I just replace fighters with Warblades. Fuck standing still and swinging a sword.
This is what I do. At least for my players who can be bothered to keep track of things more complicated than 'I hit it with a piece of metal until it stops moving' (and those players I try to direct to playing a Barbarian).
Incidentally, I am currently running my own 3.5 campaign, and have a few house rules of my own. I write everything in a horrible shorthand which is only readable by myself and people able to decipher alien script so there's a bit of translation going on here.
1: There are no critical misses. It makes no sense to penalize the people who are the best at combat (ie who make the most attacks) with something that will only ruin their day. A roll of 1 is merely a miss.
2. I always do critical confirmation rolls: many of my friends don't bother with them, as they slow the flow of combat a bit and tend to kill tension, but I like to keep a buffer between my low level player characters and one-hit death.
3. (private DM house-rule unbeknownst to players) Player Characters will never die because they flubbed one roll through no fault of their own. If they do something stupid 'so there's this large inky black sphere of nothingness that seems to destroy the stick I poke it with. . .I jump in!' deserving of death, no mercy is to be had for them, however.
4. (private DM house-rule unknown to players) Keep the game moving. If the PCs are standing around with nothing happening for more than 10 minutes, orcs attack. Or something explodes. Give them time to think and plan if they want it, but otherwise, move move move).
5. Do everything you can as a DM to never outright tell a player 'No, you can't do that.' If they want something unreasonable, work with them to tone it down to something that works.
5.5. Let the players do awesome things whenever they can plausibly get away with it. If they're running from the captain of the guard in a city's docks and they climb a set of stairs and ask if there are casks to be tumbled, there will be casks for tumbling.
6: I've pretty much gone through and changed most feats in 3.5 that relate to combat, to make them scale properly. I hate the concept of 'feat trees', because let's be honest, most characters will only ever get 7 feats THEIR WHOLE LIVES (if they live to 18th level), so it's entirely unreasonable to make someone spend 5 feats to be good with a bow.
If they have a concept such as 'I am a Sniper' there should be 1 feat which lets them be a sniper, available from 1st level. It must scale as they go up in level, based around their attack bonus: At +0 (so 3/4 classes like clerics (who really don't need anything to boost them but oh well) and marshals and bards (who need all the help they can get) can benefit from it), at +1, at +5, at +10, at +15, and at +20 BAB the benefit must become more awesome.
Example: Lightning Reflexes (Vanilla version: Gain +2 to reflex saves.)
+0: You gain a +3 bonus to your Reflex saves.
+1: You gain Evasion, if you already have Evasion, that stacks to Improved Evasion.
+6: You may make a Balance Check in place of your Reflex save.
+11: You gain a +3 bonus to your Initiative.
+16: When you take the Full Defense Action, add your level to your AC.
6.5: Share the work of balancing with the players; If they want a new feat to accomplish something, or a new spell, or a new trait, make them come up with it, and work with them to work it out. Same goes for a cool background story, or anything else. (It helps that because I'm using a homebrew setting, my more creative players can spontaneously come up with stuff like traditions and what not to add detail and life to the setting).
7. (secret DM rule unknown to players) The Dice come in secondary to dramatic tension in fights; if the villain is on the ropes, and the player makes a sweet speech before making the what should be the last attack but rolls an awful to-hit, he just happens to be inspired by his words enough to get a morale bonus to attack just high enough to hit and end things then and there. Further, if the bad guy does something similar, same rules apply.
8. Force Cage allows a save. Every other round.
9. Ability damage is unchanged, but effective save-or-die effects work differently; they take a number of rounds equal to the affected character's constitution bonus to take full effect.
Example: Broham of Boletaria has a Constitution score of 18, giving him a +4 Constitution bonus. He happens to catch the gaze of a medusa, and flubs his save. His feet immediately turn to stone, dropping his base speed to 0, and removing his dexterity bonus to AC and ability to make Attacks of Opportunity. He can still cast spells, chug a potion, or otherwise defend himself, however.
On the second round, he gets another save, which he again flubs. His shield arm is now stone, and useless for attacks and shield holding.
And so forth; I refuse to kill off a player character because of a single shitty roll on their part (especially because they refuse to have a cleric in the party), but I'm not going to completely neuter dangerous enemies.
This also goes for player attacks, barring low level utility spells like Sleep and Color Spray.
10. Intelligent enemies in combat will act according to their intelligence, and take full advantage of every possible opening.
My group likes to bunch up and go after targets one at a time, leaving their back ranks exposed. Thus far, it hasn't cost them any characters because everything dies in one or two hits, and they can get away with it. When they get to meet their first Devil or Demon (or anything which can teleport) however, they'll quickly learn that tactical thought is vital.
DEMON TACTICS 101: bait warriors to charge; laugh and use Quickened Teleport to get behind the squishies. Begin to maul.
There are more but they're mostly related to my setting.
