Open-eneded because in comparison to something like a Warlock you’re simply handed a guy who hits real good and in comparison to a ranger there are no weapon specific stereotypes. You can be pretty much anything you want and there isn’t much distraction in the flavour text, even. Now, I personally don’t pay much heed to flavour text and roleplay things however the hell I want but I do know a lot of people get bogged down by the idea that rogues need to be theives and paladins need to be good and that 95% of the community still doesn’t know what “lawful” means and they should really change the word to “principled” to square that away.

The reason I said “stricter framework” was in response your comment where it seemed as though you were saying that the 5e fighter required creativity to make it fun and I assumed that meant that what you wanted was for other systems to lay things out for you a little more. I assumed that because nothing I was suggesting required building your own class and mechanics, it was all just fairly high-level rules found in the books(minus the Eldritch Knight, I thought I’d seen it elsewhere).

Oddly enough, though, the fighter in PF2e, I would imagine, requires much more thinking since much of its power appears to come from feats that you need to choose at every level. I love that idea, and technically you can do a similar thing in 5e with the optional feat rule, but I’m struggling to figure out where you’re coming from saying that it’s easier or that dedications are safe from bad choices. I don’t find it as daunting as an experienced player but it’s certainly a lot more opportunity to accidentally build poorly. Also 5e multiclassing really is not that difficult, though there are small details that I think should be ironed out(maybe there were in 2024, I don’t know at this moment).

End of the day, 5e Fighter may be a bit of a blank slate but that’s precisely why I love them. They aren’t at all boring if you bring your creativity and roleplay skills to them and that also depends on what kind of game you want to play. I also play a Warlock now that I’ve made fairly unique and love the amount I can do with him so it’s not like I’m scared of classes with more complexity to offer, either, I just see the value in all of them and play to their strengths and weaknesses appropriately.

And then you could get them on a caster and they would do it much better.

Well, running PF1 put me off RPGs for nearly a decade because I hated that system so much, so probably.