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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MNblockhead" data-source="post: 7779310" data-attributes="member: 6796661">Sincere questions. I see this complaint made about Pathfinder and even more so when people talk about 3/3.5 and the d20 "glut."What is stopping you from just sticking to the core rulebook? You don't *have* to buy every book that comes out. Right?If a player has an class they want to play, they can petition their DM for it. Then the DM needs to know core + player's class. Even with 5e, I don't bother to attain even familiarity with every race and class, just those in my games. Is this mentality due to organized play?  Or is our hobby really dominated by completionist collectors? If the core rules are hard to learn that's a valid criticism. But complaining about too many options and bloat seems unfair. You don't like them, ignore them. This is something 5e has done well. Even as they've release more options, you can still pare the game down to the Players Handbook without feats. Heck, in my first 5e campaign, I limited race and class selections beyond what is available in the PHB or Basic Rules. Partly to create a theme, partly to make it easier for me to ease back into DMing. If you allow third-party material into your game, you can make 5e quite crunchy and customizable. Most people choose to ignore most third-party stuff. Here's a secret: you can ignore a most of the "official" material as well.</blockquote>