Assuming equal wealth, who would win in a fight?
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If they get the same point build the commoner will have better stats (increase at 12,16,and 20) the fighter will have a +2 to all attacks and damage from weapon training and a better selection of weapons but the commoner could just take weapon proficiency and armor proficiency. (They both have 11 feats 12 if human) overall the commoner will have more HP I will assume both have a 14 con so commoner gets 112.5 fighter has 79. The fight is fairly balanced as far as I can see, same BAB, stats, etc. I think fighter will win for weapon spec and better proficiencies.
Here it comes, must build crazy 'optimized' lvl 20 commoner build.
Calling dibs on the Commoner, someone else make a fighter.
Play by Post gauntlet death match incoming.
Also dot.
The fighter because....
A. There are no level 20 Commoners.
B. Commoner NPCs dont recieve that much wealth.
C. If he did have the wealth of a 10th level player he would be living in a villa sipping wine.
D. He would have spent all his feats on skill focus and such.
In order to get to roughly the same potential AC level the commoner loses out on 3 feats (armor prof light, medium, and heavy) out of 10 (11 if human) and to use a non-simple weapon needs another feat (or maybe just the heirloom weapon trait to give the commoner proficiency with any 1 weapon if both have access to traits). The fighter will have armor training 2 and weapon training 2 in addition to feats the commoner needed to spend on armor. NPC classes I believe can't apply favored class bonuses, so a fighter will have +10 hp or skill points, 10hp from 1st level and using average 49.5 from the remaining 9 levels, 69.5hp before constitution. A commoner will have 20d6 (NPC classes don't seem to get max hp at first level, though I'm not 100% sure that's an actual rule) or 70 before con bonus. 20 levels would give the commoner double benefit from high con however, so the higher the constitution the more the hp gap between the commoner and fighter would go, but even giving an 18 constitution (+40 hp for the fighter, +80 for the commoner) would likely only extend the commoner's survival by maybe 3 hits over the fighter.
With identical stats and identical items, if both wear heavy armor the fighter will have +2 attack and damage, 2 less ACP, +2 to potential dex to AC, and 3 feats to spend making himself a better fighter. Even with an hp advantage I'd think the numbers are on the side of the fighter in this case. Of course, different situations can change this. If the commoner is archery focused, the fighter a heavy, slow moving tank of a dwarf, and they start a couple hundred yards away then circumstances probably favor the commoner. All else being equal though, I'd say the weapon and armor training swing things the fighter's way.
Is the commoner an NPC then? I was under the impression that they were PCs.
Hmm, you could be right. As commoner is an NPC class I don't think it's crazy to assume that they would be an NPC, but if the commoner were a PC and got max hp at level 1 that adds 2.5 hp to the total. If an NPC class qualifies as a favored class for the favored class bonus (the CRB only says Prestige Classes cannot be favored classes, mentioning nothing about NPC classes) that would add potentially 20hp as well.
We would have to make assumptions about feats and armor/weapon styles next to work out exactly what 3 feats and +2 attack and damage translates to in extra damage per round for the fighter over the commoner and it would be a race to see if the more accurate, harder hitting fighter can deplete the more hardy, but weaker and less accurate commoner before the fighter's lower hp total depletes. At that point it becomes way too much work to be a fun thought experiment for me though, so I'll leave that to others to debate. Since there are no 20th level commoners in my game I wouldn't ever get anything out of putting more work into this line of thought. Interesting what-if scenario though.
Making use of this feat may change things.