u/jesse-accountname192

I like looking at different systems and seeing what cool ideas they have, and lately the biggest thing I've judged a system for is how they handle "Fighters" or "Warriors" or "Soldiers" or whatever they call them. Like, if your basic-bitch weapon expert is nothing more than a brain-dead attackbot, I feel like that shows some fundamental flaws in the rest of game design. Do the designers actually respect every player and want to give them all an enjoyable experience? Is there something fundamental to the system that's fun instead of depending on the class chassis to be interesting enough? Does everyone get to do neat things both in and out of combat or just some people? I really think the Fighter is the canary in the coalmine for good or bad game design in games that feature it.

I know they made some improvements in 5.5e but when I rolled my first character as a fighter with the 2014 rules I honestly felt like my time was disrespected by the designers. I don't think there should be any class whose entire contribution to the party was "Roll attack, maybe roll damage" every turn. I kept thinking my contribution to the team was so small I could've easily had someone else roll 2 dice for me and go home and do something more fun. This suspicion was confirmed when I later played a caster, actually had fun, and realized the summon elemental spirits spell was almost the same as playing both a sorcerer and a fighter on my turn. Except the summon had more variety and abilities.

That's why I fell in love with Pathfinder 2e. Athletic maneuvers don't do next-to-nothing like in DnD, even a sword and boarder has interesting choices about when to raise their shield vs make another strike, skills like bon mot or intimidate let me moonlight as a debuffer and give my character some personality while doing it. I could go on and on.

3.5E/Pathfinder 1e Fighter seems pretty neat from what I've experienced. Getting a shitload of feats and being responsible for being a versatile, dangerous weapon master or a toothless, inaccurate sword swinger can be really frustrating but also really rewarding, and making decisions each turn about sacrificing accuracy for damage or defense is pretty cool!

DCC and Daggerheart show that combat doesn't have to be crunchy or complicated to give martials a fun and varied experience and a meaningful role at the table.

What other games should I look at for how they treat their "basic" martials?

I found the hobgoblin feat that not only gives you Alchemical Crafting but also gives you a new alchemical formula for each level-up. I think it'd be really fun thematically to have an intimidation animal instinct barb that uses mutagens to buff himself and then go into a drug-induced rage!

Are there mutagens that would be useful for an animal instinct barb to have? They're definitely not overpowered or universally beneficial to martials like they were in PF1e. At first I thought bestial mutagen to upgrade my unarmed strike damage but it seems like the rage bonuses only apply to the animal-instinct attacks, or at least the rage buff at level 7?

I know the optimal build for a swashbuckler is something like a rapier and then a free hand or shield. But I'd like to make a troubadour landsknecht character with a finesse spear.

I'm using Free Archetype so that opens my options up quite a bit, and I can use the dueling spear and the feat that allows disarm for bravado, but can I make anything cool out of this as a swashbuckler or are all the good feats and abilities limited to the Inigo Montoya type fantasy?

I just found out about crafting grafts with medicine and some of the cool things you can do with it like camouflage or get Cat Fall-like benefits or even get wings near the endgame. For a while I've loved the magic tattoos and wished there were more of them. I know they're not the strongest because of balancing and making sure that ancestry, class, feats, etc are the most important things, but I think it's really fun that you can play whatever character you want and also moonlight as a mad surgeon that gives you and your friends cool abilities!

I especially love how silly some of them are. Me and the boys riding up with our giant bat wings and anglerfish antennas to the fight

Are there other, similar, crafting things I should look at? What are y'alls favorite tattoos or grafts?