Class Design: The Fighter Part 1

One of the iconic classes of the game, the Fighter has the poor position of only being as good as his weapon.  In essence, the class concept is "I hit it with my X," which works in previous editions, yet is infernally boring without having extra combat options unavailable to other classes, as well as having interesting weapons to work with in the first place.

Weapons should deal more damage than any kind of at-will power, but I think it would be actually interesting if the fighter were restricted to only encounter and daily powers, and got extra talents with certain weapons, as well as combat stances he could assume during the fight to gain some benefit.  Looking at the Wheel of Time weapons, the 3.5 Weapons, and the 4th ones, the weapons really don't have much of a difference outside of critical threat range and critical damage.  As the guy who normally ends up being the DM, having critical hits not needing to be "confirmed," which makes no sense, but simply doing maximum damage for that attack, helps mitigate the amount of damage a single PC can do in a single turn, my personal record being 54 damage with a Paladin's Smite against a Hill Giant.  I think it's fine keeping the damage dice as-is, but critical threat range should be back, and I think that weapons should gain benefits against certain targets. 

For instance, the ever-present longsword was developed to pierce plate armor.  So, in D&D terms, have it, as a piercing weapon, ignore 1 AC of a target wearing Heavy Armor.  Works just fine against the others, and it just happens to be a little better against heavily armored guys, which tend to be the ones Fighters go against anyway.

Conversely, a short sword could be better against Medium Armor, and a dagger could be better against Light or no armor.  Hammers and maces weren't designed to pierce the armor, so much as just bash the juicy bits inside, so they could naturally have a +1 to damage against guys in Medium or Heavy Armor.  Let's say that these weapons could be tiered, so a club could be good against an unarmored target, a greatclub against Medium Armor, and the mace and maul could be tiered like that.  Axes should keep that "high crit" concept, and have a decent critical chance, something like 18-20 or better, so you crit more often as the boon for using that weapon.

Also, when 2-handing a weapon, apply 1.5x STR modifier again.  It's that good.

Rambling on, weapons from the flail category should ignore the target's shield bonus to AC, so they have their role against certain targets.

I need to make a spreadsheet of this tomorrow and work with it, but I think some of these ideas have merit even within the 4th edition rule set, so I'll continue rolling with this tomorrow.