Celebrim
Legend
4e had a fix for that! It was called Epic Destinies...
4e is the only version of the game that expressly had an epic tier as a core part of its game, taking the game from 1-30 as are core part of it's game. And I think the epic destinies are fine in the epic tier. Personally, I have never gamed all the way to level 20, and have a hard time imagining carrying a game up to 30. I find that even playing 25-30 times a year, we only go up 2 levels or so a year. A 1-30 campaign for me would be like 15 years with the same group gaming every other week. I'd have grandkids by then.
I think trying to jam two competing design philosophies in the same frame is probably possible...
I don't see really any competing design philosophy at all.
but I also think it’d be a lot of effort to get a good version of it.
Yeah, but so. IMNSHO, my Champion class is best designed 3e class. I would would love to have fighter be equally well done, but feats - which most designers treated as something easy to design - are in my experience one of the hardest things to get right. I don't think 3e, 4e, or 5e designers really did feats well, though I do like the direction 5e went.
And for what exactly?....To limit the number of classes for some arbitrary version of streamlining?
There is nothing arbitrary about streamlined and flexible chargen. Rules bloat is horrible for a system and from 3e on we've been seeing WotC build rules bloat into the system for the explicit purpose of selling books, and not because it makes for a better gaming experience. All those silo'd out class abilities, and silo'd out classes do immense damage to the game. You're basically arguing for a system where everyone's character concept is hard coded by a designer.
And those feats would need to be unique to the Fighter, because I particularly despise the "If Fighter can do X, anybody who can swings a sword can do it" trope.
Ok, if you are happy with that. That in essence would return us back to 1e where only fighter and it's subclasses could fight. I'm not interested in a PnP game where everyone has 5 different character defining powers on cool downs. I can get that elsewhere.
"Warlord" is a pretty broad concept though. The Mundane Leader of Men can be a LOT of things. From Robin Hood to Zhuge Liang, they can have very different flavour and styles.
Yeah, and? You seem to be upset that I've threated your world of narrowly defined martial artists with a separate subclass for everything. How about applying your same logic to Pirate? Pirate is a pretty broad concept. They can have very different flavour and styles. Absolutely then we need a pirate as it's own class, right? Because sailing a ship is too far outside of what a fighter can be expected to do, or something?