Pathfinder changed stuff that didn't need to be changed. What are the changes that I actually think are improvements vs changes that I don't care about or even worse, don't even want? I'm including an old 3e era Wayne Reynolds Dragon Magazine cover of a rogue, just because rogue was one class that needed some extra help, in my opinion. The Trailblazer rules clearly "priced" it as one of the most poorly balanced on the short-shrift side of all of the core classes.
(I never did get around to costing a bunch of other classes from the Complete books, after saying that I suspected that they would come out even lower in value than the lowest ones Trailblazer costed, using the Trailblazer costing formula. I still actually want to do that, even though it's been more than fifteen years since I thought of doing it. Just for funsies.)
Let me, as I love to do, make a bulleted list. For all of these, even if house-ruling 3.5 rather than adapting Pathfinder, I would want to adapt these changes.
- CMB/CMD: Combat maneuvers were kind of a mess in 3.5. It was a joke that nobody ever remembered how to do grapple correctly, but bull rush, trip, and all kinds of other things were equally cumbrous. Simplifying all of these maneuvers to two statistics, Combat Maneuver Bonus and Combat Maneuver Defense and have them all work more or less the same was a much needed simplification. This, indeed, may have been Pathfinder's best initial contribution to the d20 system, at least when it first launched. It later added more things that are arguably even better, but we'll get to those later.
- Skill Consolidation: Trailblazer did this too, as did Star Wars SAGA Edition and various other late d20 games, but I think Pathfinder's skill consolidation was probably the best one. But not by much. All of these games independently did more or less the same thing.
- Archetypes: Archetypes aren't really unique to Pathfinder. They were an expansion and formalization of rules that appeared in the PHB2 during 3.5. However, they became the gold standard in character customization. In fact, they became so good that they completely made prestige classes obsolete, which I don't think anyone anticipated at the time.
- Classes: I wouldn't necessarily have said this early on in Pathfinder's run, but after I've got the entire spread before me, I think ignoring the 3.5 classes and just using Pathfinder classes is fine by me. They are more powerful compared to 3.5 classes, which is the main reason I advocate for using all of them instead of cherry-picking. Frankly, even without archetypes, most of the classes are built to be more flexible and have longer, more a la carte lists of abilities to choose from. This is even true for the psionic classes, but let's be honest; the only psionic class that I ever really loved was the soulknife, and if worse comes to worst, you can get that from the 3pp Ultimate Psionics book. Of course, this comes with my caveats already spelled out; I'm using E6, and you can't take any fullcaster option until 2nd level, and monk and bard are just banned because I like those classes. If you like the idea of either the monk or the bard, you can get there without using the class; brawler is more what I'd want a monk to look like, and the Freeport noble with some minor magic and jacked up perform skill is more like what I'd want a bard to look like. I'm on the fence about the paladin too, especially given that it's so tied to alignment, which I have no interest in. The Cavalier is probably a little bit more what I'd want a "paladin" to look like, if we really have to have some kind of semi-supernatural Mallory-style Arthurian knight. I'm less convinced that I want Arthurian anything anymore, honestly.
- Probably should have put classes first, since Archetypes are a corollary to them. I don't have an opinion on feats or spells. I don't know if they're different between 3.5 and Pathfinder other than some fixes here and there of the ones that probably don't really work. I don't care where you get your feat and spell descriptions.
- A second corollary there; I don't really go in for tools like Hero Lab or whatever. Print off a pdf blank sheet and make your character by hand with the books and a pencil. You'll have to because this is a gallimaufry of a system anyway, but I've found that I understand systems where I make my character by hand, and I don't really where I make my character with a tool. Although 5e is supposed to be simpler than d20 games, I understand d20 games intimately (or at least I did; I haven't played any of them in a good ten years now) while I just stumble through 5e as if it were d20, even though I've been playing it for over a year. Anyway, given the skill list and CMB/CMD, printing off a Pathfinder 1e sheet is probably better than printing off a 3.5 sheet, where you'd have to cross stuff off and otherwise do weird things to make it fit.
- Races: Speaking of races, I need to double check my stats. I had old d20 house rules back in the day, but I haven't looked at them in a long time. I suspect that they need a little work. Hold tight on this one for now. TBD.
- Abilities: Standard ability score generation. 4d6 six times. Drop the lowest die from each of the 4d6 rolls, so it's essentially a MAX 3d6 out of a 4d6 roll. Ideally, I'd settle on a more predictable point buy, but the reality is that I like rolling dice for abilities. It seems wrong not to. Maybe the heroic 2d6+6 six times would be better, or even 4d6 seven times so not only do you get rid of the lowest roll of the 4d6, but you throw out the lowest score altogether. While I like rolling, I find that having crappy ability scores really stinks. I'm kind of schizophrenic on this particular question.
- XP: I've never been a fan of factoring XP, although mostly because it feels like accounting rather than gaming. If I actually use XP as opposed to "milestone" leveling, I'll create handwavey XP awards rather than calculating them as the rules indicate that I "should."
On the other hand, I think most of the rest of the system, I'd rather use 3.5. 3.5 races. 3.5 combat, where they differ, etc. I'm actually not really a fan of the Pathfinder races and the way that they're written, even though in my current readthrough I've really only closely reviewed the core book races so far. I'm also not a fan of the power creep that they represent. And I'm not a fan of additional power creep with traits; especially when they recommend taking two of them! If they're supposed to be equivalent to a half-feat, why would they automatically give characters a free feat? The "mixed blessing" traits of Unearthed Arcana are a much better design, honestly, although they should be seen as optional, not as expected.
I do need to re-read Trailblazer again, and compare it to what I'm reading in Pathfinder Core Rulebook, as well as do the class math that TB allows for to make sure that I've got them balanced. Or at least according to that formula; no guarantee that Trailblazer's balance formula is completely correct. Still, it's better than any alternative.
As much as I was excited a week or two about pursuing d20 again, I'm finding as I dig into it more and more that I prefer my own native rules lite kinda sorta OSR adjacent system better after all. Which I knew, but now I really know it, if that makes sense. Heck, maybe if going through this exercise only real result is that decide how much I prefer my own system, that's worth doing.
I do really like classes, though. The Pathfinder 1e classes tend to just excite me in their own right.
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