There's no excuse for designing a "three-pillar" approach to gameplay, then making it so the Fighter is largely useless in two of those three pillars. It's not like Wizards are largely useless in combat for example, is it? Something as simple as giving the Fighter 6 skills, and say Expertise in a couple of skills, or some sort of ability to analyze enemy weapons and tactics outside combat
I feel like you and
@EzekielRaiden both assumed I, or most people, conflate popular and high degree of satisfaction. I didn’t, though I would assume someone who keeps playing fighters has a high degree of satisfaction with them, though you do point out how, actually, that might not be true.
I think my point was that we don’t need to worry about “balance” as much as people are saying, if I can walk on the ceiling, walls, and do flips and drop and deliver 1d8 vs a mechanically superior dude standing still and tossing 1d10 blasts at the same people my bouncing around the room ability allows me to hit is it that big of a deal if I’m happy?
The “high degree of satisfaction” is the important part, and I perhaps naively assumed a “high degree of satisfaction” conflated to ”repeat popularity”. Sure, maybe thematic things will make stuff “initially popular”, but if unsatisfying to play, people would not repeat. Perhaps I underestimate the determination of people to play “cat person rogues” in the face of grinding disappointment. But I also think others underestimate the happiness of cat person rogues going about their day being suboptimal (Was just a made up example, no idea about Tabaxi Rogue parity in D&D, probably great)
You’re right though, probably won’t be an epidemic of cat person rogues if they gain more mechanical parity, but does it rise to importance if cat person rogues are generally happy?
Pillar utility seems like a whole nother thing though. And there’s obviously no reason there shouldn‘t be more class pillar equality. But honestly, to keep up class themes, really requires a robust rethinking of skills altogether, or maybe just assigning multiple abilities to skills. Dunno.
In my games, party skills and spells are a pretty big thing. I want to help Gwendolyn search for herbs, everybody talks at the guar, any check uses the best skill in the party. Everyone can offer ideas, but having the skill proficiency matters for someone, DM just has to moderate party skills and abilities don’t become an Alpha’s personal added skills.
anyway, whatever