>>96477426
The irony of fighter existing as a PC class in DnD is the archetype it seeks to mimic are all rogues or rangers instead.

The typical protagonist swordsman isn't some 50 IQ idiot who can only swing their sword. Narratively, that's shit. They tend to be more clever fighters and have skills they use to carry things. Which is the realm or rogues or rangers. We can go further. What does the big rival of this character typically have? Or maybe the midboss that challenges their way of fighting the hardest before they get to move on to the rest of the plot? The guy who is even better at JUST SWORD than they are, and that's all they can do. They tend to be meat houses too. If they have armor or not depends. I've seen it go both ways. They tend to be so big and strong it puts the protag's skills to the test. Do they REALLY work against just hitting it harder like a meathead? You don't typically get the classic fighter or barbarian. Even Conan is more of a rogue in his writing. He's just a strength rogue. Which made more sense as a thing to do back before WOTC made the terrible mistake of making dex to damage a basic feature.

Shit, even the BBEG of Baldur's Gate 1 was a fighter, and boy could 2E fighters be nasty once they got all their attacks.

It may be an actual thing to do. Well, we'd want to make rogues a little more independent if we did. With no flanking partners they can then claim the effort of, it's a bit rough. Then again, even in the straight jacket that is 3.5, there's nothing stopping a rogue from using power attack and twohanding a longsword.