Personally, i always felt fighters were held back by the flavor assumption that he be purely constrained by the laws of physics. It bugged me that the fighter had to rely on power attack while the rogue could tear it up with sneak attack. IF the rogue could do 10d6 with the flanking, the fighter (who should be the best at fighting) should be able to do 10d6 whenever. I never got why they made the fighter as weak as they did, except they either made the game with intentional flaws to reward "good" players, or they only play tested the lowest levels.
How would you fix the fighter? did pathfinder do a good job? Does their fix leave something to be desired? I think they were on the right track, but i would go further. I would do all good saves, d12 hd, and probably Tremendous Strength as a class feature. This in addition to the pathfinder features (Armor and Weapon feats as free class features) as well as the bonus feats.
tl;dr fighter fixes are a dime a dozen, but how would you fix the fighter?
The bolded part is right.
I'd fix the fighter by giving him the ability to attack incorporeal opponents without magical aid, perception skills to locate hidden opponents, bypass forcecages and magical terrain, give him special attacks which can daze, blind, stun, etc. opponents and perhaps a "slip past the armor" ability which converts a regular attack to a touch attack.
Also, expanded list of skills, especially interaction, stealth, and knowledge skills.
Ziegander (a member here and at Giantitp) made a bunch of cool Fighter fixes. I really like his
Battle Lord class, as it fixes many of the Fighter weaknesses and shortcomings. In fact, some of the stuff I mentioned is in the class!
