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I'm going to make a request which may be unpopular, may be controversial, and which Paizo in particular are likely to find very hard to fulfil.
Less is more.
Over my years following Pathfinder, I've accumulated more rulebooks than I can count, containing dozens of classes, hundreds of archetypes, and countless other options. The result being, I'm probably never going to see most of them in action. A new class came out in Ultimate Wilderness, the Shifter. It's kind of cool. I like it. Am I ever going to play it, or see anybody in any of my gaming groups play it? Probably not.
Even if you disregard third parties, there's a vast quantity of Pathfinder material out there now, huge numbers of options, and while most of it is afaict really good material - Paizo know what they're doing, after all - it's still just TOO MUCH.
So please consider scaling back the release of new playable options in second edition. That way every option matters.
Seconded. Having 4 (5?) different core book lines was tiring. All of my FLGS stopped carrying Pathfinder products for this same reason.
That's a good point. The effect on physical game stores of having multiple cubic feet of solid paper to stock is an aspect I hadn't considered.
To clarify: I'm not suggesting you slow down the release of the adventure paths. Those have been the real core of Pathfinder since before there was a Pathfinder, and will continue to be what drives the game forward.
But the core rules need to stay compact enough to pick up, even when second edition is five years old.
If "less 2E content" would translate to "continuing release of lots of new 1E content", I'll let you have your 5E-ified PF2E, and I'll keep playing the PF I know and love, which draws its strength from the diversity of options it offers.
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I don't even know what's in the new edition yet, so it's much too early to be so negative about it.
Over my years following Pathfinder, I've accumulated more rulebooks than I can count, containing dozens of classes, hundreds of archetypes, and countless other options. The result being, I'm probably never going to see most of them in action. A new class came out in Ultimate Wilderness, the Shifter. It's kind of cool. I like it. Am I ever going to play it, or see anybody in any of my gaming groups play it? Probably not.
The problem I have with stuff like Shifter is less "it exists" and more "I can already do the same thing, easier and better, with other content I'm already familiar with". The real problem with the "splat treadmill" isn't that more content exists, but that most of that content is just a marginally different retread of previous content, and when some original things do show up they don't get enough support to be useful.
Consider, for example, how many spells are basically identical in mechanics with slightly different fluff, and then look at the way ranger traps offered an entirely new playstyle that nobody ever used because they were never actually made useful enough to bother with.
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We certainly don't need a hundred different feats, that all give +2/+2 to two different skills.
Why not one feat, that says 'pick two skills'?
"Oh, but then everyone will cherry pick their two most desired skills!"
They effectively already have been doing, as the list of similar feats has grown.
It reminds me of the D&D3 practice, of setting a race's favored class. No favoring anything except wizard, for you, Mister Elf.
(Pssst...wanna play a wild elf?)
Rigidly defined favored classes led directly to every race having a dozen sub-races, purely to work around that restriction.
Instead of simply allowing the player to decide on a favored class, which also allowed them to consider new classes that were introduced post-core rules.
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Similarly, we can do without multiple traits that do the same thing, but with different enforced flavor text.
We can write our own character backgrounds, and justify our own mechanical improvements.
I'd like to see an end to explicit flavor text, in general.
It acts as an unwanted gatekeeper, against concepts the official writers didn't come up with.
And it pushes the player base toward one of two extremes;
Either every PC with a certain bonus is shoehorned into the same flavor. Everyone who wants to improve their reaction time has to have been bullied as a child, so, no you can't have been the happy contented child of a circus knife thrower...
Every person with a talent for metamagic has a wayang in the family. They put it about a bit, those wayang, don't they. Someone needs to round them up and tie a knot in it.
OR, you wind up with repetitive entries, for the same benefits, with slightly different flavor text.
I want my PC to be good at swimming, but I have to recall the name of a specific trait, that makes it a class skill and adds +1. But then, I find it's only open to PCs from The Shackles. So I look again, and here's one that's only open to Varisians. And one for people who live along the Sellen River. And one for people near Lake Blah.
Why can't I decide my PC is good at a skill, without being forced to wade through overly specific material?
What if I'm not playing or running a game in Golarion?
The game should be generic enough, to be used by GMs who run a home brew campaign, in their own world.
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We can write our own character backgrounds, and justify our own mechanical improvements.
I would totally agree on that, only that in my experience an awful lot of players don't care about writing their own backgrounds, because the only thing they care is the mechanics. In my games the traits' fluff encouraged players to think about that background just a bit more, and I'd hate to see that go.
I agree that there's probably no need to copy a trait just to make it usable for characters from different origins. On the other hand, it's easy enough to change names for play in other settings, so I'm not bothered with core rule traits being setting specific (not even sure if that will be the case as it (mostly?) wasn't in PF1 rule books).
We can write our own character backgrounds, and justify our own mechanical improvements.I would totally agree on that, only that in my experience an awful lot of players don't care about writing their own backgrounds, because the only thing they care is the mechanics. In my games the traits' fluff encouraged players to think about that background just a bit more, and I'd hate to see that go.
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I'd love to write my own fluff to things. Not once I have come up with some really cool concept and got told 'nope' because of fluff text/doesn't fit in with some other fluff. (One of the reasons I don't play with strangers anymore.)
Back to the topic at hand, fewer books, less fluff, more game-options, would make one very happy bunny.
I like there being lots of books, something to look forward each month rather than each year. Really the lifeblood of Pathfinder to have so much lore and options!
Can always play Core-only if you want, but I want the bloat!
EDIT: I also like traits kinda as they are. Limiting them to specific regions of Golarion or deities. Ignoring the fluff in a trait doesn't make you more creative, it just means you wanted +2 initiative for free.
Only sorta acceptable one to ignore is where you get the class skill, I guess, but I still wouldn't like it.
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I'm fine with there being example flavor given, as long as it's understood it's exactly that.
If a spell was described, 'you extend your hand, and the orc in front of you is folded inside out.', it would obviously not be relevant to a PC using the spell against a target that was a non-orc.
It's an example, and is there to be inclusive, not exclusive.
So I'm fine with feats, traits, and class abilities (whatever they end up being named) having example descriptive text.
As long as there's a disclaimer at the beginning of the relevant section, advising GMs to borrow, steal, or be inspired by the the examples, to make this material their own.
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I want lots of books. Lots and lots.
Similarly, we can do without multiple traits that do the same thing, but with different enforced flavor text.
We can write our own character backgrounds, and justify our own mechanical improvements.
I'd like to see an end to explicit flavor text, in general.
It acts as an unwanted gatekeeper, against concepts the official writers didn't come up with.
And it pushes the player base toward one of two extremes;Either every PC with a certain bonus is shoehorned into the same flavor. Everyone who wants to improve their reaction time has to have been bullied as a child, so, no you can't have been the happy contented child of a circus knife thrower...
Every person with a talent for metamagic has a wayang in the family. They put it about a bit, those wayang, don't they. Someone needs to round them up and tie a knot in it.OR, you wind up with repetitive entries, for the same benefits, with slightly different flavor text.
I want my PC to be good at swimming, but I have to recall the name of a specific trait, that makes it a class skill and adds +1. But then, I find it's only open to PCs from The Shackles. So I look again, and here's one that's only open to Varisians. And one for people who live along the Sellen River. And one for people near Lake Blah.Why can't I decide my PC is good at a skill, without being forced to wade through overly specific material?
What if I'm not playing or running a game in Golarion?The game should be generic enough, to be used by GMs who run a home brew campaign, in their own world.
Given that Golarion is now baked into core, I don't think you are going to see this. Certainly there might be less traits that are only different on flavor, but I expect, especially in later releases, to see a lot more flavor related rules
My ideal set release schedule per year would be:
One Bestiary/NPC codex
One player splat
One heavily campaign setting related book which would have elements of both of the prior two style books
If Paizo is going to be on the crunchy end of things, that means producing lots of options