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 that 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

*if you have donated/bought the premium version

Can you link the app? I cannot find it.

you do not have to worry about anything other than what you’d like to play. you could do everything randomly and you’d still make a pretty good character

what are prestige classes? (i only play pf2e)

what’s paladium? (i only play pf2e)

It’s not available yet on iOS (though an iOS port is in development). You can find it on the web at pathbuilder2e.com. Mobile and web apps don’t sync, though. The paid versions allow you to save characters to Google Drive, which you can use to sync them.

Sounds like they’re actually similar to archetypes and I’m just dumb, tbh, but basically in 3.0+ D&D there were classes you could multiple class into without multiple penalty if your character met specific qualifications (different for each prestige class, usually ability score minimum and knowledge of a feat, spell, or spell level, but sometimes specific race or language or whatever). These classes were usually much more specialized and specific than the general core classes, but also gave your character great powers and flair in that specific niche. Or at least that’s the idea when they were well-implemented, which was not always the case, and prestige bloat is often cited as one of the worst parts of 3.0+ as nearly every single sourcebook would include at least a couple new ones (but I never saw this a problem, personally).

PF1e archetypes are similar to subclasses - many functionally are - but are more about using one class as a base and replacing the parts you don’t want with parts of other classes you do want. Each archetype is linked to a specific class (which contributed to PF1e’s bloat), but you can stack any that don’t affect the same class features, and most classes have equivalent archetypes - for example, nearly all the non-companion classes have an archetype to replace something with an animal companion, most of the casters have a martial archetype and the martials a caster archetype etc. You can still multiclass on top and add archetypes to the new class(es), but they’re not quite class agnostic so I guess I can see why you wouldn’t like them.

PF2es archetypes/dedication feats are fully class agnostic replacements for PF1e archetypes/3.x prestige classes/multiclassing in general - you take them in place of class feats, and have to take a certain number from the same archetype before you can choose a new one. Medic is very popular because feats like battle medicine and ward medic lets any character replace a dedicated healer. Because of PF2es feat-centric design your initial choice of class gives you quite a loose framework of abilities to choose from, which you can then expand with dedications in more agnostic directions, like healing, duel wielding, archaeology, or becoming a lich.

yeah sounds a lot like pf2e archetypes.

you take a feat that gives you stuff related to other classes (multiclass archetypes) or just more specialized stuff.
some of them require certain things, like the wrestler dedication feat requires you to be at least trained in athletics, or like the new necrologist, that requires you to be a spellcaster that can cast summon undead

and then there are class archetypes (not to be confused with multiclass archetypes), which are subclasses you take at level 1 and at 2nd level you have to take the archetype’s feat

and like prestige classes, they seem to add a bunch of archetypes every new book they release, which is not at all an issue because that means MORE OPTIONS! and i love that

Okay, cloud saving, custom items and companions for a single payment of 4.50 EUR. But you can completely disregard the rules and freely give skills, spells and feats with the free version. The app is very well maintained, gets updates at least monthly. They were so fast with the implementation of the remaster. I’d love to gift the app to people in my group, who are struggling a bit more financially, but Google doesn’t have a functionality like that unfortunately.