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Message: <blockquote data-quote="500 Toads" data-source="post: 9860443" data-attributes="member: 7056434">Balance would be the issue, but hey, it's not like D&D 5E subclasses are all that well-balanced anyway. Take it to an extreme, and you end up with a point-buy system where features have point costs, prerequisites, and probably mutual-exclusions.  I have vague memories of GURPS being somewhere in that space, but to be fair I haven't gone anywhere near that system for many years so my recollection could be wildly wrong.PF2e uses a mix.  It has classes, subclasses, class archetypes, non-class archetypes, and feats.  For a number of the classes there's a level-1 choice which is the equivalent of a D&D 5E subclass.  Rogues have "Rackets", Gunslingers choose "Ways", et cetera.  These provide a package of changes to the base class, including some that unlock at later levels.   Not all PF2e classes have subclasses (fighters don't, for instance) but it's common.There are "class archetypes" that replace the subclasses, where you make a choice at level 1 and are also required to take the relevant class archetype dedication at level 2.  These tend to change the base class in more drastic ways.  Examples include "Spellshot" dedication for Gunslinger or the "Flexible Spellcaster" dedication that applies to multiple caster classes.There are other archetypes that exist as feat trees that one can enter into instead of taking 'ordinary' class feats.  There's a "Wrestler" archetype that can be of interest for martials particularly interested in grappling, for instance.  Taking an archetype dedication feat means that you aren't taking a different class feat instead, and you can't really spam dedication feats because you need to take two more feats from that archetype before you can pick up another dedication feat.And then there's piles of class feats, which have prerequisites regarding class, level, previous feats and what-not.  There's also feats associated with ancestries, and general feats, and a subset of general feats that are tied to specific skills.  The end result is that pretty much every time you level up, you're choosing a class feat or a general feat (that might be a skill feat) or a skill feat, which means a lot of customization possibilities (in addition to that granted by the somewhat more granular skill system (untrained/trained/expert/master/legendary rather than untrained/proficient/expert, say).Multiclassing is also handled through archetypes, which provide access to a restricted set of class features plus access to other features with feat trees (again, taking a feat from a multiclass archetype is in lieu of alternatives such as taking a feat from your own class, or from any other archetype you may have).That does mean that there's potentially a lot of choice (which you can explore for free if, say, you poke at creating characters using the popular Pathbuilder 2E tool; even if you restrict things to the core books only, there's a lot of options).  In general they've tried to be reasonable about things so that if you make logically appropriate choices you won't be severely underpowered or overpowered -- there's not really guarantees on effectiveness if, say, you insist on investing your feats into archetypes like Dandy and Celebrity for a pure dungeon crawl, but the system is meant so that you can viably build into a lot of different styles, and with rules for retraining during downtime in case somebody does end up regretting a feat choice.  Whereas, say, if I were running D&D 5E w/ the 2014 rules and there were a completely new player who didn't read up on build guides, I might have to warn him about how for instance spears and halberds have significantly better feat support (in terms of game mechanics) than the "traditional" sword-and-board fighter; or how in many cases, hand crossbows can just out-DPS other bows c/o XBE + SS.  Feat trees need to be carefully thought-out if you don't want there to be "trap options".</blockquote>

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