Returning the Fighter to relevance.

[Morphic tide]

Sigh.

As it stands, a Fighter can't competently do more than one, possibly two of the following with their pathetic skill-points:

Climb a cliffside
Stand watch
Administer first-aid
Navigate the wilderness
Swim
Get through an obstacle course
Swing from a chandelier
Maintain, repair or build their own gear
Ride a horse
Take care of a horse
Guess how tough their opponent is
Know what they're fighting
Not fall for a feint
Know the battlefield's terrain
Guess the enemy's tactics
Lead troops
Know the city they LIVE IN
Know politics
Be GOOD at politics

I'd expect any competent warrior-type to be able to manage AT LEAST half of those.

The 'lol, Fightars r dum' meme is a pernicious one, and I want to see it killed. But Fighters are no good at killing memes, either.

I'm fine with options for the combat-related and basic-athetics stuff in there all being doable with the base Fighter overhaul version. My thinking is that the base Fighter should only do one thing by default: Fight. Anything else is opt-in, sacrificing insane personal combat power bit by bit to do so. The less connected to fighting something is, the more I want to see it as a general feat instead of a Fighter feat. Having a sizeable selection of Fighter feats for the army directing and countering stuff, feats to let any class meeting the requirements do politics stuff and ways to be competent at those things that aren't combat related under some variety of flexible skill system where the character has class skills separate from their classes specifically to deal with the issues of cross-skill ranks are all things I can accept. Yes, Fighters need more skill points, but only enough to cover all the direct combat use and travel skills. You can swap some things for other things, of course, but the design intent I want is to have enough skill points to fill in all the combat stuff, which can be traded off for non-combat stuff.

Also, you seem to mistake being a Fighter for being a general of an army. That is not the case, and should not be the case with the base class of Fighter. What you describe is much more Marshal than Fighter, because Marshals are built to be leading military groups. Fighters should trade off astronomical combat power when they are hitting for the non-personal fighting power. Being a warrior needs far, far fewer of those than half. A warrior is not necessarily a trained soldier or anything like a general. They can just be amazing at Fighting alone, no backup, no politics, just fighting on their own with little to no ability at anything else.