Essential Fighter Preview

Well technically, its a knight. Shazbot mentioned that the podcast mentioned that the fighter knight wouldn't get at-will exploits, but instead have abilities that would modify melee basic attacks, and from the looks of things thats true. The knight is proficient in every sort of armor out there (as opposed to having to burn a feat on plate like actual fighters), but otherwise looks to be on par in terms of class traits.

She gets a laundry list of class features at level one,  only a couple of which are even touched on: Defender Aura constantly marks any non-marked enemy adjacent to you, but it doesn't look like she knight gets the freebie attacks. Instead of at-will attacks, you instead get two Fighter Stances: battle wrath gives you +2 damage, while cleaving assault works like cleave, except that the damage is based on Con instead of Strength. Power Strike is cited as a class feature, which is actually them just choosing your level 1 encounter for you. It also modifies melee basic attacks, dealing +1[W] damage as a free action after you hit something.

Again, the essential classes look to be thematic characters that make most of the decisions for you. The knight's only key ability scores are Strength and Constitution, instead of the usual Strength and maybe either Constitution or Dexterity, perhaps with some Wisdom on top that the usual fighter possibly demands (I'm guessing the slayer will be linked to Strength and Dexterity only). Again, I think these are going to be great for newer players, or players looking for that nostalgic feel without all the save-or-fuck-all bullshit of past editions.