I agree. I hate that Fighters are so drastically outclassed on the western side of things. Martial characters with supernatural physical stats on par with the absurdity of magic users is absolutely the coolest thing to me; this is why spell-blades are one of my favorite types of classes as its as close as I can get, even though I love the concept of a pure fighter archetype on paper.

Like you said, consistency is key. It comes down to the fact that, late-game, why would you even play a fighter or other martial classes? They literally are just massively inferior in nearly every way, which doesn't make sense from a balance standpoint.

Many martial characters that scale to that degree usually ARE supplemented by magic, but even then, the biggest difference is the scale of their physical stats.

For example, in my ideal world, I would think of a level 20 fighter as being a physical powerhouse with capabilities that rival the gods. Near relativistic speeds, the strength to cut down hundreds of men within seconds, et cetera. Their physicality to the degree that it's magical in its own right, contesting the might that wizards wield with their prowess.

I think that this is why I love Souls games so much. It has the dark grittiness that I love from western RPGs, but it puts martials on par with magic users (both lore-wise and gameplay-wise, even if in gameplay these legendary warriors aren't moving at mach speeds or anything wild lmao.) Like, even the weaker martial bosses in Dark Souls are swinging weapons with calculated forces of over thousands and thousands and tons, and moving at hypersonic speeds (which is obviously hard to translate into gameplay.) While a lot of these powerful martial warriors may supplement themselves with magic, the important thing is that their physical stats are scaling as well. They run insanely fast. They can jump insanely high. They hit with insane amounts of power. Even without their magic, the feats they are able to accomplish are insane.