*gasp* I know, dozens of threads about what the Settings and RUles do not have and what we want them to add in. How about we do the opposite of that, what we don't want added in later additions.
Now you're thinking to yourself, Steven, how could you be such a meanie poopy head and not want more things in this new system, don't you know lack of content will turn people off to the system.
While this may be true to some extent, I just want to avoid bloat. A common problem that Pathfinder had; is that over the years they kept adding new Feats, Items, Classes, Subclasses, Prestiges, Monsters, Weapons and Spells. But never a new skill. (Something to look into maybe) This caused many problems, for many of you power gamers, addition of feats and other accoutrement; and yes I am using that word correctly, look it up; led to either them being discarded as situational at best or a trap at worst or they were way better than anything else previously added and became a staple in pretty much every build.
I prefer this game tries to avoid that as much as possible, since well it gets boring seeing every build use the same feats. Now this cannot be done by making the classes not need them as options, since people will want 100% Maximum in every numerical category they can, so making choices like Iron Will or a Ring of Resistance not mandatory just in turn makes them stronger as everyone starts at an even higher base value. Too much of that and a Level 1 feels like an epic hero even if they are just a nerf herder. (Not inherently bad either, but the system must support that playstyle)
Now being that this is a new system, albeit a tweaking of the previous one, there is not much to use and a lot to add. What I think is important is to outline what we as a community don't think is beneficial to the overall health of the system, so as to avoid such claims such as, Mathfinder or Numbers the Numbers Game.
Now common problems I observed at my tables over the many years of game playing may not be something you have encountered, or it might be something you knew but couldn't put to words or even something you knew and want to bring up, this is important to have this discussion and I believe we are long overdue.
Problem #1: Multi-classing: Now I enjoy the odd dip, because variety is the spice of life and who else is going to smuggle all that precious spice off Arrakis. The occasional taking of one or two classes to add some features and abilities that compliment and add to the playstyle of your INTENDED character, (we all know the What I made/ What the DM saw/ What I played). But my problem lies in the many many builds of Take 2 Levels of Sorcerer, 3 Monk, 10 barbarian and 1 Cleric of Angry Stick. Those exist solely to hit some ridiculous mark that would never be needed out of a single person.
Now this is a complex problem because frankly how do you prevent this from becoming a problem, you have so many classes doing so many things that eventually some things click and bleed into each other too good or too weird. This to me has to be addressed early on so to prevent it from being a terrible decision all the time or almost mandatory the rest. I think this can be addressed only when the game has a small pool of classes to choose from. And should be looked at not about what the other classes can give you, but what the classes are lacking. So if someone wanted to say be a Melee Mechanic but always dips Soldier or Solarion, look at what can we give the Mechanic so they can stay a melee character if they chose to without needing to dip or for a whole lot. Now this does go into another problem of classes stepping on each others toes, but I would rather have a bad dance partner and a great evening then spend a few hours trying to find the zipper on my dates dress because they wore 18 coats and I need a half a dozen manuals to understand why everything works together. So I feel like more options being available to classes would be a better long term solution than isolating classes into a niche role only they can fill.
Problem #2: Feats: I am not saying I do not want more feats, what I am saying is the feats being added must not just be a requirement to do something common well or only for something exotic that requires a dozen levels before it works.
This is noted in many two-weapon builds, usually requiring some f!*+ery to get feats early or meet requirements in a weird way. I am not much of a fan of that, don't really think anyone is. Countless threads about people dropping one or two of the requirements for two-weapon fighting or just dropping some penalties to not make it take forever before you can dual wield knives without stabbing your own eye. This is a pretty simple problem compared to the last one. Not that feats should be selfcontained but that feats should not rely upon one another to be useful. A possible solution is the removal of prerequisite feats. Allow the players the access to do the things they want to do, but curb the power they receive out of them. Which is actually much easier now, with added levels of items. You can put restrictions on what they can be used with less on what type of item can be used and more on what level it can be used at/with. So this removes penalties that annoy players, why should you be worse at something you took a feat to be able to do.
Problem #3: Rituals: This might be a problem I and very few people had, but it did annoy me plenty, a player, not always the same one. Would try to perform some ritual to gain power, example Lichdom. Having a ritual that exists to change fundamentally what the player is, usually causes problems. So a player wants to be a Vampire, well now they have to go find one, but they can't just be bitten otherwise they are a thrall, so now they need to go on a quest to find a magical item and a book and some old guy in a swamp on a mountain to do a ritual to make them a vampire. This tends to grind everything to a halt and either makes the player way overpowered or just was a way to delay them leveling and now are back in line with everyone else.
Now what this really boils down to is, I don't much care for miniquests in the books as a way to get power. I understand there are ways for quick power to be gained, at a cost. But they never have these as something that could be done quickly, it's always written as some long, many year process to achieve the goal and then stated it's not intended for players to do this or be careful because they may become overpowered. Just stop adding those, if the player wants to add in they are a space lich or cyber werewolf don't put in rules for how it should be done, just what they get as a result. Let us decide how much power that constitutes. And let us determine what they have to do to achieve there goal.
To be fair I would prefer they don't add it to begin with, as after a certain point the cost benefit is negligible to the point of why is not everyone at a certain point also a Insert Magical Being Here because it only costs a fraction of their time and resources to do and they just get stat increases out of it.
I have other things I would like to have kept out of future books but I see this post is getting long and will want to see what others think should be forgotten on later releases.