So, I played the fighter last night.
Actually, a Dwarven Fighter 9. We played part of Sinister Adventures: Blood Waters by Greg A. Vaughan, and KnightErrantJR was the DM.
So, in the first combat, I bit the dust. Now, I understand where this could be a bad review from that point, but this is a playtest, and I am happy to report that he performed exactly as I'd hoped, and better, actually. The real thing that did him in was the Critical Hit deck (3 con loss with 52 points of damage +18 hp lost from the con loss (Organ Scramble), means pain for the dwarf), a plain critical hit was survivable (albeit painful).
Until this point, he had been able to use a class skill, Knowledge (Engineering), and had made perception checks that made me happy. The other part of this is the Dwarven resistances allowed him to make some dicey Will saves, and with the Dwarven Wisdom, he was able to survive a bit longer against the onslaught of magical abilities against him.
The good of it all was that his melee damage output was CONSISTENT. I was very pleased with that, as I was worried that although his damage was higher, his output would be severely hampered by grapples, trips, or other things he wasn't geared towards (thus a couple of the defensive choices to eliminate that problem).
So, overall, I'm happy with him. Does it mean that everyone will be? Nope. But MY view of the fighter is the "regular Joe" who wants to be something more. You get to high levels by fighting smart, not just hacking at the front line. This proved it. If the dwarf had stayed at the canon, he would have been mostly fine. If he were foolish, as he was, he died. So, I can't down him on that basis.
My only thoughts are merely echoes: Give Fighters Perception as a class skill. I'd also argue for Sense Motive to avoid being feinted on a lot.
If you want to give them "special abilities," something similar to Dragon 310's "Specialist Fighters" article might make them happy.
As to the whole Alpha 2: We (as a group) agreed that the Lethality from the Player versus Monster/NPC abilities were roughy equal, rather than lopsided one way or the other at this level. This makes it much more fun, with the lethality increased (and man that Critical hit deck really does hurt!).
/d
P.S. When the fighter was "scrambled" I nearly fell onto the floor laughing because it was such a fluke!
A little more context . . . the PCs were all 9th level (originally, we were only going to have 3 players, which would average out for a four party group in this adventure, but we added a player, so they were a wee bit higher level than the adventure called for, but it worked out).
Spoiler for Blood Waters:
I also used the "cultist customs inspectors" in conjunction with the "sinking option," but I had they bail as soon as the game was up.
The Benthic Serpent was a CR 11 creature with a CR 9 group, so under Pathfinder this would have been a "hard" encounter. It wasn't really too far off to see a player die under that CR, and the critical that the serpent got with its bite really wasn't an everyday event.
Isn't the Critical Hit Deck only for PC critical hits?
The deck mentions various ways to use the deck, from "PC only" to "Important NPC and PCs only," to "Everybody gets them." I've run with "everybody gets them" since I first got the deck.