Yep. The disfavored classes, balance-wise, are often the ones that represent the most popular and/or approachable archetypes.
And you get a viable character out of the exercise, rather than a campaign-wrecker.
Eh, I think 3.5 Fighters are perfectly viable right out of the box. I don't expect to ya know, be breaking the game with one, but I think they're fine.
As I've written about, campaign wrecking depends on several variables. Obviously capability is one of them, but you can build an insanely OP Cleric, Druid or Wizard right out of the Core Rulebook (or PHB). Some campaigns (read: DMs) are capable of handling this. It's
not hard to handle highly optimized characters. You just optimize your fights, problem solved. Tactical enemies with a couple class levels go a long way to making fights significantly harder. Some campaigns are more "breakable" than others. The older, sloppy math tended to produce two results: either very narrow campaigns that fixated on a specific "power level" and anything deviating from that broke the campaign, BUT it also could also generate highly fluid games where any level of power was tolerable. Thirdly, your need to have the
desire to wreck a campaign. All the capacity in the world is meaningless if you don't
use it.
That aside, I've built some fairly OP fighters. My DM made the mistake of letting me play a Minotaur for a few sessions once. Level 10, right in that sweet spot before casters get crazy. I built a Bull-Rush-based character. Hit 'em, knock 'em back, move up, hit 'em again, knock 'em back; rinse and repeat until I ran out of iterative attacks. Even had Pounce thanks to a dip in Barbarian.
Yeah, I've also built some level 20 Druids who can turn into Colossal Dragons an unlimited number of times per day, but around level 10, I made all those silly spellcasters wish they had a big fat hammer to hit things with instead of a holy symbol.
Fortunately this DM's campaign was fairly durable, and he could optimize with the best of us.
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Anyway, I just wanted to say that I'm a bit of a stickler 4E'er. If it doesn't have AEDU powers, it ain't playing to me as a 4E'er. Simplified math is great, but that's a natural reaction to RNG-weariness over time. People get tired of getting a raw deal on HP, people get tired of the d20 meaning too little (3.5 high levels) or meaning too much (5e the whole way).
I LIKE that 4E is this weird different beast of D&D. It's still my favorite edition of D&D. Every time I see attempts to balance Vancian casting I just roll my eyes and go "Here we go again..."