I've posted before about giving the fighter fighting stances or styles, but one of the problems with the fighter is that he just fights. And he fights in a vacuum.
We see this in 3.5 and 4e where fighters get fewer skills than other classes. I can accept that rogues get more skills since skills are a rogue thing. Clerics are basically all priests (or monks, mendicants, friars, and very very rarely prophets or mystics or others not associated with the priesthood). Wizards, given how magic works in the game, are all intelligence-based and scholarly spellcasters. Both clerics and wizards end up with class features supporting their role as trained priests or scholars. There are alternate classes (sorcerer and warlock; invoker/favored soul) who are similar to clerics and wizards but their spellcasting and the origins of their powers are different and thus the classes are quite different in terns of ability scores used, skills, and class features. But where does a fighter's weapon training come from?
Fighters are knights, soldiers, outlaws, hunters, or commoners and these should grant them some skills. Games like the Conan D20 simply eliminated the fighter in favor of these type of classes. Likewise, the original Oriental Adventures rules divided the fighter into the Bushi (peasant-type fighter), Kensai (weapon master), and Samurai (ok, a type of cavalier or knight so technically not a fighter subclass). If the wizard or cleric class presume enough background that one would have training with a certain crucial skill, fighters should also get something comparable, because otherwise fighters are stupid and have no background.
I see that this does overlap with the background system in the current rules, where a wizard may have been a noble or a craftsman who takes up wizardry. But a fighter learns somewhere, whether he has noble training, soldier training, outlaw training, or is naturally talented. These might not be the entirety of the weapon-training typology, but I think the fighter needs to acknowledge that the class has some background beyond simple weapon training and grant some non-combat options. The class origin or training feature might just grant one or two simple things (a skill selected from a thematic list) or something more (heavy armor proficiency for knights, dirty fighting for bandits, tactics/inspiration/formation fighting for some soldiers or worldliness for others). I'm a little attracted to the "something more" option because then every fighter might have simple weapons and medium armor proficiency, but bonus weapons, armor, and skills could be granted by your origin.
Once we acknowledge that fighters have some training traditions or origins, I think we'll begin to think of them as less of a broad combat master class and more in-line with the other classes.
This could be a nice decision point for the fighter class, if not real motivation to divide fighters into knights, soldiers, outlaws, and the like. My guess is most fighters could use largely the same mechanics, so distinct classes might be too much for basic D&D or even most campaign settings. A simplified list of western fantasy might give us something like: Horseman, Soldier, Hunter, Gladiator, Noble, Outlaw, Swashbuckler, and Peasant. Assume that class feature could be swapped out or given other options for different campaigns and I think you've got a reasonable mechanic that gives fighters a bit of history and will distinguish between two or more fighters in a campaign.
We see this in 3.5 and 4e where fighters get fewer skills than other classes. I can accept that rogues get more skills since skills are a rogue thing. Clerics are basically all priests (or monks, mendicants, friars, and very very rarely prophets or mystics or others not associated with the priesthood). Wizards, given how magic works in the game, are all intelligence-based and scholarly spellcasters. Both clerics and wizards end up with class features supporting their role as trained priests or scholars. There are alternate classes (sorcerer and warlock; invoker/favored soul) who are similar to clerics and wizards but their spellcasting and the origins of their powers are different and thus the classes are quite different in terns of ability scores used, skills, and class features. But where does a fighter's weapon training come from?
Fighters are knights, soldiers, outlaws, hunters, or commoners and these should grant them some skills. Games like the Conan D20 simply eliminated the fighter in favor of these type of classes. Likewise, the original Oriental Adventures rules divided the fighter into the Bushi (peasant-type fighter), Kensai (weapon master), and Samurai (ok, a type of cavalier or knight so technically not a fighter subclass). If the wizard or cleric class presume enough background that one would have training with a certain crucial skill, fighters should also get something comparable, because otherwise fighters are stupid and have no background.
I see that this does overlap with the background system in the current rules, where a wizard may have been a noble or a craftsman who takes up wizardry. But a fighter learns somewhere, whether he has noble training, soldier training, outlaw training, or is naturally talented. These might not be the entirety of the weapon-training typology, but I think the fighter needs to acknowledge that the class has some background beyond simple weapon training and grant some non-combat options. The class origin or training feature might just grant one or two simple things (a skill selected from a thematic list) or something more (heavy armor proficiency for knights, dirty fighting for bandits, tactics/inspiration/formation fighting for some soldiers or worldliness for others). I'm a little attracted to the "something more" option because then every fighter might have simple weapons and medium armor proficiency, but bonus weapons, armor, and skills could be granted by your origin.
Once we acknowledge that fighters have some training traditions or origins, I think we'll begin to think of them as less of a broad combat master class and more in-line with the other classes.
This could be a nice decision point for the fighter class, if not real motivation to divide fighters into knights, soldiers, outlaws, and the like. My guess is most fighters could use largely the same mechanics, so distinct classes might be too much for basic D&D or even most campaign settings. A simplified list of western fantasy might give us something like: Horseman, Soldier, Hunter, Gladiator, Noble, Outlaw, Swashbuckler, and Peasant. Assume that class feature could be swapped out or given other options for different campaigns and I think you've got a reasonable mechanic that gives fighters a bit of history and will distinguish between two or more fighters in a campaign.
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