Another way to look at warrior design is from a requirements perspective. What are reasonable requirements for a warrior?
MINIMUM 7 WILL -- I virtually never recommend lower to anyone. Assur and Consortium run some oddballs and have graduated warriors with less, but 7 is really the bare minimum. It is very difficult to have success without at least 7 will. The rulebooks do not tell you that will is one of the most important stats for all warriors. Seven is a skill break point and other than the decise skill at 9 will, no more skills until 15 will.
MINIMUM 7 STR -- Strength is a primary attribute in damage dealing, carrying, and using weapons. The options below 7 are very slim. Until you learn otherwise, always raise strength to at least 7, preferably 8 or 9. Seven Strength is also a skill break point. There are no more skills to be gained from Strength until you get to 15.
Higher than Little Damage -- Pure Defenses might get away with little damage, no other warrior type wants to deal with it.
Aimed Blows: Highly recommended 21 deftness (or 17). ABs get double attack skills for higher deftness. It just isn't usually worth making ABs with lower deftness.
Bashers, Slashers, Strikers (and some Aimed Blows/Lungers/Parry Strikers) These are the pure offensives. There are ways to make oddballs, but most of these want to win and win fast. For all of these, 15 wit is a minimum. The following is a chart of the other minimums
Style Damage Endurance Strength Deftness Basher Good Normal 11/13 (*2) 11/7 Slasher Good Normal 9/11 (*2) 11/7 Striker Good Poor 9 11 Parry Striker Good Poor 9 11 Lunger Good Normal (*1) 11 7 Aimed Blow Good Poor 7/9 (*3) 17*1 -- Lungers burn endurance very fast. Normal is 'minimum' for an offensive based lunger, but good would be much better.
*2 -- Bashers and Slashers can have the lower number with 11 deftness, but need the higher number for 7 deftness. (Weapons used: Basher: QS/WH, Slasher SC/BS (or HA against faster warriors in light armor))
*3 -- Aimed Blows can deal with 7 strength if they also have the 15 wit, using the EP. With less than 15 wit, stay with 9 strength for SS and SC.
Parry Defensives: Total Parries, Wall of Steels, Parry Strikes, Parry Ripostes, and Parry Lungers. All of these styles can be made into pure defensive parry based styles. These types generally want 11 deftness, 17-21 will, high constitution, and high strength. If you choose Total Parry, you can definitely skimp in one or more of these. Since you'll almost always have high will, you can also easily assume that you can train each stat twice. For Will, realize that your skills are at 17 and 21 will. If you start with 17, training two times doesn't help nearly as much as starting with 19 will and training to 21. Assur does not recommend training more than 3 times in a stat and if you're going for 3rd trains, start with 18+ will. By high Strength and Constitution, the desired is 14+ in each. These types of warriors can definitely run with lower strength (think absolute minimum of 11 after trains). Going lower than 14 con is going to make it hard to stay up long enough to take enough damage. You'll notice I don't mention wit on this type of warrior. That is because it is mostly optional. The traditional super scum was a 3 wit/3 speed monster Total Parry. Since then (and especially because ABs are everywhere), there are many different types of defensive warriors, with wits ranging even as high as 17.
Hybrids: Lungers, Parry Ripostes, Wall of Steels, Parry Lungers, Parry Strikes, Total Parries, and Aimed Blows. These warriors are the toughest to master and there are too many ways to create them to give a single set of guidelines. I'll give the minimums as I see them, but there are so many exceptions it is impossible to list them all.
Style Str Con Wit Wil Dft Dmg End Weapons Lunger 11 11 5 17 7 Norm Good SS*, LO Parry Riposte 11 11 11 7 11 Norm Poor LO, SC Wall of Steel 11 11 7 17 7 Norm Good BA, BS, SC Parry Lunge 11 11 11 17 7 Norm Good SC, LO, SS* Parry Strike 11 11 11 7 11 Norm Poor SC, LO, BS, BA Total Parry 9 11 7 7 7 Norm Poor SC, LO, BS, BA Aimed Blow 7 11 5 7 17 Norm Poor EP, SC, SS*, LORealize that these 'minimums' will not all work together. Wit, especially, is an area of contention, but Assur believes these low end wit can work for each style as a hybrid. If you can't get your wit to 17, Assur doesn't mind at all having 11 instead of 15 (11 is a big skill breakpoint and makes most weapons available) Seven wit is a riposte break point (very important to realize on WOSs). I've listed possible weapon choices for each, with an '*' by weapons that I consider inferior, but workable. There are lots of other weapon choices, some of them are even pretty good. The most common weapon Assur uses that wasn't listed is SH.
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Also realize that while these are 'minimums,' you want to design to the strengths of a warrior. What can you maximize that would help a warrior win? Especially look at attack, parry, decise, and defense when looking to max a skill. Maxing hit points is great for defensive type warriors. Maxing damage is fun, but often hurts a warrior overall.
When selecting a style, consider what each style learns as primary skills so if you max parry, consider a warrior that learns parry as well. You can use style to overcome a weakness or augment a strength. But if you're making a fast attack warrior, do you really want to select a style that doesn't learn decise naturally?
Things to consider...
Style Learns Naturally Aimed Blow Attack, Riposte (Parry) Bashers Attack, Decise (Initiative) Lungers Initiative, Defense (Riposte) Parry Lungers Initiative, Parry Parry Ripostes Riposte, Parry (Attack) Parry Strikers Parry, Decise Slashers Initiative, Attack (Decise) Strikers Decise, Attack (Initiative) Total Parries Parry, Defense (Riposte) Wall of Steels Attack, Parry, InitiativeThe reason Parry Lungers and Parry Strikers are consider such difficult warriors is because of what they learn. The skills they learn don't work well with each other.