I've recently concluded that Pathfinder is, pretty definitively, not for me - not just as a DM (which I've known for some time), but even as a player. And the reason for that is very simple: too many options.
To an extent this has always been true - the game started off excessively option-heavy. It has since exploded... which is absolutely fine provided the #1 option that is available is to simply opt-out of all that stuff.
Unfortunately, there's what is possible, there's what is practical, and there's what the peer group will effectively allow you to do. But in many ways it's like trying to opt out of social media - yes, it's possible, but if everybody you know is using it heavily and they insist on using it as their primary (or sole) means of communication, you're basically screwed.
The upshot is that it looks like opting out of the mess of options in Pathfinder may well not be a practical choice - not only will you end up with a character that just sucks (because of the power-creep inherent in those options), but the local group will constantly be pushing you to use them.
And, faced with that, it looks like I may have to opt out of Pathfinder as a whole, as just being not for me. Which is a shame.
Worse than that, since I'm also opting out of 5e as being a big pile of pish (which isn't an entirely fair assessment, but I was utterly soured on the game by the time I'd left ENWorld, largely due to that community's insistence that it was flawless in every regard), that takes me out of 90% of the RPG field. At which point, it looks easier to step out of the remaining 10% than trying to find a game I can just play.
Maybe it's time I really did become an ex-gamer.
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