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The "simplified" version of DnD exists in the form of 5E. I think it would be an incredibly bad idea for Paizo to move in that direction, since that niche is already occupied, and I would argue that many folks complaining about that complexity have already invested in 5E. As for things getting spread out...that is basically destined to happen with a complex system you support with expansions. As others have said..no one forces you to wade through every single book to construct a character
Sort of. I don't like the lack of advancement 5e provides. There's little room for character customization after level 3, and numerically characters stay pretty even throughout the 20 levels. I prefer the modularity of Pathfinder's skill system. I prefer the greater access to feats that Pathfinder provides. I prefer the greater change in character power over their 20 level career.
So, in the end, what are the main differences between Pathfinder and 5e other than "Pathfinder has more words printed." Feat advancement, skill point selection on level up for greater skill customization, generally more class features it seems, and more customization through magic items (5e seems lower fantasy than Pathfinder with its relatively low powered magic). And greater focus on stacking numbers throughout all those mechanics. I didn't look much into 5e's multiclassing so I don't know how that compares. But is there anything I missed? And within that list, is there anything wrong with trimming the fat, so to speak? Is Pathfinder better for having redundant feats because it offers more option?
Edit:
stuff about a cleric
Allowing same typed bonuses to stack would also solve this problem. I'm not suggesting the "typed bonuses don't stack" behavior is difficult to manage, but it's still an extra layer to manage that is unnecessary. (also I don't mind dependency on magic items. Pathfinder is a relatively high fantasy game by default. I think it's fair to assume magic items have a relatively large impact. Also I don't see how typed bonuses not stacking has to deal with teamwork directly, other than having players mix & match their spells & items to ensure they all play nice).
Wait a minute. That argument literally breaks down to "I want there to be fewer choices so I don't have to know what I'm missing."
....yeah that's actually fair and bad on my part. Rather, I'd like the system to be easier to navigate so finding what I'm looking for is less of a chore. But that's going to be difficult in any system with such an ocean of things to choose from. So I suppose that's really what I'd look for in a 2nd edition, which is what I mentioned in the first half of this post.
(but, to your last point, again, depth vs complexity. Don't confuse the two)
Edit2:
Actually one final related thing. This concept is important for gaining new players. A complex and unapproachable system is intimidating to many, whereas a simpler or more organized system is not. This is also speculation, but I don't expect a superficially simple system to be a turnoff to those looking for more depth, so long as the knobs presented are able to provide that (think chess. Easy to understand piece movement, complex game).
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Disparity, you mean. But hey, it IS a thing. That thing is: a feature, not a bug. I can only speak for myself, and clearly a lot of people disagree, but that disparity is a selling point for me. Having classes who can truly influence the world (via spells) is a whole "advanced" game, for when a player masters "flank, Power Attack, full attack". Normalizing means "removing powerful spells", which means vanilafying the game. My Pathfinder goes to 11. I'll vote no for making it only go to 10.
That has nothing to do with disparity though. You can fix the disparity AND have classes that truly influence the world and have an advanced game. It'd just be that everyone can play that game rather than just a handful of classes.
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It's important to have distinction between simplified as in less options and simplified as in easier to play and run. A GM could offer few options but have those options only be needlessly complex. And vice versa. Pathfinder offers easy and hard to use options.
While I don't play E6, my understanding is that's part of its goal. It keeps the game relatively easy to play.
Grappling, transmutation/wild shape, archetype stacking, overly similar conditions, some feats/spells/items, original summoner, environmental rules, floor type rules which most don't even know about, having a ton of buffs and debuffs active, and I'm sure other rules as well, are all cases where I believe things are too complex for their own good. I don't want to see those things removed from the game, but I see room for improvement.
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Seems like some folks want a goldilocks edition somewhere just right between PF and 5E. The more I think about it, I start to like the idea.
I believe that's called the Beginner Box.
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Seems like some folks want a goldilocks edition somewhere just right between PF and 5E. The more I think about it, I start to like the idea.I believe that's called the Beginner Box.
I agree. And, I really like the Beginner Box.
Great product.
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Tome of Battle, Spell Compendium, and Magic Item Compendium all still get lots of use at my table.Yeah, it's hard to overstate how valuable backwards-compatibility was seen by the fans back when PF was being playtested.
Now, I suspect it's a very, very small minority who think it's important.
I don't think there's nobody, but I think it's a negligible section of the market. (Taking your comment to mean you think backwards compatibility is still important and not just that you still use some 3.5 books).
But here's the important bit: if you break 3.5e compatibility, you're breaking Pathfinder compatibility.
Not necessarily - it's not a binary thing but rather a spectrum.
Despite being "compatible" PF changed some things from the way 3.5 did them. It's just easy enough to tweak things to make them still work. Similarly, PF2.0 could be a further evolution: still broadly compatible with PF1.0 but moving further from 3.5 so that pre-07 products are less tweakable and require more thorough rewrites.
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I think the Beginner Box simplifies in the wrong areas, personally.
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Want a new game system, even still tied to Golarion? Fine, but it has to be a NEW system, not a .5 or 2.0.
NEW, significantly different. Possibly not in a bad direction like D&D 4 did at the time, of course.
But no X.Y anything. I don't want to see X.Y stuff ever again till the end of times. Never ever.
Bad idea. Awful customer care.
That said, yes, Pathfinder has long since fallen into the trap of bloat. That's for a great part customers' fault. People always want new classes (when every character concept could already be done with the CRB classes and, at worst, with those nice archetypes), new feats, new spells, new magic items... when 90% of all this stuff will probably never be seen in any game ever, primarily because it's not as good and useful as other options.
So, even if you could fix the system (or build a new one), how can you fix the players? They'll always ask for more, and that "more" will always be roughly 90% crap, 5% okay, and 5% overpowered. Hence, bloat. There's no escaping it, especially if you add marketing laws in the equation.
Maybe it'd take a very courageous approach to try and change the mindset of the average Pathfinder/D&D player, so that future sourcebooks will bring rules to improve the quality of games, not mere added rules to build more characters. Not rules that are going to be just a waste of ink and paper.
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I love the beginner box, but it's just a tease.
It's a very good tease mind you, one of my favorites, but still just a tease.
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Want a new game system, even still tied to Golarion? Fine, but it has to be a NEW system, not a .5 or 2.0.
NEW, significantly different. Possibly not in a bad direction like D&D 4 did at the time, of course.
But no X.Y anything. I don't want to see X.Y stuff ever again till the end of times. Never ever.
Bad idea. Awful customer care.That said, yes, Pathfinder has long since fallen into the trap of bloat. That's for a great part customers' fault. People always want new classes (when every character concept could already be done with the CRB classes and, at worst, with those nice archetypes), new feats, new spells, new magic items... when 90% of all this stuff will probably never be seen in any game ever, primarily because it's not as good and useful as other options.
So, even if you could fix the system (or build a new one), how can you fix the players? They'll always ask for more, and that "more" will always be roughly 90% crap, 5% okay, and 5% overpowered. Hence, bloat. There's no escaping it, especially if you add marketing laws in the equation.
Maybe it'd take a very courageous approach to try and change the mindset of the average Pathfinder/D&D player, so that future sourcebooks will bring rules to improve the quality of games, not mere added rules to build more characters. Not rules that are going to be just a waste of ink and paper.
If you really feel this way, then 5E is the answer for you.
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I'd be fine with a revised core book where all of the the unwritten assumptions that the game is built on are spelled out in plain English. Things like "spells have manifestations" and "metaphorically, one can only ever have 2 hands" and things like that.
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back when Pathfinder was just the core book, compatability with 3.5 was probably a big thing and much 3.5 material I'm guessing was used. But as pathfinder has moved further and further away from relying on 3.5 material to supplement it, and as they've made rules that are opposite 3.5 rules, and as new people to the game probably don't have 3.5 material, 3.5 is less a part of the game.Yeah, it's hard to overstate how valuable backwards-compatibility was seen by the fans back when PF was being playtested.
Now, I suspect it's a very, very small minority who think it's important.
I would wager that, as important as backward compatibility to 3.5e was to gamers here during the initial PF transition, backward compatibility to PF1e will be just as important in any future transition to PF2e.
There are a lot of people who would just as soon throw up their hands and say, "I have enough PF1e material to last me a lifetime!" Except now, people that have been on-board since the beginning have even more material than they did back then. It's especially so in a community that was (more or less) founded on people who refused to move during the 3.5e->4e edition change.
-Skeld
I agree. I don't see it happening soon (other than via errata/unchained options they've been using to essentially achieve a similar goal).
Although it does feel to me that it's been a long time between CRB reprints this time around, so perhaps there is commercial pressure for a reboot.
Don't forget that they just released the pocket edition CRB a few months ago. That thing is probably eating away at CRB market share.
If my PE CRB continues to hold up well, I don't see ever buying a hard cover version again.
-Skeld
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(when every character concept could already be done with the CRB classes and, at worst, with those nice archetypes)
Unless your the least imaginative person on the planet (which I severely doubt any of us are), this is blatantly untrue... So untrue I cannot tell if it's just elaborate sarcasm or what.
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I wonder what the people who whine about "Bloat" all the time think about 5e. I think that game's only released one real splat book in two years.
Main reason I haven't bought 5e yet.
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The problem with bloat is not that extra options are bad (not necessarily the case at all), but that one can end up ignoring a lot of options completely unintentionally, or worse yet falling into trap options, especially when the trap options used to be the only options but are now functionally obsolete. These messageboards do help alleviate that, but still, a reorganization and cleanup is in order. (If you want a specific example to start with: Sorcerer Bloodlines are a total mess; to get even more specific: Although Wildblooded Bloodlines at least tell you what original Bloodline they came from, the reverse is not true.)
The problem with bloat is not that extra options are bad (not necessarily the case at all), but that one can end up ignoring a lot of options completely unintentionally, or worse yet falling into trap options, especially when the trap options used to be the only options but are now functionally obsolete. These messageboards do help alleviate that, but still, a reorganization and cleanup is in order. (If you want a specific example to start with: Sorcerer Bloodlines are a total mess; to get even more specific: Although Wildblooded Bloodlines at least tell you what original Bloodline they came from, the reverse is not true.)
I don't know that I see your point here unarc. ignoreing options unintentionally doesn't seem like a huge problem who is going to miss something they don't know about? You could also research it so its not a hard problem. now when you say Trap options are you talking about non-optimized options that look good? Isn't the worst case scenario here being you have a Stickler DM who won't let you change or retrain them and you know not to use them next time? Also as a DM you can Steer people away from bad options.
If the biggest problem with bloat is you end up with people that have not perfectly optimized characters then I can live with that.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Not a matter of perfectly optimized, but a matter of much less well made than they should be, because you couldn't find (and didn't even have a clue of what to search for) what you needed.
This reminds me of the 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide's horrible organization (Gary Gygax must have been possessed by a Protean), which caused not only me, but also a lot of other people I played 1st Edition with, to miss the text that says how often (as opposed to under what conditions) you can prepare spells. By the time some of us finally found it, we had ACCIDENTALLY house-ruled that you could prepare spells whenever you had the right conditions (not being interrupted, and not being too fatigued, even though fatigue didn't have a clear official definition back then, and not having been KO'd). And I don't know about everyone else, but I remember thinking something can't be right, and looking for this several times to no avail, until finally finding it after too much retconning would been required to make the correction. Now in this case, the lack of finding stuff worked to the player's advantage instead of disadvantage (and at early levels the adventures were often deadly enough to need this), but the basic idea is equivalent.
Now, Pathfinder's organization is a lot better (at least Boneyard level rather than Maelstrom), and the Google-powered d20pfsrd.com Search function helps a lot, but still the risk of these kinds of things is definitely non-zero (especially when you find what you are looking for, but it is confusing, or your search ends up trapping you in a Local Minimum).
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I think trap options are actually worse without extra content being released, since if you don't add additional content then alternatives to the traps wont be created. But of course, other traps will be created (and if they don't people will complain about power-creep).
Not a matter of perfectly optimized, but a matter of much less well made than they should be, because you couldn't find (and didn't even have a clue of what to search for) what you needed.
This reminds me of the 1st Edition AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide's horrible organization (Gary Gygax must have been possessed by a Protean), which caused not only me, but also a lot of other people I played 1st Edition with, to miss the text that says how often (as opposed to under what conditions) you can prepare spells. By the time some of us finally found it, we had ACCIDENTALLY house-ruled that you could prepare spells whenever you had the right conditions (not being interrupted, and not being too fatigued, even though fatigue didn't have a clear official definition back then, and not having been KO'd). And I don't know about everyone else, but I remember thinking something can't be right, and looking for this several times to no avail, until finally finding it after too much retconning would been required to make the correction. Now in this case, the lack of finding stuff worked to the player's advantage instead of disadvantage (and at early levels the adventures were often deadly enough to need this), but the basic idea is equivalent.
Now, Pathfinder's organization is a lot better (at least Boneyard level rather than Maelstrom), and the Google-powered d20pfsrd.com Search function helps a lot, but still the risk of these kinds of things is definitely non-zero (especially when you find what you are looking for, but it is confusing, or your search ends up trapping you in a Local Minimum).
HA we did that 1st edition spell casting thing to.
Now help me out here when you say well-made are we talking like Hey I see your fighter took skill focus ballet don't you think it would be better served with power attack? Still I think if you don't know about the option then your not going to miss it. If that is the concern maybe there is a market for a website or book that organizes and ranks options. I think actually there is already something similar to that. I just don't think having a few bad options constitutes a reason not to make anymore.
So someone makes a bad character. Hey someone has got to at some point right? They could grin and bear it or make a new one. Those are options. They even added retraining so they can be like this isn't working I'm going to try something else. Heck there might even be that one guy who somehow combined all his bad options into a super good option by accident.
For your side however Ill present this.
Now the argument that does work on me is when they make something that I am interested in and want to try and then am disappointed in its implementation (This is usually where I bring up that horrible hulk vigilante archetype.) I think one thing that should be done is going back and maybe improving on past mistakes. Errateing or what have you or maybe even making whole new options that are close but better.
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^I'll agree with the last part. For the first part, a reasonably likely specific example would be to miss Dirty Fighting and think you still have to take Combat Expertise (after all, the Improved Combat Maneuver feats still say you have to have it as a prerequisite).
(*)Mind you, Combat Expertise CAN be made genuinely useful, but you really have to work at it to make it useful in more than corner cases.
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I think though that when it comes to something character defining like an archetype or a bloodline, one person's "trap" is another person's "I know it's not very good, but it's flavorful and matches what I want".
Where I think bloat is most concerning is when players gain a level and need to pick a feat, or some new spells... and there are thousands of each they have to look through in order to make an informed decision. Just the number of combat feats alone make it nearly impossible to read through all of them in order to make an informed choice without forgetting whether or not Ancestral Weapon Mastery or Bloody Assault is any good. Particularly if you're looking through actual physical books, and the stuff you're looking at is spread across a dozen volumes.
It's more of a logistical problem than anything else, I feel.
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I think though that when it comes to something character defining like an archetype or a bloodline, one person's "trap" is another person's "I know it's not very good, but it's flavorful and matches what I want".
Where I think bloat is most concerning is when players gain a level and need to pick a feat, or some new spells... and there are thousands of each they have to look through in order to make an informed decision. Just the number of combat feats alone make it nearly impossible to read through all of them in order to make an informed choice without forgetting whether or not Ancestral Weapon Mastery or Bloody Assault is any good. Particularly if you're looking through actual physical books, and the stuff you're looking at is spread across a dozen volumes.
It's more of a logistical problem than anything else, I feel.
Yeah now that I agree with with its why I really appreciated the class guide book they put out now if they just made that on a larger scale I Think that would help people out. Plus internet resources their is a class guide for most classes if not all which helps quite a bit too. There is ways to manage.
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back when Pathfinder was just the core book, compatability with 3.5 was probably a big thing and much 3.5 material I'm guessing was used. But as pathfinder has moved further and further away from relying on 3.5 material to supplement it, and as they've made rules that are opposite 3.5 rules, and as new people to the game probably don't have 3.5 material, 3.5 is less a part of the game.Yeah, it's hard to overstate how valuable backwards-compatibility was seen by the fans back when PF was being playtested.
Now, I suspect it's a very, very small minority who think it's important.
I would wager that, as important as backward compatibility to 3.5e was to gamers here during the initial PF transition, backward compatibility to PF1e will be just as important in any future transition to PF2e.
There are a lot of people who would just as soon throw up their hands and say, "I have enough PF1e material to last me a lifetime!" Except now, people that have been on-board since the beginning have even more material than they did back then. It's especially so in a community that was (more or less) founded on people who refused to move during the 3.5e->4e edition change.
-Skeld
I agree. I don't see it happening soon (other than via errata/unchained options they've been using to essentially achieve a similar goal).
Although it does feel to me that it's been a long time between CRB reprints this time around, so perhaps there is commercial pressure for a reboot.
Don't forget that they just released the pocket edition CRB a few months ago. That thing is probably eating away at CRB market share.
If my PE CRB continues to hold up well, I don't see ever buying a hard cover version again.
-Skeld
No doubt, but my impression was that the pace of reprints had slowed even prior to the pocket edition.
It could well just be an illusion, since I need another copy so it seems to be taking forever..
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Yeah, I'm for PF 2.0, have been for years. But it should have public playtesting with a longer development cycle than this edition. There's a lot to be done for high level play, so that it doesn't derail so often.
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Edit2:
Actually one final related thing. This concept is important for gaining new players. A complex and unapproachable system is intimidating to many, whereas a simpler or more organized system is not. This is also speculation, but I don't expect a superficially simple system to be a turnoff to those looking for more depth, so long as the knobs presented are able to provide that (think chess. Easy to understand piece movement, complex game).
Complex and unapproachable is subjective. I have always been able to teach new players how to play. That includes the time when I was allowing 3.5 material with much less restriction into my Pathfinder games. Now admittedly even some experienced(1st edition) players had trouble with things, but I also found out they had issues with 2nd edition rules.
In my experience, if I don't turn the dial up to 11 on difficulty when I GM for new people, and I run at least a decent game people stick around and learn(good enough to be sufficient), even if they don't master the game.
I think the Beginner Box simplifies in the wrong areas, personally.
This is true, the BB is great as a minimal investment into the hobby but the rules definitely feel like they took the Pathfinder base, ripped its guts out and kicked it out the door.
Pathfinder is just too complex a beast to 'begin' with, I still hate the enormity of the feats and spells and traits- its a matter of accretion, like a bathtub of soap scum that builds until the scum to water ratio becomes 1:1. There comes a point where you have to say to yourself "Okay, do I scrub this clean or buy a new bath tub?"
D&D is inherently accretionary by nature, the GM can randomly generate all sorts of non-sense and fluff; rightly so to give each setting and circumstance a unique 'game feel' but it's when these elements are compiled and executed that things become cumbersome and opaque. Heck if I play in a game with more than the core rules I have to have the internet on hand to google every little weasel worded ruling about how tgat archetype from this book works with the feat from that book using a race from over there. Feels bad.
A 2.0 core rulebook reboot would be nice, good luck to whomever has to do it!
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I admit I hate the layout of the core rulebook. The text is so dense as written it's a major pain to find anything, not helped by sometimes poor organization of material. I shouldn't HAVE TO USE the online PRD to find things, but it often feels like that is the most efficient option, even with the book spread out in front of me.
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Yeah, I'm for PF 2.0, have been for years. But it should have public playtesting with a longer development cycle than this edition. There's a lot to be done for high level play, so that it doesn't derail so often.Seconded. While making sure that a very vocal minority don't chase away fellow gamers like the last playtest. A true playtest needs to hear from everyone. Not just from one side that wants nothing to change. First offence a warning. Second banned for a week. Third a permanent ban. Otherwise it's going to be another repeat of the last one. The previous playtest has a bad reputation with some in the gaming community. Their cannot be a repeat of that.
I admit I hate the layout of the core rulebook. The text is so dense as written it's a major pain to find anything, not helped by sometimes poor organization of material. I shouldn't HAVE TO USE the online PRD to find things, but it often feels like that is the most efficient option, even with the book spread out in front of me.
Even if their is no new edition. At the very least a good rewriting and streamlining is needed to the core book imo. One should never assume that experienced gamers are the only market. The section on magic is my goto cure for when I can't sleep. As well it's better to split books between players and DMs. Yes it's good to have all the material in one book. Yet if one is never going to rua game. One has just payed for wasted material. Interesting comment beginners set for PF as it reminds me of Gurps lite for 4E. It REALLY does a horrible job of teaching new players to Gurps.
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Pathfinder evolves and does so quite well.
Rebooting is unnecessary(at least in the case of PF-see previous sentence) and has killed games in the past.
I for one would be EXTREMELY ticked at having obsolete books with the amount of $$$$ I have sunk into PF lately.
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New to this long thread, so this might have been thrown out there already, but maybe Starfinder will be the closest thing to a PF 2.0 reality. Sure it's not High-Fantasy but if you land on the right type of world with a like minded group that wants the fantasy feel I'd be surprised if you couldn't make it indistinguishable.
Anyways, we should be receiving a new system built of the lessons learned via that line.
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Edit2:
Actually one final related thing. This concept is important for gaining new players. A complex and unapproachable system is intimidating to many, whereas a simpler or more organized system is not. This is also speculation, but I don't expect a superficially simple system to be a turnoff to those looking for more depth, so long as the knobs presented are able to provide that (think chess. Easy to understand piece movement, complex game).
Complex and unapproachable is subjective. I have always been able to teach new players how to play. That includes the time when I was allowing 3.5 material with much less restriction into my Pathfinder games. Now admittedly even some experienced(1st edition) players had trouble with things, but I also found out they had issues with 2nd edition rules.
In my experience, if I don't turn the dial up to 11 on difficulty when I GM for new people, and I run at least a decent game people stick around and learn(good enough to be sufficient), even if they don't master the game.
"Unapproachable" perhaps is, but "complex" is not. Rather, the complexity one is willing to tolerate is subjective, and is expanded when one has a teacher. Of course, presenting the game in a simplified format for those without a teacher is the beginner's box's job I suppose, but I've not actually bought the begginer's box so cannot comment on it.
one person's "trap" is another person's "I know it's not very good, but it's flavorful and matches what I want".
As idealistic a goal it may be, I'd prefer the rules provide balanced support for as wide a range as characters as possible so that no one has to make that compromise.
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As idealistic a goal it may be, I'd prefer the rules provide balanced support for as wide a range as characters as possible so that no one has to make that compromise.
Not to mention there is no good reason we can't get both good fluff and mechanics at the same time. More often than not "one mans garbage is another mans treasure" usually ends up being garbage that no one will ever take and rarely treasured imo.
One also has to realize that Paizo is in the business of making both a great rpg and a profit. They can't very well keep supporting a ediiton that is making them lose money. Simply because fans have invested money into books. I'm not saying that the current one is by any means. Neither should they lose profit because it may make some fans unhappy either.
I don't think the system is complex. Neither is it for beginners imo. At least not without a fellow gamer who has not played it.
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Given the "make this less like a video game" line I see occasionally, I find it funny that much of the same lines for a reboot also show up in another of my interests, pokemon.
For one, I love the complexity. I actually enjoy sifting through a lot of stuff for making the best out of whatever stupid idea comes into my head. I see people saying that enough is enough, but in the event of a reboot, I'll probably miss my Suli Cleric 1 Oracle 5 Vigilante X or my Trick Room mono-steel team.
Though I would like a cleaned up version (colloquially lumped with the multitude of other mutually exclusive ideas called "PF 2.0" by various people), it would not be one that validates previous material. Instead, it simply makes for a better, more palatable experience for new and old players by having the way in which the information is given in a more digestible presentation.
Any updates would be a combination of eratta, intent, and a few rules that just don't work like the company wants them to. I'll be the first to say that I expect that quite a number of changes won't be to my liking - the nerf of cranewing, the manifestations of spells, and overlapping ability score stuff is clear evidence - to me - that I wouldn't like all of their decisions (which will probably remove things like undead creation and simulacrum from the player section and put them in the monster section for bad guys, to come up with a random example).
But it would be better for the game and community, I think, by helping everyone communicate better and manage expectations better.
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If Paizo do decide to make a Parhfinder 2.0 my hope is that they build it from scratch rather than simply modify what has gone before. When I think of all the things I like about Pathfinder: the world building, the maps, artwork, the forums, adventure paths etc. it is stuff that is wholy Paizo content. All the problems I have with Pathfinder are related to the game mechanics which are a legacy of being tied to an outdated D&D system. I would really love to see what Paizo can come up with when they aren't restricted by backwards compatibility.
All that stuff you like wouldnt work with PF 2 then.
The stuff I like, the non mechanical stuff, would work just fine in any rule set. The campaign I am working on now is set in Golarion with all the associated history, maps, gods etc. but will be played using 5e rules because they are simpler and easier.
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{. . .}
Pathfinder is just too complex a beast to 'begin' with, I still hate the enormity of the feats and spells and traits- its a matter of accretion, like a bathtub of soap scum that builds until the scum to water ratio becomes 1:1. There comes a point where you have to say to yourself "Okay, do I scrub this clean or buy a new bath tub?"
Wait . . . just how did you manage to find my bathtub?
D&D is inherently accretionary by nature, the GM can randomly generate all sorts of non-sense and fluff; rightly so to give each setting and circumstance a unique 'game feel' but it's when these elements are compiled and executed that things become cumbersome and opaque. Heck if I play in a game with more than the core rules I have to have the internet on hand to google every little weasel worded ruling about how tgat archetype from this book works with the feat from that book using a race from over there. Feels bad.
A 2.0 core rulebook reboot would be nice, good luck to whomever has to do it!
If we're going to talk reboot, it shouldn't be like a movie franchise reboot, but an operating system upgrade and its associated reboot, provided that it's one of the ones where you do the operating system upgrade and after the reboot all your old programs still work. (Yes, I've experienced those from time to time, although it seems like these days it's never something you can count on.) But even then, this analogy still doesn't do one thing that is needed, which is compaction: Spells that do almost the same thing, feats that do almost the same thing, etc. get compacted into one thing with multiple options, and then you get cross-reference tables ("What happened to my favorite spell?"; "What happened to my favorite feat?"; etc.) (depending upon how big these get, they could be in an on-line supplement rather than in the printed new Core Rulebook -- not everyone is going to want the extra bulk of the conversion guide tables in there).