Well why not? Everyone else has taken their swings at buffing fighters to bring them in line with the other martial classes, so I figured I'd take my turn and step up to the plate.
Since the common complaint is that the main problem with the fighter is their lack of true versatility and out of combat options, that's what my simple changes aim to fix:
1. Fighters receive 4 + Int skill points per level. In addition, Acrobatics, Knowledge: Local, and Perception are class skills.
2. At 8th level fighters receive the following ability:
Master of Arms (Su): Starting at 8th level a fighter can spend an hour in meditation and arms practice, preparing for the battles ahead. At the end of the hour the fighter may exchange any of her bonus fighter feats for any other feats eligible to be taken as bonus fighter feats. She cannot exchange a feat that is a prerequisite for a prestige class or other ability. She can exchange a bonus feat that is a prerequisite for another feat if she exchanges that feat as well. A fighter can use this ability once per day.
At 12th level, when the fighter uses her Master of Arms ability to exchange any combat feat she knows for another combat feat (with the same restrictions regarding prerequisite feats), not just her bonus fighter feats.
Perhaps this change may homogenize fighters to an excessive degree, but I feel you'd still see plenty of variations given all of the fighter archetypes that exist. More than that I feel that with this kind of day-to-day flexibility the fighter can adapt to meet the challenges she expects to face that day - much like a prepared spellcaster - and truly live up to the title of the foremost master of combat.
That doesn't homogenize them at all. It gives them choices and more variety, the big thing is that they can choose between multiple weapons instead of being sucked into one. Theres nothing keeping htem from saying "I like swords best" and never using a mace, but with that change they can say "I don't feel like tripping today. Its all flying foes. I'm going to try out archery! Hand me the +2 bow we got yesterday."
That doesn't homogenize them at all. It gives them choices and more variety, the big thing is that they can choose between multiple weapons instead of being sucked into one. Theres nothing keeping htem from saying "I like swords best" and never using a mace, but with that change they can say "I don't feel like tripping today. Its all flying foes. I'm going to try out archery! Hand me the +2 bow we got yesterday."
This is one of the two main goals of my change. Instead of tying up 4+ feats into a single weapon, the fighter can actually use that +3 shocking falchion he found instead of hocking it because he specialized in greatswords.
The other goal was to try to get some actual use out of the more specialized and corner-case feat chains out there. It's not so bad to take the Teleport Tactician feat chain in order to prepare for the fight with the evil wizard when you know you can swap them out for more useful feats the next day.
oh i am so adopting this.
Looks similar to the fighter tweaks I've been using in my games.
I do not, however, agree with your decision to allow all of a fighter's bonus feats to be retrained each day, and especially not allowing all of a fighter's combat feats at 12th level.
At 20th level, that is 21 feats (22 if human), all of which could be combat feats. Being able to retrain that many feats each day just seems ludicrous and counter-productive (not to mention time consuming). Even by 8th level, that is 5 bonus feats that can be retrained. By 12th level, that is at least 13 feats (14 if human).
You would essentially be able to rebuild your character every single day.