I put "mostly satisfied" because there was no "dissatisfied, but I'm lazy" option, which would be the real stance I have since the fighter is pretty lackluster overall (in my opinion, of course), but that fixing it would be a boatload of work that I haven't the motivation to take up yet. My issues with it are this:
1) As quickleaf already commented, the subclasses are all almost completely absent of flavor. Nothing in the text actually gives an indication of how a Champion and Battlemaster exist differently in the world, it just comes down to mechanics. While I'm the type that favors mechanics over fluff if I have to choose, the absence of fluff isn't something I want.
2) Mechanically weak. Given that the base class gets next to nothing in regards to social/exploration pillars (aside from devoting your extra feats to them), you would naturally expect the fighter to tower over other classes at, well, fighting. This isn't the case, and optimized or not, they're not significantly ahead of paladins/barbarians/rangers and that's a problem. Either fighters need to be the uncontested gods of combat and bad at everything else, or they need some help in the other pillars.
3) Too conservative in design scope, again echoing the words of quickleaf. Since people wanting the simple fighter were already thrown a bone with the Champion, it's really annoying to me that the other side of the fence wasn't really given anything in the Battlemaster, since none of its maneuvers really enter the realm of fantasy. I'm not saying we need to go full book of Nine Swords here, but it's been noted before that many find the unlocking of additional maneuvers to be less and less exciting as time goes on, since you've likely already picked your core abilities by that point. In my opinion there should have definitely been a list of level-gated maneuvers to ensure high-level progression was meaningful.
3a) No one wants to hear this for the nth time, but it's doubly frustrating that despite their lack of ambition elsewhere, wizards did find the time to bolt on an incredibly lackluster series of pseudo-warlord maneuvers/sublcass, which is simultaneously not helping any of the fighter's issues and making it less likely for us to see a full warlord release.
Pretty much all I can think of on short notice, or at least other issues aren't related to the fighter itself, such as problems I might have with the weapons table. None of these make the class unplayable, but they do make it unappealing to me as a player and annoyed at what could have been.
1) As quickleaf already commented, the subclasses are all almost completely absent of flavor. Nothing in the text actually gives an indication of how a Champion and Battlemaster exist differently in the world, it just comes down to mechanics. While I'm the type that favors mechanics over fluff if I have to choose, the absence of fluff isn't something I want.
2) Mechanically weak. Given that the base class gets next to nothing in regards to social/exploration pillars (aside from devoting your extra feats to them), you would naturally expect the fighter to tower over other classes at, well, fighting. This isn't the case, and optimized or not, they're not significantly ahead of paladins/barbarians/rangers and that's a problem. Either fighters need to be the uncontested gods of combat and bad at everything else, or they need some help in the other pillars.
3) Too conservative in design scope, again echoing the words of quickleaf. Since people wanting the simple fighter were already thrown a bone with the Champion, it's really annoying to me that the other side of the fence wasn't really given anything in the Battlemaster, since none of its maneuvers really enter the realm of fantasy. I'm not saying we need to go full book of Nine Swords here, but it's been noted before that many find the unlocking of additional maneuvers to be less and less exciting as time goes on, since you've likely already picked your core abilities by that point. In my opinion there should have definitely been a list of level-gated maneuvers to ensure high-level progression was meaningful.
3a) No one wants to hear this for the nth time, but it's doubly frustrating that despite their lack of ambition elsewhere, wizards did find the time to bolt on an incredibly lackluster series of pseudo-warlord maneuvers/sublcass, which is simultaneously not helping any of the fighter's issues and making it less likely for us to see a full warlord release.
Pretty much all I can think of on short notice, or at least other issues aren't related to the fighter itself, such as problems I might have with the weapons table. None of these make the class unplayable, but they do make it unappealing to me as a player and annoyed at what could have been.
