>>96389800
Pathfinder is D&D 3.5, reimagined by people who had no deeper knowledge of 3.5 design Philosophy.
Third edition wasn't designed like a traditional RPG, because WotC doesn't know what those are. So they turned to their most successful entity in the /tg/ style games space for guidance on how to craft a new edition of Dungeons and Dragons: Magic the Gathering.
Third edition D&D at it's core is a deckbuilding game. Look at the toughness feat: It gives you a could of Extra hit points. That seems useless, until you consider the idea of a Low-Level pickup game one shot at a convention or something. Your Wizard can effectively double his HP pool and therefore survivability with one feat at the cost of weird meta-magic shit he wasn't going to use inside the next hour anyway.
Every splat book was a list of classes, monsters, feats, etc. Designed to give you more 'cards' to build your 'decks'(Characters) with, creating an evolving style of play that completely reinvent itself by choosing with books were allowed.
Pathfinder's Toughness feat just gives you a couple of extra HP per level. There was no understanding of the nuance behind the design of the original Toughness feat. Paizo made adventure paths and so every aspect of the game was attempted to bring into line the idea that EVERY game without exception would be a 1-20(+) campaign. They made splat books with new classes/ideas because that's what Third edition did, and they were trying to keep third edition alive by all but calling Pathfinder 1e D&D 3.75e.
Third edition D&D, for it's sins, was designed to create as many options as possible to create the most possible ways of engaging with the game, even if it chose a weird way to go about it (Ivory Tower Game Design). Pathfinder was designed to wear 3rd edition's face like a mask Buffalo Bill style and trick people into the cesspool that was Paizo's Adventure path based Ecosystem.
I can't speak on 2e Pathfinder, haven't had the chance to check it out.
