I dunno, I don't proscribe to the thought of martial classes lagging behind casters, but I do hear the blather enough that I had this idea.
Make Combat Feats either:
a.) Accessible only by Fighters, Barbarians, Monks, Rogues, Cavaliers, Swashbucklers, etc.
Or
b.) Combat Feats can only be taken if the class gives access to them at the bonus. I.E. Fighter bonus feats, Ranger combat style feats, Cavs at 6s, etc.
This would mean a straight wizard or other caster (except Magus) for example could not have ANY combat feats.
Think that'd stop the whining?
No, nothing can stop the whining. Even if the game were completely rebuilt, then we'd just get more whining.
I honestly made Weapon Finesse free and allowed my players to use material from Dreamscarred Press's Path of War. That fixed a lot.
Maybe I just thought it might make those characters feel more 'special'
Restricting options doesn't really solve anything and stomps on the face of gish classes. The only full casters that care about combat feats are the 9-level divine classes, which don't get any bonus feats and can't pick up staples like Power Attack until level 3.
why
No seriously, what is this meant to accomplish?
Combat feats are already essentially restricted to martial characters... because martial characters are the guys that benefit from them most.
Even builds for combat casters are often pretty light for straight combat feats. And I wouldn't want to restrict the already limited options for combat-oriented divine and secondary casters.
Buffing combat feats by making chains neater and smaller would be nice. Things like Power Maneuvers replacing individual CM feat chains following Power Attack, or having expanded range of functions for Intimidate unlock through the skill and not feat chains.
It's already been said in this thread, but here it is again.
This won't change much.
Wizards rule the world. For obvious reasons. And so do clerics. And so do many other classes that look and sound and function somewhat like wizards or clerics. And all of them manage to do it without EVER taking ANY of these combat feats. Sure, a few do. But the best builds that rule the world the best and at the lowest wold-dominating levels, take ZERO combat feats.
So you're not actually taking something away from the most awesome classes.
Which means you're not really making even a tiny dent in the disparity between casters and non-casters - to do this, you need to restrict casters from stuff they actually want, or give new and better stuff to the non-casters, or both.