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My group uses the PRD, usually excluding Mythic Adventures and the Technology Guide; the GameMastery Guide is kept on hand solely for the 20-odd pages of optional rules.
We don't use Player's Companions, mostly for our convenience, since the PRD is more than enough to thoroughly flush out just about any world we can think of, and provide plenty of powerful options for any build. Nor do we use Campaign Setting booklets, since we play in homebrew worlds - nothing WRONG with Golarion, we just like to use our own settings is all.
I can understand Companions being pick-and-choose with groups, though. It's especially easy to do that since they're 32-page booklets.
The PRD is just nice because it's all there online - since it's easily accessible in it's entirety, why not make use of it all? It's all pretty balanced (well, nothing's really more broken than a Core-only Wizard), and it's pretty easy as a DM to adapt to the extra classes, races, and feats.
I love the Gamemastery Guide for the NPC gallery it provides. It makes for an excellent complement to the bestiaries.
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I think that "Any rpg that has more than just the core book is too big" is an extreme position, even among those who find PF bloated.
Normally I agree. But let's be honest. As soon as a new book is announced from Paizo.It's assumed that the bloat will go out of control. So far the game seems to be surviving.
If one is going to accuse Pathfinder of becoming too big. Then it means any rpg that is six books or more is too big then imo. I'm a fan of Earthdawn I bought much of 3E. That at least 11-13 book right there. Call of Cthulhu 6E and both OWOD and NWOD have many books. Do I agree that their is much material for PF yes. Then again unless your the DM or a player who wants to access to all of it to make a character all that is needed is the CRB.
Cthulhu has that many Core books? Plenty of adventures and supplements for different eras and settings.
Does 6th Edition really have 6 rule books that you'd actually wind up using together for anything but a time travel game?
The other thing with PF, that isn't so common in some other games, is that there are a lot of very useful feats, items and other things scattered throughout the non-core lines. The various feats and items making Dex to attack/Damage available are a good example. From the original Dervish Dance to the recent Effortless Lace.
I was so delighted when I saw the effortless lace. So often, I'd want to create a dexterous spearwoman or katana-mistress kensai, but be stopped short by the restrictions on Weapon Finesse. It has the same issues that agile weapons do, and in fact can't be used with such, so my character has to wait a while and rely on a trinket for their skills, but it's better than nothing.
And in case you can't tell, I agree with your point. :D
This is exactly how I felt when I heard about Effortless Lace. Then it was banned from PFS before the book was publicly released. :(
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More-vaguely-on-topic... after getting the story about the forced-level-thing from Kain, I can safely say that I would have walked immediately. Call me narrow-minded if you like, but unless there's more to the story that wasn't shared that would have immediately proven to be a game I no longer had interest in. I like my characters, and I like them on my terms.
Two characters drew the Void from a Deck of Many Things: a wizard and a fighter. The Void card transported them to a region of Hell where their souls were tortured for months on end while the rest of the party (and replacement characters) dealt with some lingering matters then sought out an artifact to rescue them. A level or two passed in that time.
When the characters were rescued the GM returned character sheets that were one level higher (I think slightly below the rest of the party, but perhaps equal), but with levels that he felt reflected events that took place in the Void (which were played out via PBP between the two players and the GM).
The fighter, who had always had anger issues, had raged and fought against captivity in the void, and especially over his companions torture. He gained a level of barbarian.
The wizard, who was actually slain there and returned to life, gained a level of sorceress that showed her tapping into a more primal source of magic.
Both also gained a couple other goodies. The fighter (who lost an arm) gained an arm of temporal quick-silver that magically heals his wounds (fast healing 1, can spend actions for more healing from a pool), while the wizard gained the ability to use sorceress slots to power wizard spells.
Oh, and both gained an ability that let them count half of their previous levels towards the abilities of those new classes. E.g. the wizard came back with 1 level of sorceress, but cast spells as a 6th level sorceress, while the barbarian gained barbarian abilities as a 7th level barbarian.
Resulting characters (several levels later) can be found here.
It I was limited to core-only, I might as well just play 5th edition D&D. Without a lot of class choices, I wouldn't be interested in Pathfinder at all.
Just chiming in as a fellow player in Kain's game to concur with Kain and Peter.
Relentless oppression and stockholm syndrome ma...
...I mean, trust and confidence make a big difference in how flexible or inflexible I am likely to be about exercising control over my areas of the game.
I will also add to what has been said - trust and confidence make a similar difference in how often Kain feels the need to exercise his absolute control over his areas of the game as DM. As a player, I've chimed in on worldbuilding stuff often enough. It's not a one way street.
Respecting each person's realm is a good default approach. But if both player and GM are willing to blur the lines some, then there's nothing wrong with that.
Picking up on an earlier point there has to be trust between DM and players
Players need to trust the DM to be fair and impartial in all things game related
And the DM needs to trust the players to be honest about there characters