So I was thinking about weapon juggling and how silly it felt as if it would look in melee. And I was thinking about the fighter. And realised that weapon throwing allows almost all the cheese of weapon juggling without feeling as silly and it's actually easier on the action economy because you don't have to stow or drop weapons if throwing them was intended.
There are several weapons that add things to the toolkit - starting from the most relevant to the least.
- Trident for d8 (piercing) damage and Topple (alas you can't use Versatile).
- Light Hammer for bludgeoning damage, Light and Nick
- Handaxe for slashing damage Light property and Vex
- Javelin for range 30/120
- Spear for Sap
(If you want to be cheesy then after this then when you pick up your fifth or sixth option make it e.g. a Greataxe for Cleave - and the Spear is redundant on a level 9 fighter).
Two feats are really useful to unlock this build properly; Sharpshooter gives you significant range and the ability to throw in melee and ignore cover while this is an obvious dual wielder build.
It feels like an extremely good dual wielder; the Thrown Weapon fighting style is +2 to all attacks (rather than a maximum of +5 to one attack) and because you are throwing your weapons your light weapon and your nick weapon can be different with no problem, allowing you to make the rest of your attacks with your trident rather than having to pair two light weapons.
It is of course a "natural fighter" build because they stack up the weapon masteries. And the ability to throw Topple, Sap, and Push almost anywhere at level 9 feels as if it could be fun. Optimising after tier 2 this approach might work better with a paladin or barbarian with a single fighter level (for the extra masteries and possibly fighting style or even stacking with duelist).
The one downside is if you pick up a very good weapon you probably want to just throw it...
And I'm probably very late to the party.