@johnpoz I use IPSec to create a site-to-site tunnel should the wireless bridge go down. (Hilariously, this is no longer working, but that is a different problem for a different day). I wanted to use the pfSense for the VPN clients but had too much problems setting it up with the win 10 clients. I only have two VPN clients so it is not really a problem at the moment. But I will probably sit and redesign the whole network. Or I should just get some hardware routers. The win 10 hosts are giving me hell as well.

@pnunn The default route is simply the way out of the network. It's just like driving somewhere. The first thing you have to do is get out of your driveway. On more complex networks there may be other, more specific routes that might be used first, but eventually you'll need a default route. The only exception is at the top level, between ISPs, carriers, etc., where every possible route must be known and the packet gets dropped if there isn't a route. You could route through an interface, but only on point to point links. On Ethernet, there's always the possibility of more than one other NIC out there, so you can't rely on using just the interface.