ISo a fighter should be a knight who can lead the people, find succor with any noble, identify areas of tactics and strategy, gather an army or allies as needed, etc.
Or a tribal warrior who can race and sneak across the lands, identify plants and animals, climb mountains, swim rivers, etc.
Or an urban bruiser / tyrant who knows every connection, every route, whether for nefarious or legal reasons, as they enforce their will on the city.
In PF Those would be the Cavalier alternate class, Ranger core class, and Urban Ranger archetype. I don't understand why they all need the name "Fighter" attached to them to count.
The PF example doesn't really hold, because in PF a full caster (ex: druid) can get a fighter-in-a-pocket (animal companion) without sacrificing anything
I'd argue that shows the druid animal companion needs to be nerfed and nothing bad about the fighter. Can the fighter pick up useful help with Leadership?
Ie, there's no need to make sub-classes for things that every example literary fighter can do when we don't do so for every other basic class.
As @Ahnehnois and @N'raac note above, don't we already do that for the other classes?
PF does archetypes for every class. In D&D proper there is the Paladin, Ranger, and Barbarian playing off the Fighter; the Druid playing off the Cleric; the Clerical domains in 3e or the specialty priests in 2e; the schools of wizardry in 2e and 3e; the Sorcerer playing off the Wizard in 3e; the sorcerous bloodlines in 3e; the Assassin playing off the Rogue in 1e; the defender/striker/controller/leader variants in 4e, etc...
Even pure career soldiers learn nature, stealth, recon, logistics, etc at high levels of play. If a general country boy with a rifle is expected to know it, the fighter sure should be able to.
As noted in #36 above, the learning more is available in PF without needing any archetypes.
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