Ichabod said:
Of course, this only matters if players think there is a problem. Seems like soldier is one, if not the, most popular classes in people's campaigns, suggesting either that people don't analyze the game or that there's no real problem.
I always had the impression that, also on this forum, the Soldier is pretty much the most unpopular class. Or as someone sometime had put it, "the red headed step-child" among the classes.
The reason simply being that the Soldier can do nothing but fighting; no social skills, no wilderness skills, nuffing. Even if you give him more skill points, he still has a rather crummy class skill list. I haven't had a Soldier PC in my games yet.
And last not least, you get more feat slots than you can use. Judging from my D&D experience, a single-class soldier will run out of sensible choices around level 10.
What the Soldier class is good for, imho:
- NPCs / opposition
- minor Multiclass, i.e. you take a few levels of soldier to quickly climb some skill tree.
Either case does not require a plethora of skill points. When players MC to Soldier to get an extra feat, it's okay that they have to pay for it by sacrificing two skill points.