Pathfinder 1e: How well did it do what it set out to do?

[Endarire]

Greetings, all!

It's been about a decade since Pathfinder 1e launched, and recently Pathfinder 2e launched, marking the end of official new material for Pathfinder 1e, at least for now.

PF1 set out to be a successor to and sorta reboot of D&D 3.5, to compete with D&D 4e, and to rebalance D&D 3.5.  There may have been other notable goals, and, if so, list them in your talking points below.

I assume PF1 did some things worse and better than D&D 3.5.  (This is a somewhat subjective analysis.)  Mention what you think went worse or better in your talking points below.

An early analysis of D&D 3.5 to Pathfinder 1e is in Saph's 3.5/Pathfinder Handbook which compares PF's core and early releases to D&D 3.5's content at the end of its official run.

Let's keep this discourse civil and on topic.  D&D 4e/5e and other systems may have influenced PF1, but aren't the main focus here.

Thankee!

[Nanashi]

Well at the lowest level, PF set out to make money. Given they kept it around and kept supporting it, I'd say it did that. During Essentials it even did better than 4E.

As for balance, PF has less stupidly broken stuff by avoiding totally open-ended things, but otherwise struggled to balance. Way too many things that were once per day or required absurd conditions that seemingly existed for filler. While 3.5 greatly improved in understanding the system's balance as it went along (The 2007 books are largely very high quality and worked to support weaker things) while PF didn't in the slightest.

I liked traits on the level of getting two bonus class skills, since it fixes 3E's bizzarely restrictive requirements. Too many seemed to stray too far into doing other stuff. I don't get how, of all the changes that d20 Modern made that got adapted in the 3.0 to 3.5 transition, starting occupation was not one of them. This was especially baffling for the two Star Wars d20 systems which are based on d20 Modern and either didn't have it or stuck it as an optional rule in a random book, but that's getting off topic.

Skill system is a huge improvement. Whenever I go to an older 3E variant and theorycraft a character, the massive pain in the ass of managing class skills is always a pain. The inability to spread out your starting skill points for a bunch of slightly trained stuff is a small loss for removing the pain in the ass that was.

The biggest pluses are the all OGL nature of the system. This allows very good third party support and encourages actually supporting non-core content. That's a huge step up from 3.5's utter lack of support for non-core classes after their initial printing (/update to 3.5) aside from Eberron fluff in Player's Guide to Eberron and maybe a mention or two in one of the 2007 books.

[zook1shoe]

things they did well...
- condensing the skills
- smoothing out the combat maneuver stuff, plus adding some nice ones, like dirty tricks.
- removed/decreased the amount of dead levels each class has, most now have none.
- Unchained really helped the Rogue class out in areas that they were drastically needing support. also helped the Monk out and made the Barbarian just not pure Strength-based. it fixed some of the balance issues of the Summoner, but maybe went too far.
- making most prestige classes underpowered and/or obsolete

things they didn't do well...
- kept certain old dumb combat maneuvers, like overrun or bull rush, that are easily negated.
- making most prestige classes underpowered and/or obsolete (yes, both a good and bad thing)
- EDITING... there's some really terrible editing, esp. in later books.
- while 2e was being finalized, they all but stopped any 1e support, even though there was new 1e material still being released.

[Nanashi]

Reviewed change logs and recalled a few other things PF did that were really welcome:
1: Making non-humans something you actually want to play. The serious buff to other options, condensed skills, and increased feat rate really helps them, as has support for enhancing natural abilities. Human is still top tier for pretty much anything but Summoner (where Half-Elf beats it) where Human is still a great option, but it's no longer the only real option.
2: Paladin and Ranger actually work without extensive charop that's only possible because they're a core class.
3: Letting natural enhancement bonus beat material DR actually makes raw pluses worth it, unlike 3.5 where every weapon is +1 with GMW on it.
4: Identifying items is no longer a tax. Just Detect Magic and the right skill. Outside of ToEE, even the 3E video games that used multiclass XP penalties (oh hey, that's another thing) ignored the identify cost.
5: Unlimited cantrips are nice.
6: Polymorph spells aren't stupidly broken.
7: Crafting is actually possible for people that aren't Wizard or Cleric. Wizard is still best at it, but it's now more manageable
8: Removed all the stuff that prevented just giving the whole group the same XP number. (Which reminds me that the 1000 XP system is one of the few things everyone actually liked about PF2)

[Endarire]

What do you mean by #8 about giving people the same EXP number?

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

Pros
I like how they handled Combat Maneuvers. I feel that Reposition, Drag, and Bull Rush should all just be their own thing together, but otherwise the system is a definite improvement.
Classes have more features that fill out the empty levels of 3.5, which is nice. I would say martial classes are generally in a better position here then they are in 3.5 as well
Multiclassing is not a punishing chore that disproprantely impacts noncasters.
Races are more interesting overall, and alternate racials and unique favored class bonuses make many pretty distinct options.
Archetypes are a solid evolution to ACFs, and make customization of build quite interesting.
Skill System is a straight improvement all around.
Feat scaling made for more interesting choices all around.

Cons
Prestige Classes were largely pushed aside by archetypes and classes having featured that scaled by class level. There are interesting prestige options, but they are definitely not in the same position as 3.5 prestige classes.
Likewise Alternate Class Features were put aside for archetypes, which is not entirely bad, but it is a little annoying when you just want to trade out one or two things, but the archetype rips out otherstuff you want to keep. It is even worse when you come across two archetypes that otherwise dont conflict but both modify what class skills you have rendering them incompatible. Overall the end result is the more bulky archetypes become a bit of a drag on customization. Having more stand-alone alternate class features would have elevated this, or just allow for a bit of pick and choosing.

What do you mean by #8 about giving people the same EXP number?

I imagine he is referring to all xp costs for spells/crafting/etc being removed which leads to some characters falling behind by a level or so depending on how exp is distrubted, affecting experience rewards.

[Nanashi]

That and level loss from stuff like being raised from the dead being turned into negative levels instead. In-fact, the official forums have comments by authors that giving the entire group XP for a single character's personal accomplishments in certain APs was to avoid disparate XP totals in the group.

Speaking of APs, 3E's first party module support was pretty weak. The only notable ones I can recall are Sunken Citadel, Red Hand of Doom, that Eberron series, and Expedition to Demonweb Pits. Of those, only the first two are celebrated as good modules while the other two are notable more for being a good introduction to how an Eberron adventure is supposed to look, and for the fact that it's the sole Planescape book of the system than anything actually in the module respectively. PF had some really bad AP volumes (all of Wrath of the Righteous for one...) and modules but far more good ones both in total and percent.

[zook1shoe]

- I like items don't require XP to craft.
- Every odd level feats helps a lot.
- I really like the Vigilante, but a couple of the archetypes SUCK soo bad.
- I agree, good thing they brought down the power level of Polymorph and Wild Shape.
- Half-Elves are viable as a race, they even have one of the best spells in the game (paragon surge).
- I agree about Bull Rush, Reposition, and Drag should be the same maneuver.
- I wish they continued Epic, with Mythic as a different system.
- Making most of the playable races fairly comparable across the board, removing LA for the most part (outside a couple races).

---

- WTF were they smoking when they made the Medium base class?
- Lack of rules on playing monsters.
- Quite a few repeated names of mechanics, or stuff that has names that are way too similar.
  - two Pact Wizards
  - Race traits and Racial traits
- Bards and Investigators should get access to Skill Unlocks, like an Unchained Rogue does.
- Psychic spellcasting's Thought component is kind of rough.
- Not updating some of the early 3.5 Paizo stuff to the full PF system. Why not do Dragon and Dungeon too, since they own them.... unless WotC had something in their contract.
- Not updating some of the mechanics that are clearly miswritten, like the Anaphexis Vigilante archetype and the Fearmonger Antipaladin.

Edit

I agree...
The level loss stuff was much too harsh previously.
Yeah, the module/AP support was amazing in PF.

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

That and level loss from stuff like being raised from the dead being turned into negative levels instead. In-fact, the official forums have comments by authors that giving the entire group XP for a single character's personal accomplishments in certain APs was to avoid disparate XP totals in the group.

Speaking of APs, 3E's first party module support was pretty weak. The only notable ones I can recall are Sunken Citadel, Red Hand of Doom, that Eberron series, and Expedition to Demonweb Pits. Of those, only the first two are celebrated as good modules while the other two are notable more for being a good introduction to how an Eberron adventure is supposed to look, and for the fact that it's the sole Planescape book of the system than anything actually in the module respectively. PF had some really bad AP volumes (all of Wrath of the Righteous for one...) and modules but far more good ones both in total and percent.

Oh yeah PF does seem to have quite a decent amount of APs that are highly celebrated, though I have only had experience with 2 modules of Kingmaker and the 1st module of Rise of the Runelords (the 3.5 version, and one of my first dnd experiences =P)

- I really like the Vigilante, but a couple of the archetypes SUCK soo bad.

Yeah Vigilante, as well as some of the other one off base classes added in later in the system, are woefully undersupported. Thankfully a few 3rd party sources have rescued some of these options (Legendary Vigilantes and Legendary Villains Vigilante from Legendary Games really flesh out the potential of the class concept)

- I wish they continued Epic, with Mythic as a different system.

Yeah Mythic rules are not a good alternative to Epic rules. I like Mythic rules myself, but it just does not provide the same role at epic rules. I mean I somewhat despise 3.5 epic rules, but they at least are there. I think an epic ruleset would have been a valuable option to include at some point, especially if they could make them simple to use and can avoid reproducing the cancer of epic spellcasting.

- Making most of the playable races fairly comparable across the board, removing LA for the most part (outside a couple races).

...

- Lack of rules on playing monsters.

Oh yeah this has kind of bothered me as well. LA for the most part sucked, but it did open up monster options. They do have rules that use a monsters CR to determine a pseudo level adjustment but none of it was ever expressly stated as part of monster stat blocks and it was mostly disregarded.

That said I also do quite like the advanced races quide, provided players are never allowed to touch it or utilize anything without DM approval at least. You can get away with constructing a few monster races with it in a decently satisfactory way at least.

[Nanashi]

Not updating some of the early 3.5 Paizo stuff to the full PF system.

Some 3.5 stuff did get new versions and some more things got small updates in the PFS notes (only one I recall off-hand is there's a feat that trigged on casting that no longer works on cantrips). I'm surprised they never reprinted Curnogen Smash though, since that's a really useful feat for the many charisma based melee classes that actually helps the party.

[zook1shoe]

Ooze Companion and Vermin Companion are two that stand out to me that never got updated.

both give access to ooze and vermin animal companions, but they use the actual monster stats, not the animal companion style stats.

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

I am also a bit fond of the Familiar Archetype and Animal Companion Archetypes. It made for interesting options for those focusing on familiar builds or just happen to have one. Removing the exp loss and the huge hassle of getting a new one is also nice.

[Nanashi]

I'm of the opinion that Mythic and Epic are pretty much equally terrible in PC hands, but mythic is at least useful for boss monsters (extra actions and less vulnerable to save or die) where epic is not.

[Power]

Stuff I liked:

• Making everything publicly available under a share-alike license.
• Sorcerer bloodlines
• Paladins being less MAD
• Reducing dead levels
• Better ranged builds
• More frequent feats
• Reduction of save or die effects
• Removal of exp costs
• Animal companions and familiar archetypes (cheese aside)
• Trait system was a neat touch (cheese aside, and other silliness like not being able to take multiple traits of the same category without Exemplar traits)
• Rage powers
• Spell descriptors

Stuff I didn't:

• Asinine tendency to nerf things not by publishing erratas but by publishing absurd rules "clarifications" that have rules work in ways they never did before. This causes a major fucking case of the core rulesbook being an unreliable indicator of how the rules actually work since some book or FAQ somewhere could retroactively assert it works in a completely different way from described. So you get shit like a nerf on scry & die tactics in Ultimate Magic, absurd rules minutiae being invented in FAQs for things like Two-Weapon Fighting so you can no longer use a two-handed weapon and armor spikes, 5-foot steps no longer being allowed during Cleave, and various other stupidities. It reminds me of a programming anti-pattern called "Actions at a distance" which basically states that you should never write logic in a way that a mysterious change on some distant page of a completely different document can completely change how this function described in front of your eyes works without you knowing it, since that sort of thing makes it a complete pain in the ass to figure out and keep track of how shit actually works. Paizo should just publish honest erratas when they want to nerf something or just change how it works instead of abusing FAQs and new books to nerf shit through novel bullshit squirrely clarifications. Having to deal with rules gotchas buried on some page of a completely different book to figure out how the mechanic described in core rules is supposed to work is a fucking abomination and they shouldn't do it.
• And the problems with that approach go deeper than that. Many FAQs just take the form of a GM who doesn't like it when you're doing a particular thing and therefore comes up with a squirrely reinterpretation of the rules to ban it without admitting he's changing the rules by pretending this is how the rules have always worked (even when it is reinterpreting 3.5 rules text in a way that is blatantly at odds with 3.5's way of doing things). This kind of dishonest and inconsistent ruling might work for a GM who is ruling on his own game, but it's horrible for a general ruling on a game system, where the rules are burdened by a need to be clear, predictable, and consistent. Instead, we are now left with cases where you interpret the same rule different ways depending on what you're looking at and you have to eyeball more RAI to keep stuff working the way it should.
• FAQs that are bad or stupid enough that you're better off ignoring it outright, like the "Invulnerable Rager Barbarians are not supposed to be able to take the bonus DR rage power" FAQ (the archetype flat-out recommends taking that rage power), "taking a 5 foot step during Cleave is now prohibited" FAQ (who on earth thought Cleave was overpowered and needed some BS rules minutiae invented on the spot to rationalize taking 5 foot steps away - well Jason Bulmahn did, but why on earth you'd do that is mystifying), "Titan Mauler Barbarian does not permit the Barbarian to equip large 2H weapons" FAQ (that's the entire purpose of the archetype), "Wildblooded bloodlines are archetype replacements and do not count as bloodlines or bloodline powers" FAQ (go ahead and follow that one to its logical conclusion by using Ampoule of False Blood - apparently you keep the wildblooded bloodline power now?), "just because your deity's holy symbol is a hammer doesn't mean you can use an actual hammer as your holy symbol" FAQ (This is about as nonsensical and silly as claiming a Wizard cannot cast a spell without a spell component pouch just because he has the literal spell component the spell asks for.), "Wizards no longer get free spells in their spellbook for gaining spellcaster levels through prestige classes" FAQ (easily surmountable with a Teleport, but a rather unnecessary nuisance), "Slashing/Fencing Grace cannot be used with Spell Combat" FAQ, or manifestation FAQ.
  
• Paizo ignores and contradicts their own rules on a regular basis. For instance, you are supposed to get your class level before you get feats when leveling according to the rulesbook, but there are class archetypes that require feats on level 1 and Racial Heritage feats largely exist to let you take racial class archetypes at level 1 as well. Sometimes racial type bonuses are considered stacking type. Other times they are considered non-stacking. Sometimes the results of Paizo getting their own rules wrong is completely useless trash, like the Repositioning weapon property from Ultimate Equipment (which costs a +3 bonus and gives you a +2 enhancement bonus on combat maneuver checks to reposition an opponent - Now bear in mind that weapon enhancement bonuses apply to maneuvers performed with them, enhancement bonuses do not stack, and a weapon needs to already have a +1 enhancement bonus before you can add a magic weapon property to it: a +2 weapon would give the same bonus to repositioning as the vastly more expensive +1 repositioning weapon). Polymorphing rules explicitly do not allow you to polymorph into templated versions of monsters, but Undead Anatomy spells offer features that are only available to undead templates. Brew Potion explicitly states that it does not allow you to make potions of spells with a range of "Personal" and yet Pathfinder is awash with Potions of Shield, especially in the hands of NPCs. (You can even start with one by taking the Well-Provisioned Adventurer equipment trait for the Corporeal Warrior Package.)
  
• Rules that are not properly explained at all (ie. which bonus types are stacking and which ones aren't, what happens if you don't sleep, and so on). Sometimes this is a direct result of PF's simplifications (for instance, any time you roll a d20, it's considered a "check" in PF now, which creates new problems with Circlet of Persuasion which are ignored even in PFS by defaulting to 3.5's explanation of what a check is instead of Pathfinder's, but then there are cases of content where rules text confirms that saving throws and attack rolls are considered checks too) or just plain omissions (they forgot to explain how burrow speed works in the CRB, but there are burrow speeds implemented anyway, even available to the player through things like polymorphs and animal companions, so I guess we just default to 3.5's mechanics for that). How the fuck bardic masterpieces are exactly supposed to work is still one of those mysteries that goes unanswered (Do they count as bardic performances or not? Can they be performed while performing bardic performances or not? Are they affected by feats and spells as performances are?). The feat Augment Summoning lets you get +1 summon when you use a summoning spell to summon more than one creature, but it is never clearly answered whether rolling a 1 whenever you summon 1d3 creatures means the feat no longer gives you a bonus summon or not (most tables default to it always giving you the +1 creature). Rope darts are another rules clusterfuck of an item that has gone utterly unanswered (at what distance can you retrieve a rope dart as a free action?).
  
• Closing requests for FAQs and clarifications with "Already answered" when it certainly hasn't been answered anywhere. Paizo does this shit a lot. It's their go-to for getting rid of old, open FAQ requests they can't be bothered to get around to.
  
• Designers generally behave like prima donnas who think they can do no wrong and know everything better than players. There are too many examples of PF designers responding in a hostile and/or dismissive fashion to legitimate, constructive criticism. There are even cases where PF designers banned users from their forums simply for engaging in severe charop.
• Spite-based game design, where content is deliberately made too bad to be worth using out of some grudge against 3.5's counterpart or whatever. The Vow of Poverty Monk in PF, for instance, is absurdly garbage and was obviously designed as some kind of revenge for 3.5's Vow of Poverty feat, which the designer clearly considered to be overpowered. Spiked Chains have been rendered into a form that is too nerfed to be worth using in PF.
• Paizo's editing staff is typically hot garbage. Not only do editors frequently miss bad design, broken design, writing mistakes, and painfully ambiguous writing, but they often break content by addling it for various (often balance-related) reasons in ill-advised ways, resulting in things like the infamous Prone Shooter feat being utterly useless, the infamous Elephant Stomp feat being worse than just moving and taking a single attack, or Argent Dramaturge prestige class being broken when you realize that while the Bard prestige class now sucks for Bards by no longer advancing (and requiring) bardic performance, it is now eligible for non-Bards who can use it to obtain access to some ridiculous Bardic masterpieces, joining the ranks of other prestige classes which are shit for the class it was designed for but an upgrade for other classes (like Thuvian Alchemist and Green Faith Acolyte).
• Printing new content that operates as a nerf on existing game mechanics by implying you shouldn't be permitted to do this without the new feat/spell/whatever. For instance, False Casting feat suggests you should not be allowed to bluff that your magic item or SLA is spellcasting without the feat. Strike Back feat suggests that you shouldn't be allowed to use readied actions to strike limbs of enemies who are attacking you from reach. Etc.
• Writing new books covering the same content as older books, with partial overlap in rules content in updated form, instead of doing direct edition updates when it's on the same subject. This shit makes it hard to tell whether or not the absence of certain content that was present in the older book or presence of suspiciously similar content in the same context in the new book is meant to operate as some kind of content removal/errata on that book's content. For some reason paizo has difficulty spelling out their intentions on these matters in their newer books, evidently preferring to leave their readers to struggle with the ambiguity. This is also not helped by the presence of otherwise minor nuisances like...
• Printing content with duplicate names (like multiple forms of the Pesh drug, two different Dueling properties on weapons, two different Wizard archetypes called Pact Wizard, etc.)
• PF has a ludicrously inconsistent relationship with its support of 3.5-era Paizo content. PFS for instance will consider some 3.5 content perfectly legal and other content will be treated as if it no longer exists. This sort of thing causes issues with questions about use of the Guided weapon property, for instance, among other things.
• Poorly written Bestiary/monster stat blocks where the numbers do not add up and the abilities do not work the way the writer assumed.
• Stat blocks or rules text that are simply incomplete and unfinished, leaving you to guess at the rest.
• Pathfinder iconics are prebuilt characters with hideously sabotaged builds that are extreme cases of putting thematic decisions ahead of what is actually remotely helpful to the player or the party. The iconics are supposed to serve as a reference and playable prebuilts for noobs, but in truth it really is just self-sabotage to make or play a character like that, so they end up serving as another noob trap that will give new players an unpleasant time and encourage them to make bad decisions, and I'm not sure why you'd want to give them a hard time. Occult Adventures iconics are next-level incompetent, as the character sheets are incorrect and the numbers don't add up.
• Combat maneuver system requires heavy cheesing for combat maneuvers to stay viable at high levels. Feels like they didn't playtest it at all. Also, paizo writers often seem to be confused on what bonuses are and aren't added to combat maneuver rolls, resulting in loads of content that applies bonuses to combat maneuver checks in redundant, non-stacking ways which are worthless as a consequence (Brawling weapon property, Repositioning weapon property, etc.).
• Feat chains absurdity. For Eldritch Heritage and Two-Weapon Fighting the investment of a feat chain makes some sense. But for things like combat maneuvers, whip mastery, and many style feat chains, feat taxes frequently make the entire set not worth taking.
• On that note, dividing 3.5 maneuver feats into two feats for PF. Martials really did not need this kind of nerf.
• PF has aggressively resisted ways to permit mundane melee builds to collect a full attack and move. Most of the ones that do exist require level 11 or higher, when even mediocre groups tend to have spellcasters severely overshadow martials.
• Quick Draw nerf fucks over most mundanes. Being unable to toss multiple tanglefoot bags or move and draw a scroll to UMD as a Rogue without having a Prehensile Tail makes it severely more difficult for martials to contribute in combat in ways that don't consist of the usual "I just attack for damage" routine and was never a serious balance concern.
• Tumbling nerf makes it a useless sack of shit unless you cheese your Acrobatics skill modifier. Spellcasters, however, still get class features and spells for easy AoO-free movement. It was really aimed at ruining the Rogue mostly.
• Power Attack, Piranha Strike, and Deadly Aim, due to auto-scaling in PF, are often worse than not using them at all at high enough levels. At level 12, an automatic -4 penalty to attacks can cause you to miss more damage than you would normally inflict, especially for Two-Weapon Fighting builds, unless you are buffing your attack bonus very high. This means that that must-have feat you got at low levels can become useless at high levels.
• Refusing to port Tome of Battle style martials in favor of the reimplementing the vastly worse-designed 3.5 core martial classes. It seems Paizo deemed the ToB classes overpowered, but any competent min-maxer can tell you that you can develop an excessively powerful martial much more easily with the right investment of the Fighter's massive bucket of feats than the Warblade's basket of options that just made him more all-around useful and interesting to play.
• Handing UMD to almost all spellcasters. PF doesn't seem to understand that spellcasters don't need UMD to use their magic items, that UMD exists for Thieves to abuse magic items they shouldn't qualify to use, or just how abusable UMD is. The only saving grace to this is that the average PF player is unaware of how to properly take advantage of UMD, although it is helped by the fact that while the PF UMD rules text is the exact same as 3.5, it is missing the clarifying examples of 3.5's Player's Handbook (aka PHB) because Paizo was cutting space as much as possible (and 3.5's examples used some Wizards of the Coast characters, probably creating an IP problem). I've seen PF self-professed rules experts claim that UMD does not let you use items that require the activation of class features (which is in stark contradiction to 3.5's examples of how UMD works, and PF uses the exact same rules text, without any addendum of its own) and that UMD does not allow you to circumvent alignment-based penalties from using items (again, in stark contradiction to 3.5's examples) and only lets you activate items with an alignment requirement.
  
• At-will cantrips leading to retarded shit like always walking around with Detect Magic active, enterprising players using Create Water spam to continuously perform Decanter of Endless Water stunts at level 5 and later, and so on.
• Lack of cross-rank skill penalties makes it excessively easy for a Wizard to out-Rogue the Rogue as a skill monkey using his superior int modifier. It also has the consequence of making it trivially easy for Wizards to have their familiars borrow their UMD skill ranks in order to break action economy by letting them cast wands and scrolls.
• Making it excessively easy to turn all charisma-based skills into int-based skills, cementing charisma as a garbage stat no one should ever use unless they are playing a cha-based class or abusing Planar Binding. Stop making it trivially easy for Wizards to be the party face and UMD abusers on top of everything else.
• Skill consolidation resulting in must-have super skills like Perception while neglecting basic things like merging Knowledge (Arcane) and spellcraft.
• Concentration skill removal making it too easy to develop a high Concentrate modifier as well as freeing up extra skill ranks for spellcasters.
• Fly skill is an unnecessary mechanic and new skill tax for everyone, not just spellcasters.
• Too many buffs to the Wizard's optimization floor. Moving from d4 hitdie to d6+1 (favored class bonus), gaining school powers (some of which are quite powerful), and being able to cast spells from opposition schools are some severely unnecessary buffs to a class that was already known for being extremely powerful. Moving wizards from "fragile but powerful" to "survivable and even more powerful" is retarded.
• Removing Save or Die on the one hand only to go crazy with Save or Lose mechanics on the other.
• Absurdly powerful metamagics like Dazing Spell, Authoritative Spell, Familiar Spell, and Persistent Spell.
• PF Bard's Versatile Performance ability makes a disaster out of planning skill rank progression. They never fixed this. So for sanity's sake, you're usually better off houseruling that you retrain all skill ranks you had in the relevant skills when you get a versatile performance, but somehow they never, ever bothered to write a simple errata to fix this shit so it wouldn't take a houserule.
  
• PF Bard's new rounds/day mechanic ruins Inspire Competence and Fascinate bardic performances. They never fixed this one either. It also promotes Inspire Greatness cycling, where the Bard ends and re-initiates an Inspire Greatness performance every single round (instead of just maintaining it normally) in order to give the party fresh temporary hit dice every single round.
• PF Barbarian's new rounds/day mechanic ruins most of their new skill-boosting rage powers while helping promote ridiculous rage-cycling stunts where you keep ending and re-activating rage in order to take advantage of powers that can only be used once per rage.
• Uses/day and rounds/day mechanics promotes rocket tag playstyles to prevent resource exhaustion. The 3.5 Barbarian and Bard would have no problem with going for a 10 round long combat. The PF equivalents will want to kill everything in 4, ideally 1, because fuck running out of performance/rage rounds. There's a lot of low-key power creep in the optimization floor of PF like this.
• PF Monk's Flurry of Blows does not let you stack Two-Weapon Fighting, even the Unchained variety (which is clearly giving its bonus attacks modeled after how the 3.5 Monk did it), unlike 3.5's Monk. Who on earth thought Monks were overpowered and needed this nerf?
• PF Rogues cannot reliably sneak attack enemies without optimization now that Tumbling and most methods of getting enemies flat-footed (including Ring of Blinking) are deliberately nerfed.
• In fact, there is hardly a reason to play a Rogue at all, now that skill monkey is no longer an in-demand role, Quick Draw got nerfed, and sneak attack is an unreliable mechanic. Just get some other class with an archetype that grants trapfinding.
• Going out of your way to destroy 3.5 flask rogues only to create PF Alchemists that use Fast Bomb discovery to be a flask rogue on steroids with all kinds of ridiculous perks. What is even the point of this? I guess the problem wasn't what you do but that you weren't a spellcaster when you were doing it?
  
• Oracle class is frankly misnamed. It is not oriented towards divination.
• Making archetypes that allow one class to steal another class's trick in a way that makes you wonder why someone would even bother to play that other class anymore (Nature Fang Druid >>>>>>> Hunter, Ranger, & Slayer, Sacred Huntmaster Inquisitor > Hunter, Evangelist Cleric >>> Bard, Sacred Fist Warpriest >> Monk, Blood Arcanist >> Sorcerer, Daring Champion Cavalier > Swashbuckler, Gun Chemist Alchemist >>> Gunslinger, Vivisectionist Alchemist >>> Rogue, Primalist Bloodrager >> Barbarian, etc.)
• Creating classes whose sole purpose, it seems, is to feel like a severely handicapped version of a better class (Warpriest < Cleric, Hunter < Druid, Shifter < Druid, etc.)
• Classes and archetypes that give armor proficiency for medium and heavy armors at later levels. This isn't particularly sane. Heavy armors aren't really upgrades on medium or light armors. They're just more expensive armors that enable an alternate stat distribution delivering the same AC (but not the same reflex, initiative, stealth, etc.). Light armors are for high dex builds. Heavy armors are for low dex builds. So there is no benefit to be had from switching armor types if you do the sane thing and build high dex with your light armor. Mechanics like this basically read "don't bother building for heavy armors unless you start at a high enough level to have the proficiency from the start."
• Summoner class. Someone made basically a full caster, gave it enough spell level discounts to jam it into a 6th level spell progression, then handed it 3/4 BAB, a better hit die, and weapon and armor proficiency while being tailor-made to do exactly the kind of shit that made Druids so infamous (spam summons and abuse your companion). Unchained variety nerfs it some, but even then it's still a damn strong spellcaster with mystifying features like 3/4 BAB and weapon and armor proficiencies. Whoever designed the Summoner does not understand class design.
• Hunter class. Another mess of bad and lazy class design. It services a ludicrously redundant niche (much like the Warpriest), cobbles together the Ranger and Druid lists (with the side-effect that the Hunter can take advantage of certain Ranger spells at levels before they were intended to be available) instead of having a proper list of its own, is inexplicably a spontaneous caster despite using the spell lists of prepared spellcasters that favor situational spells (and does not get an extra spells known favored class bonus either), appears to be intended to be played as a martial class (as a 3/4 BAB class without meaningful class feature support to bolster its martial prowess), and has an absurd throw-in that the Hunter's animal companion can use Skirmisher Ranger tricks with utter disregard to how the Skirmisher Ranger's tricks are not meant to be used by animal companions. Its prized Animal Focus ability also has an unnecessarily low amount of uses at the early levels unless you spend a feat tax on Expanded Animal Focus (even though the Hunter already needs his feats for his martial build) and does too little for you unless you spend another feat on Planar Focus (which will generally stop being useful once you run into enemies with fire resistance unless you have an Evocation (Admixture) specialized Wizard in the party) so his prized Animal Focus ability isn't worth much except to save you the cost of stat belts on your animal companion unless you use the Snake focus to abuse AoOs with teamwork feats or you pursue an improvised weapon build (unless you have a Bard in the party).
• Psychic spellcasting. Creating a mechanic whereby an enemy rolling Intimidate on your character renders you unable to cast was a retarded idea. The need to spend move actions in order to avoid +10 to concentration DCs also interacts very poorly with full action, swift action, and immediate action spells and quickly becomes crippling if there is any form of environmental hazard (like strong winds) or the like that induces constant concentration checks.
• Mindscapes. We can begin with psychic duels. You know how grappling rules are the source of many jokes about tabletop systems for being an unnecessarily convoluted mess that can leave the rest of your party twiddling their thumbs while you work out what you're doing because you're now waging combat by completely different rules? It's that kind of mess. And the typical actual use of a psychic duel is to just render an enemy unable to do anything in the real world while the rest of your party just mobs him because the two of you are locked in your duel, but if you know what you are doing you can probably win any psychic duel on your own, since you are naturally advantaged in the matchup if your opponent isn't a psychic. Even if you aren't mobbing him, GMs don't really like it when you psychic duel the bad guy and render his entire build irrelevant. Then there's Create Mindscape. It's Instigate Psychic Duel's uglier cousin. At least the enemy can use his full build now, but you dictate the battlefield and the disbelief save doesn't even stop your victim from entering the mindscape. It just stops him from realizing he is in one. You could just create a maze he has to wind his way around while everyone kills his body in real life, or you could try to kill him with your rigged battlefield. Basically a no save lose condition! Given what an utter mess mindscapes are, Paizo couldn't even be bothered to attempt some kind of FAQ "clarification" on any of it and politely ignored the issue.
• Alchemical spellcasting. The presence of what is essentially a spellcaster who has zero interaction with any of the usual spellcaster feats (including item creation feats), items, prestige classes, and other mechanics is extremely awkward. At the same time Alchemists are in a good spot to abuse action economy through various potion delivery methods, like having a tumor familiar use poisoner's gloves to slap him some buffs or taking the Accelerated Drinker combat trait. Worth noting that there is an Investigator archetype (Antiquarian) that casts all alchemical spells as arcane spells.
• Poor prestige class support for anything other than full casters.
• Broken (ie. horribly overpowered) prestige classes.
• Broken (ie. horribly overpowered) class features and archetypes.
• Extreme amounts of spell list poaching. I don't mind getting access to another class's list if you have to make a real investment or you have some kind of disadvantage to pay for it, but PF makes it entirely too easy and comes up with stupid shit like the Shaman class which can steal a Wizard's spell list and help himself to all kinds of spells from the Cleric's spell list on top of his own spell list, and he can even get still more spells through his wandering hexes, without performing any optimization tricks, just out of the box. Worse still, spell list poaching methods can be used to obtain early spell access by having a Wizard, say, use Samsaran Mystic Past Life to help himself to Summoner spells he already has, just for extreme spell level discounts (who doesn't like getting to cast 9th level spells at level 11 by taking them from a 6th level caster's list).
• Exotic weapons that aren't meaningfully more powerful or useful than martial weapons because apparently exotic means "foreign" rather than "weapons worth paying an entire feat to use" to some designers.
• Firearm misfiring rules were a stupid idea.
• Firearms resolving as ranged touch attacks.
• The vast majority of Tech content was a bad idea, really.
• Tons of trap options in PF. Stop printing content that no sane player should use unless he wants to severely handicap himself. Content like that only serves the purpose of giving noobs a bad time, and I'm not sure why you'd want to do that.
• Printing non-working content that has blatantly not been playtested or even pondered.
• Hosting playtests then blithely ignoring all feedback and printing content with inconsistent language (ex. Spiritualist description explicitly says his phantom can wear armor, but his phantom description explicitly says it cannot - this was pointed out in playtest. FYI: Apparently the designer intended no armor.), non-working mechanics, or overpowered features.
• Writing rules that lean (sometimes explicitly!) on GM adjudication to decide when it does or doesn't work a certain way and claiming "it's a feature, not a bug!" that the GM now has to waste time and suffer otherwise unnecessary rules arguments to make something work and that players cannot predict whether something will or won't work, all because the writers at Paizo couldn't be bothered to draft rules that operate in a clear and consistent fashion. It's little surprise then that we end up in...
• "Just use house rules to fix it!" territory. If I had a nickle for every time I heard "PF is a pretty good system if you constantly houserule, adjudicate poorly written rules, fix up the occasional poorly written stat block, and rely on gentleman's agreements to keep it functional" I'd be a wealthy man. The truth is, a good system should avoid requiring this sort of constant labor, player restraint, and need for spot-rulings on the GM's part just to stay functional and fun.
  
• Doling out ridiculous amounts of buffs and options to Summon Monster spells in PF, even in Core. Summon Monster is downright broken in PF. Who on earth thought that Summon Monster needed a buff? I assume this was some kind of revenge for Summon Nature's Ally being better in 3.5 but once again it creates its own balance problems. For instance, the reason why SM gets the same monsters at +1 level compared to SNA in 3.5 is because the addition of the celestial/fiendish template is a significant step up in power, but now SM gets them at the same level as the Druid counterpart and the result is of course that those smiting monsters with DR and resistances tend to pulverize encounters with ludicrous ease. I guess the problem with SNA abuse wasn't the spell's strength but that you weren't a Cleric/Wizard/Summoner while doing it?
  
• Favored class bonuses operating as another penalty to multiclassing and prestige classing. Has the added effect of locking spontaneous caster classes into races with extra spells known bonuses and making spellcaster prestige classes much worse for spontaneous casters (who would lose the extra spells known favored class bonus) than prepared classes. Just give spontaneous casters more spells known out of the box instead of doing this. I think favored class bonuses in general were a mistake, at least in their current incarnation, because they often serve to restrict character build freedom instead of enhancing it.
• Attempting to punish multiclassing when it just hurts martials far more than spellcasters, since spellcasters always want to progress spellcasting and martials generally just want BAB and decent class features. That said, martials can still multiclass very easily, unless they're multiclassing 3/4 BAB classes.
• Mythic rules are broken alright.
• For that matter, many of PF's subsystems were poorly thought out, poorly balanced, and distinctly un-fun to play.
• Reroll mechanics for rolls that are typically rolled by the GM, especially when the roll is conducted in secret, but also when the GM has no reason to inform you of the result of that roll.
• PF failed to address many of the basic imbalance issues. PF Fighters are still by and large horrible one-trick ponies, whereas in 3.5 you could just play a Warblade instead. Even though PF fighters get more feats, 3.5 had better feats to offer Fighters.
• Deity-specific Paladin codes. Some of them (like Shelyn's) are extremely bad for no good reason, and best ignored.
• Many level 20 capstones are ludicrously unbalanced, to the point of impeding the ability to play at 20.
• Changing staves from 50 uses to being 10 uses but rechargeable (at a rate of 1 charge per day and consuming a spell slot equal to the highest level spell in the staff). This has the effect of making staves hot garbage when your campaign is a race against the clock, extra bad for any classes that are not 9th level casters, but rather powerful when your campaign comes with lots of frequent downtime (especially if you make staves of spells with expensive material components, like Limited Wish). In PFS your staves are fully charged at the start of every module, though, making them quite abusable. This idea was incredibly poorly contemplated, and the net result is typically that in PF people avoid staves.
• On that note, Core Rulesbook staff pricing implies that staff creation rules price is for creation cost, not market cost. Advanced Player's Guide assumes it was market cost when pricing all their staves. This inconsistency has been pointed out to paizo, and yet it has never been fixed. What does that mean if you want to buy APG staves or craft your own staff? Problems like this abound due to the very poor proofreading paizo does.

There's more. PF is basically a mess of bad design by hacks with little system mastery, a lot of ego, and just enough skill to continue the 3.5 trend of mediocrity. Much of its success can be accredited not to the talent of the PF team but inheriting the 3.5 playerbase and market dominance when WotC insensibly tried to push 4E down everyone's throats. If you ask how well it did what it set out to do, then it's easy to answer that PF was a severe failure at solving the balance issues 3.5 had. It billed itself as a "fixed" 3.5 which it certainly wasn't. In fact on multiple points it introduced new problems that 3.5 did not have or repeated mistakes that 3.5 developed some form of solution for. PF's design is also an overwhelming case of "martial classes can't have nice things" while continually cranking out fresh stupidities for spellcasters.

[zook1shoe]

I like that you can crit constructs and undead, which didn't make sense not doing in 3.x. just lop off a leg.

Gun Chemist was another crazy class mixture.
WTF were they smoking when they made the good Pact Wizard or Master Summoner archetypes?

[Samwise]

There's more. PF is basically a mess of bad design by hacks with little system mastery, a lot of ego, and just enough skill to continue the 3.5 trend of mediocrity. Much of its success can be accredited not to the talent of the PF team but inheriting the 3.5 playerbase and market dominance when WotC insensibly tried to push 4E down everyone's throats. If you ask how well it did what it set out to do, then it's easy to answer that PF was a severe failure at solving the balance issues 3.5 had. It billed itself as a "fixed" 3.5 which it certainly wasn't. In fact on multiple points it introduced problems that 3.5 did not have or repeated mistakes that 3.5 developed some form of solution for. PF's design is also an overwhelming case of "martial classes can't have nice things" while continually cranking out fresh stupidities for spellcasters.

So basically:
All the same problems of WotC with 3.5 by the people who made those mistakes at WotC then got fired so WotC could bring on replacements with the exact same problems to make the exact same mistakes with a new system.

I would just add the Paizo people also had severe Appendix N pretensions they were not entitled to, plus a severe bloodlust and felt that killing one PC per adventure was an unwritten minimum requirement, which nearly derailed their organized play program.

[Keldar]

Ah, c'mon guys.  At least they finally lifted 339's ancient solution for the stupidity of polymorphing.

[zook1shoe]

yeah, i feel like polymorphing was one of the least balanced aspects of 3.x.

[TC X0 Lt 0X]

Yeah they definitely did good to change Polymorphing.
Actually Synthesist Summoner not following those new standards is one of the reasons it is so potentent that a lot of people ban it outright =P

[Keldar]

Yarp.