1. Because all classes can improvise equally, roleplaying and creativity can be applied equally to all classes. No class gains any advantage because it is "better" at improvising than any other.
2. The Fighter has no actions it can take that the other classes cannot also take.
3. However, the other classes all DO have actions they can take that the Fighter cannot.
Therefore: The Fighter is mechanically less interesting.
The fighter is not better at improvising than any other class. The fighter cannot do anything that other classes cannot attempt. The Fighter cannot cast spells. I'm not sure on what basis you've determined non-Rogues can't find traps--they may not be able to open locks or disarm traps without proficiency in thieves tools, but I think finding the traps is general--but I guess that's besides the point.
None of this means that the Fighter is more or less interesting, though, because assuming that the number of unique actions available to your character is the entirety of the measure of "interesting" is a false premise.
The Fighter can do a lot of things better than anyone else. They hit more accurately, deal more damage, and have a significantly larger hit die. Now, I do fear for the future when full spell lists are released--I hate quadratic wizards--but at the moment, I honestly feel like the classes are pretty balanced.
And I don't think it's especially more interesting to say, cast Arc Lightning a couple times a day than it is to deal more damage on every attack I ever make.
Except
1. They don't hit more accurately. None of their class features add to accuracy. 2. While more damage might be true at higher levels, at the kick-off of the game, they are only 2 points ahead of the Cleric, especially when you consider that the 3 damage on a miss is a theme thing, not a class thing. The bigger damage die? That's a dwarf thing, not a class thing (according to the playtest-related articles, at least). 3. Larger hit die just means that they have a chance at being better in terms of 1) maxHP, and 2) HP recovered. In fact, in the D&D Next HP model, Wizards actually fare better HP-wise because even though they only have d4 HD, because Constitution modifiers give HP and determine the minimum HP, a 16 CON Wizard will always regain 1d4+3 HP and will always gain 3-4 HP per level, whereas a 16 CON Fighter will have to roll a 5 or better to ensure that he doesn't get the same HP as the Wizard... and note that not everybody is that lucky on the die rolls. In short, Wizards heal faster and are more reliable HP-wise than Fighters.
That's the THREE things the Fighter does better.
As for the "Rogue is the only one who can find traps", I concur that non-Rogues can find traps; the 10 or 11 foot pole exists for a reason, after all. Disarming traps, however, not so doable as a non-Rogue. This would certainly provoke (strawman?) situations where you have traps that hamper or block parties when triggered instead of disabled, but isn't that pushing the group to a corner just because nobody felt like playing the Rogue?
You are both rational and emotional. You value creation and discovery, and feel strongly about what you create. At best, you're innovative and intuitive. At worst, you're scattered and unpredictable.
If you're crossing the street and see a city bus barreling straight toward you with 'GIVE ME YOUR WALLET!' painted across its windshield, you probably won't be reaching for your wallet.
This is what I believe is the spirit of D&D 4E, and my deal breaker for D&D Next: equal opportunities, with distinct specializations, in areas where conflict happens the most often, without having to worry about heavy micromanagement or system mastery.
My experience is more valid than your experience argument, is about as useful as my love of x edition is more valid than your love of x edition.
Some people found the fighter boring. That is valid. What is important is that the explanation of why is there along with it. Similarly, your experience of 'fighter is cool' is a good post because you say why you thought so. That disparaging of others who don't - that's not good. The designers can read all these posts about the fighter and then come to some sort of conclusion based upon whatever goals they set themselves for this playtest. If 'fighters can be cool because they can improvise more because they are less tied down to class mechanics consuming action economy' - is enough for the designers, then so be it. Some people don't want that to be the case however, and are simply expressing that concern in the current basic fighter that's presented.
Let's take ALL the abilities, spells and powers off of the Cleric and Wizard.
Then we give them a single "arcane/divine attack" power and a "do magic stuff" ability, totally adjudicated by the DM.
If that isn't acceptable to you then you should probably stop moaning about people not being "creative enough" with their Fighters and accept that EVERYONE deserves an equal amount of mechanical support for cool stuff BEFORE they start using their imagination and creativity to ADD to what the game has already given them.
SUMMARY: This is really long, so I'll summarize real quick. People complain that fighters in 5e are boring, but that's because they're not being creative. The rules make it easy to do anything you can think of, more or less; you just need to think like a warrior. I give some examples of things the current rules support.
EDIT - I also posted this on reddit, phrased differently on some places. Just FYI.
Now then. One of the main complaints I see with the 5e playtest is that fighters are dull to play. Just hack and slash and move on, with nothing cool happening. I've read that fighters have no cool abilities. That's incorrect--fighters have almost any cool ability you can think of. Since rolls are now based on stats, not skills, a fighter will excel at anything that uses strength. This is an amazing system--you don't have to train or take feats to do anything other than swing a sword like in other versions. You don't look at your list of abilities to decide what you're allowed to do. You use your imagination, and then you DO IT.
This is a result of two things: Advantage and Contests.
Advantage means that any interesting maneuvering on your part has an immediate benefit, if you're successful. ANY INTERESTING MANEUVERING. Think about that for a second.
Contests cover basically ANYTHING that isn't a direct weapon attack. There are a lot of things that happen in combat that aren't direct weapon attacks.
Also, take note of the Improvise section of the How to Play guide. It more or less backs me up here.
One last note before the interesting stuff: 5e has absolutely nothing in it that should lead to a Mother-may-I experience. Never ask the DM if you are allowed to do something. You simply say you're going to try it, he assigns a DC (if applicable) and you roll. The end. Don't ask for permission, and if you're DM, don't expect to be giving it. Empower the players.
I'm giving you a list of things that could reasonably be done under the current rules that will make a fighter an interesting and dynamic thing to be. Keep in mind that you can only do one thing per round, so I usually make the advantage roll take effect on the turn afterward. This is all stuff for a player to come up with on the fly. My player will say 'I'm going to trip him,' and I as DM improvise how that might work. None of these ideas are intended to become new rules, or even act as such. It's more about helping players think like a warrior, and helping DMs accommodate them. If you don't like how I ruled it, rule it differently in your game. NEVER TELL A PLAYER NO. They can try whatever they want, and the rules let that happen.
1 - Choke. Attacker has disadvantage and must use a free hand, but on successful hit, str contest to choke. Success causes restrained. Contest each round to maintain, and after three successful rounds, next round causes stunned. Next round causes unconscious. Death ten rounds later (which is actually too short in real life). Come here, goblin! (A fighter within arm's reach of a mage will probably never lose, which I and my players have generally been happy about.)
2 - Lock Joints. Again, attacker has disadvantage, needs two free hands. Str or dex contest, depending on circumstances and DM whim. Success causes restrained. I usually only give the defender one attempt to break the hold.
3 - Disarm. Attacker has disadvantage, successful hit triggers dex contest to disarm.
4 - Trip. Dex or Str contest, depending. This could be anything from a sweep attack to a bullrush and lifting up the enemy. Attacker gets advantage if the halfling is ducked down behind the target, giving him something to trip over :D Once tripped, target is prone.
5 - Throw net. I know it's not on the EQ list. Make one. Then throw it. Successful hit causes restrained. Then toss an Alchemist's Fire for extra fun. After dumping oil on them.
6 - This is really one for the rogue, but I had a player manacle an enemy's legs with two hidden attacks.
7 - Oil up the floor and make the enemies fight while standing on it.
8 - As a ready action, duck under a strike and end up behind the enemy, ready to hit him from behind next round. Gave that a dex DC of 17.
All of those were improvised on the spot, and the rules made it very easy to accommodate. Here are some other things that were tried or talked about (I'm sparing the rules I used since by now I think you have the idea):
Launch the halfling over an enemy. Throw a goblin to knock another goblin over. Make and throw mud. Gouge out eyes. Knock away the enemy's shield, giving the next person to hit them advantage. Throw **** (yes, that happened.) Hold the end of a rope for the thief to walk across like a tightrope. Dwarf, grab that ogre's nuts.
One last thing. This isn't really about the rules or covered by them in any DnD system of which I'm aware, but I do it to make things more fun. Sometimes when an enemy is brought to 0 hitpoints, instead of killing them, I make them combat incapable but still conscious. For example, "Your greataxe cuts right through both of the orc's knees, severing them and dropping him to the ground screaming." The legless orc might then, for example, flop around and get in the way, still try to swing his sword, lay about screaming in pain, beg for mercy, or who knows what. The party then may do roleplay-ey sorts of things involving the orc if they wish. Basically, it still meets the spirit of the rules, but it gives the party a better sense that they're interacting with the world than simply 'You killed it to death. It dies.' Other things are cut off an enemy's sword arm, causing him to yield; disembowel something large, causing its guts to spill all over and make the ground slick, etc.
1. They don't hit more accurately. None of their class features add to accuracy.
None of their listed features do, and yet they clearly have a higher attack bonus than the other characters (and one point higher than they should by all known calculations).
2. While more damage might be true at higher levels, at the kick-off of the game, they are only 2 points ahead of the Cleric, especially when you consider that the 3 damage on a miss is a theme thing, not a class thing. The bigger damage die? That's a dwarf thing, not a class thing (according to the playtest-related articles, at least).
2d6+7 is only two points ahead of 1d10+2? Or do you mean 1d8+4? You can argue weapon choice is irrelevant to the point, and that's fine, but they still have a +7 vs. a +2 or +4. Again, we don't know what the calculations are, but the sheets are correct.
3. Larger hit die just means that they have a chance at being better in terms of 1) maxHP, and 2) HP recovered. In fact, in the D&D Next HP model, Wizards actually fare better HP-wise because even though they only have d4 HD, because Constitution modifiers give HP and determine the minimum HP, a 16 CON Wizard will always regain 1d4+3 HP and will always gain 3-4 HP per level, whereas a 16 CON Fighter will have to roll a 5 or better to ensure that he doesn't get the same HP as the Wizard... and note that not everybody is that lucky on the die rolls. In short, Wizards heal faster and are more reliable HP-wise than Fighters.
Er, what? How is 1d4+3 more Hit Points than 1d12+3? That makes absolutely zero sense. The wizard is going to average 5.5 HP gained/recovered and the Fighter is going to average 9.5 That's a big advantage.
Fighters should get 2 actions around, it will not hurt the game speed more than waiting for saves or hits on multiple monsters when a wizard casts a spell. And for a fighter this would go along way to allow him to perform an improvised action and still make an attack.
The fighters surge power/idea should be made into some kind of adrenaline surge for double damage 2 times a day instead or allow him to have advantage in a situation. If action points make a return that would still be something that every character has access to. The fighter should be allowed to fight.
Whatever the fighter can or cannot do in relation to the other classes, the character class is also lacking any kind of "choice point" for players to make.
Everyone gets Race-Class-Background-Theme as choices then each class also get further choices with the class itself:
Clerics - Choice of Deity (Pelor and Moradin so far) which likely affects both Channel Divinity and spell options Wizards - which spells they have access to Rogues - their is a Rogue Scheme - which implies choice
Fighters - sure the get Weapon Mastery, but it's not a choice, their is nothing present in this fighter class that allowes a player to select options that will define their character - thus making is possible for that players character to feel unique.
In the older editions of the game, other than the players "RP vision" of their character the only difference between two fighters would be the magic items they'd aquired and how high their Strength score was.
Let's take ALL the abilities, spells and powers off of the Cleric and Wizard.
Then we give them a single "arcane/divine attack" power and a "do magic stuff" ability, totally adjudicated by the DM.
I personally like this idea, or a variant of it, though I realize it's a totally infeasible sell. Too bad.
Fighters are supposed to be like Humans in a sense, the basic class others are variation of. They ARE supposed to be able to do the basic stuff better, maybe a little better than other than they currently do, but that's their role. Any person/character should be able to be a Fighter when they start off life, it just takes dedication. If they chose a different path, they sacrifice a little of the general fighting ability everyone has (to a greater or lesser extent) to get different abilities.
In some previous additions, this was most clearly delineated by a fighter getting to two attacks per turn faster than other classes, and that seems to be the case in Next (looking at the level two ability).
All that said, there are some good points that the Fighter might not be enough better at the basic stuff than other classes. One possible solution would be that a Fighter get +X (Going up in levels, maybe +1/3 lvls) to ALL checks made during the heat of combat to indicate their general ability to handle combat better than other classes.
The only problem with the OP is that any class can do those things, its not something specific to the fighter. So once again the excuse that the fighter can improvise or use magic items is negated by the fact that all classes also have those advantages...
I love "Throw goblin into another goblin!" I thought of that while playing with the fighter as well and it absolutely cracked my table up. My DM treated it a basic attack without using the weapon bonus (+4 instead of +6). We figured a goblin would do about a 1d6 damage the same way a chair or a barrel might. What made it really interesting was getting into the room with the cooking fire and the pot of boiling soup.
A goblin is a two handed improvised weapon, i.e. disadvantage and 1d10 damage...
Telling people that "You're not creative enough" if you don't like X is an ad hominem attack. It goes beyond telling people that you disagree or that they're wrong about something and ventures into attacking them personally for their lack of creativity.
----------------------
As to the ideas presented in this thread, I have never found that having a powers list for a fighter or any other character limited what my character could try in game. Players in 4e occassionally needed to be reminded that they could venture beyond their powers list for actions in combat. But that doesn't mean that many of these creative options didn't exist in previous editions of the game, including 4e.
I do welcome the addition of flexible rules to adjudicate things like tripping, disarming, grappling, or whatever else a player can imagine. I will almost certainly adapt these ideas to my current 4e game. The problem I have with the playtest fighter (and the rogue to a lesser extent) is that it lacks the interesting and flavorful powers that the wizard and clerics were given. In my view 4e was a major advancement in overcoming the notion that 'fighters cannot have nice things'. I see this iteration of the fighter as a major regression and I am not happy with this direction for the game at all.
