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PF1 Remastered: What Could Be Cut From the Core? (Patreon)

Published:
2026-06-28 03:59:28
Imported:
2026-11
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Let's say, hypothetically, I'm writing a "Remastered" version of Pathfinder 1st edition.

And the core rulebook HAS to have some things trimmed from the original. No choice. CANNOT be avoided.

What feats and/or spells can be excluded?

Could we lose Endurance?
Run?
Blend ALL the +2-to-2-skills feats into a single Skill Synergy feat?

Surely SOMETHING can be cut from those sections?
#PF1Remastered

Comments

The Hobbled Goblin Podcast

I think some of the prerequisite feats can be cut. Power attack, deadly aim, combat expertise and Point blank shot can be done by anyone in combat. All Martial characters know how to fight so improved unarmed strike is no longer a feat either. I think it would help builds get where they want faster and remove some feats

Ebonbolt

Sadly, I've always thought that a few things should be added to the rules. Things like an entry in every spell description for Permanency costs (mostly, so 3rd party spells get that info built in). I don't know how much it'll change the word count, but that's the big change I'd advocate. There's a few other changes I'd like to see, but nothing that includes cuts.

David Chart

I think there's a surplus comma in the first sentence of Elemental Channel, on page 122. That's all I've got. (Sorry. Silly joke rather than actual helpful contribution…)

Silver Griffon

Definitely turn the the 2 skills at +2 into a single feat. Some feats feel unnecessary like run or point blank shot shouldn't be a prerequisite to anything.

Matt Daley

There are a lot of feats that could be cut away, but I feel like any re-mastery of PF1 would have to do away with Vancian Magic as a whole. That is the number one thing I would cut in favor of basing magic on Spheres of Power.

Twelveseal

This. Some Feats should just be core aspects of the game, possibly tied directly to weapon Proficiencies. If anything, they might just be functions of specific weapons characteristics; two-handed weapons gain Power Attack. Light/Finesse Weapons automatically gain Weapon Finesse or just outright use DEX for attack and damage rolls instead of STR. Those that are kept might instead advance automatically over time, similar to a class feature, without requiring additional investment. The earlier one buys in, the more advantages one gets.

Andy Christian

Condensing feats is a good way to do it. Like your skill synergy suggestion, or combining a lot of the feat tax/trees into a single feat that grows stronger as you level up. Dodge, Mobility, Spring Attack come to mind. Power Attack, Purahna Strike, and the ranged one dont all need to exist independently--call it Damage Focus and they can pick the type of attack it effects (melee, ranged, precision weapons, etc). Fighter feat trees like weapon focus, weapon specialization, etc, can be a gemrowung feat as well. Style feats dont need 3 entries. Just one entry each and grows as you level.

Andy Christian

You can stipulate a growing feat requires a new feat expenditure to gain the next power if power creep is an issue with growing feats. Or maybe you can save a feat for later and growing feats cost two feat slots.

Twelveseal

I like Spheres of Power (and Spheres of Might even more), but if anything, the Words of Power system would be what gets mainlined and expanded on, especially if one were to shift to a standardized MP system rather than slots. It's both an in-house choice that doesn't require additional licensing, and it has the potential to allow for greater versatility. Though it's a bit of a deep cut, Green Ronin's Black Company Campaign Setting (from their Mythic Vistas line) used a spell-building system where knowledge of individual Effects imparted their own passive bonuses. A rehash of that which merges elements of WoP, SoP, and passive effects from specific types of magic one could cast would make for a more distinct system that could also DRAMATICALLY cut the amount of spells you'd need to include in the core book. Bonus points if you allow Spellcraft to be used to justify distorting a given effect. I use a system similar to this as a form of archaic magic in a homebrew setting, minus the passive bonuses from known Words.

Twelveseal

Like I said in some of my responses to other folks in here, some of the Feats should probably just be rolled into basic character actions or tied to specific weapon qualities. I also think you could do away with most of the standard spell section entirely and just switch to a modified version of Words of Power as the standard, coupled with a Spell Point/Magic Point system that incorporates Spellcraft to reflect altering Effect and Meta Words. You can roll a lot of the Metamagic effects into those Meta Words and just expand that system in general, dramatically cutting down on the total number of actual spells needed to be written. This move away from Vancian casting would also distinguish it further from D&D as a bonus.

Owen K.C. Stephens

"Instead of its normal effect, you can choose to have your ability to channel energy heal or harm outsiders of your chosen elemental subtype." Huh. I mean, I don't THINK that would save me a line, but...

Owen K.C. Stephens

That would very much upset fans of the Vancian magic system, and destroy any chance of backwards compatibility. :)

Daniel Powell

Rolling all the +2 to two skills feats into one feat of “pick two skills, gain - +2 bonus to each of them, this bonus increases to +4 if you have at least 10 skill ranks in that skill, you may take this feat multiple times, pick disjoint skills each time” might be enough of a power bump for it to be considered more often. As is, it’s only taken when both skills are good for the character. Trimming the lists of class features of “pick one of these options that will become class feats next edition” seems like a better option. Bring rogues and barbarians in line with the ranger; pick a type and get abilities from that type, rather than picking from a huge list every few levels. For fighters, give all the fighter bonus feats chains one feat that scales with BaB (cleave adds the effect that is cleaving finish at 6 BaB, greater cleave at BaB 9, and greater cleaving finish at 16, or whenever they make sense- and then give Fighters a class feature to treat their BaB as higher for the purpose of qualifying for and determining the effects of feats (half fighter level seems right). Yes, that means they get a bigger viral strike, and that’s okay. It might make more sense for rangers to have a more limited version, which would allow Ranger fighting style feat chains to collapse into a single feat that scales. Drop the animal training rules entirely; anyone with an animal companion barely interacts with them already (pushing an animal companion is automatic very early on). On that note, animal companions and familiars can be simplified. There’s a lot of steps taken to give them a full character sheet that doesn’t vary a lot based on the choices made. Negative levels and ability drain can be merged into a single stack of negative energy drain, that doesn’t require recalculating most of the character sheet when it happens. Grappling is still too complex. The other combat maneuvers are okay, especially if their feat chains are merged.

Daniel Powell

My thought with feats is to have them scale with BaB, and then give fighters a feature that lets them treat their BaB as higher when determining the effects of feats instead of bonus feats, since the core fighter’s main thing is paying the feat taxes. That would mean that some feats could have bonuses for an effective BaB over 20, which only high level fighters ever see. That’s fine, only high level fighters could have greater cleaving finish and the top tier of vital strike already.

Brent A Strom

Power Attack, Combat Expertise, and Deadly Aim, etc. should lose their status as feats and become an innate part of BAB progression. Similarly, Heighten Spell should be eliminated and made innate based on class with spells always using the slot level expended to determine DC. Spells that clearly function like the Undercast spells (think Silent Image -> Minor Image -> Major Image, etc.) change into the Undercast model. Magic item crafting feats should also be collapsed into one feat you can take multiple times and a chart of minimum levels. Metamagic feats that remove a casting component can similarly be collapsed (Still Spell, Silent Spell). Controversial take: caster level and spells per day progression should be collapsed. A Cleric 3/Wizard 3 characters should be CL6 and their spells per day should be level 6 on a single chart. Multiclasses of different spell progression speeds, such as Bard and Paladin, should follow the spells per day progression of the stronger casting class. This eliminates several charts from the class section. Additionally, any spells are drawn from a shared pool of slots rather than tracking multiple pools. This makes the Cleric 3/Wizard 3 example above have 4/3/3/2 instead of 4/2/1 twice. This is a buff to total spell slots until character level 9 for 9-level casters, then it flips to a nerf for the remainder of the character progression. It's mitigated by the availability of higher level slots for the automatic Heighten effect. One thing that needs to be added back is rules for Burrow as a movement type. It is currently undefined in PF1. I was astounded during a PaizoCon panel on Ultimate Wilderness development when it was acknowledged as missing but they never put the rules in the final book. It was kind of fine for it to be missing when it was basically monster-exclusive, but once PCs could reliably access burrow speeds, it was a real mess especially in organized play. One of the biggest things to me that seems hard to address is the amount of hole-patching that seems to occur from both the hardcover and softcover lines. Feats and spells were frequently added as effective errata to the core. Piranha Strike is an egregious example of this: "I want to power attack but I also want to be a dex-based character with 8 str" is not a ridiculous idea, but there wasn't support for it until Sargava, The Lost Colony. Obviously this example falls into the first suggestion, but it was one of many. Similar-but-different, the "magic has a visual effect while casting as the spell forms" errata that occurred somewhere between Occult Adventures and Ultimate Intrigue where people complained about how automatic Silent Spell favored psychic casters in social situations that happened via forum post and represented a significant shift in most players'/GMs' understanding of the benefits of Silent Spell and Still Spell.

Alzrius

I think that there are a lot of small, inconsequential aspects of the game that could be done away with without compromising its overall nature as a PF1-compatible game. For instance: -Yes, absolutely consolidate all of the +2/+2 skill feats into a single variable feat. It worked for Skill Focus just fine, so it can work there. -There's no reason to have your off-hand deal 1/2-Strength bonus to damage, and so no need to have the Double Slice feat. -Just make it so that combat maneuvers don't provoke AoOs. Players seem to avoid drawing attacks of opportunity like the plague, and it cuts down on interesting combat options (not to mention that, when you read the fine print, damage they take from those AoOs applies as a penalty to their CMB check, which is even worse). -Change iterative attacks so that at +6 BAB you get a second attack (made as part of a full attack action), with a -2 penalty to both attacks; at +11 BAB you can make both attacks with a -1 penalty; and at +16 BAB you can make both attacks with no penalty. Bad Axe Games' Trailblazer pioneered this, and the math bears out that this results in overall more damage being dealt and less time wasted on third and fourth attacks with almost no chance of hitting. -No class should ever grant a paltry "2 + Int. bonus" skills per level. 4 + Int. bonus should be the absolute minimum. -Let the keen weapon property stack with the Improved Critical feat. Sean K. Reynolds did a piece on his (now defunct) blog where he broke down the math on this, and showed that it was how you kept low-damage-but-high-crit-threat-range weapons viable at higher levels, as opposed to weapons with massive damage ranges like the greataxe. There's a lot more, but they're all like this; small discrete changes that make themselves felt collectively, even if they're individually not very significant.

Gen Giggles

Blending the synergy feats into one skill and one combat synergy feat, so only two feats, would be huge.

Chris Mortika

When Third Edition came out, there were several essays by the designers about Feats, how they were designed, how to design new ones, etc. And one suggestion was: if you make a feat that you think is too good, that lots of different characters would find useful, then give it a pre-requisite feat. So, if someone really wanted Pretty Good Feat B, they’d need to invest two feat slots for it. And I think linking several themed Feats to the same pre-requisite is clever design. As I understand it, the purpose behind the common pre-requisite feats, like Power Attack or Point-Blank Shot, is to encourage players to specialize / focus their characters’ fighting style. They are themselves underwhelming, because a large part of their value is the more attractive feats each of them unlocks.

Kaira Silvermist

There's a forum post called "Elephant in the Room: Feat Taxes in Pathfinder: That covers a lot of this, and it's automatically enabled in any game I run. I don't know if you've ever read through it, no doubt you have, from what I've seen it's pretty well known in PF1e spaces.

Ebonbolt

This is precisely what drove many players away from 4e to Pathfinder in the first place. At that point, it is justifiable to say that it is no longer the same game; not just a new edition, a new game.

Benjamin Lash

If you just wanted to cut stuff, I don't see anyone discussing spells. I think these can simply be omitted. bleed Flare obscure object locate object - unless reworked phantom trap +4 enhancement to a score can be one spell - it will break nothing if clerics get "fox's cunning" Flame arrow - or fold into magic weapon greater option Dream/nightmare: one spell ally/enemy split Agree with other commentator, try to shorten/systematic permanency +4 enh mass - one spell, or remove as almost never used sequester invisibility, mass (invisibility sphere covers it usually, or lower level) read magic helping hand? 7th level "word" spells could be condensed if needed warp wood/wood shape could be combined IMHO detect animals or plants know direction And that's my consider cutting list. Hope it helps.

Ian Danton

Agreed on a skill synergy feat.

Steven Schend / Vistag Media

Skill Synergy would be a sanity saver, yes indeed. Beyond that, it's tough to rebalance the feat trees and advancements while retaining cool play value but there's rarely as much fun payoff for the non-martial types in the feats (since they get variety from spells et al). What if there were thresholds past which you can forego/skip feat checks based on levels and ability scores?

Daniel Powell

Crit focused builds looking at a 9-20 x3 crit weapon next to a 15-20 x5 one like there’s a comparison?

Weston Clowney

Combining similar feats sounds like a good idea. Also in that vein, reducing entries by collapsing feat trees seems like it might help. For example, Cleave, Great Cleave, Cleaving Finish, Improved Cleaving Finish, and Cleave Through maybe don't need five separate entries.

Daryl

* Deadly Aim has to go for sure. It's a bad-for-the-game feat. * Prestige Classes can go. * "Crit fishing" things -- both feat and weapon enhancements -- are probably left in the past.. * Toss all 0-levels spells and set make each it a free-form-with-guiderails, maybe with an example or two of the old ones left in. * Merge the highly-symmetric spells (there are fewer than you think) though, like the Animal's Trait statboost ones. * "Protection from Alignment" is the spell, not a bunch of different ones. Maybe a clause in the spell that the variant is chosen at preparation.

Chris Mortika

I have been thinking about this all day. I recommend adding in enough classes and general archetypes to allow your Core Rules to feel like mature-but-not-bloated Pathfinder 1. But I would only include rules for playing the game up to Level 7. Every class, truncated to the first 7 levels. No spells beyond 4th level for full casters. No feats that have, like, five pre-requisites, or that only come into their own in the later game. Drop equipment that costs more than 35,000 gp. That saves you a lot of space. (And, sure, you can also collapse some of those Feats.) A lot of players retire characters at level 6 or 7. (Heck, I know of several campaigns that just used the Beginner Box rules.) There was the whole E6 modification to the game that was popular (at least in my neck of the woods) where characters get to “the fun levels” and just stop there, developing skills, adding spells to their spell books, and maybe earning enough experience to get an extra Feat.

Kaan Ozkal

“My honest cut would be Wizard and its support package. Not because Wizard is unusable, but because it is one of the densest sources of Core bloat: spellbooks, schools, opposition schools, bonus-feat support, scroll/crafting assumptions, and prepared-arcane spell-list pressure. Move Wizard to an Arcane Anthology-style book and let Sorcerer carry Core arcane casting.”

Lucus Palosaari

Oh wow -- you know I agree in broad strokes that "a good way to cut a lot of the game" would be to just include the needed rules for Pathfinder to... some level. I mean "10" feels like a natural stop but 7th or somethign might actually mechanically make more sense But how much "content" would Owen get to "cut" if he didn't include anything ABOVE 4th level magic and magic items and support (entire Feats and class abilities get to go away etc) THAT would be an amazing way to "Cut bloat"

Michael Order

I love the idea of a remastered 1e but it needs to avoid becoming the somewhat overly prescribed feeling of 2e. Nerf what needs nerfing and combine some of the options where there are far too many but don't overkill it as those multiple options are half the charm. A lot of the problems we had as a group with 1e where that we became over-powered and our DM had trouble balancing the combats.. Maybe a good way to approach this is to rank abilities semantically (especially those that are min-maxed) such that the ranking helps denote the scale of the encounters to ensure balance while honouring the original system? Great thought provoking discussion!