Reasonable buff to war

[Reynhart]

Aesthetic is valid reason to start a class.

Aesthetic was thrown out of the window the minute they decided that barefist did more damage than a 2-handed axe.

I don't get why it's so taboo to ask for damage as a War or Drk. It's like we have to be punished for being good in SB.

The official reason why those did more damage than PLD was because PLD was supposed to be "mitigation king"...except that this is not true, and in fact, never really was since 2.1.

[Esmoire]

Aesthetic was thrown out of the window the minute they decided that barefist did more damage than a 2-handed axe.

Not sure if you are confusing aesthetic for realism. If you give me a shot of a party of adventures, and they all look experienced, the ones without weapons are the ones I would be the most worried about taking on in a fight. It's just kind of like visual shorthand and falls into expectation. Even going back to the earliest Final Fantasy games, monks thing was their barehanded damage was awful when you first got them but they would become the deadliest over time, matching or exceeding the power of the greatest weapons in the series.

Talking about fantasy at large, we would generally place a big axe or a big sword-wielder as being more dangerous than someone with daggers (more typically assumed to be rogueish or underhanded), yet when they have no weapon at all suddenly they seem immensely more badass.

[Reynhart]

Not sure if you are confusing aesthetic for realism.

Apparently, "aesthetic" is a reason to explain why WAR and DRK should do more damage...because they have bigger weapons.

Talking about fantasy at large, we would generally place a big axe or a big sword-wielder as being more dangerous than someone with daggers

Because in all fairness, they are. In "fantasy at large", you don't have "tanks" that are plagued with low physical damage.