Looking at it from mecanics some things might be intresting.
A subclass that uses versitile weapons, and has abilities based on if he is using one or 2 handed stance.
Maybe also a figter subclass that uses smaller weapons like dagers or hand axes and can also trow them.
See, I'd like to see something in this direction. We may have the BattleMaster who excels at, well,
Battle as a general concept, but what about a Weapon Master? Take the Fighting Styles or something like that to an extreme.
The only real issue I see with it is a lot of the Feats cross into that (like Polearm Mastery), but I'd think a Fighter that forsakes most weapons to
only use Longswords or
only use Glaives could be pretty neat (not to mention there is precedent for the Weapon Master).
The problem I have with looking at interesting, new Archetypes for the Fighter is that your Fighting Style
kinda already covers what you need, and if not, Feats certainly do.
"I want to be an amazing archer, so I take Archery and the Sharpshooter Feat."
"I want to be very Swashbucklery, so I take Dueling and the Defensive Dueling feat."
And then lo, go BattleMaster, pick the maneuvers that suit what you need, and that's your "Archetype" 90% of the time. Ah well.
I do think something like an Arcane Archer would be cool, but that seems to fall under the Eldritch Knight (unless Arcane Archers can like use their Weapon Attack modifiers for their Spell Attacks, or something? But that basically means 1-stat dependency).
I keep going back to Feats and kinda figure that allowing the feats really restricts where you can go with the
class.
I want to play like a Heavy Armor fighter who can just wade into battle and be super tanky and ... I'd probably just take the Heavy Armor Mastery feat. Or I want to be all Renaissancey and wear my breastplate but be dashing and sneaky and roguish with my Rapier and ... Medium Armor mastery. I am the best Halberdier in the worl-!Polearm Master. Etc.
So many previous iterations of the Fighter were based around certain pieces of kit or using certain gear in new and interesting ways, but that now seems to be the province of
solely Feats. And as others have stated, I don't think the Fighter should just always be the "1/3 Caster" for every type of magic class in the game. Fighters
fight, every archetype they have should be about creative or different ways to do so.
I think fighting styles is where the best opportunity lies. Something like a shield master, where you can throw your shield like Cpt America, with damage scaling similar to cantrips. Or maybe something where you can wield a two handed weapon in one hand for a limited time. or one where the reach of all melee weapons is increased by 5ft. Stuff like that.
See, this I like. Literally different styles of combat. Maybe finally getting a reason to take Duelist and
not use a Shield aside from pure flavor purposes? Or Stances with a Longsword (or any other weapon) that you can shift between as a Bonus Action to start shifting your stats and mechanics in combat (Add Str to AC, don't add Ability Mod to Weapon Attack Rolls, or Gain advantage on next attack but your target can immediately use a Reaction to try and hit you, stuff like that). Really, we just need new ways to Fight, not "BattleMaster, but without the decision-making part".
