Fanaelialae
Legend
I never suggested otherwise.
My response focused specifically on 5e, because that's what interests me the most at present. It's not like there's any likelihood of going back to earlier editions and fixing martials there, but with the revision I hold out at least a sliver of hope that improvement for martials will be implemented in the 5e revision. Hence, why I focused on 5e.
Even if some other editions came closer to the mark, it isn't as though we can easily mix and match those qualities into 5e to solve the problem.
IMO, the issue was quite present in Basic, 1e, and 2e.
3e did actually go a way's in addressing it, but the solution wasn't great. A fighter got 2 skill points (1 if you dumped Intelligence) and skills were very niche. You could eventually become a legendary jumper, but it might be at the expense of something more useful like climbing. 3e fighters had real potential to be awesome, but often fell apart in execution. Plus, casters were incredibly strong in this edition, so raising martials up didn't narrow the gap nearly as much as it would have in any other edition.
4e is probably the only edition that actually did this well, IMO. Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies meant that everyone, including fighters, was guaranteed the ability to do awesome things at high levels.
