I've often been frustrated with the system as wordings are needlessly duplicated, reworded yet trying to keep the same meaning, and so on. So, minor inconsistencies over years create massive confusion and lots of simple questions here that often get bogged down in needless debate even after the question is answered. Furthermore, Paizo takes no interest in maintaining a consistent and concise lexicon or even internal logic to reinforce rules. This has left me, and many others as evidenced by posts here, with a huge desire to see things rewritten entirely.
I'm curious about doing this as a community project and releasing it in bits and pieces starting probably with the Summoner class. My thing is, I don't know if anyone would be interested in it. What say ye?
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First, I direct you to this XKCD comic.
Secondly, it sounds like you would have to start with the base system and work your way up, not with the most complicated character class from the second round of characters. If you want to manage wording and system standardization, you first have to gather the base rules together and standardize them. Then you have a single lexicon from which you can build upwards. Starting with a class means you'd have a lexicon for just that class that may not be compatible with other classes.
It's not so complicated as that. There is, actually, a commonality among terms (just not precise ones) and an internal logic. They simply don't rely on it to reinforce rules and go out of their way to be overly verbose a lot of times rather than relying on precedent or reference.
Take, for instance, the summoners eidolon ability. Per the rules of ability notation, that is a natural ability of the class. It is not magical in any way, or, at the very least - and most importantly, it is not a spell effect of any kind. Thus, inherently, dispel magic can't work against it, ever, in any archetype that doesn't change its notation. It doesn't need stated. That's wording space saved for other things. The summoner is a perfect candidate because most of the misunderstandings about it come from an effort from Paizo to be overly verbose trying to be clear. My assertion is they shot themselves in the foot.
Most of the work comes in simply getting rid of cruft and referencing the CRB in appropriate places even within the CRB, itself. Some wordings would change, some formatting done differently to better group related information, but, mostly, it's a scrub job with references where necessary. Things that could be changed in the CRB are things like creating an entry on save progressions (standard being 10+1/2lvl+ability mod;spell saves being 10+SL+mod, etc.), spell casting advancement types (prepared casters gain 2 new spells at each level...), etc., and then simply referring back to them. However, I see the creation of new content being very minimal. Things that had to be unique and be new things would then be reference points for later material and so on.
At the end of it all, it's really just an effort to standardize the patterns across source material. Paizo has clearly stated they have no interest, currently, despite how utterly useful it'd be. It's nothing near creating a new standard. It's embracing the standards that are already there.
Nesting the rules and descriptions leads to its own set of issues. Take for example the druid wild shape. A player starts by reading the wild shape rules, which say they work like Beast Shape except for certain things. Beast Shape is a Transmutation [Polymorph] spell, which has its own definition. Then the creature stat block itself has notations and abilities to consider (which may further reference universal rules like monster type inherited qualities, templates, and special abilities).
So all these sections (wild shape class ability up to the druid's level, the progressively more specific versions of beast shape up to the one valid for the druid's wild shape, the transmutation school of magic, and the polymorph subschool, monster stat block, monster abilities) are required to be mashed together to determine what the druid can become and, once a form is chosen, which aspects and qualities are gained or lost in the shape changing.
There isn't much duplicated wording here. In a way, this is good because it saves space. However, it also means you have to read a half dozen different parts of the rules and, more importantly, be aware of the fact that you have to read these different parts to get the complete picture.
If there was simply a nice full page or two complete description, taking all relevant rules and duplicating them in the Wild Shape Class Ability section, it would be far easier for players to understand limitations. It would also be great to have a single reference point for all this information. Right now we have a "works just like this except for these things" nested rules with links to other pages and progressively more generalized information. Can be a headache.
With all that said, give it a shot. Post the result on the boards. If it is something people want, they'll ask for more. But without actual proof of concept, it is hard to get a lot of "yes, I would like that" answers.
Polymorphing in general already requires a lot of page turning. That's not something new that'd be introduced. Having yet another ability that utilizes those rules is yet another page to be referenced. Not only is it a lot of page turning, it's multiple paragraphs that you might need to mentally load before a single spell, from one spell to another, and so on. That's a problem with the system itself, or, at least, it's a problem with that subschool of magic. Arguments can be made it's necessary. Though, I would be interested in seeing what it would be like that to follow other rules and be more a "you are monster x except for x,y,z" rather than the current "you get this, but not this."
However, that's fair about actual proofs of concept. I'll go ahead and do up the summoner class.
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