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I don't understand what is different between your approach and making such list of differences between fighter and ... wizard for example and arriving to the same conclusion that wizard could have been a fighter class archetype.These are all the differences, everything else is exactly or at least functionally the same - HP, saves, shield block effects.
In this state, it could have been a champion class archetype.
The same list for fighter and wizard would have been twice as long at least!
A better comparison would be between a guardian and a champion, where the difference list would have been even shorter I suspect, but there is no pregen champion to emulate.
The point of the fighter comparison was to show that there's a lot of overlap in what the characters can do and the few unique mechanics of the guardian hardly outweigh the +4 to hit -2AC balance.
EDIT: as others pointed out I am not against guardian existing, in fact I love playing the sword and board knight types, my point is that there need to be more things that improve the guardian's party niche and playstyle.
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The Guardian to me feels like a 1e alternate class. Like Ninja, Samurai and antipaladin. It feels like an alternate Champion class. It really just says "champion san magic" which is less interesting to me personally but I get why it exists. I have to agree that it may be need something more to justify existing as its own thing, but I also don't want it to just make the champion obsolete either, which is probably my second favorite class in the game. I'm fine with more than one defender/tank type class in the game, but I don't want to be in a situation where I am looking at the champion and thinking "man this is just a worse guardian" be discouraged from playing it
No, I read both of those posts, where do you think I got that idea from?
You tell me, given that if you had actually read the posts I linked, you would've been able to see that the list of differences, or changes that would need to be made from one class to the other, were much less than what you were trying to make them out to be. If you did in fact read those posts and still chose to argue off of the pretense that the facts they underlined simply exist, then your argument here is not ignorant, but dishonest, which I'd say is worse.
And the issue with the pile of Guardian feats unmoored from a class is either you make it a class archetype (hence locking it out from access from any other class or builds) or you're stuck unable to make any proficiency changes. That's what I mean, there's no option for "here is a bunch of proficiency changes and feats bundled together". Flexible spellcaster works because it changes, technically, one thing - spells per level,...
That's a nice little false dichotomy; why should anyone have to care about it when you are the only one proposing it? As stated several times at this point, the claim I've made is that the Guardian's feats and even most of their class features could easily just be poached by the Fighter, Champion, and Barbarian, no class archetype or proficiency changes needed. If you want your pure martial, you've got the Fighter and Barb, and if you want your legendary AC, you've got the Champion.
I tend to find discussions that certain classes are "unnecessary" and should be a subclass of another to be a slippery slope because you can make that argument with a lot of other classes, depending on how arbitrary the criteria is.
Emphasis on the operative expression added. For sure, anyone can choose really arbitrary criteria and argue in bad faith that the Fighter and Wizard are basically the same class or the like, but as human beings capable of rational and at least moderately intelligent thought, even on the internet, we have the ability to differentiate those bad-faith arguments from the good-faith ones.
Just to take a few common examples, the Investigator and Swashbuckler are both commonly criticized as shoddy Rogue alternates: personally, I think that claim can only go so far, but there's nonetheless some truth to it, in that both did start as Rogue offshoots in 1e, have the bones of the Rogue in their class design, and are to this day kind of half-baked. There are, therefore, valid reasons why people are making those criticisms, much like how there's rapidly rising agreement that the Guardian fails to differentiate itself all that much from the Fighter.
By that same process of observation, though, we can also note that the Investigator and Swashbuckler both have at least some things going for them: Pursue a Lead, Devise a Stratagem, and Striking with one's Int mod collectively form this really distinctive set of mechanics that really do differ thematically and mechanically from the Rogue, and that can't be easily ported to the Rogue with just an archetype, let alone a handful of feats. Similarly, the Swashbuckler's panache and finisher system are very much their own system, once again distinct from the Rogue's mechanics and theme, and capable of generating entirely different gameplay. As much as I generally dislike the term in tabletop games, both classes manage to generate their own unique gameplay loop, and despite their origins in the Rogue and their current flaws, both still manage to stand on their own two feet as the game's detective class or flamboyant Errol Flynn-esque class, as opposed to the tricksy criminal type.
All of which brings us back to the Guardian, and I think the criticism can be made evident with this simple question: take a good look at Irabeth Tirabade, the orc featured in the playtest material section for the Guardian. Tell me: if you saw this character completely out of context, with no information on what their class was, would you be able to tell me accurately that they were a Guardian and not a Fighter? Because I can easily take a look at the iconics for the Investigator, the Swashbuckler, and the Rogue, and instantly be able to tell you which one belongs to which class. Even if I didn't know those classes existed, I'd still be able to see which character fantasy each is aiming for. You can tell me Irabeth is just a placeholder, but then one look at the dwarf holding the banner in the Commander section should be enough to indicate that that character is a martial class distinct from any of the ones we've had released so far.
So really, it's not that the reasons to assimilate the Guardian with the Fighter are arbitrary, so much that it is pretty obvious that the two classes have a lot of thematic and mechanical overlap, such that the reasons to differentiate them are what strike me as arbitrary. In particular, "I want a Champion with no magic" is such an overly-specific and reductive base concept that the result is doomed to feel like a subset of some other class. I do think there's a distinct niche to be had with the Guardian, but in my opinion the current implementation ain't it, so I'd say there would need to be a lot of work that'd have to be done to push it out of the Fighter and Champion's shadow.
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And what would that be? I think a reason you're getting so much pushback in this thread is because your premise doesn't really offer a solution, or at least, not a solution that is very likely.
Criticism does not need to offer solutions on the spot to be valid, and attempting to dismiss my and many other players' valid criticism on those grounds is fallacious. Similarly, claiming that the criticism did not elaborate on the reasons why the Guardian lacks standout qualities or is too similar to other classes when those reasons have been demonstrated at length is just straight-up lying. If being productive and making the developers' lives easier was your objective, you also wouldn't be going around arguing with another player over how to theorycraft a Taunt fix on an official feedback thread where a Paizo developer explicitly asked you to avoid debating other people's feedback. Interestingly, there appears to be near-total overlap between the people violating that developer's requests by arguing on that feedback thread, and the people who've come to this thread to try to invalidate the criticisms made of the Guardian class here, almost as if the intent wasn't to have productive feedback around the class so much as try to control which feedback does and doesn't get seen as valid.
Now, with all of that said, I do think that the criticisms made of the Guardian have also helped me better express what I'd want out of this class. If I had to pitch the class as a theme, it'd be "armored brute with a heart of gold", or effectively a character playing Blood Bowl in Pathfinder. They shouldn't really be keen on technique (that's the Fighter's job), so much as taking hits for the team and being able to survive just about anything. I can easily think of character types that could fit the above well and fit the Fighter or Champion much less, like a bodyguard, a quarterback, or any friendly Terminator from that franchise.
Off the top of my head, some broad ideas for mechanical changes I'd like to see to push the Guardian in that direction:
Effectively, I'd like to see a Guardian who'd be really mobile and really disruptive, with Taunt and Intercept Strike being more last-resort tools to focus an enemy's attention on them than effectively the only base options at their disposal outside of bog-standard Strikes and Athletics maneuvers. The class's delayed attack progression and ability to find themselves without any sort of attack booster I do think is a major problem, not because the class needs more damage, but because without anything of that sort, I think the class ends up feeling quite passive, like an extra health battery for their team more than anything.
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This class doesn't appeal to me, so I'm trying to temper my criticism and see it for what the designers intend it to be rather than what I would have wanted, but I do think Teridax is on to something here.
Notably, I notice that the guardian has warpriest/support proficiencies instead of standard martial. Which from a design perspective intrigues the hell out of me, but I also have to question the lack of class features that should accompany that chassis. We've only had 1.5 class on that track (though I will forever advocate that warpriest should be made a class archetype for all casters to pickup), and the alchemist has a ton a minor class features plus free consumables, and the war priest has their spells.
The guardian, meanwhile, has a lot of proficiencies. Which isn't nothing, 2 master saves plus (conditional) legendary reflexes and legendary armor add up to a lot of big numbers. But I think having so much of the class budget tied up in passive proficiencies is what is contributing to the "why isn't this just an archetype?" feeling. I certainly agree with those that are arguing that there's enough to this narrative space that there can be an entire class here, but I'm not certain how best to get that feeling across given the design constraints they've accepted.
Edit: I should note that this is entirely about the class chassis itself. The feats seem interesting to me, so I think it's closer than a first read might suggest. A handful of those given to the class for free at a much lower level than you could get as a class feat might do a lot to make the class feel better.
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No, I read both of those posts, where do you think I got that idea from?You tell me, given that if you had actually read the posts I linked, you would've been able to see that the list of differences, or changes that would need to be made from one class to the other, were much less than what you were trying to make them out to be. If you did in fact read those posts and still chose to argue off of the pretense that the facts they underlined simply exist, then your argument here is not ignorant, but dishonest, which I'd say is worse.
I think Ryangwy's point is pretty straightforward, and I don't understand why you're being weirdly hostile to them. Yes, a relatively small list of changes were listed for changing from fighter to guardian or vice versa with a class archetype - but that's true for so many classes. It'd be pretty straight forward to change a champion into a fighter! Once you've switched around weapon/armour progressions and switched Reactive Strike and your champion reaction, you're most of the way there. Ranger and rogue are probably also a similar length list to the Guardian and Fighter one. That list on its own is absolutely not a reason to make one a class archetype - people are using this logic to argue that Guardian could be a class archetype of Champion, but there is legitimately maybe one feat every 4 levels that you could take as a guardian without being woefully out of flavour. Many of the fighter feats - just about all of them with the Press trait at least - are designed around the heightened to-hit of a fighter, so a guardian picking them would be a rather bad idea given they're sometimes at a -4 to hit compared to the fighter. Arguing that a relatively simple set of changes with a class archetype for proficiency is sufficient reason to just use the class archetype is completely ignoring that class feats are comparably important, and often are completely at odds with the two classes being merged. Bard and Mesmerist has a lot of similarities in what their core chassis could look like, but so few Bard feats are appropriate for a Mesmerist that I'd much rather it be made as a separate class and not a class archetype.
I think Ryangwy's point is pretty straightforward, and I don't understand why you're being weirdly hostile to them. Yes, a relatively small list of changes were listed for changing from fighter to guardian or vice versa with a class archetype - but that's true for so many classes. It'd be pretty straight forward to change a champion into a fighter!
But this is simply not true. If the Champion class did not exist, you would have to list every cause and their own mechanics, without accounting for everything else the class gets at higher levels -- that is the level of complexity I'm talking about that warrants an entirely new class. By contrast, it only takes a few lines to change a Fighter into a Guardian, as exequiel's post demonstrates. This is also why I did not humor Ryangwy's insistence on this: the claim is so absurd, and it is so easy to demonstrate this with even just a modicum of thought, that I utterly fail to see how one could hold to that opinion in good faith, especially after being shown simple, obvious evidence of its absurdity.
Once you've switched around weapon/armour progressions and switched Reactive Strike and your champion reaction, you're most of the way there.
I invite you to actually take a look at the Champion's causes. Just for fun, try to copy-paste that page's contents into a Word document or a similar word processor. See how many pages it takes to fit all of that in, then come back to me and tell me that this is the same as switching around a small handful of actions and a proficiency track. Try that then with the Rogue's rackets or even just the Ranger's hunter's edges -- and this is before even accounting for the radically different flavors those classes have, as opposed to the Fighter and Guardian both being technique-based users of weapons and armor (once more, the Fighter trains in armor techniques as well, not just weapons techniques).
That list on its own is absolutely not a reason to make one a class archetype - people are using this logic to argue that Guardian could be a class archetype of Champion, but there is legitimately maybe one feat every 4 levels that you could take as a guardian without being woefully out of flavour. Many of the fighter feats - just about all of them with the Press trait at least - are designed around the heightened to-hit of a fighter, so a guardian picking them would be a rather bad idea given they're sometimes at a -4 to hit compared to the fighter. Arguing that a relatively simple set of changes with a class archetype for proficiency is sufficient reason to just use the class archetype is completely ignoring that class feats are comparably important, and often are completely at odds with the two classes being merged. Bard and Mesmerist has a lot of similarities in what their core chassis could look like, but so few Bard feats are appropriate for a Mesmerist that I'd much rather it be made as a separate class and not a class archetype.
This is a complete non-sequitur. Nobody is saying the Fighter should be a Guardian archetype, and in fact the claim made is that the Guardian's feats and class features could easily find themselves at home on a Fighter, Champion, and in the case of some abilities even a Barbarian.
I do think the Guardian is missing an Action/bonus that defines their turns radically.
Intercept and Taunt are cute but they are sometimes foods.
Barbarians Rage, Rangers Hunt, Monks Flurry... the Guardian cannot be entirely reactive, and if it is, it needs to be a little bit sexier, I think.
SHIELDING TAUNT
My longstanding lukewarm take is that Fighter long ago ended up with too much of the mechanical/thematic pie by sheer virtue of being "good at fighting" in a system in which ones choice of fighting style is really what defines a class. All classes must be "good at fighting" but one class happens to be the goodest at fighting as their theme. Swashbuckler and Investigator are shoddy Rogues/Fighters/etc. because Rogue got to the "light, evasive melee with precision damage" and "nonmagical skill/plot monkey" pies first. Likewise, Fighter stuck its hands in almost all the mundane fighting pies: they make great duelists, large weapon users, defenders, archers and throwers, and are an archetype away from being unarmed fighters as well. Unless wants to really lean into "nature warrior" or "divine warrior", Fighters encroach on the mechanical space of Rangers and Champions. "Guardian could be a Fighter with an archetype" is just the latest example of Fighter being too broad of a base mechanically; you have to have a pretty non-mundane theme to survive Fighterization; naked kungfu warrior, magic anime warrior, and semi-magical pile of junk warrior all ended up pretty unique.
The nature of splats and TTRPG publishing means that you can really only add, not take away; the ship on Fighter has long sailed. But if I had my way, I'd do the reverse of this thread: dismantle the Fighter and distribute its parts amongst the other martials. Of course, that just moves the Guardian from the Fighter's shadow to the Champion's, but maybe in that hypothetical we'd sharpen the Champion as "divine warrior" and not necessarily "defensive warrior."
I find myself agreeing with a lot of this; the Fighter being good at any sort of fighting technique in general I do think makes them cover a very broad range of themes all at once. In this particular case, the fact that they're also masters of armor techniques, hence the heavy armor proficiency and armor specialization, also crowds out the Guardian.
I will say, however, that looking at the Guardian's flavor text, a lot of that collision could have been easily avoided all the same. Simply ditching all of the text around technique, and instead emphasizing the Guardian's own hardiness and ability to shrug off mortal blows would have gone a long way towards making the class feel thematically distinct, in that a lot of their power would come from brute force rather than being really accurate with their armor (!) or the like. "Plated in heavy armor and freakishly hard to kill" is already a theme that starts to depart from the technique-focused Fighter or the divinely-protected Champion, and I think the more we emphasize the Guardian's brute force and ability to throw their weight around (without the all-out aggression of the Barbarian), the more thematically distinct the class would already be without even going into mechanics.
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But this is simply not true. If the Champion class did not exist, you would have to list every cause and their own mechanics, without accounting for everything else the class gets at higher levels -- that is the level of complexity I'm talking about that warrants an entirely new class. By contrast, it only takes a few lines to change a Fighter into a Guardian, as exequiel's post demonstrates. This is also why I did not humor Ryangwy's insistence on this: the claim is so absurd, and it is so easy to demonstrate this with even just a modicum of thought, that I utterly fail to see how one could hold to that opinion in good faith, especially after being shown simple, obvious evidence of its absurdity.
I invite you to actually take a look at the Champion's causes. Just for fun, try to copy-paste that page's contents into a Word document or a similar word processor. See how many pages it takes to fit all of that in, then come back to me and tell me that this is the same as switching around a small handful of actions and a proficiency track. Try that then with the Rogue's rackets or even just the Ranger's hunter's edges -- and this is before even accounting for the radically different flavors those classes have, as opposed to the Fighter and Guardian both being technique-based users of weapons and armor (once more, the Fighter trains in armor techniques as well, not just weapons techniques).
You're correct that Champion has more class features than many martials; despite that, I do not think it would be an amount of content prohibitive to putting in a class archetype. I double checked and both the Causes and the Tenants are about 70 words long each for the main text. The causes then get a reaction, and 2 abilities at level 9 and 11 that are ~20 words long to 'account for everything else the class gets at higher levels'. If I'm being thorough, another 20 words for the Hero's Defiance feature at level 19. If you went with all the content released in the CRB, it'd be ~400 words plus 3 short reactions. By comparison, the unique class abilities that Guardian get add up to ~350 words and one short reaction (the mechanics of Threat Technique, Taunt, Tough to Kill, Reaction Time, Greater Armour Specialization, the unique bits of Guardian Mastery). There's a difference in length there, but by no means large enough for me to think it justifies significantly different treatment on the basis of length. I think Champion gives a lot more bang for its buck with that word, but if your argument is only about length, I don't think this is very compelling. Is the length of ~50 words and ~2 short reactions enough to say the claim is 'so absurd' that a 'modicum of thought' would reveal it to be so absurd that it could not be held in good faith? If that's your honest opinion, I feel you'd have strong opinions about how a lot of classes in Pathfinder 2 shouldn't exist.
This is a complete non-sequitur. Nobody is saying the Fighter should be a Guardian archetype, and in fact the claim made is that the Guardian's feats and class features could easily find themselves at home on a Fighter, Champion, and in the case of some abilities even a Barbarian.
The literal post you keep rudely telling people to go read literally starts off with the suggestions that Guardian should be a fighter class archetype (not sure where you got the idea I was suggesting the other way around?), which is what the quote you are replying to there was discussing. Very literally the entirety of this conversation is based off of the suggestion of a class archetype, and not the claim that their feats and class features could be given to other classes:
Last week I mentioned in other thread how I feared guardian being too similar to the champion and that it could have been a class archetype instead, to which Michael Sayre answered that a class archetype can't step too much outside of what a class is supposed to be. With that said, would it be outrageous if instead of champion, guardian happened to be a fighter class archetype?
Expert weapon proficiencies → Guardian Armor
Reactive Strike → Intercept Strike
Guardian Dedication → It would give you Taunt.
Master weapon proficiences → Expert in armor
Legendary armor proficiencies → Master in armor
And I'm explicitly leaving the delayed progression behind, because if I incoporated it, I think its easy to justify having the chassis of the guardian as is in a fighter class archetype.
In fact, you yourself started discussing class archetypes instead of a class for guardian as literally the very next post:
Funnily enough, I'd been thinking last week about what would constitute a valid Fighter class archetype, and this looks like it could be it (though legendary rather than master in armor, as the Fighter is already a master). Simply swapping Reactive Strike for Taunt and the special attack proficiency track for a better armor proficiency track (in fact, starting out an expert in all armor would significantly help mitigate the accuracy bonus Taunt gives to enemies) would effectively make the Fighter into a Guardian with a less awkward proficiency track. In fact, if we're going along with this method, you could just make Taunt a 6th-level class feat that you could get on a regular Fighter (+Barbarian or Champion), and Intercept Strike potentially a lower-level class feat too, and you'd have all of the key points of the Guardian covered without needing to create a brand-new class.
You're correct that Champion has more class features than many martials; despite that, I do not think it would be an amount of content prohibitive to putting in a class archetype. I double checked and both the Causes and the Tenants are about 70 words long each for the main text. The causes then get a reaction, and 2 abilities at level 9 and 11 that are ~20 words long to 'account for everything else the class gets at higher levels'. If I'm being thorough, another 20 words for the Hero's Defiance feature at level 19. If you went with all the content released in the CRB, it'd be ~400 words plus 3 short reactions. By comparison, the unique class abilities that Guardian get add up to ~350 words and one short reaction (the mechanics of Threat Technique, Taunt, Tough to Kill, Reaction Time, Greater Armour Specialization, the unique bits of Guardian Mastery). There's a difference in length there, but by no means large enough for me to think it justifies significantly different treatment on the basis of length. I think Champion gives a lot more bang for its buck with that word, but if your argument is only about length, I don't think this is very compelling. Is the length of ~50 words and ~2 short reactions enough to say the claim is 'so absurd' that a 'modicum of thought' would reveal it to be so absurd that it could not be held in good faith? If that's your honest opinion, I feel you'd have strong opinions about how a lot of classes in Pathfinder 2 shouldn't exist.
This is such an easily disprovable lie I'm surprised you even bothered. Without tenets, and discounting redundant titles and other similar text, the Champion's unique features come down to 2394 words, or 2681 with tenets (which are, by the way, an integral part of the Champion's gameplay). By contrast, even with the inclusion of redundant titles and the like, the entirety of the Guardian's stand out features come down to 700 words. That is under a third, to say nothing of how much more easily the Guardian's mechanics could be compressed compared to the Champion's eighteen different abilities across six different subclasses, (or even just nine across three if you want to stick to the CRB), their deity, devotion spells, and so on. Once again, the Guardian is very easy to express as Fighter class archetype; the Champion is not.
The literal post you keep rudely telling people to go read literally starts off with the suggestions that Guardian should be a fighter class archetype
The literal thread you are posting in, which I started, clearly frames the discussion as a matter of poaching the Guardian's feats and giving them to the Champion and Fighter. Exequiel certainly stated they considered just having the Guardian be a Fighter archetype, and I indeed agreed that if their proposal would constitute a valid Fighter archetype given its simplicity, but that is evidently not the thrust of my thread. If you have to resort to this degree of quote mining to appear in the right, you may as well admit right now that you don't have a quote to argue.
not sure where you got the idea I was suggesting the other way around?
Here:
Many of the fighter feats - just about all of them with the Press trait at least - are designed around the heightened to-hit of a fighter, so a guardian picking them would be a rather bad idea given they're sometimes at a -4 to hit compared to the fighter.
This is you directly talking about the Guardian using the Fighter as an archetype, and how the former's low accuracy would prevent them from doing so effectively. Again, the straw man you are arguing against did not originate from anywhere, so your argument genuinely does not follow.
I think one test of distinctiveness is this: if a Champion or Fighter took a multiclass devotion into Guardian, what would the result look like? If a Guardian Fighter looks too much like just a Guardian, or just a fighter, it makes me question a lot.
I think one test of distinctiveness is this: if a Champion or Fighter took a multiclass devotion into Guardian, what would the result look like? If a Guardian Fighter looks too much like just a Guardian, or just a fighter, it makes me question a lot.
That's the thing: if the Guardian didn't exist and someone proposed to add feats like Shoulder Check, Raise Haft, Averting Shield, or Repositioning Block to the Fighter, I don't think anybody would bat an eye. Even Intercept Foe and Taunt, if made into class feats, would fit the class, and much of the same could be said for the Champion. Given how we have existing feats like Shield Warden that already encourage a similar playstyle on those classes, those feats wouldn't even significantly change how they play.
It's really shocking to me that people are saying "why bother, the Champion exists" since a thing I have wanted since the original PF2 playtest is "the ability to play a Champion without being beholden to a God." Not just for atheist champions, but for like animist champions (but definitely also for those), or reincarnationist champions, or ancestor-worshipping champions, or "I don't even think about religion" champions. Not a reskinned oracle or something, an actual honest to goodness martial with good defensive abilities.
I figure the Guardian should be the class I have been wanting.
I've felt the same way, for just as long! Here is an imaginary conversation two developers could have had (or one developer might have had with themselves) that may represent the kind of thinking that got us to this point:
DEVELOPER A: "Hey, now that we think about it, there's really nothing about the core chassis of this class that requires the character to be religious, and we'd be able to easily accomodate a more diverse range of fantasy archetypes if we covered all that stuff with some feat chains. So we'll have one set of options for players who want their character to simp for some weird space ghost, and another for ones who just want to play a cool dude who tanks hits in heavy armor and wallops anyone who tries to hurt their friends. Sound good?"
DEVELOPER B: "No! If we do THAT, who will force players to appreciate my ~*~setting~*~?!"
DEVELOPER A: "Okay, whatever, but can we at least still let champions pledge themselves to ideals, rather than entities? After all, that's what we've been doing so far--we explicitly allowed it in the first edition, after all--and lots of people seem to appreciate it."
DEVELOPER B: "...no."
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I think one test of distinctiveness is this: if a Champion or Fighter took a multiclass devotion into Guardian, what would the result look like? If a Guardian Fighter looks too much like just a Guardian, or just a fighter, it makes me question a lot.That's the thing: if the Guardian didn't exist and someone proposed to add feats like Shoulder Check, Raise Haft, Averting Shield, or Repositioning Block to the Fighter, I don't think anybody would bat an eye. Even Intercept Foe and Taunt, if made into class feats, would fit the class, and much of the same could be said for the Champion. Given how we have existing feats like Shield Warden that already encourage a similar playstyle on those classes, those feats wouldn't even significantly change how they play.
How about Sneak Attack. The fighter is supposed to be good at weapons, so why not daggers?
Maybe have some stances that let them punch better too. Flurry of Blows could easily be a fighter feat.
Why not give them Divine Ally and Liberating Step too? A sort of divine fighter subclass.
And a fighter that knows how to read magic books. So they can fight with magic as well.
... I can do this with any class.
How about Sneak Attack. The fighter is supposed to be good at weapons, so why not daggers?
The Fighter is good with daggers, that's why they get legendary proficiency in them. In fact, if you were to play a Fighter, you'd notice that you even get to choose a weapon group to specialize in for most of your career, which can include daggers!
Maybe have some stances that let them punch better too. Flurry of Blows could easily be a fighter feat.
... could it, though? Putting aside how there's nothing about the Fighter that suggests they particularly need unarmed martial stances, mechanically FoB doesn't work terribly well with high-damage weapons either. You'll notice that there is a slight distinction between the Fighter, who specializes in weapons and armor, and the Monk, who specializes in neither of these.
Why not give them Divine Ally and Liberating Step too? A sort of divine fighter subclass.
Absolutely! It's called archetyping into Champion for a completely different theme.
And a fighter that knows how to read magic books. So they can fight with magic as well.
... I can do this with any class.
Yes, you can indeed say any old nonsense irrespective of such trivial things as basic integrity and intellectual honesty, but that does not prevent others from pointing out that you are rather obviously arguing in bad faith. All of the examples you listed attempt to tie classes together that have little thematic or mechanical overlap. By contrast, the Fighter does in fact have a whole line of defensive and shield-based feats, including feats that let them guard others, like Devoted Guardian and Guardian's Deflection. Call me crazy, but I can't help but sense a theme here that may relate in some way to... what was the name of the class we're talking about?
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Give the guardian two reactions at level 1. First one, a strike against a taunted enemy if they attack someone other than you, with a significant bonus to strike. Make ignoring you hurt. Second, stride + Intercept Strike, if the enemy is out of reach. But the enemy is going against your AC, instead of ally's AC.
Then, take away the +2 to hit guardian from taunt. And make Guardian Armor apply to all physical damage, instead of one damage type.