If you had a voting thread, it would get complicated.
1: How to help fighters be better in combat.
A. They need no help.
B. Give them anime like superpowers, especially at the higher levels.
C. More access to combat magic such as True Strike, shocking grasp, ect.
D. Pop off the damage caps, and crit range caps, but only for fighters.
E. Weaken full casters in melee further. Attempting a coup de grasse automatically dispels sleep is one way. Another is low magic in general.
2: Updating the vancian magic system.
A. Leave it alone.
B. Replace it with Spheres of power(which I have little understanding of)
C. Replace it with spell points.
D. Replace it with incantations and rituals which cause backfire if you miss the DC.
E. Replace it with a fatigue system, because the energy to cast comes from the caster.
F. Add these as special classes, so players and NPCs can choose their best system. (This is my favorite)
3: How to get rid of the big six.
A. No, keep it.
B. Expand the bonus ability scores per level. Replace the items in the item lists.
C. Have both, but bonus ability scores will not stack with items.
D. Let each character choose a bonus to an ability, hit and damage, or AC. Possibly every even level. A plus is no longer required for special qualities to weapons or armor.
E. Have a ritual or spell that destroys the magic item giving the recipient the bonus and freeing up the body slot. Thus a +4 longsword could be destroyed giving the monk +4 magical hit and damage with all unarmed strikes, with one limb. Must be a permanent magic item, not a potion, scroll, or wand.
4: What would you scrap entirely?
A. Nothing.
B. Classes.
C. Levels.
D. Humanoids.
E. CMB and CMD.
F. Changes that make no sense, such as the new version of mirror image. Just put the images in any available spaces, like it used to be.
5: What is needed?
A. Nothing.
B. Psionics rules. Point value system or mutant abilities. Maybe trained such as a psionicist.
C. Epic levels, with 10th, 11th, ect spell levels.
D. Just use mythic classes or prestige classes for epic.
E. A FAQ book.
F. Standardized rules for role playing monsters. For example, a Genie cannot grant their own wishes and a Spinx cannot answer their own riddles.
Another way is rules specific to the game world.
This is "things to change" in the general game.
It would be a good idea to label game world specific content in the rule books. Then again, the core gods are skimpy enough that you can flesh them out for your game world.
Design Manager
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Yep, not in popular fantasy literature, just: Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber, pTerrys Discworld,Lawrence Watt-Evans,Diane Duane,Patricia C. Wrede, Glen Cook, .......
None of which actually resemble PF vancian magic at all. Most Vancian magic models involve higher level or more powerful spells taking up larger amounts of mental space and edging out other magic, so that a 9th level spell equivalent would actually prevent you from using lower level spells. That's actually a key story point in both Discworld and Chronicles of Amber, and it's just the default for Vance's work. Ironically, this kind of casting is better modeled mechanically by point based magic systems than by our current so-called "Vancian" magic.
Basically in Fantasy Literature, if you have someone actually casting a spell there and there, it works by either making them tired, by Vancian or has no real limits at all, it just happens.
"Making them tired" i.e. Depleting their resources, as modeled in a point based magic system where there's generally no limit on what they can cast within their given field of knowledge, but casting enough of it typically leaves then unable to perform even less strenuous spells.
Mana or spellpoints is the most popular in games- but rarely shows up in Fantasy lit. Not never, but it's far more rare than Vancian.
I would disagree, since mana and spellpoints are both mechanical representations of casters having a limited but unassigned pool of magic to draw from fpr creating their various magical effects. In fact, that's probably the most common representation of magical power with Vancian a very distant second.
Running out? Ah come on, it's not running out of spells that's the issue, at high levels you have 2-3 round battles, and only as many as you want before you Tport back.
Some people prefer magic systems where the 15 minute adventuring day isn't as highly encouraged as it is by Vancian mechanics where spell scalabity is fixed and can't be adapted to the encounter on a case by case basis.
Mana casters dont have to spam, they just burn all their SP in 1-2 rounds of super mindblowingly powerful spells, tport back, recharge, wash, rinse, repeat as necessary.
Think you're referring to Vancian magic here...
You're talking to the guy who has seen it all. They had "spell points" in many games and even ( disguised as Psionic Power points) in earlier D&D ed. So easy for them to...
And many of those systems worked very well when people actually understood all the rules for them, though the oldest versions of some (like AD&D adjacent) were admittedly rough, but game design has come a long way. Vancian magic is essentially a legacy sacred cow- it's far from the best option, is horrifically flawed, doesn't actually model the system that inspired it, but it's so baked into what D&D is for some people that it's hard to escape.
Another way is rules specific to the game world.
This is "things to change" in the general game.It would be a good idea to label game world specific content in the rule books. Then again, the core gods are skimpy enough that you can flesh them out for your game world.
Could you elaborate a bit on what you're saying here? Paizo already divides up their core product line (essentially anything that appears on their PRD) from their Golarion-centric companion, campaign, and Inner Sea hardcover entries, so I'm just wondering if you mean aesthetically separating out the feats with some kind of descriptor, retailoring the way they're designed, or something else.
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Design Manager
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None of which actually resemble PF vancian magic at all. Most Vancian magic models involve higher level or more powerful spells taking up larger amounts of mental space and edging out other magic, so that a 9th level spell equivalent would actually prevent you from using lower level spells. That's actually a key story point in both Discworld and Chronicles of Amber, and it's just the default for Vance's work. Ironically, this kind of casting is better modeled mechanically by point based magic systems than by our current so-called "Vancian" magic
Yep, not in popular fantasy literature, just: Roger Zelazny's The Chronicles of Amber, pTerrys Discworld,Lawrence Watt-Evans,Diane Duane,Patricia C. Wrede, Glen Cook, .......It's point-based vancian.
Preparing spells from a limited pool of flexible potential.
Well, that's what actual Vancian magic as modeled in the works of Jack Vance or Roger Zelazny is, yes, but not what we have.
If modern PF "Vancian" casting and its offshoots were actually an accurate model of Jack Vance's works, or really any other Vancian casting seen in literature, the Wizard would look a lot like a hybrid of what we have now and the 3.5 psion. You'd have a pool of points or generic slots, and you would pre-assign those when readying your spells for the day.
Say we went with the slot-based formula instead of a point based one (though they're functionally identical in form and purpose, with the only real difference being the level of granularity and customization desired)- a Wizard capable of casting up to 9th level spells might have a total of (for example) 40 slots available, with 1st level spells taking up a single slot and 9th level spells taking up 17 slots. So, he could decide to memorize two 9th level spells that day, but doing so would mean he only has 6 remaining slots available, or enough for maybe a few 1st level spells and a 2nd level spell, or maybe one 1st level spell and one 3rd level spell. That's how Vancian casting as modeled in pretty much all non-D&D/PF produced literature works (in other words, the only difference between that and point-based psionics is the stipulation that you prepare your spells ahead of time). A sorcerer or other spontaneous caster under a true Vancian set up like that would pretty much be mechanically identical to a psion.
I think that's ultimately what myself and others were getting at- what we have doesn't model anything not directly inspired by (and intended to sell) the source material, and even most authors who write established world fantasy find ways to break away from the weird mechanics of PF-style "Vancian" casting, because they're not really conducive to immersive story-telling. Elminster converts his spells into raw points and repurposes then all the time, Varian Jeggare has a unique and crazy hybrid sorcerer/scrollcaster casting system he uses, etc. So the system we have is essentially a legacy relic continuing under its own weight and inertia rather than a more modern and better designed casting system that actually does a good job of modeling the kind of magic we might see anywhere else, and that's almost certainly why it appears on so many people's lists as an item that they would change in Pathfinder.
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Honestly the magic that I see most often in fantasy literature more closely models how the kineticist works than anything else in this game.
That is, you can do minor things all day (and what counts as "minor" depends on how good you are) without a problem, but if you want/need to push yourself it takes a lot out of you. Just for reasons of efficiency authors are generally more interested in exploring "you have power over x, and can use it creatively in a number of ways" than "you know 46 different spells, most of which are pretty specific."
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Honestly the magic that I see most often in fantasy literature more closely models how the kineticist works than anything else in this game.
That is, you can do minor things all day (and what counts as "minor" depends on how good you are) without a problem, but if you want/need to push yourself it takes a lot out of you. Just for reasons of efficiency authors are generally more interested in exploring "you have power over x, and can use it creatively in a number of ways" than "you know 46 different spells, most of which are pretty specific."
That's one of the reasons we use Spheres of Power for traditional magic in most of my games. It's a hybrid at-will / point-based system where you have certain things that you can pretty much always do based on what spheres you specialize in, and more advanced abilities that you have to spend spell points from a limited pool to accomplish. It also structures magic along more logical and coherent progressions- if you want to learn how to throw a delayed blast fireball, you have to first learn how to blast foes with magic, then how to make that magic manifest as fire, then how to shape it into a explosive circle, then how to set it on a delay. To cast a powerful high end effect, you have to master all the component effects that make it up first, with each step building on the one before. Also, being really good at throwing fire spells around isn't going to just spontaneously allow you to stop time one day like in the core tiered slot system, to do that you actually have to learn all the component pieces involved in mastering time. It's honestly one of the best casting systems I've ever seen, not surprising with the name of a Paizo designer with a catalogue as deep as Owen KC Stephens' listed amongst the developers.
Goth Guru wrote:
Another way is rules specific to the game world.
This is "things to change" in the general game.
It would be a good idea to label game world specific content in the rule books. Then again, the core gods are skimpy enough that you can flesh them out for your game world.
Could you elaborate a bit on what you're saying here? Paizo already divides up their core product line (essentially anything that appears on their PRD) from their Golarion-centric companion, campaign, and Inner Sea hardcover entries, so I'm just wondering if you mean aesthetically separating out the feats with some kind of descriptor, retailoring the way they're designed, or something else.
I was being quite literal. Some of Core is very Golarion specific. All undead being evil, a few gods including Asmodeus, and quasi realistic space. How hard would it be to just label these things in the next printing?
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I was being quite literal. Some of Core is very Golarion specific. All undead being evil, a few gods including Asmodeus, and quasi realistic space. How hard would it be to just label these things in the next printing?
My impression is that they don't necessarily view most of those things as being campaign specific. Deities obviously are campaign related, but you need a default pantheon to hang divine options, and generally in design the onus of defining a new pantheon falls to the creator of the campaign setting, which then "overwrites" the defaults. Undead being universally evil and quasi-realistic space are core design components from their perspective though, not campaign specific elements, because they hinge core design off those assumptions.
I get what you're saying, I just don't think it's something they can or would deliver on since they don't necessarily share the view that those are campaign specific elements.
See the last page or so has turned me off to this thread i'm out. Peace!
AoOs work fine for penalizing movement, but they're really annoying when they penalize doing something fun and interesting, like disarming, bullrushing, grappling, etc.
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I'm not really in favor of dropping AoOs since if you did that, you'd mostly eliminate the reason someone would use a spear or a polearm as a weapon- that you can keep people away from you by hitting them before they get close (this is the actual, real, historical reason people used these weapons.) I'm also not really a fan of "you can just stand 5 feet away from me and shoot your bow".
You might want to hide AoOs behind a feat (like combat reflexes) rather than giving the ability to make them available to everybody by default.
But even 13A, which is as rules light with as speedy-combat as you'll find in something in this family of games, keeps AoOs ("opportunity attacks" in their language). Iterative attacks probably bog games down more than AoOs, since they're harder to avoid with tactics and you probably miss anyway.
^That's why I'd like to make some variant of the Vital Strike chain just be something you can do (instead of a feat chain) when you meet the prerequisites.
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1 Aroden alive
2 Guns and Numerian tech standardized as regular equipment and treasure out the gate.
3 Incorporate Psionics
4 Incorporate Path of War
5 Make non-combat roles and game play standard and viable concepts in the core rulebook, kingdom building, intrigue, etc.
Bonus points stop assuming npcs are incompetent nobodies that never get better in life. Get rid of sucky npc classes and give people a few levels because people learn and get better at stuff.
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So... I really only have a couple of things I wish were different. These aren't the only problems I consider Pathfinder to have, but they are the only ones that I can't really find a homebrew/house rule solution for. (I would love to hear suggestions, if anyone's got one.)
1) Allow low CR monsters to remain viable in combat. Not saying that an adventurer should be likely to die from a bunch of lemures, but they shouldn't be able to virtually ignore them.
2) Viable solo boss encounters without requiring a ridiculous amount of pre-planning (both in and out of the game world). Some villains just should be fought on their own, but doing so means either a short, anti-climactic fight, or always fortifying the villain in ideal conditions and countless wards, which gets rather old.
So... I really only have a couple of things I wish were different. These aren't the only problems I consider Pathfinder to have, but they are the only ones that I can't really find a homebrew/house rule solution for. (I would love to hear suggestions, if anyone's got one.)
1) Allow low CR monsters to remain viable in combat. Not saying that an adventurer should be likely to die from a bunch of lemures, but they shouldn't be able to virtually ignore them.
2) Viable solo boss encounters without requiring a ridiculous amount of pre-planning (both in and out of the game world). Some villains just should be fought on their own, but doing so means either a short, anti-climactic fight, or always fortifying the villain in ideal conditions and countless wards, which gets rather old.
For number 2, angrygm's paragon monsters. Or I think "legendary actions" from 5e. Basically one creature gets to act as if it had multiple initiative results, effectively taking multiple turns in a single round of combat. I've not tried running with it myself, but looksnlike a good subsystem.
As for #1, I suppose you could always have monsters take class levels. Rotrl has harpies with monk levels if I recall.
Multiple initiatives could be mythic and available to PCs and monsters alike. Frankly it hurts my brain that crippled beggars have class levels.
Bounded Accuracy in 5th Edition lets low CR monsters remain a threat for many, many levels.
Basically, 5th Edition reduced the bonus you get from "BAB" from 1-20 to +2 to +6. Also, PC ability scores max at 20, and monsters max at 30. This means a typical PC has a starting attack roll bonus of +4 or +5 and maxes out at +11 at 17th level.
AC is also pretty restricted. Monster ACs are between 8 and 20, usually in the 11 to 15 range. PC ACs usually max out around 20, with magic boosting it by 1 or 2 or so. (No Xmas Tree effect!)
So a CR 1 monster with a +5 to hit hits 30% against a level 20 PC.
But to do something similar in Pathfinder would require re-doing lots and lots of details.
They're different games. Pathfinder really rewards rules mastery and optimizing builds. 5th Edition sacrifices complexity for ease of play.
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For number 2, angrygm's paragon monsters. Or I think "legendary actions" from 5e. Basically one creature gets to act as if it had multiple initiative results, effectively taking multiple turns in a single round of combat. I've not tried running with it myself, but looksnlike a good subsystem.
As for #1, I suppose you could always have monsters take class levels. Rotrl has harpies with monk levels if I recall.
I'll give the paragon monster thing a look, but something about it just... feels wrong. Still, better than nothing.
As for granting class levels, that just takes a previously low CR monster and makes it a high one. I'm talking about, for example, to allow a horde of weak monsters to be a viable encounter.
Bounded Accuracy in 5th Edition lets low CR monsters remain a threat for many, many levels.
Basically, 5th Edition reduced the bonus you get from "BAB" from 1-20 to +2 to +6. Also, PC ability scores max at 20, and monsters max at 30. This means a typical PC has a starting attack roll bonus of +4 or +5 and maxes out at +11 at 17th level.
AC is also pretty restricted. Monster ACs are between 8 and 20, usually in the 11 to 15 range. PC ACs usually max out around 20, with magic boosting it by 1 or 2 or so. (No Xmas Tree effect!)
So a CR 1 monster with a +5 to hit hits 30% against a level 20 PC.
But to do something similar in Pathfinder would require re-doing lots and lots of details.
They're different games. Pathfinder really rewards rules mastery and optimizing builds. 5th Edition sacrifices complexity for ease of play.
Perhaps combined with some armor-as-DR rules, (including a minimum damage clause) that might have some potential... Probably would need a fair bit of tweaking, and perhaps even rewriting a few class features and other common rules, but...
Since things like Spheres of Power, better feats, and more interesting/versatile stances and techniques for Martial types have already been mentioned ...
I want to see HP be a meaningful defense against everything, including magic and other hazards. If an evil wizard attacks a fully rested party and tries to hit them with a group save or die, save or suck, or a dominate or something, a character with high HP should have a much higher chance of resisting than one who has 10 HP left.
A fully rested mid-to-high level fighter, for example, should be really hard to dominate, blind, put to sleep, slow, or whatever for a level appropriate encounter, even if his save isn't so great.
Things like killing, taking a character out of a fight, crippling them, and/or flipping their allegiances should require wearing the character down some first. A caster should need martial allies, summons, or blast spells to knock off a good chunk of enemy HP before he can have a good chance to SoD or SoS them.
I don't know exactly what form this should take, a bonus to saves based on current HP or the ability to negate negative statuses and effects by expending HP would be the two things I would look at as a possible starting point.
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Since things like Spheres of Power, better feats, and more interesting/versatile stances and techniques for Martial types have already been mentioned ...
I want to see HP be a meaningful defense against everything, including magic and other hazards. If an evil wizard attacks a fully rested party and tries to hit them with a group save or die, save or suck, or a dominate or something, a character with high HP should have a much higher chance of resisting than one who has 10 HP left.
A fully rested mid-to-high level fighter, for example, should be really hard to dominate, blind, put to sleep, slow, or whatever for a level appropriate encounter, even if his save isn't so great.
Things like killing, taking a character out of a fight, crippling them, and/or flipping their allegiances should require wearing the character down some first. A caster should need martial allies, summons, or blast spells to knock off a good chunk of enemy HP before he can have a good chance to SoD or SoS them.
I don't know exactly what form this should take, a bonus to saves based on current HP or the ability to negate negative statuses and effects by expending HP would be the two things I would look at as a possible starting point.
How about:
1. Saving with Advantage when at full hit points
2. Saving normally when wounded between 1 hit point and half your hit point maximum
3. Saving with Disadvantage when below half your hit point maximum
EDIT:
Advantage means rolling 2d20s and choosing the highest result.
Disadvantage means rolling 2d20s and using the lowest result.
RE-EDIT:
Maybe a way to spend Hit Dice to "shake it off?" Gaining a re-roll against the negative effect, with a bonus on the roll equal to the number of Hit Dice spent?
I like all the options except the "+1 per 10 hp" idea, because it seems like it would be tedious to bookkeep and manage. Also, I think it might scale ridiculously. A 10th level barbarian might get +10 on saving throws when raging, and a slightly wounded 10th level wizard would have +0. From an encounter design perspective, would a GM place monsters/NPCs that the barbarian auto-succeeds or the wizard auto-fail?
I really like the option to add one of their class HD to a failed roll, especially in a 5th Edition-like campaign where they also have the option of spending Hit Dice to heal hit points.
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Since things like Spheres of Power, better feats, and more interesting/versatile stances and techniques for Martial types have already been mentioned ...
I want to see HP be a meaningful defense against everything, including magic and other hazards. If an evil wizard attacks a fully rested party and tries to hit them with a group save or die, save or suck, or a dominate or something, a character with high HP should have a much higher chance of resisting than one who has 10 HP left.
A fully rested mid-to-high level fighter, for example, should be really hard to dominate, blind, put to sleep, slow, or whatever for a level appropriate encounter, even if his save isn't so great.
Things like killing, taking a character out of a fight, crippling them, and/or flipping their allegiances should require wearing the character down some first. A caster should need martial allies, summons, or blast spells to knock off a good chunk of enemy HP before he can have a good chance to SoD or SoS them.
I don't know exactly what form this should take, a bonus to saves based on current HP or the ability to negate negative statuses and effects by expending HP would be the two things I would look at as a possible starting point.
You'd need to be really careful not to turn HP into a death spiral. Also, this may reinforce the healbot necessity mindset many folks hold. Interesting concept but it has to avoid some big pitfalls.
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I still use pencil and looseleaf for my character sheets (I know! I know! I'm barbaric!!!), so aligning hit point loss with saving throw decreases would be a little tedious, but for folk who use electronic character sheets (that automatically track all those changes), I think it would be a really neat option.
I once played a thing called time trek. If your shields came down you wold lose a system, Phasers, warp, or something. You had to find a base for repairs.
If hit points are shields, then instead of death you could lose use of a limb or conciousness. Monsters and enemies would have this too.
Since things like Spheres of Power, better feats, and more interesting/versatile stances and techniques for Martial types have already been mentioned ...
I want to see HP be a meaningful defense against everything, including magic and other hazards. If an evil wizard attacks a fully rested party and tries to hit them with a group save or die, save or suck, or a dominate or something, a character with high HP should have a much higher chance of resisting than one who has 10 HP left.
A fully rested mid-to-high level fighter, for example, should be really hard to dominate, blind, put to sleep, slow, or whatever for a level appropriate encounter, even if his save isn't so great.
Things like killing, taking a character out of a fight, crippling them, and/or flipping their allegiances should require wearing the character down some first. A caster should need martial allies, summons, or blast spells to knock off a good chunk of enemy HP before he can have a good chance to SoD or SoS them.
I don't know exactly what form this should take, a bonus to saves based on current HP or the ability to negate negative statuses and effects by expending HP would be the two things I would look at as a possible starting point.
How about:
1. Saving with Advantage when at full hit points
2. Saving normally when wounded between 1 hit point and half your hit point maximum
3. Saving with Disadvantage when below half your hit point maximumEDIT:
Advantage means rolling 2d20s and choosing the highest result.
Disadvantage means rolling 2d20s and using the lowest result.RE-EDIT:
Maybe a way to spend Hit Dice to "shake it off?" Gaining a re-roll against the negative effect, with a bonus on the roll equal to the number of Hit Dice spent?
Doing it by percentage of HP doesn't work for me, since the idea is that the 3rd level Character with 42 HP should have a better chance of resisting an effect than the one with 11 HP, just like they have a better chance of resisting the old Axe to the face.
The idea of expending hit dice is something to look at.
Since you mention 5e concepts, I'd say that 5e Sleep is very interesting in this regard.
Roll dice, you get a number of HP in the area that can be effected by sleep. Characters in the area go to sleep, starting with the lowest HP character first until all of the 'damage' you rolled is spent.
In this case our 13 HP martial is more likely to stay awake than the 6 HP wizard.
If stuff like Dominate or Slow or Blindness/Deafness was, "roll X dice, if you get a higher number than the target's current HP then they are blinded/slowed/dominated, that might work for me.
You might also check oug The Alexandrian. He has an article on handling save-or-die spells as well as posting his houserules, which takes a different approach from yours. His approach is more based on ability scores rather than hp (which I prefer, then again, I dislike hp).
Time to flesh out what I posted on 2016-12-16:
1. Decompress spells, especially the higher level ones, so that the awesome stuff is still available, but doesn't increase so steeply in the later levels. So 9/9 casters would become (for instance) 12/12 casters, but the 12th level spells would be equivalent to today's best 9th level spells except for having higher Save DC, and so on. Similarly, 6/9 casters would become 8/12 casters. (This goes with +1 on not feat-taxing martials to death.)
Two things to help flesh this out: First, do a lot more of what D&D 5th Edition does with some spells in which you cast them at higher levels to get additional effects (like the Summon Monster/Summon Nature's Ally series in D&D 3.x/Pathfinder); second, have a moveable capstone level so that as GM you can easily set when you want character progression to top out (or not), and expand this moveable capstone concept to all class (not just spellcasters).
2. Offer side-by-side Vancian and Spell Point casting in a transitional period so that the latter can be balanced properly.
From my limited study of it, some adaptation of Spheres of Power may help considerably with this. Spell Points would also be useful for classes like Kineticist, for which the current Burn mechanic is kludgy (unless you play an archetype that does something even clunkier, you have to make yourself really hefty to be decent at your job, even though you are an Energy Projector in Champions terms).
3. Make spellcasting progression more consistent, so that prestige classes can have a fixed rate of spellcasting progression that doesn't hose slower-advancing casters that get into them. On the other hand, also make it more consistently MAD (like in the Vancian model, start with Arcanist-style casting with highest level of spell you can learn normally depending upon Intelligence, highest number of spells you can prepare at once normally depending upon Wisdom, and spells per day normally depending upon Charisma, and then classic base classes become archetypes of this that may shave off a bit of MADness at the cost of losing flexibility).
This has synergy with #3 below. A possible alternative that also works with #3 below is another idea I have been toying with: EVERYBODY has racial Hit Dice, which for Humanoids corresponds to traditionally NPC classes (which, however, are retooled to give substantial benefits to character creation), and then all base classes become effectively prestige classes that have really low entry requirements so that you can potentially get into them with just 1 level of traditionally NPC class; in the case of spellcasters, they would either add to your existing spellcasting progression or start their own). Normally gameplay would start with the leveling to 1st level of base class done during character creation, but you have the option to start from absolute scratch to reflect the idea of really wet-behind-the-ears characters being thrown into a situation in which they have to become heroic by on-the-job training. The way that this would be relevant to spellcasting is that normally you would start a spellcasting character with Adept (which would have had its spellcasting progression made usable for different speeds of spellcasting progression depending upon which base class you enter), and then enter a spellcasting base class; for Bloodline-type spellcasting classes, you could alternatively start with some other traditionally NPC class if you had spell-like abilities to gain entry (which would be explicitly allowed).
3. Compress partially redundant feats, spells, and archetypes into a much smaller number of things that have various options you can pick. This would also save a lot of space and give a chance to clean up a lot of messy stuff that has accumulated over the years (including a lot of stuff that just doesn't work right, especially with new material, such as Fighter archetypes that sort of have Weapon Training, but different enough so that you can't use it to qualify for Advanced Weapon Training).
For feats, make more of them be like Power Attack and Combat Expertise, which scale automatically as your Base Attack Bonus improves, and for Power Attack and Combat Expertise themselves, make these be no longer feats, but just things that you can choose to do if you meet the prerequisites. For spells, both go through the spell lists to compress partial duplicates into fewer spells, and use what D&D 5th Edition does with some spells in which you cast them at higher levels to get additional effects, as noted above. For archetypes, redesign the classes so that they all have various Class Specializations (like Vigilante Specialization but more widely used) and Class Talents (Barbarian Rage Powers, Oracle Revelations, Rogue Talents, and Shaman/Witch Hexes) that you can choose for customization, thus allowing you to build many of the archetypes just by choosing the right Class Specializations and Class Talents. Also make the way Class Talents work more consistent so that instead of some classes having things like Hexes, Major Hex, and Grand Hexes, you just have level prerequisites on each of the Class Talents (like Oracle Revelations).
5. Make VMC an integral part of the system, but with more flexibility -- when every class and archetype is designed, a set of Class Feats is built into it, that can be taken to get the equivalent of today's Variant Multiclassing, but properly play-tested to get more consistent quality. Also provide the option to VMC into your own class to get more benefits (such as effectively combining archetypes that could not normally be combined).
If the number of archetypes is reduced as noted above, this actually becomes manageable.
I could go on, but the specification was just top 5 . . . .
(Doing my best to cheese in some more things into the top 5.)
From what I've read, adding the Stamina system(*) gets you part way there.
(*)If you had every character have it instead of it being either Fighter-only or purchased with a feat
I approve of reorganization. CMB and CMD need to be clearly defined IN the character creation rules. Give core page numbers on the character sheet at least.
Several issues can be solved by revamping Prestige classes. The Eldritch Knight should require 11th character level instead of already casting spells. If it allowed magic missile and shield to fighters at that level, it would level the MCD.
You might also add an Arcane Forsworn to have spell resistance and abjuration magic only. 11th level or higher and must have no arcane caster class levels. They won't resist non harmful healing or curing spells.
The advantage to this direction would mean the GM could rebalance the game as they see fit. Also, low magic seems to mean low levels most of the time. High level monsters are broken so it makes sense to allow broken classes at high levels.