Definitely archetypes. Lets you tailor the class to your liking or to fit specific theme, maybe replace some features that you dont like.
The Advanced Players Guide, mainly due to archetypes as many have said, but also because of the base classes introduced in it. Alchemist replaced rogue as my favorite class, and even with all the classes that have debuted since, nothing has dethroned it.
You can uncross them now. It's been revealed that the Unchained Summoner is the original James Jacobs version of the Summoner which doesn't have Build-A-Beast for the Eidolon.Summoners. Designing Eidolons is just too dang fun.
Fingers crossed for Unchained.
Though Mark Seifter's advised that the unchained eidolon is still customizable. Here.
@ OP - I'd have to say archetypes and traits.
Archetypes combined with the core/base classes actually having useful features moved the game well away from 3.X's "get into a PrC ASAP" playstyle.
Traits are nice little bits of character customization that generally aren't that powerful but in of themselves can give a PC a great bit of flavor.
Guided hand. I love the option to use wis to attack with my deity's favored weapon.
Third party content.With virtually all my play being PFS, third party content is not an issue for me.
With literally all my play being at my friend's house, 1st party content is not an issue for me.
For me on the player side the Core Rulebook, is enough of a game to make it feel like Pathfinder. All the other supplements are icing on the cake.
I'm with LazarX on this one. Mostly. I usually play Core Only plus homebrew, but even in these Core Only game, we use Hero Points. Those are a fantastic innovation. They add a lot to the game, and allow for some truly heroic story-telling.
Also, liontaurs. Wait, what? Liontaurs are not in the Core? What a shame. And not in any of the splat books? Neither are wemics? There's not even a wemic avatar to use on this site? I have to use a centaur? Oh well. Anyway, liontaurs are super cool.
For me on the player side the Core Rulebook, is enough of a game to make it feel like Pathfinder. All the other supplements are icing on the cake.
That's fair.
I second the magus and the archetypes for sure. But also the gunslinger and inquisitor would be big misses for me. And eastern weapons, those are needed.
All the extra classes. Seriously, very few of the campaigns that I'm in have that many core classes in them, if at all.
A lot of it is pretty important, I think, but if I had to pick a single thing it would be archetypes. Close second is the extra classes.
The feat that started DEX to Damage (at least I assume it did) Dervish Dance.
Without it, I would guess the other feats would not have followed.
The Ninja, pretty much the class I want to play about 80% of the time. That would pretty much ruin the game for me.
Without them, its not pathfinder, its 3.75.As someone stated above that's what made Pathfinder really start to feel like it's own system rather than D&D 3.75.I find these two comments rather odd, as the overwhelming selling point of Pathfinder is that it's a continuation of 3.5.I'd argue is was a selling point. Definitely is no longer. Sure, compatibility is still there but the game is just its own recognizable beast. It has a large swathe of features all its own.
As has been pointed out, the APG came with a set of new classes. Classes that while not turfing over all the mechanics of 3.5, introduced new ways to play in the system.
For me it being a continuation of 3.5 was important in lots of ways. First and foremost, it was the same style of game. I like that style game. Early on, it was important to be able to use my 3.5 stuff to augment what I had for pf. That is ofcourse less of an issue now, mostly because I like the space that paizo forged with pathfinder even more then I did in 3.5.
And thats sort of the point, starting with the APG, paizo began to forge their own path. It was still the same style game as I wanted, but it was something new also. They showed they werent just going to go through the motions of retreading the 3.x ground we had effectively seen twice before. They did things their own way, and I liked that. For me, the flagship of 'their own way' were the 6 base classes introduced in the APG.
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