@ Bortasz;
The point I was making was not that the fighter should be a mundane person, because that's stupid, and if a mundane person has to fight a dragon, the mundane person is charcoal.
The point I was making was that the fighter should not rely on buffs or buffing in any way full stop. He should walk around, all goddamn fucking day, as if he WAS buffed. That's the point of the class, after all, not being 'a sorcerer but with only buff spells and no other spells'.
Warblade, Swordsage, and Crusader do not have buffs. They have
boosts. Boosts rarely last more than one round, in fact, I can't think of one that does. They also get one stance, that is always on. That is not how buffs, and buffing, works. Buffs last for longer than one round but shorter than all day, not counting persist, so they benefit greatly from the party choosing when combat starts, and don't benefit as much during ambushes.
If by 'buffs' you mean that the Fighter should be stronger than a mundane person, well yeah, derr. The only people arguing that the fighter should be 'mundane' and only be able to 'take on a few foes' and only ever hit things with swords one at a time and not have flight or anything useful are the derps, and those, you can safely ignore.
@ Ians;
15/15/12 is meh. Saving throws in general are meh. There are too many things with 'fuck you' save DCs like DC 42 fort save at CR 12 or DC 27 will save at CR 8. The fighter needs good saving throws but he also needs other options from his class abilities, like rerolls, full cover as an immediate action, being able to take hit point damage or go prone instead of taking the effect of the failed save, and possibly even a per day/per encounter 'no, fuck you' class ability for failed saves.
That 'huge bonus' that you're worrying about is 50% better than basic magic weapon bonuses. And guess what! Fighters DO struggle to hit things at higher levels without stupid amounts of focused magical gear/bullshit like wand-chambered wands of wraithstrike and UMD/emerald razor. It's a nice way to add a bit of hit and damage, absolve fighters from having to buy stupidly expensive magic weapons, it fits well with fighter flavour, and people are unlikely to go OMG THAT'S OVERPOWERED because it fits fighter fluff and doesn't look overly powerful.
Combining the basic bonuses a fighter should just HAVE with a weapon style sounds utterly fucking stupid. Also, your 'unarmed' style is actually the 'grappling' style, as it does not help pugilist fighters at all ever in any way.
Your light weapon style gives, at level 5, what the hit and run fighter gives at level 1 and the shadow blade gives at level 1. In fact, I played a Frog Knight Hit And Run Fighter at level 1, with three feats, martial study, martial stance, and shadow blade. He was a tiny fey who used a feycraft lance from frogback to stab flat-footed people for double his dex to damage at level 1. So uh. Fail. Think
bigger.
At level 8 he needs to be able to not get dazed by a DC 25 dazing blow. The 'quintessential' fighter save is fort. He would have, under your system, +6 base fort. He has massive MAD, cause he's a fighter, so he has 14 Con. He also has a +1 vest of resistance. Altogether, that gives him +9. Most optimized basic fighter 20s will not have better than that. He has to roll a 16 or better to succeed. He gets hit multiple times, because I doubt you've given him a better AC even by accident because your idea of a good level 5 ability for a fighter is dex to damage. He is going to fail that save, and lose his next turn.
Congratulations. The fighter is now a well of dazed hitpoints whose job is to stand there and hope the monster keeps hitting him and that his friends can wipe it out before his hitpoints run out. Or, as I like to put it, T5.
Why? That's shitty design. Either the buffs will be amazing and push him off the RNG, or he'll need them in order to keep up, and HAVE to use his swift actions each round to keep his attacks or saves or whatever meaningful. Sounds like a crappy system to me, unless you mean to use it like 'either use my immediate to do <X SPECIAL THING>, or wait til next round and use my swift to make myself basically immune to will saves for a round, decisions decisions' kind of thing, and even that's kind of lame and shit.
@ dark_samuari;
perhaps nominate it be the mundane bad-ass who is really good at fighting a select few enemies through offensive means.
NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO.
NO.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK.
EVERY. FUCKING. CHARACTER. SHOULD. BE. ABLE. TO. CONTRIBUTE. TO. EVERY. COMBAT. DND IS A GAME ABOUT FIGHTING. IF ONE GUY IS SITTING THERE AND HAS NOTHING TO DO FOR THE HOUR OR SO THAT COMBAT TAKES, THEN HE IS FUCKING NOT PLAYING DND. IF ONE GUY IS ONLY USEFUL AGAINST ONE SPECIFIC THING AND HAS NOTHING TO DO FOR THE REST OF THE TIME, THEN HE IS NOT FUCKING PLAYING DND.
You want the fighter's flavour to be 'the badass normal'? SURE. You want the fighter to be able to specialize in fighting certain kinds of things, like humanoids or giant sized things or flying things due to his choices? SURE. You want to make the fighter mechanically weaker than everyone else at the table except against a couple of specific foes so he's more 'mundane'? FUCK. RIGHT. OFF.