Why do people care about feat taxes?

[Crake]

This wouldn't be a problem without that underlying player mentality... but it seems that something about the ruleset also fosters the mentality that makes it unsustainable.

Other games have optimization junkies and rules lawyers of their own, but I've never seen another game with a fanbase as bloodymindedly dedicated to reading each and every rule as far as possible from its most reasonable interpretation, regardless of whether or not it benefits their own character(s).

I don't think that the mindset is as pervasive as giantitp makes it SEEM like it is. I highly doubt most people play "Absolute strictest RAW possible" at their table, everyone will have SOME houserules at their table to fix the inconsistencies and, as people put it, dysfunctions. The issue though, is that everyone will have slightly differing ideas on what is and isn't dysfunctional, or how this or that rule can be interpreted, or what is and isn't a reasonable rule.

Thus, the only way to really discuss the game is with the "absolute strictest RAW possible" reading, which even then is sometimes ambiguous.

tl;dr: I really doubt people are as argumentative over the rules at their tables as they are here.

There's also the notion that, if you have a GM that's willing to let you do something like Dark Chaos Shuffle to get {thing}, they're probably also fine just giving you {thing} for free. I'd wager that it's actually more likely to find a GM willing to houserule like that in the name of fun, than it is to find one that wants you to have fun but only if you leap through the most convoluted RAW-legal hoops imaginable to get there.

I think this pretty much sums it up. There are times when sometimes it would make more senses to use psychic reformation or DCFS to change abilities around, but I personally think the only time a PrC should have a feat or skill requirement is when said feat or skill requirement is integral to the PrC, and that PrC should instead have more story-centric requirements, rather than meta-crunch requirements. My players actually rarely take prestige classes these days, because they're just such a hassle, and none of them enjoy the experience. The last time one of them took a memorable PrC was actually one of the players taking a homebrew, dragon-slayer-themed PrC that had campaign ties and story elements. It's actually one of the things I think pathfinder just did better, archetypes/ACFs over PrC, though I think PrC still have their place, my table I think is pretty much over the whole hardcore theorycraft characters into oblivion and pick all this and that, and they would much rather just play the game and let the characters grow on their own, and if something's not working, we'll fix it later.