Having played through a few fights with rage-point barbarians, I've reach the conclusion that spending points to activate abilities feels more tactical than barbaric. My proposal for tweaking the rage point system to better fit the barbarian appears elsewhere. In this thread, I attempt to apply what I've seen of rage points to the fighter class.
Since rage points feel very tactical, I suggest replacing the fighter's armor training and weapon training with something resembling rage points: my placeholder name is "combat points." Each round, a fighter gains a number of combat points equal to one-half his class level, rounded up. Unspent combat points are lost at the end of the fighter's turn.
As a free action, a fighter may spend a combat point to gain a cumulative +1 bonus to any one of the following: Armor Class, all attack rolls, or all weapon damage rolls. This bonus lasts until the beginning of the fighter's next turn.
(Because the fighter class is supposed to be a relatively basic class, I don't recommend building any other "combat powers" into the class. Instead, feats could be created that use combat points, and these feats could be available as fighter bonus feats for those who are interested.)
