Quote Originally Posted by Ignimortis View Post
PF1e took the worst parts about 3.5 and, for the most part, didn't do anything about them. Specific spell nerfs and small class changes aren't that important in the grand scheme of things - 1PP content for Pathfinder follows a very samey scheme that mixes and matches the 3.5 PHB concepts, but very rarely goes beyond. The myriad bonus types, the focus on "you either do X at-will and it kinda sucks or just provides basic numbers, or you do it Y times per day, and it's either broken or useless" design, the idea that only dedicated builds should be good at things, etc. About the only semi-unique class that Paizo made is, I believe, the Kineticist, which is horribly overdesigned and not very good anyway.

Most of the good stuff for PF1 that I've seen in play came from Dreamscarred Press, who were nice enough to put their things on the d20pfsrd for free (my hat's off to you, people).

PF2 goes a step beyond PF1 - while it does cut some of PF1's crust and reins in the caster supremacy, the end result is somewhere between the bad parts of 4e (unpleasantly tight math, excessive focus on teamwork to the detriment of personal capability, the idea that any class a role they need to fulfill and ) and the bad parts of low-level PF1 (uninspired classes and abilities, high resistance to anything that isn't at-will or X/day, with Focus spells being rather lame, making a lot of things only function for dedicated builds). The end result feels a lot less like a TTRPG and a lot more like a wargame with in-depth unit customization.

I'm currently DMing a PF1 game and playing in a PF2 game. If it weren't for factors unrelated to the actual rulesets, I'd drop both right now. They aren't really good games, and while PF1 is workable as a player, I do not envy PF1 GMs. I've also heard that PF2 is extremely easy to DM, and I can hazard a guess why - it's because the players can't surprise you much, and the numbers are tight enough that you can just plop down a couple monsters and be sure it's a balanced fight.

I might be up to play PF1 with DSP content at some point in the future, but that's about it - I don't want to interact with either edition all that much anymore.
I like PF1 a lot. DSP does great work in it, but the game works just fine in general, in my opinion. Of course, I don't share the dim view some take on 3.5's "rougher" mechanics. I think they're largely fine in real play, not having seen caster supremacy be a problem except when either the caster player was cheating about how his powers actually work, or the non-caster was deliberately refusing to engage in the game. (And I have seen non-caster PCs be as big problems when the player is the same kind of cheater.)

There are problems, yes. They're not, to me, so big as to ruin the game. They also can be house ruled much more easily than they can be fixed overall, if only because house rules can work for a particular table or game where the problems they would introduce just don't come up for table- or game-specific reasons.