Some more suggestions, from the other fighter thread:
Fighter
add the following class features at the indicated levels:
3 - triumph pool, technique
5 - technique
7 - technique
9 - technique
11 - advanced techniques, technique
13 - technique
15 - technique
17 - technique
19 - technique
Triumph pool -- A fighter has many hidden reserves of strength and skill to draw on in times of need. These reserves are represented by triumph points -- the ability of fighters to carry out extraordinary techniques. A fighter at any given time has a maximum triumph pool equal to one half of his current levels in fighter, plus his constitution bonus.
Techniques (available at 3rd level) -- As a fighter's skills develop, he's able to draw on his hidden reserves of strengths in different ways. Depending on his training, he will be able to manifest his strength to enhance his attacks, focus his skills, or increase his defenses. Select a technique from the following list and add it to your previous skills.
Strategic Blow -- As part of a single attack during his turn, a fighter may add a special effect to one of his attacks. The player must declare which attack the effect is being added to. The possible effects and costs are listed as follows:
(1 point): bleeding (+1d6 per round), dazing (1 round), deafening, dazzling; (2 points): bleeding (+2d6 per round), blinding, staggering, sickening.
Crushing Blow -- Once per round, a fighter may spend 2 triumph points to strike especially forcefully with the attack at his highest bonus. Treat this roll as a roll to confirm a critical: if the roll succeeds, multiply its damage times its critical multiplier; if the roll fails, it still hits normally, as per any other critical threat roll. Do not multiply any damage that is not normally multiplied for a critical hit.
Follow-Through -- A fighter may spend 1 triumph point to add another attack at the fighter's highest attack bonus. This does not stack with effects which add additional attacks, such as haste.
Impossible Mark -- As part of a normal attack in a fighter's turn, he may choose to spend 2 triumph points to greatly enhance his combat abilities to make unusually accurate attacks. Upon spending the triumph points, the fighter gains a +5 competence bonus to a melee or ranged attack. Additionally, for ranged attacks the weapon's range increment is effectively doubled (i.e. a range increment of 100 ft. is increased to 200 ft., etc.).
Artful Maneuver -- As part of a combat maneuver, a fighter may spend two triumph points to gain a competence bonus of +5 to his combat maneuver in this round only. At 10th level, this bonus increases to +10.
Advanced techniques (available at 11th level) -- At 11th level, a fighter may choose any of these advanced techniques to add to his repertoire.
Wall of Steel -- To use this technique a fighter must be equipped with a shield. As part of a Total Defense action, the fighter may spend 3 triumph points to gain DR 5/-- for one round. At 15th level, the damage reduction increases to 10/--.
Rapid Recovery -- immediate action. When reduced to 0 hit points or lower (but not enough to kill), the fighter may spend 3 triumph points to gain as many temporary hit points as he has levels in the fighter class.
Unbending Determination -- immediate action. When forced to make a Will save, a fighter may choose to spend 3 triumph points to gain a +4 bonus to his Will saves for this save only. The fighter must choose to spend the triumph points and take the bonus before he rolls his Will save. At 15th level, this bonus increases to +6
Timely Intervention -- Immediate interrupt. Once per round when one of your allies is being attacked, you can choose to spend 3 triumph points to push your ally out of the way and take the attack instead. Your ally is therefore allowed to take a 5-ft step in any direction he chooses, even if they have already taken a 5-ft step in this turn. If you have moved already this turn, your next turn will be skipped. In either case, your initiative will be reset to the same value as the attacker targeted.
Human shield -- Immediate interrupt. Upon being attacked but before the roll has been made, a fighter may spend 3 triumph points to replace himself with any enemy no greater than 5 ft. away, causing the enemy he replaced himself with to be attacked instead. A fighter may not use this technique more than once per round.
Gaping wound -- As a part of a fighter's normal attack, he may cause a major wound to a non-critical area, causing blood to gush out and the target to suffer from 1 Con bleed damage each succeeding turn. The target or one of his allies must make a heal check (DC 15) to stop the bleeding.
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Ok, here's another idea. So, I've been thinking that fighter paradigm concepts are not compartmentalized as per 3.5/PF rules. However, cleric, ranger, wizard, and even sorcerer paradigms are compartmentalized -- if you want to be a necromancer, you play a wizard with the necromantic school specialization, if you want to play a cleric of destruction you pick the destruction domain, and so on and so forth.
But what of fighter specializations? At best, you just pick a feat build and run with it, many of those feats of which can be picked by any other class, with varying effectiveness (why, pray tell, would a ranger be better at TWF than a fighter who's spent multiple levels specializing in that very field?). I daresay that there are some builds that actually have to be built with specific feats, and that therefore if one wants to play such-and-such fighter paradigm, then they should just automatically get some feats that build up that archetype as they progress, and then allocate their bonus feats as they see fit.
So, let's say that there are some "builds" or "kits" or "specialties" or "disciplines" of fighter that give free feats that mesh nicely with the character concept. These would take away from some of the bonus feats, naturally, as some of the feats normally picked would be from the fighter bonus feat list. A useful point of comparison, though, would be the baseline fighter -- the fighter equivalent of the wizard's Universalist school specialization. Honestly, this particular build is in many ways deficient to other schools -- they can't prepare as many spells, and they don't get the cool bonuses each other school gets. But what they give up in terms of raw power, they gain in flexibility. So, if we have a system of "disciplines" for fighters, then the baseline discipline is the generalist "man-at-arms," which gets the same progression of feats as is normally listed.
So, different "disciplines" would have different synergetic bonuses from simply declaring that particular discipline when taking a level in fighter. I daresay that some of the disciplines already in this thread are simply A-one, and I'll use them as archetypes to build off of. Special thanks to anthony Valente and A Man In Black for helping bounce off ideas and developing thoughts towards this direction:
- Brawler -- a maneuver specialist; would be good in fighters pretty much exclusively vs. humanoids, but would be a real nice guy to have in a bar fight (Someone pull out a dagger? Well, Brak the Brawler can pry that dagger from his scrawny little fingers lickety-split! Now let's send him to the floor, then Unarmed Strike him into unconsciousness.)
- Weaponmaster -- a multi-weapon spec fighter; would be able to draw any of many types of weapons and be extremely useful at it (Let's see... my longsword's not working? Good thing I packed that +1 golem bane warhammer, and have weapon spec in it thanks to my class...) Builds in redundancy in weapon specs, which makes it more reliable when one's weapon isn't working.
- Warlord -- a leader of men and source of strength for his allies. Could be used to buff allies, as per 4E warlord. Haven't decided.
- Slayer -- a fighter specializing in killing a specific type of monster (i.e. Dragon Slayer, Undead Slayer, Giant Slayer, etc.)
- Guardian/Sentinel/Champion/Knight (name suggestions, folks?) -- a fighter specializing in defending and protecting his allies
- Samurai -- an imposing battlefield controller who frightens lesser opponents with his mere presence. Ideas can probably be lifted off of Complete Warrior samurai class.
- Mage Killer -- a fighter specialized in disrupting, disabling, and killing magic-users.
That seems like a pretty nice list to start off with. If these made it into a core or even a supplemental rulebook, that would give us 7 specialties -- 1 less than the wizard in the PFCR, 3 less than the sorcerer, and 26 less than the cleric. Considering all the different "fighting styles" that are folded into the fighter class, I reckon this is movement in the right direction.
Also note that many of suggested Disciplines listed above may have been variants or new core classes introduced in the past. I daresay that if these fighter rule variants come into play, then we can translate martial classes pretty easily into fighter Disciplines, much like new sorcerer bloodlines and cleric domains are released in every AP module or so. This is intended to add modularity, and therefore customizability.
