Christ, I see that breaking people of the 'FIGHTING EQUALS BONUS FEATS' mindset would be the hardest part of making the fighter a tier 3 class.
What exactly, do bonus feats, have to do with fighting, at all, ever? Please explain this to me. And so help me god if you use the words 'good at fighting' or 'wizards of the coast designed it so that fighting = bonus feats'.
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The Fighter, as written, is used almost solely as a source of bonus feats. It has exactly two class features, both of those from ACFs. The 10th level fear-spam substitution, and dungeoncrashing. It also has Hit And Run, but having used that, I don't think it even counts. Dungeoncrashing is a good class feature. It's interesting, and lends itself to a style of play. Fear-spam isn't. Hit And Run is just an attempt to make melee light weapon using viable. You stack it with shadow blade and precision damage and then you kind of can do damage! Yay!
Giving the Fighter MORE SHITTY FEATS does NOT MAKE THE FIGHTER A CLASS WORTH PLAYING, MUCH LESS T3. It just upgrades you from 'glass cannon that does 200 hp damage', to 'glass cannon that does 300 hp damage'. Maybe, if you give the fighter all feats ever, he could totally be a lightning macing Jack. B. Quick pouncing ubercharger! And this makes him good at TRADING HITS WITH MONSTERS. Maybe if you pulled shenanigans with a prestige class and defending weapons and combat expertise optimization you could make him have an unhittable AC! Yay! However... now you have an unhittable AC and you do damage. That's alright, but it's strictly, STRICTLY, T4. T3 is for people who actually have multiple options. Immunities are the closest thing to an option that fits with the Fighter's fluff, that and being able to hit stuff. At low levels, you can get away with only hitting AC. At higher levels, you not only need to be able to fly and go ethereal to GET to your opponent, you need to be able to target will, and concentration checks, and fire resistance.
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What in the Fighter class is anything like the Big Damn Hero Fantasy Combatant? Quote the reference material.
Classes are for PLAYERS TO PLAY. They should FULFILL THE ROLES THE PLAYERS EXPECT FROM THEM. We are playing in a BIG DAMN FANTASY COMBAT GAME. If the FIGHTER is someone who can't even FIGHT, much less BIG DAMN FANTASY FIGHT, then that's false fucking advertising. People, looking at the list of classes in the front of the PHB, who want to play a Cool Sword Guy like, y'know, wait for it here, the Sword part of Swords and Sorcery, immediately go to the Fighter. The ranger is Cool Nature Warrior, druid is Cool Secretive Mystic Forest Dude, Sorcerer and Wizard need a bit of explaining but both fill essentially the same role, Monk is Cool Kung Fu Guy, Barbarian is, well, y'know. And they are being LIED TO. If the Fighter is supposed to be Shitty Soldier Guy Who Can't Fight, then why is he called 'The Fighter'? Why are people taking it for more than 2 levels? If it's a 2 level dip, why write the rest of the class? If all melee combatants weren't so feat starved (knock someone into someone else? That'll be 5 feats. Oh, mr spellcaster, you want spells to last all day? 2 feats.), no-one would ever bother dipping fighter, and when feat rogue came out, only the BAB requirements of prestige classes stop people dipping it instead of fighter EVERY DAMN TIME.
Your GODDAMN CLASS should do more than give you BAB AND FUCKING FEATS. It should have a FLAVOUR, and unique abilities, and keep you on par with the rest of the party out of the box with ZERO OPTIMIZATION.
If you need dozens of feats and magic items from dozens of supplements including some of the most obscure things on the face of the planet (drow of the underdork) and some of the most often banned (psionics, ToB:Bo9S) in order to BE RELEVANT, and at which point you still literally aren't as good as a wizard right out of the box (picking colour spray instead of magic missile is something my YOUNGER BROTHER DID AT HIS FIRST GAME EVER. Why? BECAUSE HE CHOSE MAGIC MISSILE, THEN READ IT, THEN READ COLOUR SPRAY, AND THEN LITERALLY LAUGHED OUT LOUD AT HOW SHIT MAGIC MISSILE WAS. GIACOMO IF YOU TRY TO SAY THAT BUYING AN IRON HEART SURGE VEST ISN'T OPTIMIZING AND PICKING COLOUR SPRAY INSTEAD OF MAGIC MISSILE IS OPTIMIZING I WILL RIP OUT YOUR SPLEEN AND DO HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE THINGS TO YOU WITH IT), then
that class is a bad class, and
needs to be rewritten.
So.
1. The bonus feats fighter doesn't actually fulfill the role of 'fighter' in a Big Damn Fantasy Combat Game. (he can't fight well)
2. The bonus feats fighter does not fulfill the archetypes he is supposed to be fulfilling.
3. The bonus feats fighter is poorly designed and much, much weaker than many other classes in the PHB and even other Fighting Man style classes.
4. The bonus feats fighter doesn't bring ANYTHING to the table other than vague customisability through a shitty medium (feats).
5. The role that some have suggested the class was intended to play - shitty soldier - is supposed to be, according to the DMG, covered by the Warrior class, which makes a fuckton more sense as that is a class NOT INTENDED FOR PLAYERS.
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Fighter only feats is just a stupid idea. why not just deduct that many bonus feats from the fighter and give them goddamn class features instead. If you want to preserve it as a dipping class for extra feats, why not just add more feats to the goddamn game, since really, characters could get a bonus feat for each point of BAB and the game would simply become better, quickly, not worse.
Or hell, call this fighter something new, like 'The Facepalm Warrior' and then you can still have crappy shitty basic fighter for the people who REALLY REALLY MUST have their 2 feat dip.
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2e and the Good Ol' Days.
2e was a much less powerful game than 3.5. 3.5. is
very much Big Damn Fantasy. You can kill armies by about level 10 fairly consistently. That's the power level. Stuff that worked in 2e like making fighters get 2 extra attacks at base weapon damage, won't work here in 3.5.
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Thats better, at least it's a playable class. Sorta.
The mechanic makes more sense on top of the other posts in this thread though.
Amongst other things
-Grant Fighters damage reduction and energy resistances as they level.
-A Fighting Styles mechanic, you add fighting styles to the fighter and they improve those styles in the particular manner. The TWF one, I think, wouldn't go amiss at the levels they're granted, compared to manuevers of similar level and frequency. You'd be getting a lot more abilities than that after all, and the advanced styles you'd be getting later can do quite a few tricks.
-Automatically magical weapons and armor.
-Additional special abilities off a menu to allow you to do things like jump for miles, move faster(scales with level), smash dimensional portals into existence, negate immunities, parry/shatter magical effects. Or at lower levels just provide superior senses(blindsense is a good start for alertness related) and fancy footwork(immediate action 5ft steps).
Yeah, but you're still thinking too small. You want a) a bunch of core class features of the Goddamn Fighter. That's being immune to stuff, using hp to beat stuff down, and generic stuff like moving around for free and standing up for free and pulling people out of the way of fireballs.
Then you move onto specialized stuff. I was thinking that could be covered under shit like thor's chariot etc. The fighter has special magic items that are way better than regular magic items but have bullshit prereqs that mean only he can use them. He gets to pick off a list. So you could have a belt that lets you make a 5' step after each attack, or one that lets you take a 5' step when you're attacked, or both. OR maybe the second one is better off as a class feature all Goddamn Fighters get to spend their immediate actions on. But DR, ER, automatic magic weapons and later on things like one 5' step as an immediate action is not a good use of levels.
The goddamn fighter needs to be getting stuff that compares to dipping various base and prestige classes, and at the same time be able to compete, in different ways, with the wizard. So you need to be getting 1 or 2 things per level that actually matter to you, like immunity to dazing, or thicket of blades, or burning tornado testicles, as well as flavour things like Tuck And Roll and whatnot.
Besides, DR and ER is more of a goddamn barbarian thing.
EDIT: On second look, the abilities you are suggesting (mile-jumping, dimensional rifts etc) are actually in line with some things wizards and clerics can do, as long as you're planning on handing them out at 6-12th levels, not 15-20.
But while making a Fighter who can do crazy insane things out of eastern legends is a laudable goal, what I was kind of trying for was the 'Indomitable' part of a Goddamn Fighter. There's nothing wrong with the 'does crazy impossible stuff like a wizard' Fighter, but I liked the idea that the Fighter would have personal small range combat power in that he couldn't be stopped and could turn people into mince, while having a few shiny things like a belt that fires celestials at people, and could make people around him like him but slightly less unstoppable, whereas the wizard can build giant dungeons with his mind and affect large areas etc etc... it also (bonus) has the side benefit of being T3, which is what this thread was asking for. While you can make a 'makes rifts with his fists' fighter that is T3, you probably can't make a T1 immunity to everything fighter. While you could make one that could stand up to wizards by just being that guy they can't imprison, stop, or kill who just relentlessly comes after them, that's at best T2.