Yora's page

I really do love the whole idea behind the license and how it's reaching out to bring lots of medium and small content creators together.

But the more often I see it, the more I am bothered by naming it the "ORC" license.

Whatever anyone's personal views are on orcs being harmless fun or offensive and toxic, it's been the most controversial and divisive topic in RPGs and fantasy in recent memory.

Yes, I get it. It's a bit of a pun. It's cute.

But surely I can't be the only one who is feeling really uncomfortable using ORC in the branding of material I create and want to release? I'm not even feeling super strongly about the issue and don't feel bothered by people wanting to use orcs in their own material.
But forcing me to decide branding my material as ORC license or not releasing it at all really is a situation I don't want to be in. And surely there are many more people who feel the same or even more strongly.

If the goal is to create something that brings people together in a common creative space, then I don't think a cute pun is worth the alienation it brings because of it's controversial and problematic name.

Under any other name, I would totally be on board with it. But like this, it might make me scrap my plans to release the material I created for my favorite game system.

I always use whitelists rather than blacklist. It would be too troublesome to ban pretty much every source there is.

Players can select from the races that are appropriate to the game we play, select from the classes that exist in the world (4 CRB classes, two custom), the weapons and armor available in the world, and chose from all the skills and feats in the CRB.

That's much more than anyone would ever need.

I am mostly waiting to see what the classes are that have not been announced in the original announcement post. (I've seen mention of "Investigator", which leaves three more.)
Shaman might be interesting, since for my homebrew setting, I was planning to use oracles with psionic spellcasting in the role of shamans. Maybe whatever paizo came up with for the shaman using psionic spellcasting does an even better job at that.
And if the hunter doesn't use spells, I might use it as a replacement for the ranger.

But I also wonder what else the playtest will include, since the final book is targeted at 250 pages. It will probably be a lot more spells and feats, and magic items, and archetypes, and some other things I never care for in a rulebook, but maybe there's something to suprise me.

It's only 3 in the night. You probably have to wait at least 6 to 8 more hours.

So they changed it from how it worked in 3.5e and now realized it's a bad change?

If constitution drops from 10 to 9, he loses 10 hp because his constitution modifier changes from +0 to -1.

-1 times 10 levels means losing 10 hp.

I like some of the aspects of those, but the modern image of "the middle ages" is already a completely inacurate fantasy version pretty much entirely divorced from the reality.

Norse-Asian Bronze Age E10 with huge unexplored forests dotted by small tribal villages of elves, lizardfolk, and gnomes and some more recent settlements of humans. With a big focus on nature spirits and ancient ruins left behind by fey races, as well as naga ruling powerful domains in the jungles in the south and ambitious spellcasters working with demonic spirits from the Void to gain access to their unique magical powers. PCs are usually part of the elite of one of the numerous clans rather than wandering mercenaries, and their tasks are the protection of their clans from monsters or bandits comming from the wilderness, and to root out any warlocks or cultists of monsters from the underworld within their midst.

It's comming along just fine and I am already planning to run an actual campaign in it.

There are two types of spellcasting in Pathfinder. Prepared spellcasting and spontaneous spellcasting.

Wizards, clerics, druids, and witches prepare spells. At the beginning of a day, they chose from their spell lists or spellbooks what spells they want to have ready for this day. When they cast the spells, they can not use them again until the next day and they prepare them again.
Sorcerers, bards, and oracles don't prepare spells. They have a limited list of spells they know, but they can cast them without having to chose which spell goes into which slot at the beginning of the day. When a sorcerer knows the spell fireball, he can decide at any point that he wants to use one of his 3rd level spell slots and cast the fireball spell.

If a wizard has the fireball spell in his spellbook, he has to prepare that spell in one of his 3rd level spell slots in the morning. He can not decide later in the day that he wants to cast another fireball and use an empty spell slot for that.

Basically, wizards have to put the spell into the slot in the morning, but sorcerers can put the spell into the slot right at the moment they want to cast it. On the downside, sorcerers have a much smaller list of spells that they know, while wizards can have basically every spell there is in their books.

I'm not a fan of the "full sandbox" experience, as in a game where the players can do whatever they want without the GM planning out what will happen in the campaign.
But the most criticial thing about planning a campaign is understanding that you don't have only the two choices between Adventure Path style railroading (where every scene, their order, and their outcome is pre-determined) and sandbox games (where there is no goal for the players to complete).
As a GM creating your own campaign, you don't have to stay on a single path from the starting point of the adventure to the final defeat of the villain. And it is actually easier to improvise an open-ended adventure than to plan out every single part of a linear module. You only need to know who the villains are, what bases and troops they have, and what plan they have to achive their goal. Then you can let the players chose what base to attack, which door they use to enter, and what enemies they fight and which one they sneak by. After they "completed the dungeon", you just spend a few minutes to think what the main villain will do now that his base is destroyed and one of his lieutenants killed or captured.
If you don't have plannned out what exactly the players will do, there are no problems to let the players try whatever plan they come up with. It's great fun for the players to make plans to outsmart their enemies, and as a result they will care a lot more for the story, which makes it more enjoyable for GMs.

I dunno. Used to be Grendel would have just been a troll with a few barbarian levels. I guess that's just one of the fundamental drawbacks of a level based system. Always have to keep making things ever more extreme to keep the PCs challenged. All starts to get a bit DBZ after awhile though. :/

Grendel would be a great monster for an E6 game at CR 11 or 12.

Do I understand regeneration correctly, and that you can simply get him deep into negative HP to get him unconscious, and then can kill him with a punch to the face?

My favorite monster is probably a medium sized Kodama Kami, refluffed to have the appearance of a Spriggan. All their abilities match perfectly.

Skills by far being the number 1 improvement. Maybe not such a deal when you create 1st level characters, but when you make a lot of NPCs of higher levels or new creatures with Hit Dice, it becomes a huge improvement.
With the PF system, you only need to know that a 9 HD creature can have 9 ranks in any skill and asign the ranks as you like. In the 3.5e system you have to asign all skill ranks for the 1st HD and check that you don't get over any limits, then asign all skill ranks for the 2nd HD and check that you don't get over any limits, and so on.

Pathfinder skill ranks are a massive improvement in that regard.

CMB is also a great thing. While the statistical success chances for a high optimization tactical wargame may not work out so well for some people, for groups who just want to have some simple fun exploring and interacting with NPCs, it's such a big help.

This seems like a regular case of good old rules bloat. Not that this hasn't been going on since the Ultimate books and Advanced Race Guide.

What relevance is Charisma? Animate dead only creates zombies and skeletons, both lose the Charisma score of the original creature.

This states that only the druid can see through obscuring mist, fog cloud and so on. Everybody can see through fog from natural sources.

No, this says that the special ability of druids only works on magical fog but not on normal fog. The other abilities work on all types of fog, magical and normal.

Feather Step ignores magical and normal difficult terrain.
Woodland Stride does not relate to difficult terrain at all.

Are you talking of still playing a Pathfinder game but using the adventure structure of those other games you named? Sure, there's no problem with that at all.

I would probably go with the second idea, since it's a lot easier to run. Political intrigue games are fiendishly difficult to prepare and even harder to run.

With alignment, I would suggest just ditching it completely. A simple way to do that is to make any magic that affects alignment only work on creatures with the good, evil, chaos, and law subtypes. Everything that isn't an outsider with an alignment subtype is effectively Neutral for purpose of magical effects. That way you could even keep Paladins.

Yeah, I would say advanced awakened toad with ML 20 dominate/mind control at will. It could affect seven humanoids with every casting. Maybe also mind seed 3/day.

That's something that people easily forget. When you know the campaign won't be so long that you reach 17th level, a spellcaster does not have to increase the main ability score to 19 by 16th level. Starting with a 14 can be enough, and if the campaign is going to be shorter, even a 13 works just fine.

Nonlinear exploration and survivial games are all about making descisions. For a descision to have any meaning, the players need to know what things their options would likely lead to. Chosing between A, B, and C when you have no way to determine what the difference between those option is, is not really a choice, just a random pick.

For my own campaign, I created this system using the Hex-Exploration rules from Ultimate Campaign:
The party can chose to travel on highways, on smaller tracks, or cross country. Highways and tracks may not be available everywhere.
On a highway, the PCs will cover the distance in the fastest way, but there is a higher chance to have a random encounter. When going cross country, the chance for a random encounter is lowest, but they will also take longer to reach their destination. The chance for an encounters on highways is 40%, on tracks 20%, and cross country 10% per time unit in which you roll for random encounters. (Taken the movement rates below, this comes out as 40x3=120, 20x4=80, 10x6=60. You'll have twice the chance for encounters when covering a distance by highway than cross-country.)

Characters movement speed is given in Movement Points per day (8 hours of marching): 15 ft. = 3 points; 20 ft. = 4 points; 30 ft. = 6 points; 40 ft. 8 points; or simply one point per 5 ft. of movement speed.
Crossing a hex takes the following number of Movement Points.

Terrain - MP
Highway - 3
Trail (forest, marsh, plains) - 3
Highway (mountains) - 4
Trail (jungle, hills, mountains) - 4
Trackless (plains) - 4
Trackless - 6
Trackless (jungle) - 12

You make a number of different encounter tables, one for each type of common environment in the campaign. For example: Plains, forest, marsh, jungle, hills, mountains, arctic, and ocean.

The items on the encounter tables are not just creatures. I think a good mix is 32% monsters, 24% natural features, 16% humanoids, 8% artificial constructions, and 20% "special".
"Monsters" are just regular animals and other beasts common to the environment.
"Natural Features" are rivers, chasm, cliff faces, or a wildfire, sandstorm, and other hazards. Some must be endured, others the party might go around at the cost of additional travel time.
"Humanoids" are bandits, soldiers, goblins, orcs, ogres, and so on. If they are hostile or not is left to the GM.
"Artificial Constructions" are mostly small ruins, but might also be isolated farms, guardposts, and so on.
"Special" is left open for a secondary encounter list that is specific to the current campaign. If the characters are traveling through the Spider Forest, it would be additional spider encounters. If the characters are currently in a war it would be encounters with enemy soldiers, allied patrols, or refugees. Even when having random encounters, the players should not feel that this travel section does not have something to do with the story of the campaign.

Also remember encounter distances. Unless it's a group of humanoid lying in ambush, they don't expect to meet the PCs either.

Terrain - Encounter Distance
Forest - 2d8 × 10 feet
Hills - 2d10 × 10 feet
Jungle - 2d6 × 10 feet
Marsh - 6d6 × 10 feet
Mountains - 4d10 × 10 feet
Plains - 6d6 × 40 feet
Swamp - 2d8 × 10 feet

At the indicated distance, the PCs and the NPC/monster with the best Perception modifier make spot checks. The character with the highest result spots the other group first and can then imform his allies. Then they can chose to hide, run away, or meet the other group. Once the groups come into half the distance indicated by the roll, they automatically spot each other, unless one group is using Stealth.

While it's generally bad form to put the players in situations where their characters will surely die, the encounter tables should cover a wide range of CRs for monsters and humanoids. Hiding when seeing them in the distance or trying to run away should certainly be an option. Imagine having a group of 2nd level characters encounter two wyverns. If they fight, they will almost surely die. So they would probably want to find a cave or at least reach a thick forest where the wyverns can't get at them. But maybe the wyverns aren't particularly hungry and instead circle above the group just out of arrows reach, enjoying the view of seeing them trying to run to a save place in panic.
It has to be encounters, not neccessarily fights.
When the PCs encounter a guard post or a farm, they might ask to stay for the night, sleeping in the barn or buying some food. And maybe during the night, someone tries to steal from their belongings, or the guards have heard of the bounty on the PCs heads and want to trick them into feeling save to capture them later in the night. Some improvisation should always be used. It should never be "there are 3 ogers, fight them" or "there's an abandoned farm, there is nothing of interest to be found inside". The encounter tables should be a help to give the GM an idea quickly from which you instantly improvise something interesting.

Create water and create food and water are indeed problems and I would simply declare that they are not available in the campaign. In a similar way, teleport allows the pary to skip major parts of the journey, so the campaign either has to stay below 9th level (E6, E8) or that spell needs to be unavailable as well.

Aren't creatures always able to overcome their own damage reduction?

My games never reach 8th level anyway. E6 is more a descision about setting design, not about character advancement.

I simply stopped using any alignment and just have players pick some allegiances for their characters.
I have no idea why d20 Modern and Conan d20 are the only games that ever used that system. It's so much better than alignment in every way unless you specifically want PCs and NPCs to be carricatures of black and white morality.

Since I can't find a list of the creatures anywhere, I am almost considering getting this one blind.
But can anyone tell me if there's a good number of creatures suitable for a wilderness or sword & sorcery game? I don't really have a use for clockwork critters, evil clowns, sophisticated devils, and the like.

I kept the gnomes and ditched the halflings. Really not much reason to have both in the same world. (I also kicked the dwarves, too.)

Dapper Panda

Seems like a regular generic fantasy world with no real unusual traits. Nothing wrong with that.
How fun it is depends entirely on what the PCs will actually be doing and who they get to interact with.

I can't really think of any picture of an elf face except the one for the rogue in the core rulebook.

My thoughts are that E6 is actually the best thing that ever happened to D&D/PF and the only thing that makes the game useable for long campaigns. (Though it doesn't matter in campaigns with slow advancement that wouldn't get to 8th level anyway.)

This is something that I see frequently come up and nobody really seems to have a definite answer for this.

Can a plant creature with immunity to polymorph effects be a druid and use wild shape?
Can an undead barbarian with immunity to mind-afecting effects benefit from the morale bonuses from rage?

There might be more, but morale and polymorph seem to be the most common cases. Does anyone have a clear answer to that?

I'm not a fan of the Dungeons & Dragons dragons with all their spells and magic, and stuff, so I came up with these ones instead, which I think work much better as "generic" dragons.
Only a quick and dirty writeup, but I think it should include all the relevant numbers.

Young Dragon CR 7
3,200 XP
Large magical beast
Init +4; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +11
DEFENSE
AC 19, touch 9, flat-footed 19 (+10 natural, -1 size)
hp 82 (12d10+22)
Fort +10, Ref +8, Will +8
DR 5/magic; Resistance acid 5, cold 5, electricity 5, fire 5; SR 17
OFFENSE
Speed 40 ft., fly 80 (poor)
Melee bite +15 (2d6+4/19-20) and 2 claws +10 (1d8+2)
Space 10 ft.; Reach 5 ft.
Special Attacks breath weapon (30-ft. cone, once every 1d4 rounds, 4d10 fire damage, Reflex DC 18 for half)
STATISTICS
Str 18, Dex 10, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 14, Cha 12
Base Atk +12; CMB +17; CMD 27
Feats Flyby Attack, Improved Critical (bite), Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Power Attack, Skill Focus (fly)
Skills Bluff +4, Fly +6, Perception +11, Sense Motive +5, Stealth +5
ECOLOGY
Environment any
Organization solitary
Treasure double

Adult Dragon CR 10
9,600 XP
Huge magical beast
Init +3; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +18
DEFENSE
AC 22, touch 7, flat-footed 22 (-1 Dex, +15 natural, -2 size)
hp 129 (14d10+52)
Fort +13, Ref +8, Will +9
DR 10/magic; Resistance acid 10, cold 10, electricity 10, fire 10; SR 20
OFFENSE
Speed 50 ft., fly 100 (poor)
Melee bite +20 (2d8+8/19-20) and 2 claws +15 (2d6+4)
Space 15 ft.; Reach 10 ft.
Special Attacks breath weapon (40-ft. cone, once every 1d4 rounds, 8d10 fire damage, Reflex DC 21for half)
STATISTICS
Str 26, Dex 8, Con 18, Int 14, Wis 16, Cha 14
Base Atk +14; CMB +24; CMD 33
Feats Cleave, Flyby Attack, Improved Critical (bite), Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Power Attack, Skill Focus (fly)
Skills Bluff +8, Fly +9, Knowledge (arcana) +6, Knowledge (history) +6, Perception +18, Sense Motive +9, Stealth +6
ECOLOGY
Environment any
Organization solitary
Treasure double

Old Dragon CR 13
25,600 XP
Gargantuan magical beast
Init +2; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +25
DEFENSE
AC 24, touch 4, flat-footed 24 (-2 Dex, +20 natural, -4 size)
hp 195 (18d10+102)
Fort +17, Ref +1, Will +12
DR 15/magic; Resistance acid 15, cold 15, electricity 15, fire 15; SR 23
OFFENSE
Speed 60 ft., fly 120 (poor)
Melee bite +26 (4d6+12/19-20) and 2 claws +21 (2d8+6/19-20)
Space 20 ft.; Reach 15 ft.
Special Attacks breath weapon (50-ft. cone, once every 1d4 rounds, 12d10 fire damage, Reflex DC 25 for half)
STATISTICS
Str 34, Dex 6, Con 22, Int 18, Wis 18, Cha 16
Base Atk +18; CMB +34; CMD 42
Feats Cleave, Flyby Attack, Improved Critical (bite), Improved Critical (claw), Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Power Attack, Skill Focus (fly)
Skills Bluff +12, Fly +12, Knowledge (arcana) +13, Knoweldge (history) +13, Perception +25, Sense Motive +13, Stealth +7
ECOLOGY
Environment any
Organization solitary
Treasure double

Do you think these look about right, given their CRs?

I find it really hard to understand why anybody who really finds Vancian casting "crappy"

is even playing Pathfinder, or would bother to promote bolting a non-Vancian system atop/parallel to the Vancian core.

I've ripped out the whole magic system and replaced it with slightly refluffed psionics. Now that's a decent magic system that emulates how magic works in pretty much every fantasy world ever that isn't D&D.

I fail to see, and always did, any kind of need for more kinds of magic that are called "not magic".
From everything I've read about psionics or psychic magic, in the end it's the same thing as a wizard with enchantments and divinations and using a different mechanic to get to the same results.
And now psychic magic is planned to not even use a different mechanic. So why have it in the first place? Why not make all those indian mystics wizards?

Well, you cut off the part where I mentioned "post 2000". ;)

While videogames are not at blame, they are certainly a great part of the cause. I started my first contacts with RPGs with Baldur's Gate, which in comparison gives the players a lot of freedom to how you approach fights and chose where to go in what order. Especially when you look at corridor shoters. Then later there were the Elder Scrolls games, which had even much more freedom to go through the world as you want to.
But in the end, there's still only one main story in which you have to fight the predetermined villains in the predetermined locations in the predetermined order. And then pick that letter from their corpse or the chest behind them that tells you where to go next.

Can you give a couple of examples of good pre-2000 published adventures of the sort you prefer?

I noticed very early on that the greatest charm of pen and paper games is, that you can go off the rails and make up things as you go, as the options you can take don't have to be pre-programmed for months, but can be improvised on the fly.

I think actually, dungeon maps and encounters are the least important part of a adventure. I usually rework dungeons quite significantly and replace pretty much all creatures and treasures with stuff that is appropriate to the setting and the character level.
What I really want out of an adventure is an antagonist with a background and a plan, and some guidance on what he wants, how he plans to do that, and what resources he has available to do it.

It's not the "bloody DM", it's the "bloody adventures".

Pathfinder adventures stay firmly in that very narrow category of adventures in which the PCs have to fight one encounter after another, in the order the writers decited, with the outcomes the writers decited, and get precisely the amount of XP the writers calculated.

In adventures like these, the outcome of the whole campaign, adventure, and even encounters is already predetermined to a very high degree. Sometimes you get the choices of "destroy the artifact or take it for yourself" after the last encounter of the AP, but at that point it doesn't matter anymore since the campaign is over anyway. Pretty much all enemies are expected to fight to the death by default, and only occasionally you get the note that they try to flee when under 20%, after which they usually never make an appearance again. You can either win every single encounter, or you die and the campaign is over.

Players subconsciously expect this.
GMs subconsciously expect this.
And probably most writers implicitly assume this.
Because it's easy to write.

But the result lies in the nature of the subject, which is that any time PCs are confronted with a monster or enemy, they will start a fight to the death and since the GM also doesn't want to have the campaign end with a TPK just like that, everyone knows the PCs will win. Maybe one of them might die, but then he's replaced and the adventure will continue as written.

This is what you sign up for with post 2000 adventures, and this is what you pay for. If you want to play a campaign in which the PCs have to be careful, because not every encounter will be a guaranteed victory and might have long term consequences for the way the campaign turns out, then don't use published adventures of this type. And don't try to copy that style with custom adventures either.
To get players to make plans that are bigger than "how do we get to the other side of this room?" and to consider which fights to pick and when to retreat, the adventure has to be open ended. Instead of plotting out where the PCs go in what order and what monsters they will kill in each place, prepare a villian who has troops and strongholds and then play the villains as an opposing team of NPCs to the party of the PCs. When the PCs kill one valuable minion, destroy a base, or expose a secret, assume the position of the villain after the session, and come up with new plans how you can still achive your goal with the troops and bases you have still left.
In the linear published adventures, all the actions of the villains are already predetermined to happen at certain points of the adventure. Which is possible because the writer already knows what the PCs will be doing at every point of the adventure.
And to repeat this once more: When the outcome is already clear, there is no reason to make plans, be careful, investigate, or try to figure out what's going on on your own.

Derro are weird with that racial insanity thing stapled on to them in 3.5e.

Also a grell is medium size, while a netch is at least huge, maybe even gargantuan. And shots electricity.

Thanks Yora, I will look up dark suns.

This is probably the one to go: http://www.athas.org/products/toa

It even has pictures, and flavor text, and everything.
I think the only important conversion adjustments are calculating CMB and CMD, and reassigning skill ranks.

I think other than being a floating sphere with tentacles, netches don't have anything in common with grells.

For other monsters of Morrowind, I'd try to find monster conversions to 3rd Edition for Dark Sun creatures. The wildlife seems to be quite similar.

If you have 10 HD, you can have 10 Ranks in a skill. That's the only restriction.

I think Golarion is lame kitchen sink setting that doesn't even reach the level of Forgotten Realms.

Spellcasters should never have gotten all their class features, spells are class features enough.

Vancian Spellcasting is bad. All character classes should use spell points like psionics (though I admit that would have wrecked any backward-compatibility).

The beefed up races are stupid. I always use 3.5e races.

That's the fourth page from Darths & Droids:

> Jedi is your character class. You're sort of warriors with arcane abilities-
> Like fighter/mages?
> -fighting for justice.
> Ah, paladins.

But how many encounters do you do before the group rests to recharge spells? That's the interesting data point here.

Here some numbers I calculated:

No Response from Deepmar: 8/29/63/0
The Midnight Mirror: 5/20/75/0
Master of the Fallen Fortress: 0/64/36/0
Jade Regent
Brinewall Legacy: 6/36/58/0
Night of Frozen Shadow: 15/27/57/0
The Hungry Storm: 7/28/65/0
Forest of Spirits: 27/56/27/0
Tide of Honor: 22/43/35/0
The Empty Throne: 2/19/74/5

Now whether or not 30/50/15/5 is really the golden ration is an entirely different question. But so far these adventures show a significantly higher difficulty than that.

By accident I came upon an article that proposed that recent editions of Pathfinder/D&D appear to have a problem with the balance between spellcasters and mundane warriors because there is a common assumption that spellcasters can throw all their good spells at their enemies in three encounters per day. Mundane warriors would have their impact on the enemies at a slow but steady pace, but when you don't give them the time to do it before spells are recharged, they won't make much of a difference at all.
The somewhat counterintuitive reason that is proposed is that adventure modules are actually too hard. They are designed in a way that highly encourages, or maybe even enforces, that spellcaster give everything they have as soon as they can, because otherwise the party will not survive. On the other hand, if encounters are easier, the warriors can merrily chip away, while the spellcasters have their really powerful spells but don't want to waste them on the little critters and keep them for when they run into something really big.

Whether or not that actually is the case is of course debatable. However, I would be really interested to get more evidence either for or against that hypothesis. The article is over two years old and Paizo has released a huge amount of adventures in the meantime.
What I want to ask for is for people to check the adventures they have for the Encounter Levels they include, as well as the assumed average party level for these encounters.
I think the relevant section from the DMG was never included in the SRD and as such isn't in the CRB or Game Mastery Guide either. But supposedly a good balance would be:
30% - EL lower than APL
50% - EL equal to APL
15% - EL equal to APL+1 to APL+4
5% - EL greater than APL+4

Might be interesting to see how that turns out.

In 15 years of playing, I never have heard of anyone ever doing that.

Are characters made using Point Buy or rolling ability scores. Having to stick with ability scores I don't like would be the prime reason to get my character killed on purpose.

I also set new characters always at a level lower than the party average and with less magic gear. After all, new character should be a worse thing than being raised.

Maybe I should just make a new game based on D&D 3rd Edition and just use Skills and CMB from Pathfinder. I'm not a fan of all those crammed in class features anyway.

I see your point. A "small package" that contains only the "essential" classes and feats would indeed be a different undertaking. As of now, this is just an attempt to streamline the underlying structure of the game.
But if possible, I'd like to keep the changes to a degree in which most content from all the books can be used. Which I why I'd prefer to leave class features and specific feats untouched.

Skills have not really been adressed yet, other than Stealth. But if anyone has ideas how to break some of the other skills down to neat packages of just 10 lines or so, always share them here.

I am kind of thinking that it would probably be a good idea to approach this whole thing with only levels 1st to 10th in mind. 10+ is always a difficult isssue with d20 games and things become a lot harder to anticipate and to understand all the possible interactions between abilities.
And to use that very phrase that I always hate to hear myself: If you would want to play a high level game with huge monsters and powerful magic, why not play a different game? In this case, regular Pathfinder.
Could be just my perception, but aren't people who love high level play the same ones who love the complex tactical combat rules anyway?

It's shorter, has less rules to remember, and offers less options in combat. I assumed that that's what most people talk about when proposing a Pathfinder light.

The issue I have with Sneak Attack from flanking is that it's not really a special ability. Just a flat damage bonus a rogue is expected to get on every attack he makes.

However, good point in mentioning modifier-raising bonuses. Christmas-tree level wealth is indeed another thing that wouldn't work in such a game. I think the assumed setting to be "low-magic" when it comes to items would probably be best.

With reach weapons I think they seem rather redundant if you don't have clear definitions when a character is within a 5 foot reach or 10 feet reach that a grid provides. Also, there's no 5-foot step. You'd instead have to keep track of every time someone says "I step back to attack with my spear" or "I step forward to attack the spearman". And I don't see how it would add anything to the game.
But I'd be interested to hear it, if you are thinking of something specific.

With Combat Maneuvers as Standard Actions, they should not provoke an Attack of Opportunity, I think.
That really leaves only spellcasting as the whole reason of their existance. Either to interrupt a spellcaster or to hurt him as he steps back to cast his spell out of reach.

So the real question is, should characters be able to interrupt a spellcaster other than using a readied action to ready a charge? This also adresses the casting time issue.
I often read that in AD&D spellcasters were very vulnerable and easy to interrupt, but if I understand the rules correctly, that system simply wouldn't work without extensively rewriting all spells and changing the entire Initiative system.
Looking around some more, it seems that both Star Wars Saga and Dragon Age don't allow the interruption of spells at all, even though Saga does have Attacks of Opportunity for any actions that leave you unable to defend yourself. But using a Force Power is not considered to be such.

Everyone keeping things casual and not going overboard is one of the key assumptions to make this whole concept work, but I think with spellcasters in Pathfinder, simply letting spellcasters pull of their spells without real chance for failure (barring readied charges) just doesn't seem like a good idea.
Currently, I am rather lost on this aspect. If anyone has a decent idea, I'd really like to hear it.