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Base classes are more versatile, filling a variety of concepts, making prestige classes or “archetypes” less important. Multiclass options (see “Class Synergy Features” below) are intended to allow multiclassing of casters as well as martial characters, in nearly limitless combinations. Finally, the rules are extremely mechanically “crunchy,” geared towards players who especially enjoy the various tasks associated with creating or “leveling up” a character. If your group just wants to roll up characters and play, then these house rules are not for you; sticking with the core Pathfinder game (or some other system) is recommended. Likewise, if you consider multiclassing to be “cheesy,” you will doubtless intensely dislike these house rules.

Not only in combat (e.g., changing of casting rules), but in terms of narrative power: fighters, rogues, etc. are more versatile, and receive class features enabling them to do more than simply fight and disarm traps. The ranger regains his “schtick” as a tracker, scout, locator, and guide―even across the planes. As long as high-level casters can travel to Heaven at will and stop time, there will never be a total balance, but our hope is that the number of levels of which all classes are playable has been expanded upwards a bit. If you, personally, believe that there is no martial-caster disparity in the core rules, then these house rules are not for you; please delete and/or shred your copy.

As much as possible, obviously good or extremely substandard options are obtained automatically, without needing to decide whether to spend a limited resource (feat, talent, etc.) on a “tax” option or on something interesting but sub-par. That means providing bonus skill ranks (to avoid “skill taxes”) and expanded bundling of skills; selective “beefing up” or “nerfing” of talents and feats, and so on. In addition, many feats scale with skill ranks or base attack bonus, so as to remain useful throughout the character’s career rather than becoming obsolescent at some point.

In a number of cases, a seemingly bizarre rules change has been implemented as a “nod” to previous editions, especially 1e AD&D. Overall, those rules were mechanically a mess, but they did provide a certain type of experience that these rules use as a reference.

Considerable creative power is intentionally shifted from the hands of the “DM” or “GM” to those of the players. Accordingly, the person running the game is now termed a “referee” instead, in order to focus on this shift in role. Custom races, design of personal magic items, expanded leadership options in these rules all very intentionally contribute to player empowerment. If you believe the “GM” should wield absolute authority and exercise sole creative power, stop reading now and delete/burn/shred your copy of these rules. These rules assume that the referee’s job is to design and run encounters, and to impartially facilitate the rules during play. His or her job is not to railroad the adventure, “fix” the rules by fiat, and so on. This implies a correspondingly high level of responsibility required of the players not to intentionally disrupt play or “break the game.”

Uses have been rebalanced so that there are fewer obvious “dump stats” (particularly Charisma).

In many ways, a d20 + modifier task resolution system breaks down very quickly when the disparity of modifiers becomes too great. However, abandoning the core d20 mechanic is beyond the scope of these house rules, so the problem noted above becomes a something of a necessary evil. In order to ameliorate this, some “full stop” options are included in order to nullify part of a numerically overwhelming advantage. For example, at low levels AC can be “jacked up” to the point where a target is essentially impervious to attacks except on a natural 20; however, a number of feats and talents are included that potentially allow an attacker to ignore armor bonuses, insight bonuses, deflection bonuses, etc. This in no way eliminates potential disparities, but it re-introduces an element of risk to investing in any “obviously overpowered” ability or feature.