I think one of the biggest fabrications in gaming in the last 20 years was that Pathfinder 1e was D&D 3.75. Yes, the games are practically the same, but in a few, key, important ways they are not.
D&D 3.5 is still its own game.
And Pathfinder 1e is not an upgrade, is it a side-grade. It is not D&D 3.75.
Pathfinder 1e is essentially a story game, designed to sell adventure paths. When they released, the company knew what to do, turn up the mature content, sex up the art, and target the game at older players. Rise of the Runelords has a "sin system" and got into all sorts of edgy and mature topics, far beyond anything Wizards would publish (as a mainstream book, with one exception). All this was removed for Pathfinder 2E, since their market is the nebulous audience on social media. They used a lot of mature topics and sex to sell Pathfinder 1e to an older audience, and it worked.
Pathfinder 1e is still one of my iconic, greatest of all time games. But D&D 3.5E is not a prequel, nor is it inferior - it is a different game entirely, even though it was cloned. Both games have huge flaws, yes, but the goals of a game design matter greatly here.
Pathfinder enhances character power, and you see the beginnings of modern gaming in here, such as the "force missiles" that evocation wizards get, the "free magic attack per turn" that you see in 5E and most all modern games with the cantrips. Back in 3.5E, if a caster runs out of spells, you are learning how to use a ranged weapon, quick. The game is more old-school and sticks to those sensibilities.
Also, in Pathfinder, you see a simplification of skills, and they combined 3.5E's jump, tumble, and balance skills into "acrobat" - which you see in every modern game. I do not like acrobat, since the name implies working in a circus, and I would rather have balance be a skill, in case a wizard wants to buy a few cross-class skill levels in it just to be able to shimmy along a cave ledge. The skills in D&D 3,5E were far more oriented to "dungeon map play" than Pathfinder 1e's skills, which felt more like a generic game's skill list meant for story play.
And D&D 3.5E is dungeon-crawl and miniatures oriented. Yes, Pathfinder 1e has the same map and combat rules, but everything in 3.5E feels tightly tied to the map-based play. Pathfinder is full of "story feats" and a bunch of other softer character systems, where D&D 3.5E always felt more like a "dungeon battle" game, much like what they wanted to do with D&D 4E but failed spectacularly at. The jump skill is there to jump chasms placed on the battle mat. The balance skill is meant to be rolled in squares that require a balance check. Tumble is for character who want to use that as a special combat move, otherwise you don't need it.
Use rope is for using ropes, and has a skill synergy with climbing. Skill synergies were big, and added depth to the skills that we don't see in modern gaming.
There were more prestige classes in D&D 3.5E, and they were worth building towards. Pathfinder 1e seemed to follow the single or multi-classing model and avoided prestige classing for the most part, and you rarely see prestige classes in modern gaming. Prestige classes are cool! They are often overpowered, but since you had to work towards them, they were worth it and felt like a special achievement. Even roleplaying-wise, you got treated differently, in new social circles, and you felt like a "somebody."
D&D 3.5E also felt far more world-agnostic than Pathfinder 1e. The game is not linked to a single "take it or leave it" campaign setting, the art isn't trying to sell you football-headed goblin plushies, and the iconic characters aren't overused to the point of feeling like the only characters in the world. The 3.5E Deities and Demigods book was mostly classical pantheons, with over twice the page count going towards "non D&D" gods and demigods. 3.5E felt more like a "generic fantasy game" than Pathfinder 1e did, by far, and you get a 3.5E SRD these days, and it practically feels like a setting-neutral game.
With modern games, I can't say any of them outside of the OSR feel setting neutral.
Pathfinder 1e also has a huge problem with subsystems and rules bloat. You buy a book, and they give you a corruption system or kingdom score to track. In D&D 3.5E, you get your character, and you play. The design of the game stuck to the dungeon-crawling, and anything outside of that was a referee ruling. You are not tracking a corruption score in 3.5E, you commit an evil act or fall victim to a dark curse, and the DM says what happens as a result.
You don't need all these silly subsystems that Pathfinder drops in! you are better off without them.
Make a ruling.
Play.
Pathfinder 1e amps up the number of feats everyone gets. There is a huge amount of power creep going on here, and this leads to more balance issues, record keeping, and power gaming.
In modern games, the lines between good and evil start to become blurred, and orcs and goblins are our friends! People with demon-blood are not fighting against the blood of pure evil, but just different and cosplay-friendly character options. Half vampires are just really pale and have special abilities. Anybody can have any ability score modifier.
In D&D 3.5E, alignment was a thing. The DM controlled alignment changes, and they weren't done by earning points in some add-on system. You did good acts, and your alignment gradually shifted from evil to good, but you needed to prove yourself. You did evil, and you started to drift towards the darkness. New games do away with alignment completely, and the games suffer as a result. Nothing means anything. There is no evil in the world. Characters do whatever they want. Nobody judges anybody. The world becomes cosmopolitan, small, peaceful, and boring.
Pathfinder 1e started us down the road of this same-ism. It kicked off the modern design and multitudes of different shaped character races. It blurred good and evil. There were some banger good and evil books in the series, but by the end, the iconic (and every evil) Hellknights of the setting were presented as sometimes heroes and figures worth of respect. The setting ended up confusing the rules and muddling the absolutes that fantasy needs to be compelling. They wrote entire triggering concepts out of the setting out of fear of social media outrage.
The game ceased being a tool to tell stories, and a means to create an alternate identity for social media. Pathfinder became too much "about itself" than "about my story." D&D 3.5E? It is a dungeon game, first, not a story game or something to see yourself in. The lines between good and evil are clear.
And yes, D&D 3.5E is a West Coast design, and feels like deck-building in MtG. This is designed by some noted designers, and some pretty iconic ones. I feel this game is the only West Coast design that I like, the original is the best here before social media came along and the game started to pander to outside forces. Yes, the hit-points and damage are scaled, but this started in AD&D 2e. D&D 3.5E still has that design purity, and it feels like it cares more about old-school sensibilities than any other modern game - even Pathfinder 1e, which is its clone.
Where Pathfinder 1e wants to be a story game, D&D 3.5E knows what it is - a dungeon crawler.
The world is left up to you.
And the story is yours to write.
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