or toad seems pretty witchy to me.

Then for your feats... being human, you get two of them. Take Arcane Initiate, the Wizard multiclass, and you get to pick one more power: Thunder Wave, Illusion Bolt, or Storm Pillar all make good choices both to increase your character's controlleriness and for suiting the character concept of a fantasy witch. Bonus: Arcane Initiate also gives you training in Arcana, meaning you effectively have another skill to choose.

And for the second feat? Now that you're a cross-class Wizard, you also meet the prerequisites for a familiar. Give yourself an owl or a cat just in case people don't get the point. Or take another feat but keep that choice in mind for a subsequent level.

If you pick a race besides Human, take the Wizard multiclass at level one and the familiar at level two. As a Half-Elf, you can end up with two Wizard at-will powers as encounter powers, or you can borrow a Sorcerer or Warlock one, though for my money, the Wizard's more controllery powers make for better choices. When you only get one use of it per encounter, you want it to have some effect besides damage.

At level two, for your first utility power, take Skittering Sneak and faster than you can say "Goddess Hecate, before thee let the unclean thing crawl!", you can turn yourself into a rat or spider or other suchlike small skittery sneaky thing. A few levels after that, you can take Black Harbinger to gain the ability to turn into a raven. In between those levels you can get more weather and fire and frost and thorn-based attacks. By the middle of the second tier, you'll be able to turn people into a newt (they'll get better) and possibly even explode your physical form into a swarm of insects.

So, the end result is you've got someone who instead of studying magic like a Wizard or praying in churches like a Cleric, invokes the primal wild forces of nature and can throw around fire and ice and lightning and thorns from level one, has a familiar in animal shape and can possibly summon more, and can turn into some sort of forest creature (and eventually, multiple types of forest creatures.)

Just let anybody try to tell you that's not a witch... and then you can throw fire and lightning at them and turn them into a newt.

Edit-dendum:

Druids can use staves as an implement. What's a broom handle, if not a staff?

Edit-dendum the 2nd:

Take Sky Hunter paragon path at level 11 and you can fly your speed before using the bonus action from an action point, in case you want to try defying gravity. That's in addition to being able to turn into a bird and gaining a fly speed.