@JeorMattan I'm replying in chat, as you should. I even made us our own little room for this. I hope the mods can move our comments over to here.

In response to your comment, no, because Fighter is a terrible class (both in power and in design) that I have no interest in improving; as far as I'm concerned, it has been replaced by the Warblade.

At any rate, this is still far from the best feat in 3.5 for martial characters. It's a very good one, one that most will take, but ideally all feats would be like this one. I am not going to balance around the mediocrity that is 95% of 3.5 feats. The game is imbalanced because of those feats.

First, let's settle the topic. Will we be discussing the OP's question and your answer as an answer on the mentioned question (in which case I'd rather not delve in more general topic of melee classes design) or the general dnd martial vs magical thing?

I'm fine both ways, but we need to clarify that.

(lucky me, I've noticed this room)

@JeorMattan the intent when creating it was porting the discussion in the comments of my answer to chat, which is far more appropriate for a drawn-out discussion. That said, I am more than willing to discuss the merits of alternatives to my suggestion, including the asker's, and also I suspect that the martial vs. magical thing will be a part of the discussion though I agree we probably should not delve into it too much.

@JeorMattan I @'d you and included a link to it in the comments of my answer. I hope there was more to finding this than "luck".

@Zachiel The first point, I agree that this may have been the intent, but I think that was bad design in the first place, and that furthermore none of the options that require it (to my knowledge) are so powerful as to require a totally-burned feat to access it.

@Zachiel as for hitting things, I agree on its importance, but +1 just isn't enough to be meaningful most of the time. This has more relevance with the question asker's second suggestion, which was giving a huge bonus to attack, which would totally change the metagame in terms of the numbers you need to keep AC relevant and how to keep up in attack. Then the feat becomes a tax of a different sort: you need it if you want to keep your attack bonuses relevant.

@JeorMattan I am going to say one thing as an introduction to where I'm coming from with this. D&D 3.5 has extreme disparities between mundane and magical characters. I consider this strongly undesirable, and therefore favor trying to close the gap. The Weapon Focus feat I've suggested is much better than, say, almost all of the Fighter feats in Core - that is intentional, because those feats are almost entirely awful.

Truly, the only Fighter feats in Core that are better than this Weapon Focus are probably Improved Trip and Power Attack. Maybe Exotic Weapon Proficiency for Spiked Chains, if you are going for both Disarm and Trip, or some weird two-handed Weapon Finesse build.

I consider this power improvement desirable, because the other Core feats are underpowered.

Especially considering that a martial character must live their feats every day of their life, all the time. Burn a feat and it's burnt forever - you can't get it back, fix it, or decide you want a new one.

the comparison to casters is not entirely appropriate because I do not want to emulate the overpowered nature of casters, but comparing (and finding my Weapon Focus still far weaker) is appropriate, methinks

anyway, back to work for me

nice to see ya, @Lord_Gareth

What can I say, I've a dog in this fight.

I take quality control on homebrew very, very seriously.

@SimonGill Welcome

@Lord_Gareth I'm just popping in to read what's going on. All curiousity, no opinions :)

@KRyan I noticed both of those, but later than I stumbled upon this room.

Okay, as for the discussion topic.

OP wanted to make Weapon Focus a good feat. I understand this as 'a viable option, offering benefit comparable to other existing options'. Do you agree with this definition of a good feat?

@KRyan Also, are we talking core only?

@JeorMattan ...yes, that is a decent definition, but. People only get 7 feats, 8 if Human. At low levels, it's more like 2-3 (depending on where you draw the line of "low"). As a result, I'm going to ignore the 95% of feats that are crap, and only consider the best few feats as my point of comparison, because realistically those are the feats that it is being compared with.

@JeorMattan moreover, the feat was also made with the awareness that even the very-best Fighter feats are not good enough to keep them up with casters, which means I was not conservative

there are feats that are better, but this is still a very good feat, among the best

that was intentional

@JeorMattan ultimately, I don't think this matters that much. Power Attack and Improved Trip are still among the best feats in the game. There are fewer good feats -- few enough that you may end up being forced to take crap feats -- but I'm going to be ignoring those feats anyway, regardless of book set.

at no point will I consider Alertness or Combat Expertise or Point-blank Shot or the existing Weapon Focus to be valid points of comparison

because those are all awful feats

@JeorMattan but if it helps, Tome of Battle is, in my mind, "melee done right" and serves as a pretty good point of comparison. If Fighters were to be relevant, feats would have to give new abilities -- similar to the maneuvers used by martial adepts.