Cthulhu-Azathoth's page

I have never had not heard of this problem except on these boards. However, the term circles has a history of hierarchy and other RPGs have made good use of the term (Earthdawn, various GURPS Magic supplements), so I don't see that the change would be anything but neutral to positive.

Don't like "circles"? Fine, find any other evocative and fitting word

Just like it wasn't even written. Twice.

Long story short: The reason the term "level" has been used in everything from Character level, to spell level, to dungeon level, to (now) Monster level, is that it is well-known and understood after 40 years of use in RPGs and video games. While it would be no doubt cooler to have "Character Ranks" and "spell circle" or "spell power", people would likely just fall back to using "level" anyway, because that's just humans using language...

Even shorter story: "circles" (or whatever) is crystal clear, cuts a problem, and fits in-game.

I could give deeper suggestions about spells, but there are lots of reasons not to.
One, however, is to change the defining term "spell levels" into "spell circles". Or whatever else, really, but not levels.
There are already levels in the game, and spell levels only ever caused people to lose time specifying between character levels, caster levels, and spell levels.
Using "circles" simplifies everything while also being more evocative and also being a term that can be used in-game, where "I will keep them at bay with a 5th-level spell!" sounds extremely silly in-game.
Don't like "circles"? Fine, find any other evocative and fitting word, but for the sake of all that is good, get rid of spell "levels". That definition has lasted far beyond what it should have, through editions.

Want a new game system, even still tied to Golarion? Fine, but it has to be a NEW system, not a .5 or 2.0.
NEW, significantly different. Possibly not in a bad direction like D&D 4 did at the time, of course.
But no X.Y anything. I don't want to see X.Y stuff ever again till the end of times. Never ever.
Bad idea. Awful customer care.

That said, yes, Pathfinder has long since fallen into the trap of bloat. That's for a great part customers' fault. People always want new classes (when every character concept could already be done with the CRB classes and, at worst, with those nice archetypes), new feats, new spells, new magic items... when 90% of all this stuff will probably never be seen in any game ever, primarily because it's not as good and useful as other options.

So, even if you could fix the system (or build a new one), how can you fix the players? They'll always ask for more, and that "more" will always be roughly 90% crap, 5% okay, and 5% overpowered. Hence, bloat. There's no escaping it, especially if you add marketing laws in the equation.

Maybe it'd take a very courageous approach to try and change the mindset of the average Pathfinder/D&D player, so that future sourcebooks will bring rules to improve the quality of games, not mere added rules to build more characters. Not rules that are going to be just a waste of ink and paper.