A little boost to Fighters

[true_shinken]

Hello, playground.
In my upcoming campaign, I'm thinking of adding a few extra content. I'm pexperimenting with Paizo material and some homebrew.
Now, we all know Fighters could use some love. I'm not looking for a fix - now and again I use stated out NPCs for other sources and stuff like that would be pain to implement. I want as few changes as possible, while trying to make the Fighters a bit more interesting.
I like Pathfinder's Bravery, so that one is a given. I was also thinking of giving the Weapon Focus feat for free.
Also, I read a homebrewed ACF for Fighters that gave them access to a single martial discipline - it looks pretty sweet, but I can't find it again. If someone can link me to it, I'd be very grateful.

[Shademan]

I gave fighters the ability to heal themselves at level 5 and 3. 1d10+con
gain one extra d10 at lv 5.
naturally, since HP is very ambigious this is kinda like a rush of adrenaline or focusing harder or whatever.
then again, it is for a E6 game so...
well... maybe it's an idea you can use

[IncoherentEssay]

IMO, fighters are fine up until L7 or so, so at L8 and every 4 lvls after that, i give them an extra +1 to all the feats that add flat bonuses, like Weapon Focus, Iron Will, Dodge, etc. Some get a larger boost, like Weapon Specialization(+2/4 lvls) or Toughness(+3/4 lvls). It should help the lower opt. fighters more, since most high-op fighters make little-to-no use of flat-bonus feats.
I also give fighters a bonus feat at every level and lift the 'max.3' restriction on Martial Study for Fighters to give them more options. No experience how it holds out at lvls 12+, but it is relatively simple.

[Runestar]

Depends on what you mean by "more interesting".

IMO, fighters suffer from a lack of options. Stuff like free weapon focus and bravery (whatever that does) probably just let the fighter do better what he already does best, without improving his shortcomings.

IMO, PHB2 is a good start (I quite like the counterstrike variant). Maybe give them aptitude (the warblade class feature) at 1st lv.

[true_shinken]

Depends on what you mean by "more interesting".

IMO, fighters suffer from a lack of options. Stuff like free weapon focus and bravery (whatever that does) probably just let the fighter do better what he already does best, without improving his shortcomings.

IMO, PHB2 is a good start (I quite like the counterstrike variant). Maybe give them aptitude (the warblade class feature) at 1st lv.

I don't want to make Fighters more versatile or anything. My thoughts on the Weapon Focus chain is that it's supposedly an iconic Fighter thing but it never gets much use since there are so much better feats out there. Giving it for free while still giving feats means Fighters get a little edge on doing their melee tricks oversomeone else.

Bravery adds a bonus to weapon damage and saves against fears.

PHB2 has nice ACFs, sure, Fighters get some pretty good ones in all sorts of places (and I'd still love for someone to point me to that homebrewed 'martial adept of a single discipline' one, btw), I'm not looking for those.

I'm mainly looking for opinions on
a) Weapon Focus feat tree for free
b) the variant homebrewed Fighter that gets a single ToB discipline

[Kylarra]

Well you should definitely give them the weapon aptitude ability that warblades have, assuming you're going to give them iconics like focus/spec for free.

[true_shinken]

Well you should definitely give them the weapon aptitude ability that warblades have, assuming you're going to give them iconics like focus/spec for free.

I was actually thinking of having their feats apply to more than one weapon at once (probably borrowing from the weapon groups in UA) but it might be too much trouble. Weapon Aptitude should work.

[Kylarra]

Weapon groups is just a good idea all around I think.