And yet, human fighter with basic sword and shield feats is still just as satisfying as day 1

Call me when they have prestige classes

I miss prestige classes. Actually no I don't they're implemented in the form of archetypes (Dragon Disciple's actually kinda handy for some builds unlike in 1e), I just miss the *idea* of prestige classes.

I cannot recommend the Pathbuilder app enough. It narrows everything down to the available options based on what you've chosen so far, without taking the option of house ruling away from you.

Pathfinder is for my soul. I live off that crunchy shit. however 8 different spells from 11 different books that all give +1 to profession (tailor) checks at night time may have been a poor design choice

*Paladium has entered the chat*

How easy it is for someone not knowing the game to build or even play a character? It's great to have thousands of option, except when you join a game, don't know yet all the option available and find up latter that your build doesn't work. Is it a risk in pathfinder, or are the options robust enough to neither close path early nor have necessary combo?

*Much* better than 1st edition, less feat trees (more pools or tracks) and those that are there have less dead ends. I feel like there are less feat traps than 5e proportionally but I am still learning the system myself.

I'd say it's not terrible if you have some experience with TTRPGs and use Pathbuilder (a free character-building site/app). That said, I obsessively research and follow guides while making my characters, so I might not be the best source on vibes-based character creation.

PF1 was already designed to deal with mistakes like prestige classes, and they're especially not going to regress back to 3.x design now they're on a second edition that even further solves the mistakes of WotC.

I got a buddy that rolls randomly for all of those, only rerolling if they gets a combination they already used

Imo bloat and power creep were the problem, not prestige classes. I still love prestige classes and 3/3.5 overall.

It's really easy so long as you a) start at level 1 or 2 and avoid building out too far ahead, b) build to a character concept rather than try to optimize mechanically, c) avoid options released in adventures. Oh, and d), understand that retraining is actually baked into the rules. Adventure character content is less rigorously tested, and mostly amounts to professional homebrew. It's often super focused on the scenarios presented in the adventute and significantly less applicable in general. Focusing on mechanical optimjzation rather than character concept often leads to madness, since feats are generally well placed within the same power bands (there are few stand out or trap options). For a crunvhy game, it's often best played descriptively. Characters become mechanically more complex every level or two, so starting at higher levels can be very overwhelming for new players. Building out a higher level character means choosing a lot of feats, and often the utility of those feats is only really understood through play.

Yes, prestige classes were one of the things contributing to bloat and power creep, especially as they weren't even a particularly elegant solution to the problem they were solving - archetypes actually let you do mixed or more specific character ideas in the way prestige classes were meant to, and dedications open that customisation even further. As much as I love 3.x I'm not blind to its many failings.

I'm not either, I just don't think prestige classes were the failure. Yes, later prestige were one way power creep and bloat happened, but they aren't inherent to the state. That being said, I must admit I've only dabbled in PF1 very briefly, so I guess I need to ask for clarity - are archetypes different than subclasses? It was my understand (again, from very far outside) that that was just what PF2 was calling subclasses, and if so, that's a *very* different thing than a prestige class in my mind. A part of the appeal of prestige classes to me is worldbuilding groups built of a prestige classes made up of many different classes; I love than Arcane Trickster might have wizard levels, or sorcerer levels, or bard levels, etc... So maybe I'm just out of the loop here - are archetypes class specific or they actually the PF2 class-agnostic viable replacement for prestige and I really should give PF2 a look?

No, archetypes are not subclasses. They're a whole system of character modifications, most of which can be taken by any character as long as they meet the prerequisites. They usually modify some base element of your class (eg the Flexible Spellcaster archetype changes how casters select their spells, use their spell slots, and how many spells they get). There are a subset of archetypes (Class Archetypes) which are locked to specific classes, and which more deeply alter the class's base abilities. The changes can be quite significant. This is where the presteige classes are rearing their heads.

Just play a fighter/rogue. Best way to learn pathfinder 2

the fun thing is, you could literally just do everything completely randomly and your build will still be good

what spells are those