This has been the case since 2e. However in 2e their “True form” was always Female. In 3.5 they could be born either and just switch between, but one or the other is their “true form”

PF1.0 does in fact have more classes, archetypes, and prestige classes than base 3.5e.

3rd sentence, first message.

many 3.5e classes would be archetypes in pathfinder

True, there are few, I wouldn’t say “many” tho.

in my experience playing different archetypes in pf can produce vastly different player experiences

Absolutely they do and I mean, I do like PF1 as well.

I only have a problem with “PF1 has more classes than 3.5”, which I would classify as “debatable”. I wouldn’t say wrong, since some archetypes do change the class enough, to be in my view as well, another class.

Can you point me to a list of pf1e classes, since you claim it has more classes… at least d20pfsrd.com or nethys doesn’t list them all(?). I just assumed you were counting archetypes.

I found 44 base classes & 119 prestige classes in Pathfinder.

3.5 has 84 base classes & rest of 362 are prestige (also, tbh, epic classes can be argued that they don’t count, which is fair).

I don’t really count “instead of x you get y & instead of A you get B” as a new class. Some archetypes does change the class a lot but in majority of cases you are still playing the X class.

Meanwhile 3.5e has a class that just focuses on masks or another that does well if the campaign is done in a Goblin accounting, or another who just focuses on mind effects. There is truly more variance.

But yes. It does have balance issues but most can be balanced in a game, if you are playing with friends instead of randos. And it does also suffer from feat bloat and feat paths for builds.

But in the end best thing is you can kinda mix and match from pathfinder with surprisingly minor tweaking.

This was more meant for people comparing 5e & PF2e

D&D 3.5 also had a couple classes, TBH my favorite edition to make literally any kind of build.