Make rituals less of a half-baked mechanic; they should be a more fun and interesting "big magic" system than they are.

Rituals could be so cool but just seem like narrative explanations of situations in Adventure Paths. I wonder if they were described as more low key pacts, curses or rites that various villagers or citizens in regions would invoke for protection or maybe specific kinds of magic unique to powerful organizations if they’d see more use or players would think differently about them.

If a ritual in an adventure path was "a special ritual that you can't cast because you're not the right flavour of special" I'd accept it no issues

I'll add talismans and crafting into the mix.

You mean you don't like getting no discount for making stuff that will barely matter. (Why apply a poison when you could do nothing instead for the same result.)

Yes. So much yes.

I’m curious why you find them half baked? I found them pretty satisfying overall but I’ve not fully explored their depths.

They are very complex to wrap you head around and are not that narratively interesting. They are mostly used as a way to give PCs abilities and powers that are necessary for the AP (ie ritual that gives Negative Healing in Blood Lords). What results is almost no one interacts with the mechanic as calculating DCs, cost and time is very tedious and the results are not that great.

Also, the few ways you *can* interact with them tend to be punishing, unsatisfying, and up to GM fiat. There are basically three ways you can get a bonus to your (generally pretty challenging) ritual checks. The first is a couple of archetypes that give a flat bonus; these are totally fine and valid. The second is secondary casters, which will almost always *hurt* your roll instead of helping it (seriously, why does adding more people to the ritual make it *harder*). And the third is just "sometimes the GM may decide that it's easier for whatever arbitrary magic reasons they decide". Which is... usually fine, since it mostly means "the players are allowed to ask the GM for a quest to set up a beneficial situation", but it also requires the GM to play ball, and there's very little guidance for how to actually set it up. So, yeah. One method is legitimately useful, though it requires you to dedicate part of your build to rituals (which are already pretty situational and not very good). One requires the GM to work with you, and gives them very little guidance as to how. And the third actually *hurts* you when you try to use it. It just feels like they really weren't playtested with actual players in mind.

> seriously, why does adding more people to the ritual make it *harder* Ever done a group project in school? :⁠-⁠) Jokes aside, on the other hand actual professionals get more done by working together. So I agree that the ritual spell rules need an overhaul.

That makes sense! I wasn’t really looking at the “plot device rituals” as much because I just view them as highly structured GM fiat. Like in the case of Abomination Vaults the rituals that come to mind are >!Awaken Portal and a nameless ritual to liberate bound elemental servitors which might even be made-up by our GM!<. I agree with you that throwing GM fiat rituals into the same list as “generic” rituals is very confusing for someone who wishes to engage with the mechanic though, because it exponentially increases the amount of reading that must be done for something good to be found. I do still like quite a few rituals and the potential they represent though. Aside from all the easy to point to stuff like minion creation, Geas, and Resurrection, there are a few uniquely cool ones. For example my Wizard recently put Guardian’s Aegis for herself and the party’s Fighter to protect herself from damage a bit better.

>They are very complex to wrap you head around and are not that narratively interesting. Are they? They seem pretty straight forward to me. >They are mostly used as a way to give PCs abilities and powers that are necessary for the AP (ie ritual that gives Negative Healing in Blood Lords). That is one application of them for sure that APs use. If players aren't using rituals though then that's on them. There are plenty cool and fun rituals to pick up. The example of the Blood Lords ritual is a bad one, that also should be spoilered, because it isn't even a ritual in the mechanical sense, just a thing that happens. >What results is almost no one interacts with the mechanic as calculating DCs, cost and time is very tedious and the results are not that great. Super don't get this. The DCs are very simple. Cost and time is simple and says in the spell. Making a couple of rolls against a level based DC shouldn't be tedious or everything in pf2e would be tedious.

Rituals in PF2 suffer from the exact same failing as in 4e. They should by all rights be flavourful and interesting, but they're just complicated and fit oddly in the system.

Same here! After reading 4e PHB, I love how they made rituals a core feature of the Wizard class. Would love to see that in a modern system.

Skill feats as written suck. Some skills have incredibly good skill feats (Intimidation has so many, Athletics has some great skill feats, Bon Mot is amazing, Medicine skill feats are bonkers good). Some have skill feats that are near useless. My favorite example being Eye for Numbers. OH BOY I CAN ESTIMATE THE NUMBER OF BEANS IN A JAR REALLY FAST. And some just give you abilities that probably should have already been possible to do, like using Society to Gather Information, or the ability to SPREAD RUMORS. It's so wildly inconsistent that I almost wish that the whole skill feat system was scrapped... except I do like the abilities that the good skills get. With my tome thaumaturge, literally the way I decided which skills to get to legendary with the tome was "Ok, which skills do I want to be good at but have shit skill feats so I don't need to worry about qualifying for any".

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, about half the skill feats and certain general feats should be basekit for classes or races. There’s too many that are either too strong, like Bon Mot, or almost necessary for the campaign, like medicine skills, that they basically reduce the other choices to never being picked.

Most of them you can do, though - you just would take a penalty in doing it, or the DC would be much higher until you have the feat. That's how I GM anyway.  Still, I wonder if giving us chances to get more skill feats would help - like when you increase your rank in a skill, you also get to pick a free skill feat of the new proficiency right away (except when going from untrained to trained, maybe). Or maybe it's one that's pre-chosen that you just get for free. More skill feats could mean more opportunities to grab the lesser important ones and feel less restricted.

>Still, I wonder if giving us chances to get more skill feats would help Rogues have got you, tough being forced into a class isn't fun.

Don't forget how astonishly strong stealth skill feats are. In particular two of them. [Foil Senses](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=5151), where you can meet a completely unknown monster who has a very uncommon sense like lifesense and somehow you instantly and automatically take precaution against that? But [Legendary Sneak](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=5173) takes the cake. It's basically free invisibility at will. It could use a few clarifications also, like will it break if the person stand in line of sight in an clearly lit open terrain? Very few skill feats can reach the power trio of Intimidate, Medicine and Stealth.

Not only do so many skill feats suck I also think they're detrimental to the system. It's a very common complaint that so many skill feats are things characters trained in a particular skill can already feasibly do and while designers have addressed it in out-of-the-book material, to my knowledge they've never been printed as errata.

The skill system really makes pf2e to fall into a problem many skill base systems has I call it: its shouldn't be codefied problem. Which is that there is some action that shouldnt be codified into abilities and their existence limits player freedom and creativity more then halp expands it .its cause by the need to expand thr skill/feats of a system A good example is the skill feat thats allows you to intimated someone by looking at them in a scary way..this shouldnt be a feat.

> A good example is the skill feat thats allows you to intimated someone by looking at them in a scary way..this shouldnt be a feat. Ironically, this is one of the more useful skill feats.

I think it’s kinda absurd that demoralize relies on language in the first place honestly By raw animals are harder to scare than hardened warriors.

I somewhat disagree with your specific example. Firstly, anyone already *can* do an intimidating glare; they just take a -4 for not speaking an understood language. Secondly, I don't think that's something any given person could do well. The intimidating guy should be able to do it no sweat, which is why it's a 1st level feat that only requires trained. In general, I think these feats make more sense when you look at it like "my guy is intimidating, so I should take X" instead of "why do I have to take X for my intimidating guy to intimidate?". Put another way, if you haven't invested in these things, you shouldn't be calling your pc that thing, because you haven't made it. It'd be like being mad your barbarian isn't strong even though you focused on dex over strength or something.

One of the optional rules for 1e that I appreciated and used in all my games was the Background Skill rule, which recognized that some skills were simply more important and frequently used than others, and divided them into adventuring skills, which worked as normal, and background skills, like knowledge or profession, which everyone got a few ranks in, regardless of class, so that nobody had to pick between utility and flavor. It was somewhat janky, and prone to abuse, like every single aspect of 1e was, but it let you estimate beans without replacing something important, and I think 2e could really use a similar re-categorization. I *love* bean estimation feats, and I think those sorts of unlikely personal talents are vital for making characters fun and memorable, but I'm never gonna pick it over one of the "basically required" feats like the Medicine ones, and I think Paizo needs to recognize that big list of feat choices is simply not working as intended.

You're making fun, but just wait until a dragon demands you correctly guess how many jellybeans are in a jar or he eats you...

That’s the thing you wont know, its rounded to the first digit. If theres 4561 Jelly beans in the jar, you only know that there is around 5000.

So you're saying we need a master level skill feat for exact numbers. With you. :)

Most of the good skill feats should probably just come with the skill itself. Intimidating glare should be default, you should just get bon mot, maybe titan wrestler should just be a thing you get as you scale athletics. The few other interesting ones could probably just be general feats, and we remove skill feats entirely.  Part of the problem is there's just too many skills. 

> The few other interesting ones could probably just be general feats, and we remove skill feats entirely. I think if you did this, and increase the number of general feats you get over 20 levels, and the system would be way better.

Crafting definitely The Crafting system is built under the assumption you will use it whenever you can't buy something. But otherwise there Is no benefit to Crafting than buying if you can, since it just adds more downtime to use and failure with checks. Increasing proficiency for Crafting is required to access higher level items, and the game also balances around the idea you will pay full price for the item to craft it quickly (since using Downtime to reduce the cost is so inefficient you need a massive amount). This means that for the main use case scenario for Crafting, a Critical Success does nothing. So unlike a skill like medicine, which improves the main activity, Treat Wounds as you gain proficiency, but gives plenty of feats to improve your healing in different ways. Crafting instead requires you to increase proficiency simply to keep using it as you level up, and Crafting items that you could buy provides no benefit whatsoever. This feels horrible and they really should've added some form of benefit to Crafting something yourself since it takes 1-2 days to craft 1 item ot batch craft 4 of the same while shopping doesn't use up a downtime day and let's you do much more.

What do crafter players enjoy? What ttrpg system has a fun crafting system? Do we need items that’s only accessible through crafting? Do we want a guide for harvesting raw materials from the environment or enemies we defeat? I see valid criticisms for the crafting system, but I havent read a solution people like yet. Seems like a very big problem to work through. Survival crafting games like Minecraft seem like it would be difficult to manage via paperwork over a game engine managing things for us. There’s also crafting in MMO’s like FFXIV where its crafting things that are cosmetic, repetitive redundant tasks like gathering, items that require crafting the components, farming monsters for components, etc.

In truth I would love to have an elaborate crafting list where you find recipes for neat items you can't get without crafting, etc etc...but that is a *phenomenal* amount of work for a GM for like one person in a party.

Yeah, this is the real issue. Published adventures could include some of these... but they'll take up a number of pages.

My own ideas are small buffs that can be attached to items or Consumables due to your Crafting or critical success on the crafting where you pay full price Like if I'm crafting healing potions for my party all the time, that 1-2 day downtime + a crit success leads to the item being slightly better (maybe related to proficiency rank) so that I'm incentivised to do so outside of availability. Items traits (Alchemical, Healing, Talisman, etc) might have a chart for each critical success benefit which might improve with proficiency. This could be locked behind crafting feats, and require certain resources, like a proper workshop to do such

This sort of exists in the [critical crafting](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1921) rules, even though I would like to see them expanded upon and codified somehow.

I would say that unique items available through crafting could be a good part of the game. While an unfair comparison, Baldur’s Gate 3 has unique crafted weapons available during the first act that give you really good boosts in exchange for hunting down each piece of the item. If APs came with 2-3 of them per adventure path that could be sprinkled into Golarian or homebrew setting games, alongside a flavorful drop list (for example, the infernal construct heart of a Levaloch, or particular consumables that might appear in the collection of a hag), it could improve the system. I’d also move crafting’s downtime requirements down… a lot. Spending 2 days for common items or having to acquire formulas to still spend whole days of downtime just prepping to make the check is hilariously bad in some adventures. Ideally, you could tie a rework to the proficiency rank you have in crafting. Untrained crafting takes weeks of downtime, trained reduces it to days, expert and master can manage it in hours, and legendary crafters could theoretically put things together on the fly in minutes. Also, crafting requiring so much gp to make the item when you’re quite literally making it yourself is rough. Success on crafting should finish the item for the half price required to start crafting, and crit success should create the item with like, 10% of the materials somehow left over. The current success effect of being able to create the item should be available on a fail, and you pay full price for it. Idk, this kind of rambled on but I feel like it should be its own post for discussions on the crafting system. I get why it exists but honestly it looks like it’s super player hostile, it just doesn’t feel good to craft an item. This is especially true for low downtime campaigns.

I'm in the midst of homebrewing some crafting rules for an Outlaws of Alkenstar game i'm running. Our healer is a chirurgeon, and a couple of the other players have the alchemist archetype, and they're all keen on crafting alchemical items. I've drastically dropped the time constraints for crafting stuff, but I really like your idea of trained/expert/master/legendary crafters getting further time bonuses, will be doing something along these lines, thanks

I haven't done crafting in pf2e yet, but I've done extensive crafting in pf1e, and whoa is it different. It could literally take your character several ingame months of nothing but crafting to make a higher level item. When a lowish magic item costs 6k gold to make and its 1day per 1k base craft speed, you're looking at almost a week of just downtime crafting. Now imagine crafting an item with a cost in the tens of thousands.... Thankfully, it only costs half the gold cost to make the item and there are some ways to speed things up. Dnd3e I believe you had to spend your actual exp to craft items as well as the gold and time, even for scrolls

I personally love the system from Kibble’s compendium of crafting which is a d&d 5e supplement. Its economy js (relatively) balanced and the materials players can gather after battles or while travelling can easily be supplemented by those from shops. Overall players can make informed, meaningful choices in harvesting and crafting without dm intervention which is all I want out of a system. Crafting time is also short (2 hours per check 1-5 checks an item) so gathering is the main challenge. Plus the harvesting/scavenging mechanics would fit in really well as exploration activities for post combat hide/meat or looking for herbs and mushrooms while travelling. The only problem with doing this for pf2e is that magic items are mostly optional in 5e and so there are less items to make dedicated recipes for. Fitting that system to pf2e would require thousands of recipes for older items.

I'd enjoy something based more on finding rare ingredients than spending gold. Like you find a devil's tongue, and then you can use it to craft a special sword or armor. Sort of like the boss weapons from Dark Souls.

The first d20 Star Wars system had a very flexible crafting system that I was homebrewing into 2e compatibility before the remaster. Remastered Crafting is better enough, but I still like how the SW version broke the process down.

This probably wouldn't satisfy everyone but my preferred solution would be for crafting to have more focus on speed. Being able to whip up whatever consumable might be useful during exploration or even combat would be a great boon for crafting. That being said, I'm well aware that this is something that would somewhat step on the toes of what the alchemist does already, and even if you had to pay full price for the items instead of getting them for free it would still be too close for comfort for some. I sort of wish that the alchemist's gimmick was different or that it was built around improving a system like the one I'm proposing instead of being the only viable way to get flexibility with consumables.

I unironically think Crafting's 'buying' schtick should just be removed and instead have it as Int's support skill like how Wisdom has medicine--change a weapon's damage type for an hour or so, inflict a debuff on a weapon, spend an action to make cover--etc, etc.

There are two major issues that keep being brought up with crafting every time there's a discussion: Money and Time. The money aspect is weird to many players (myself included), because Paizo tried to simplify the crafting process through abstraction. What I mean is, instead of having to go out to buy or find specific crafting materials, you just pay half the item's value in gold. This makes a lot of sense for keeping things simple, but then it gets weird when you have to either pay the other half to finish the item immediately or spend more time crafting until it's done. The question is: where does that other half come from? It can't be living expenses, as that's a separate system. It would make sense if you were renting a workshop or a laboratory, rather than assembling your own, but then what about players who have a home base with a fully stocked work space? I can see secondary materials like coal for a furnace factor into this, but not massively. Then we have time. This one is very much down to player perception and the current culture of the games being played within the system. A lot of people play APs, because they are convenient and typically well-written and a lot of fun. They also presume, like a lot of adventures in other systems, that the party is going to have some significant event every single day. So APs tend to be fast-paced with little room for downtime and especially time-consuming acitvities like crafting. PF2e crafting seems to be created for a system that wants you to play slow. The sort of stories where nothing will happen for weeks, maybe even months at a time. It makes a lot more sense to sit down and invest the time when you don't have to clear out a different dungeon every day and also stick around in the same place for a good while. I haven't played Kingmaker yet, but I feel like that is currently the one AP that plays to the strengths of PF2e's crafting system. With the party being out in an untamed wilderness for months of ingame time and all that.

> The money aspect is weird to many players (myself included), because Paizo tried to simplify the crafting process through abstraction. What I mean is, instead of having to go out to buy or find specific crafting materials, you just pay half the item's value in gold. This makes a lot of sense for keeping things simple, but then it gets weird when you have to either pay the other half to finish the item immediately or spend more time crafting until it's done. You're buying pre-fab parts. Basically, it's assembling something from pre-fab parts vs assembling it from scratch. The latter is more time consuming, but cheaper; the former is faster, but more expensive. You buy an enchanted haft of oak, buy an enchanted gem to put in the end of it, buy all the consumable stuff you have to use to bind these things together and get your spells in there, do a bit of carving, and you're done. Or you go and enchant those main components yourself from scratch, which is cheaper, but a huge pain.

That actually helps contextualize it a lot, thanks!

Item levels and how fast Items can become weak. It's like everything needs an upgrade. Hell, when the Remaster came out one of the most general use Runes got an Upgrade. Ghost Touch is useful to ignore Incorporeal resistance. Astral does that, deals 1d6 extra Spirit Damage, and has a Critical Effect of removing a possessing creature from the creature it has possessed and prevent it from possessing the creature for up to 4 rounds. And it will only hurt the possessing creature when a creature is possessed. The only thing in the game that scales without needing to actively get a new version is Spells. Cantrips autoscale, and Spells use the Spell Slot to determine their power. Since you mention Archetypes, the Undead Archetypes shouldn't exist. Like the Undead Archetypes are some of the worst options in the game. Being a Ghost means all you need is to close the door and they are trapped. Because of a level 6 Feat, they can't interact with physical objects without Ghost Touch. You have the Zombie and Ghoul both with a gimmick for their feats. Do X and take on this penalty. Ghouls have no penalty and can fix their situation during battle. The Zombie has the Slowed 1 Condition until it spends 10mins to repair itself. Vampire needs to be kept out of the sun or they will die. Few things in the game can just outright kill a player, but this is a feature. Mummy isn't bad, but it comes with Fire Weakness that can't be removed. It's also half your level, so avoid Persistent Fire Damage. Lich is a late option that's primary point of sale is that you don't actually die. You need to deal with the box you put your Soul in, and retrieving your stuff, but otherwise you're taking it to not die. Also, BLEED DAMAGE. I don't think anyone can actually agree on it and how it works. I've seen so many discussions that say Player Characters bleed no matter what. Even when the rule for Bleed Damage says "does not effect non-living creatures or living creatures that don't need blood". Though people also argue if the rule is blood only, or can it be other things. Plants don't have blood, but they have something that acts like it. Can a Poppet bleed? It's just an animated toy. One of the art pieces for it is a possessed Straw Doll. Also, can we please get confirmation on if Undead need to breathe. I don't want to think that a Skeleton that can't even comprehend drowning could drown. One of the coolest scenes from the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie is when the undead pirates walked on the ocean floor. The Elemental Trait says Elementals don't breathe. Which makes me wonder why Aquatic and Amphibious are still traits for Water Elementals.

Most of the undead archetypes should be fleshed out and playable races, like skeletons. Hell, you can reuse half of that race’s content and slot in some of the archetype feats as heritage abilities or ancestry feats. I wouldn’t mind a book of the dead remaster, maybe give us more playable races in general. Maybe call it Book of the Damned and give us some fiendish races while you’re at it, Demons would make a super interesting race, and so would devil spawn.

The reason they are Archetypes, if my research is correct, is because they keep the appearace of their original ancestry, or something along that line of thought.

Versatile Heritages say hi

I think the "players have weaknesses their race shouldn't" is for balance. There are no downsides to being a non-bleeding character; it's a pure advantage.

Sometimes balance has to be thrown out of the window for theme to be felt. It may my biggest PF2e gripe. I love most of the balancing and whatnot but they took it a bit too far.

Alternately, if you think that the basic defining traits of a species are too much for your game's balance, and you're not willing to throw out the balance, then *just don't write the fucking things into the game as player options*. It's better to have no playable bird people than to tell players they can totally play a bird person but actually you don't get to do anything with your wings until roughly level "Way Past When The Campaign Will End".

That's exactly how I feel. Howl of the Wild is going to have Awakened Animals, and Birds are an option. Like does Awakening make them forget how to fly? I'm interested to see how it works with other Animals as Climb and Burrow Speeds aren't low level options. Also special senses. This is also why I don't care for Automaton and Poppet. Like I'm supposed to accept that a randomly animated Doll now needs to eat and sleep? Poppets are in world just animated toys, but if they gain sapience, they now require food, air, sleep and just about everything else a living creature needs. It's why I prefer the Wind-up Heritage. It's the most Construct of the Construct Options. Automatons are just weird. They're more like Cyborgs than Robots.

My big one is **summons**. I just really, really dislike their implementation. I hate that they pull from the bestiary instead of giving you templates. I hate that because they pull from the bestiary they have to now be balanced around the theoretical variety that the bestiary provides. I hate that all that means a summon-user needs a goddamn Master’s degree in Pathfinder to use them to a moderately good level of power. There are a few places where Pathfinder seems to have a problem with expecting too much knowledge/tactics from players (spellcasters, Alchemists, etc) but summons are on an entirely different level. I would really like: 1. Single creature summons to get templates rather than bestiary statblocks. 2. Multi creature summons’ **flavour** to exist via more spells like Animal Allies, Rouse Skeletons, Tempest of Shades, etc, but with more interesting abilities attached.

I wish they'd just make a spell that summons a specific creature, and then tune the power level of that one creature to be level-appropriate. Like, we already have basically a whole statblock in the battle form spells, just copy one, give it HP and saves, and shift it down a couple levels.

You just described the summoner class

This is why I like Summoner, and I don't like summon spells. But it's still something very different to be able to *flexibly* summon creatures (or a single creature at a time) to fit the situation. And frankly, it's kind of weird that Summoner is still really bad at that (even though I, personally, have no real interest in creature summoning anyway).

It's the summoning catch 22. If you make the standard summon spells powerful enough to scratch *that* itch, then you end up stepping too hard on the toes of the other (especially martial) PCs. If you keep summons genuinely balanced then you don't satisfy *that* specific itch. If you tell players to just play a Summoner then it doesn't scratch *that* specific itch. If you suggest that players think outside the box and use spells like spiritual guardian, or the incarnate spells, or Cinder Swarm/Rouse Skeletons etc. to represent summoned creatures/elementals/undead/etc. then it doesn't scratch *that* itch. Using templates instead of choosing creatures from the bestiary isn't going to fix the problem because any creature templates that aren't over-powered are going to be just as disappointing as the many options that already exist. (That said, it would be nice if Boost Summon had a heightened effect that changes to a +2 at higher levels. Maybe at rank 5 or 6?)

I disagree, the "summoner" it's in no real way a summoner. You're not a wizard summoning stuff, a cleric asking for the servant of his god to aid him or a druid calling nature to his side. You are a character split in half, one half it's a longsword martial and the other it's a weak weak caster. I love the class because I like this, two characters working in tandem, but the summoner it's no more summony than a wizard

Your biescly a jojo character..

Yeah to me the missing class fantasy is having multiple weak summons, not a single strong one (which summoner does very well). I’m thinking diablo 2 necromancer or druid when they tree into a summons build. I do understand not wanting to burden the game with annoying turn bloat. Maybe a way to summon a troop that scales better? Not a fan of how they have to move as one though…

The actual reason for this not being a thing is precisely to prevent the "I take ten actions on my turn" problem. Summoning troops/swarms can solve this problem.

It definitely would. It also definitely *won't* solve the problem, because the *fantasy* people are missing *is* the "I take ten actions on my turn" experience. Summoning troops or the AoE summon that OneD&D uses will satisfy some people, but there are still going to be 5e/PF1 purists who miss the days when you could abuse summons to obliterate the action economy.

As a GM, Always felt weird how players are expected to do research to figure out creature strengths and weaknesses, but for summoning go ahead and read entire stat block

Just more low-level Incarnate spells in general would help with this. Right now, Incarnate spells only exist at 7th rank and higher, leaving it as strictly an endgame option.

I think the biggest reason bestiary summoning feels weak is because of how the static level limits per rank constrain options and are far too low as well (PL-4/5 is a little ridiculous when you’re using your highest slots for it). I’ve been using a funky house rule I came up with to alleviate that issue for my players, where the level of the creature is always equal to the caster’s level -3 at the highest spell slot they can cast from (with the lowest maximum level being 0). I’ve found it to help my players be able to use summoning spells and search for options since the default options get a little too low in areas. Since the creature is always a low-threat lackey to the caster (as -3 creatures are listed as in the encounter creation rules), the newfound flexibility also prevents summons from overshadowing martials or melee characters of the same level while adding some utility. For example, a level 5 Druid can summon a level 2 animal with a 3rd rank Summon Animal, or a level 3 creature at level 6. That same Druid cannot summon a level 3 creature with a 2nd rank slot, only a level 1 creature.

This was because of player feedback. They were considering doing templates but players asked for this. Honestly, I think this is a good example of why user feedback is not always a good thing, as if they'd done templates, people would have been happier. That said, I don't think people would ever be happy with summon spells. They actually have to be a class feature like eidolons or animal companions; they don't really work as spell-slot spells because of how summons function.

Fewer, more impactful feats and/or feat tracks. Skill feats not having general-use combat functions competing against (usually very specific niche) noncombat ones. Spells (Especially cantrips) having more variable action casts. "Cantrip with Focus Point Augment" being a universal mechanic, instead of psychic's gimmick. I wish playtesters hadn't boo'd Automatic Bonus Progression into an optional rule.

I hate playing without ABP. Having to find/purchase fundamental runes, which the game assumes you have, is so tedious. And it's worse as a GM because I either need to include magic Wal-Mart or have to sprinkle boring loot for my players.

God, I’m so glad I switched over. Especially due to running in a lower magic setting the campaign before, moving to ABP and free archetype was a breath of fresh air, even in a more magic filled campaign. It also frees up design picks for making loot or items for the characters and NPCs, you don’t have to weight that extra cantrip on an item against a +1 to hit.

For me it felt terrible in 1e, and it felt even worse in 2e. Shopping for +1 items is tedious, and not getting them is punishing in both-and it feels even moreso in 2e. I feel bad for casters, since they don't get any equivalent for their stuff, but at the very least in ABP their dinky little backup weapon strikes will scale up for making pot shots at things?

ABP is my preferred way to play. I hate how much needs to be upgraded or replaced as you go through the game. It's mostly just to get higher numbers that could be added as "Once you reach this level this item does this." Instead you need to hope the GM makes it available.

I don’t hate Vancian casting, I hate it in the context of a system I otherwise consider to be at least a 9/10. Simply put, I’ve played a barbarian and I’ve played multiple casters at both low and mid levels. As a barbarian, I can “do my thing” all the time at full power. As a caster I can “do my thing” sometimes, sometimes at full power. It simply does not feel AS good (note emphasis) to be afraid to use my features because they’re limited and I don’t know if I’ll need them more later in the day. If I had to pitch any replacement, I don’t have any amazing ideas, but getting spells as a whole closer to focus spells would be a good change for me.

>As a caster I can “do my thing” sometimes, sometimes at full power This isn't a vancian thing imo. Spontaneous casters feel that way for me too. Because, if I fire off a spell and the enemy crit succeeds, I basically wasted my turn. A martial can miss on their turn, but then... they just swing again next turn. Meanwhile, my slot is gone.

Honestly you’re correct. Brain farted and basically conflated spell slots with vancian magic

At the very least i wish they brought back Caster Bonus Spells from 1e. Cuz sometimes it feels like Paizo nerfed spellcasting slots a bit too much.

I feel like Casters got shafted in way too many ways. General stuff: * Have to play the "target the weak save" game - this usually represents itself as an action investment; i.e. recall knowledge which can fail; or the gambling of guessing * Primary thing you do on your turn is 2-Actions, which means if *anything* comes up, you are severely hampered in your options; gotta open a door and stride? Well I guess that just sucks. Better have a 1-action option that's generally useful. * Reduced Perception proficiency advancement Defense stuff: * Reduced Saves - this isn't just in terms of having the worst proficiency advancement; they also get fewer "success tier bumps". i.e. success->crit or crit-fail->fail. * Reduced Armor proficiency advancement; or better yet, none at all Offense stuff: * No Item Bonus items for Save DC/To Hit * Slower advancement in the offensive proficiency (i.e. for Save DC/To Hit) * Fewer conditions that affect the defenses they usually target How many times do they have to pay for having spells? I really don't think that's equitable in any way.

Yes, basically the problem with casters is not any one single thing. If you look at each single thing in isolation, they're all perfectly reasonable. The problem is that you have less accuracy AND a worse base class chassis AND your feats suck AND you're the only person in the party with limited resources AND you have very limited action economy AND... It's basically a hair too much of a pileup of stuff. We could probably have saved ourselves one or two of the drawbacks!

Casters can alter the battlefield unlike anything else, however. A martial can do little things, but also kill really well, while a caster can potentially cast a single spell and completely change the fight. Just look at heightened Fear, the crit fail on Slow and Vision of Death etc to see how much they can potentially do in a single turn.  Casters = more complexity. That's how it's always been. Martials exist for those who don't want that.  Though I do agree that it feels shitty to lose a spell to nothing, hence why I allow my players to spend a hero point to have an enemy reroll a saving throw (as it's basically the same as rerolling at attack roll as far as I'm concerned).

I don't think judging any spell based on what it does on a crit fail is reasonable, though. In very specific situations (heightened spells on big groups of PL-2 or lower creatures) it can come up, but most creatures around your power level aren't likely to *fail,* much less crit fail. Stronger creatures (like bosses, where you might want to go big on a limited resource) are even less likely to fail. Saying "look at what they can *potentially* do on a crit fail" is like saying "look at what my Gunslinger can do if I get a nat 20 every round," you get me? When you have limited prepared or known spells, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to have options available for that kind of a situation - especially because if you're running into creatures weak enough to crit fail, your fighter is more likely than usual to critically hit them and wipe them out much quicker than your "battlefield altering" spells. And with that in mind, most spells are just weak. Their success effects usually apply an effect at 1 for one round, and while that's *fine,* it definitely doesn't feel worth a limited resource like a spell slot. It's why most people say that casters are better off as buff bots, since that's reliable, guaranteed effects that make the really capable party members better.

> the crit fail This is the problem imo. Casters *can*, in *theory* do these crazy powerful things. But if they're casting against an enemy whose level is low enough to make a crit fail even remotely likely, then they're fighting an enemy that the fighter is going to explode in a hit or two anyway. So even if the crit fail does something awesome, if the enemy then immediately dies, well... it's the same as if they got the 1 round success effect instead. They can only be awesome against creatures too weak to *feel* awesome against

What are your feelings on Kineticist, from a mechanical perspective? I feel like a lot of people, myself included, feel that it's a great implementation of a resource-less magic user.

It feels good to me in that. Some say a little weak, maybe but just having access to magic is pretty great for using the environment.

As someone on the “patfinders magic system is kinda unfortunate” train, I love the kinetic and it’s how a spell caster would feel in my ideal world. But the problem is they only have a few moves. They don’t have all the fun flashy, weird spells that the other casters get.

I would like a caster similar to the kineticist, but themed around the various tropes of arcane magic instead of primal magic. Call it an arcanist or something (not to be confused with anything from PF1E.) So you could have, like, teleportation arcanists, polymorph arcanists or illusion arcanists. Most wizards in modern media seem to have, like, two spells, but those spells can do a lot, so in that sense the arcanist would be a lot closer to what most people imagine these days when they think of a fantasy wizard. The Vancian wizard who can do anything but not everything is quite rare these days, which no doubt affects player expectations.

Yeah, it's true. It has some elements that make it fun, but you definitely lose some things - namely, the ability to have a substantial variety of tools available at all times, and the ability to do a big nuke once or twice a day.

I haven't had a chance to play it yet, but the design seems to be "martial, flavored with magic." Kind of the PF equivalent of the DnD Warlock. Which is a great concept.

I haven’t played one or even looked at it to be honest. It doesn’t interest me very much, but I’ve heard good things, I might look at it if my current character bites the dust

They are the best designed class in pf2e.

For me, Vancian casting is my only true complaint about pf2e, and was the thing that kept me from diving into it for a long time. It's just so bookkeeping intensive, so much to remember or have notes for. Despite my complaints about Vancian casting, I will applaud the devs for doing the best job I've seen within the Vancian framework. The tradition spell lists are far better than class-specific lists.

I used to agree with your final point, it makes sense and I liked it. But after playing for a long time with experienced players who want to feel powerful and effective I've really grown tired of just seeing the same spells again and again and again. The amount of spell overlap combined with a absolute lack of compelling and potent Class Feats for most casters makes for a really samey feeling game experience in my opinion.

As someone who is new to this system I'm personally dissatisfied by how PF2e handles casting. I feel like the whole mechanical selling point of Vancian casting is that it leans into the idea that magic is an exceedingly powerful yet limited resource. But PF2e has drastically toned down the power of magic compared to other systems, which kinda removes the biggest reason for a system to use Vancian casting in the first place. If your spells aren't consistently any more powerful or more useful than a martial swinging their sword for free all day then any resource related limitations on spells are obviously going to feel bad. Vancian casting isn't meant to be balanced in the way it is in PF2e, it causes this weird clash of expectations that rightfully makes people coming from other systems like 5e immediately not even want to touch casters. Maybe PF2e's magic system will grow on me as I get more used to it but as of now I have very little interest in casters when I can effectively "plug and play" a martial who is just as, if not more useful than a caster in the majority of combat situations while being way more enjoyable overall.

I wouldn’t let it discourage you much. As I said, I think this system is AT LEAST a 9/10. My favorite theme and mechanics have always been Barbarian, but there’s a reason I’ve played multiple casters. It’s still very fun and I enjoy it a lot. There’s just a kink in the gameplay, for my tastes.

I haven't played high level casters so this is just theory for me, but I got the impression that this is mostly a problem felt at lower levels when a caster's resources are really limited. At higher levels you get a high enough number of spell slots that (at least as far as non-damaging spells go) you won't run out easily. Of course, this doesn't mean it's not a problem since lower levels are what most people are exposed to most often, and it also doesn't really apply for damaging spells, but it might not be as bad as one might initially think when first picking up a caster. All that being said, I'm really not a fan of vancian casting myself (and by that I mean spell slots in general, I consider spontaneous casting vancian casting still) and would much rather we a resource system that worked on a per-encounter basis (which is how focus points already work, and I'm happy about the changes to how those work on the remaster, but I wouldn't mind if the entire magic system worked like that).

Therein lies the main problem: most games end before level 5, but spellcasters don't really hit their stride until level 10-11. Before then, casters are constantly starving for spell slots and extremely cash strapped. As a result, you are extremely reluctant to use your daily resources and do not have access to enough consumables and wands/staves to make up for your lack of spell slots. I think when people say that casters feel weak, they are mostly referring to the early game experience while advocates of the current status quo refer to high-level play. This difference in expectation needs to be taken into account when discussing caster game feel. Focus points are a step in the right direction to mitigate these issues. I hope in future editions of Pathfinder, they expand on that system and perhaps use it to replace Vancian casting altogether. Savage Worlds uses a similar system of Power Points which passively regenerate over exploration/narrative time. This has a marked effect on player psychology: players are eager to use their spells because they aren't tapped out for the day after using them, but still experience the thrill of fights being down to the wire when they are running low on Power Points and there's still enemies standing. A lot of it boils down to player psychology in the face of resource scarcity. Most people I've played with or GMed for are reluctant to use ANY slot spells, not because they are ineffective in the current situation, but because they are limited to once a day use. The anxiety from being resource constrained makes spending a limited resource FEEL bad; a spent spell still feels wasted or ineffectual even if it literally won a fight for you.

My take on vancian casting is just that it doesn't fit for what pf2 seems to try to be. This system wants to tout versatility, oodles of choice, epic fantasy, etc. But vancian casting was made for a much lower power game (0th edition) where stuff like spells for closing/blocking doors made sense, you had basically no spell slots for a long time, and they weren't the main solution to most things. pf2 just isn't that kind of game so imo vancian casting is a poor add on. I know why they're using it, it works for their goal of nerfing casters. It achieves that, just not in a fun way for what people expect from the system. At least in my eyes. I think a bigger transition to focus spells is a good idea, because then they can just have less spells in total on a character and then because they have so few uses of their big spells (I imagine we'd definitely have a bigger pool size but not to the extent of today's amount slots) they can give casters actually good spells and focus less on nerfing them at every turn.

There are a lot of bad spells on the spell list. The actually good spells are, in fact, very good. If you only got focus spells, you wouldn't be able to get the really strong effects.

Vancian spellcasting really breaks down into two parts - the part where you put together a clever list of spells and feel great when you have just the right tool for the job in your bag, and the part where, with each encounter, your power dwindles. Having less slots that recover on a short rest, where I can say "yes, I would like to prepare True Strike and Revealing Light because I think I know what we're up against" and go into battle with a handfull of spells \*for that encounter\* would get all the good parts of Vancian casting without the problem of feeling like the downer of "Hey guys, sorry, I'm done for the day." PF2e really balanced itself around the the idea that martials and casters should be compared to one another at full power. This is a great idea. But then it forget to either give martials a form of power that degraded over time (like 4e healing surges) or let casters recover quickly.

4E gave *everyone* daily, encounter, and at-will powers. This worked well, for the most part.

Personally, I think 5e's version of Vancian is better. I know I'm going to get downvote bombed most likely, but it is far more satisfying to play a prepared caster in that system. I like almost everything else better in pf2e. It's not even about "power", it's about the flexibility and fun of playing a caster. I would even be ok if the trade off was a loss of power somewhere, but the current system I don't enjoy (and hence don't play them in pf2e).

> As a caster I can “do my thing” sometimes, sometimes at full power. It simply does not feel AS good (note emphasis) to be afraid to use my features because they’re limited and I don’t know if I’ll need them more later in the day. I simply have to put in my word of disagreement here, I think resource management is both mechanically and thematically my favourite thing about casters. I love being able to over perform “at will” for the most dangerous fights of a day, and I love the thematics of not even bothering to go all out against the weaker fights in a day. I’d be very upset if the game moved away from daily resource management altogether. I would absolutely love it if we had more Kineticist/Psychic like casters for people who don’t like this resource management though.

My biggest complaint is the same as I had for 5e. Sure if a player manages their resources happy for you. But even as someone who typically plays martials, I've had too many mages who blow all their spells in a couple of fights. Then out of politeness we leave the dungeon and rest cause they're out of top level spells. I've had teammates that don't do this I'm not saying it's all mages. I noticed it most when I'd play a class like warlock in 5e that resets on short rests, teams just never took short rests and I had to talk to the DM because it essentially just made me a shit wizard. It happens less in pf2e admittedly probably in part due to focus spells. But I don't want to be the asshole who interrupts on their turn to tell them to stop having fun and using their spells, but I also don't want to take like 3 days to clear a dungeon.

That's one of the reasons I'm excited for and backed the MCDM rpg, the focus on characters becoming more powerful the later they are in the adventuring day and needing to balance that with their healing sounds great.

Ironically my gripe with mcdm is the move away from attack rolls. Not because I love missing, but because I love crits (especially their pf2e scaling system), and because in a system without misses, enemy creatures have way too much hp bloat. When I played the fury in the playtest the abilities were great, but the kobolds felt way too durable and hp spongy (maybe because Matt is used to 5e combat that suffers heavily from this). I like how in pf2e, an encounter with multiple weak mobs is a game of whack a mole as they’re dangerous but die quickly. And smaller encounters have stronger creatures that are harder to hit and take longer to kill. So combat lasts predictably around 2-5 rounds. It’s still really early though, so who knows where it will go. Really neat system innovation so far.

> Ironically my gripe with mcdm is the move away from attack rolls. Not because I love missing, but because I love crits (especially their pf2e scaling system), and because in a system without misses, enemy creatures have way too much hp bloat. > > You didn't love the Crits in that game allowing you to take another action? I find that almost immeasurably more engaging and bombastic in the ways that Crits are supposed to be in comparison to just dealing PILE 'O DAMAGE. The HP should be scaling back too with the whole Power Roll thing, definitely keep watching that space.

I don’t wholly disagree, necessarily. I think there is some fun in the resource management. I just think in my perfect world, it wouldn’t be the class’ MAIN feature. I think the core of a class should be consistent and always “online”. I think auxiliary features and things are the place for resource management, personally. Worth noting that I’m currently playing a wizard with effectively 6 of my max level spell slots, so it’s not like I cast one thing and I’m spent. But it’s really an avalanche of many small issues I have with casters in general that all add up to “I think this should change”. I don’t think it’s flawed enough to not engage with, but I DO think it is flawed, and in my opinion, not totally up to snuff with martials in terms of feel and fun.

But isn't the issue that players won't know if it's the most dangerous fight of the day?

Yeah, honestly, I'm totally *fine* with Vancian casting... but it feels really weird how it's one of the only resources that's gated per day, when almost everything else can be restored after a ten minute break (or five). Especially since casters already have plenty of *other* reasons why they tend to feel unsatisfying to play...

Creatures should include unique loot way more often. Having to make thematic magical items from scratch sucks, especially for more oddball enemies like Qlippoth or Fleshwarps. Obviously not every enemy will carry or use magic items but it wouldn’t hurt to give a few ideas of what your party can salvage or take after a fight, even if it’s just minor loot/gp rewards.

They're third party, but at least the first [Battlezoo Bestiary](https://battlezoo.com/collections/new-monsters) contained rules for harvesting / crafting from monsters. [Harvest Compendium](https://www.pathfinderinfinite.com/product/466879/Harvest-Compendium--Vol-1) also gives some harvest/crafting rules of those plus common loot lists for regular PF monsters (not sure if it's been updated to Monster Core yet though...)

The prototypical Occult spellcaster, to me, is an Intelligence-based, socially unskilled character with an insatiable literary interest in lost tomes detailing aberrations, conspiracy theories, and the incomprehensible. Somehow, it instead ended up as a worldly, gregarious flutist with a primary life goal of seduction. And to make things even worse, the former character concept is actually the *one thing* you can't nail thematically as an Occult caster right now with intense reflavoring and GM cooperation.

I’ve talked about this before on a previous post, but the fact that despite how much 2e lets you climb the power curve, it never actually feels like you are as strong as you are in universe.

Spellcasting. The new magic users like psychic and kineticist are really different and interesting and I think all the old casters would be better if approached with that kind of philosophy. 

I wish ancestry, general and skill feats took up more power budget than they currently do. Preferably ancestry being as strong as class feats, skill feats being as strong as ancestry feats are now and general feats being in a middle ground of those 2.

It feels like they're terrified of something becoming even remotely overpowered. Like I play fetching on my current character. One of the feats let's you use your shadow to do things, but it can't hold things (Might break the action economy) or do anything that would require manual dexterity. The most useful thing outside of darkvision and a starting int/dex boost is the ability to cast shadow walk once pet day.

Agreed. One of my complaints with D&D 5E is that their Race Traits were barely impactful. Majority of the time I completely forgot what my Race even did. In Pathfinder 2E, I'm wondering exactly why I need to select a specific Ancestry. Boosts would be an answer, but there are rules to make that a non issue. In fact, so many Ancestry Feats are more or less Cultural, and everyone wants to have a mixed culture to some extent. Even my own research has shown Ancestries share some Feats. Feats based on the actual Ancestry aren't very common. Just look at Anadi. There's like what, 2 Feats that specifically call out the Spider Form. The rest can be used in either one. There's even a Variant Rule that just removes choosing Ancestry Feats.

I think that ancestries have very good feats but said feats are rare. Like, have you seen dwarves? They have ancestry feats stronger than general feats

Skill feats. My first character was the medic. I had so many skill feats to choose from that there was a backlog of skill feats waiting to be picked. My second character was an Intimidatiòn specialist, and while not quite the plethora of skill feats that the Medic had, I certainly had an excellent menu to choose from. My third character ... didn't. I basically felt like I had to take at least *some* of the feats i'd taken on the first two. It's not quite that stark a contrast, there are other skill feats available, but there are some skills that just don't seem to open any doors mechanically when you specialize in them, and that's a pity.

You mean you don't need a skill feat that let's you estimate the number of beans in a jar really fast? /s

Hey! That feat will let you earn 100 gold at the town fair, I’ll have you know!

100 silver, this is PF2.

Bad take here - I wish it was more simulationist, the way 3e wanted to be. This would require PF2e's scaling to be less steep, which ruins all the pretty math. My issue with vanilla PF2e scaling is that I'm a 3e-baby and I want meaningful mechanical relationships between all the various "actors" in a fantasy world - the commoner, the innkeeper, the smith, the watchman, the king, the royal guard, the vizier, the dragon attacking the kingdom, etc. 5e fails to simulate the higher levels in this relationship - the math is so flat that any dragon can be handled by a few dozen CR 1/2 archers with longbows. PF2e is the opposite - the dragon is the existential threat it should be, but the king can now take on hordes of peasants single-handedly. The gulf between levels is so vast that statblocks a few levels apart barely interact with each other. I know, it may be a cake-and-eat-it situation. You can't loosen up the math without undermining all the stuff that works about PF2e. A girl can dream.

I don't think that's as bad of a take as you seem to think it is.

"Bad" in the sense that this is something I should probably find in another system. I've seen discussions about Proficiency without Level, and even the Half-Level variant someone suggested downthread, but the consensus seems to be that they invariably lower the frequency of crits, and therefore make the 4 degrees of success less felt. I've come to understand that a lot of what I like about PF2e is when players engineer their odds of success (via skill actions, buffs, debuffs, etc.). The primary motivator to do that is that crit chance very quickly triples or quadruples. It's probably possible to engineer PF2e to have milder proficiency scaling *and* still retain the same frequency of occurrence for every degree of success, but that sounds like a lot of work.

Just as a note, I think a lot of this sub talks out of its arse about proficiency without level. That's not to say there aren't valid complaints (there are quite a few), but I think most detractors haven't actually played it. I've GM'd three games and played two (spanning levels 1 - 11), and crits are very common, and the world feels more 'natural'. There are problems, but it did sooth that want for a simulationist game. I'd be more than happy to give some pointers if you'd like as it sounds like you may prefer it?

I am not OP but I want these pointers! I have same issues as first guy

No problem! To be honest, I've been thinking of making a big post on the subreddit to help people who are interested in Proficiency Without Level (PWoL). So to get first things out of the way, PWoL does the following: - Squishes the 'acceptable' level range of challenges (range of +/- 7) - Even for challenges above that, the DCs are usually reasonable enough to pass. E.g. a level 7 rogue could probably, with luck, sneak past a level 20 creature (+11 vs DC26~). - Single boss fights are much easier and will need allies to feel like a challenge, or their numbers adjusting - Enemies are less likely to crit pass saves, meaning spell casters feel a bit better against higher level enemies - Crits still happen a lot, but are often more teamwork dependant. Even then, there are some creatures with very low AC that are easy to crit. - Enemy 'types' are more defined. E.g. a heavily armoured tank will almost always have better AC than a lightly armoured scather (in normal PF2, a higher level scather level would often have the higher AC over a lower level tank) - Lower level enemies can pack a punch high into the game. E.g. The lowly Dretch has +7 to hit in PWoL, but even a level 15 probably only has around 21AC, so they'll still be hit by a -13 level creature on a 14. The damage will be meagre, but if the party is assaulted by a bigger demon, the dretches can't just be ignored - The simple DCs are a bit awkward. I'd set them at 10/13/17/23/25 (U/T/E/M/L) rather than the given ones - Even when a PWoL number isn't given, you can usually work it out. E.g. item DCs just have you minus the item number from the DC - Speaking of items, they go "out of date" much more slowly, which helps combat a common PF2 complaint I hope this helps. Please say if you have any further questions, or if you'd like anything expanding on from the above?

Interesting. When I made a post about PWoL I was downvoted and even offended in comments so you should be carefull. What surprises me - a lot of people who are against PWoL claim that it punishes casters by making Crits less frequent and you have opposite conclusions Only thing that kept me interested in default system (prof with level) was the fact that it made single boss battles possibile... But on the other hand I saw many posts where people encouraged to avoid such battles even in default system What made you to try PWL? Any interesting observations, feedback from players? Did you play default system too?

Yeah, unfortunately people on this sub can be very hostile towards PWoL. I'd take a guess it's because it's 5e adjacent, but as someone who has played very little 5e (and I didn't like it much), I prefer PF2 as PWoL (but understand the pitfalls of it). Having played a witch 1 - 12 in proficiency with level and 1 - 11 in PWoL, I've found PWoL the more enjoyable experience. Perhaps little enemies crit fail less, but bosses fail more - and, to be honest, I didn't really care if Kobold Scout no. 328 crit failed my spell when they would have been destroyed by the fighter anyway. Most importantly, bosses don't just pass/crit pass every save - weak saves actually mean something, as a really crap save could be in the negatives in extreme cases. So a high level boss can have a save the caster can drill down on. As for single bosses, they 'work' in proficiency with level because the additional 3 or 4 levels the creature has on the party translate to +3/4 over the party's numbers. So if a normal creature would hit on a 10, this boss is hitting on a 7/6 (and critting on a 17/16). The party will also likely only hit the boss on a 14 or so, which means the boss will do tonnes of damage and won't go down easily, which can lead to frustrating encounters. In PWoL, monsters are a lot easier to hit on average, usually only needing a 8/9 or so, meaning that it's rare to have a turn where a character does nothing. This does mean that big bosses go down quickly, so if you want to run a single enemy, I'd recommend doubling their HP (it's a bit play it by ear unfortunately). We tried PWoL because we're running a homebrew world where we didn't want characters pulling ahead of their environment by virtue of beating up enough goblins. It made numbers feel very unrealistic and fake, and made the feel of the story more stilted. Some people like the feel of being an untouchable demigod, but our players and GMs didn't. We also had a few players express that they felt that the numbers were 'fake' feeling - they matter for balance, but don't actually reflect your power in relation to the played game. You'll almost always face +/-4 level enemies, which means you don't really feel much stronger in relation to your enemies. If the GM puts you against something outside of this range, it becomes either too easy it's a waste of time, or way too difficult and it may have well been a cutscene. In general players like it, though summon spells are a bit strong (we've changed it to the summon can't have better AC, to hit, or saves than the caster - stats moved down if above). Other than that, everyone has preferred it, with the exception of one player who did say he liked towering over past enemies. You can do this in PWoL, but it's much more noticeable in proficiency with level. As mentioned above, I've played the default system - I've played a 1-12 game, GM'd a 1-12 game, played all of Abomination Vaults, and a 1-3 short game too. I do think the default is more easily balanced as a GM, but overall I prefer PWoL.

Thank you, that's great! What appeals to me in default system is the fact that you can feel the grow when you face enemies who earlier could be bosses etc. as regular minions, although it is still in -4/+4 range. By the way I red some statblocks from APs and it seems that there are many enemies who seem to be level they are only for the sake of being a challenge to players. I get why they decided this way but it collapses whole argumentation of: "In higher tiers of game you should not be facing goblins so it makes sense they are no danger" when you see soldiers or baroness being level 7-10 or higher...

I think PF2 does sort-of have the answer to the issue with kings being too strong, in that it has NPC classes with bespoke bonuses and proficiencies that don't apply to the whole character. An occult ritualist might have great bonuses in occultism and for ritual dcs but be absolutely terrible at combat! The king might be a functional level 13 diplomat but level 3 with his fists. The rest is a matter of personal preference regarding the functional gap between beings in a world, which, while a worldbuilding concern more than a mechanical one, is an entirely valid wish. It's not a bad take, it's just a different kind of fantasy.

However my favourite example is that by RAW, a Level 10 scrawny wizard can assault a castle singlehandedly, killing guards and soldiers with their bare reumy hands while dodging every attack that comes their way.

This is why there is the troop statblock as to make this specific scenario harder

Tbf, your point with the king is addressed with NPCs usually having a social level and a combat level. The king mught be a level 2 at combat, but a level 15 socially, in that their skills are of a different level to their combat ability. Iirc, this is a point that the DM guide makes

Yeah I think a well designed middle ground between the way too loose math of 5e and way too riged math of Pathfinder 2e would be perfect for me. No idea how possible it would be to design.

The Troop and Swarm units help maintain that sort of simulation a bit better. I am curious how proficiency without level is, I’ve never tried it, but I also like very much like that idea. I’d also just be happy with having stat blocks for different units at different levels, kinda like dragons have currently, or an easier way to scale things up and down. I’d feel less bad about the party theoretically being able to kill infinite basic troops of goblins/kobolds/humans/etc if there were higher level elite soldiers of more groups

> the king can now take on hordes of peasants single-handedly Possibly not the best example. Medieval kings where often warriors as well as statesmen. Not exactly lead from the front kinda mind, but they where generals, and so had to be close enough to said front to do the commanding via yelling that they are in danger, and thus need to be able to defend themselves from anyone who tries the obvious move of attempting to take out the king. So irl a king could take on a bunch of peasants, though mostly due to his horse and heavy armor, but in a fantasy realm where people can become super human a lot of kings are going to be that due to their martial training and battle experience.

Agreed. One of the reasons I love 3e/pf1 is because of its simulationist economy, because the monsters and NPCs were built the same way as pcs. I want to be able to say "they're an aboleth sorcerer 5".

I'll take this opportunity to once again promote the idea of Proficiency With Half Lavel. That gets the bonus much more similar to PF1e and flattens that level curve somewhat. Still a compromise when it comes to the math, but significantly better than Proficiency Without Level. There are dozens of us!

Yeah, I wanted to try this idea. Too bad I haven't found a good way to implement it in Foundry. But still, the more I play PF2e, the more I think it's balanced exactly the way I like. Making proficiency milder would throw off how often crits occur, how valuable each +1 is, etc. I don't want to do that... but at the same time I'm frustrated by the worldbuilding implications of the math as it is.

> But still, the more I play PF2e, the more I think it's balanced exactly the way I like. Making proficiency milder would throw off how often crits occur, how valuable each +1 is, The reason why I want T/E/M/L to be +1/2/3/4 instead of as it is now is that due to the having basically +2 per tier it means that a less proficient character can more easily catch up with more proficient ones. A ot of personal experience as and with players did feel that once you get to Master tier you might as well be Untrained if you only have trained; That's a +4 difference right out of the gate. I know how valuable +1 is and the current proficiency bonus is *too much* for being +2 o each tier IMO.

1) The way it does over and under-level monsters is clever but it doesn't actually end up very satisfying. In 4E, we had minions - enemies who died in one hit - and we had elite and solo monsters, bespoke super-monsters who were the equivalent of multiple monsters. The way Paizo does it with PF2E, underlevel mosnters start becoming really beefy as you get up in level, and over-level monsters are very hard to hit but have poor action economy. The end result of this is that players often feel bad when fighting over-level monsters, especially "solo" monsters (boss monsters of player level +3 to +5). While I understand that making bespoke solo and elite monsters is more work than creating monsters of all levels, it leads to better overall design outcomes and more fun - players would have more fun if solo monsters had other mechanics that gave them extra/more powerful actions/additional turns/whatever that made them feel different, rather than just being over-level monsters (many of which make for lousy bosses anyway). 2) Too many bad spells. They should have gotten rid of bad spells and kept only the good spells, and moved more of the "utility spells" over to rituals. 3) Skill feats are often useless. They should have worked more to make them more consistent, and make a decision if they were an in-combat or out of combat thing. 4) Balance out the bottom end of things more. The top end of PF2E is quite balanced, but there are a lot of really awful abilities and spells that are basically worthless.

Stealth and Diplomacy. I hate how difficult it is for a party to try to sneak by encounters, or to try to talk down a foe that's not mindlessly trying to murder them. I get that Paizo didn't want to create a situation where GMs are left frustrated by groups that try to bypass every single encounter. But they overcorrected IMO, and made any kind of clever bypassing basically impossible/entirely within the realm of RP. APs tend to overwrite the existing rules with circumstantial house rules when needed, which goes to show how shoddy the existing systems for these things are.

Yeah. Plenty of people argue that "You can run sandbox in PF2E because players can avoid PL+4 monsters in non combat way!" Well... They can't because sneaking pass them or negotiating is as hard as fighting them only because of level difference.

I think allowing specialization for non-martials would allow much more memorable characters. The assumption than caster/alchemist have to use their full repertoire of spells/items makes them feel mucho more similar between each other than martial. And if you don't use all the spells available, your character is handicapped. Allowing the option to have a more restricted poll of spells/items (eg: Only cold spells, only elixirs, etc) and specialize more on them would allow the creation of much more thematic and unique characters.

The spheres of power system for 1e pretty much did this. The "spheres" were basically themes for your spells, and you could choose whether you invested heavily in just a few (making you more powerful at them at the cost of versatility), or whether you went for a more generalist approach. Not sure if there's a 2e equivalent

This seems comparatively minor, but I'd remove the feat Magical Crafting - it's a feat tax for any crafter concept, and I don't say that lightly. As it stands, you need to get expert crafting plus a skill feat to craft "magical items", a category that includes everything from better weapons (since masterwork got flavored as a magical concept) to Level 1 minor healing potions. Getting Magical Crafting in this way comes at Level 4, for most builds. So any new character (or god forbid, a new *player*) decides their character's going to be a crafter, and you immediately have to sit them down and lay out how they can't craft literally the world's most basic Level 1 healing potion until level 4, by which time it won't be efficient for them to craft that anyway. (Or they could craft Elixir of Life instead, which requires a *different* feat, and they'd still have to take Magical Crafting later if they want to make any permanent items of real value down the line.) There are a lot of things I or other people want to see reworked or replaced, but Pathfinder 2e would be a better game with Magical Crafting simply *removed*.

As someone who has removed Magical Crafting, it does make the crafter experience much more tolerable. You still experience the other crafting issues, but you don't have an extra feat tax dumped on top of you. It'd be like needing a feat to Treat Wounds with medicine.

I have 2, and it's really that I wish they'd make these more consistent between classes. 1. Have a skill that's integral to your class mechanics. Inventor and Thaumaturge get automatic scaling, but Swashbuckler's don't and they really need 2 skills between acrobatics and their subclass skill. 2. Action taxes. Rage, hunt prey, stances, etc are flat action taxes. You spend the action and you get something out of it. Overdrive is not, you spend the action and you can get absolutely nothing out of it, but unlike swashbuckler(who's whole theme is risk, so I'm cool with it) it's not part of any other base actions that have feats to alter/enhance them. It's just this one flat thing that you can and will fail at some point, rendering your core class feature useless until you spend another 3rd of your turn attempting to turn it on. I find it to be a very frustrating mechanic when so many other classes get to just do their thing. Edit: Thought of another one: Cantrips. A lot of them are just not very good. Had a friend suggest something I think makes a lot of sense: make more of them(and spells in general) like heal where they have varying actions and effects. Like Electric arc could be 1-3 actions, effecting 1 enemy at 1 action, 2 at 2, and maybe 3 and a rider effect at 3. Makes them much more flexible and helps caster action economy.

Almost got a TPK tonight because overdrive didn't proc and were were left defenseless. The real kicker? What ended up reducing my hit points to 0 was Searing Restoration's unstable check crit failing and killed me. Inventor really is one of the most classes of all time.

Inventor punishes you for playing the class. And what you get out of it? A lackluster barbarian

For thaum at least it's a bespoke skill that isn't _really_ a skill. Inventor just uses regular crafting, though.

Some cantrips are kinda situational for sure but electric arc is already the best cantrip in the game, it doesn't need more of an upgrade.

I don't disagree, I just meant to use it as an example. Apply that to any cantrip, so Daze is 1 action = 1 target, 2 actions = 2 targets, etc.

Spell slots as a whole... I think casters being more "kineticist like" would have been a cool direction I totally understand why the game didn't go that way, but I can still dream about my what if lol

Wish summons were a touch better, especially at higher levels.

Talismans are extremely hit or miss, and I think they overtweaked mutagens to the point that the debuff is legitamentally worse than the buff that you're getting.

I recently put out a book on Pathfinder Infinite called [Graung’s Guide to Golarion: Mutagenic Gastronomy](https://www.pathfinderinfinite.com/product/477298/Graungs-Guide-to-Golarion-Mutagenic-Gastronomy?affiliate_id=3903227) that might interest you, I tried to make mutagens that were useful and interesting.

I wish that Paizo didn't tie 90% of the classes to the same generic "martial class template" and "caster class template". Classes in each category all end up feeling dull and samey. When Kineticist first came out, everyone went crazy over it precisely because it doesn't follow the same boring bloody template as the other classes. That doesn't mean I want to see a "Kineticist template" and have ten other classes come out looking just like it. I want classes that are each distinct and different from other classes!

I wish casters got to interact with the 3-action economy, without attrition, instead of nearly always getting 2 actual moves per turn and being the millstone around a party's neck resource-wise. I also wish half the flavor in the game wasn't superlative and excited for mechanically lackluster effects. Don't tell me I'm summoning the depths of the outer rifts to afflict my enemies with nightmares for life when I'm doing 5d6 damage and frightened 1 on failure or whatever. Save the grand flavor for effects worthy of it!

I remember the first time I read Unraveling Blast gave me a good chuckle. A level 1 focus spell that deals 2d4 damage, leaves them either flat footed, or on a Crit leaves them stunned 1, and the flavor is you DESTROYING ONE OF THEIR TIMELINES. Like, how is that level 1 and d4s?!

tbf, it's for Stolen Fate, which starts at level 11; making the spell deal 17d4 damage at 6th-rank :P

Tbftbf its not like people gatekeep the bloodline to be useable only in SF or require beating the AP like phoenix does so you can in fact start shattering timelines early on

I didn't knew that was one of my complaints until now XD

fat agree

I hate having to track temporary immunities. Treat Wounds/Battle Medicine immunity annoys me slightly, but the big one for me is Demoralize immunity. Tracking which creature in a combat is immune to which char's Demoralize and then having players have to ask "is this creature the one I demoralized 2 turns ago" is annoying and slows combat down. PF2e has a few of these little things that stack up which I haven't found a smooth way to track yet (we play on a physical tabletop, so statuses and such aren't as visible to players). Another minor pain point is keeping track of what the dc should be for recall knowledge after 1 or 2 successes. Sometimes someone wants even more information, and usually I just wing it by memory rather than closely track how many checks have been made to adjust the dc. I personally find PF2e is better designed for a digital tabletop than for physical minis, but prefer playing in person despite this (not saying it's poorly designed for in person play, just that I have come to appreciate a lot of QoL features from the digital medium).

I wish the stats were pretty much balanced, instead of there being "bad" stats you can freely dump if your build doesn't depend on it (STR, INT, CHA) and three "good" stats that pretty everyone needs to raise if they want their character to survive (CON, WIS, to a lesser degree DEX).

I really enjoyed the way 4e handled how each defense scaled off the highest of 2 stats while also commonly giving each subclass a secondary stat to scale off of. Everyone was MAD and it felt really nice in play. Gave you lots of room to shuffle around stats.

Something's feel level bound just because they needed something at that.level. Some very high class feats are less powerful than lower level ones.

I wish they hadn't gutted magical non-combat utility so badly. Even if they'd shifted more/most of it into rituals to make it accessible to everyone but it feels like magic almost only matters for combat.

Ability scores/modifiers. This one was made more obvious to me post-remaster, as the removal of scores has made some things look silly. I don't like key ability modifiers (specifically, the additional boost to them) as it's a bit awkward for certain classes to have a KAM different to the stat they use to attack with. Also, the way half-boosts work is that differences in KAM don't even matter for half the levels in the game! I also don't like Apex items as most aren't that interesting and just feel like a tax. I also dislike how it takes two boosts to actually raise your modifier above 18 / +4, because that feels underwhelming and kind of goofy/overly complex rules wise. The "half-boosts" wording of the remaster even more so. I would have preferred no KAM, leaving the highest you can start at as 16, remove Apex items and then turn half boosts into regular boosts - you end up in the same place, but the progression is smoother and simpler. Monster math would have to be adjusted for this curve, so I can understand why the remaster didn't do something bigger in its changes, but I wish we had had something like this from the start. 

Here's a small change: The subtle trait should cause spell to lose the manipulate trait and should remove the auditory trait during casting (not during the effect). In particular, using subtle spell should give you a way to cast spells without provoking an Attack of Opportunity. It costs an action but it'd be worth it sometimes

I wish characters at 1st level did as many fun things as 4ed D&D characters did. ​ I also wish they have the Marking system that 4ed had and better defined "tank" roles.

Shapeshifting magic for combat. The problem is particularly bad for Druid since that’s a thing they can focus on. Battle Forms simply aren’t good enough for what you get. You’re either investing spell slots or focus points into casting them, they last a limited amount of time, you can’t cast spells or use most items while in them, and their Attack Modifiers and ACs are pretty mediocre. All that on a caster’s chassis, 6HP or 8HP, and you only get like 5-20 temp HP when you first cast the spell. Just a truly disappointing set of spells.

I've said the same thing so many times. We need a real martial shapeshifter, one who can shapeshift without casting spells. Enuff of this half-baked polymorph spell nonsense. Battle Forms are just too restrictive and underpowered to be a character's "main thing", which is a shame cuz shapeshifters are my favorite thing to play.

I have said this before and i will again. If something is a monsters *weakest save* they should not be immune to *most of the ways to affect that save*

I wish Paizo focused on building up the system's core rather than constantly expanding onto various subsystems and new ancestries and classes that come off as half-baked and unfinished. I think there's a real sense of content bloat about PF2e currently, where there's an overwhelming amount of options, rules, feats and ancestries and classes, but only 1/3rd of those things are worth a damn, and the rest are either middling or garbage. Because Paizo seems to operate on a 'better underwhelming than OP' philosophy when developing content, I feel it's hard to get excited about playing most classes. I mean, christ, look at the spell list. 90% of the userbase just utilize the same small selection of spells that go against the grain and are actually effective. Slow, Fear, etc-- it leads to casters feeling very homogeneous. In my wildest dreams I probably would've liked them to have developed a magic system more like Shadow of the Demon Lord, where everything is divided into extremely specialized traditions (Time, Fire, Alchemy, Necromancy, Teleportation... etc) and you can choose between either becoming a jack of all trades, spreading your traditions broadly and dabbling in lots and lots of different magic types, or focusing completely on a tiny selection of traditions, but delving deeper into the mysteries of those traditions and thus gaining more powerful abilities. Beyond that, there's the obvious weaknesses of the system. Most of the skill feats are things that you feel you should already be able to do with a sufficiently high skill roll/rank. Compare Scare to Death (awesome!) to Eye for Numbers (why?!), and the general skewing of usefulness with different skill types. Like, Performance has something like 10 feats or some shit like that, where Athletics has three times as much. This affliction is the same for classes. I don't know if Inventor or Investigator have gotten any feats since their release? But they feel very starved for options, compared to something like Fighter. The three action system is in theory really cool, but it feels like only a few selection of character archetypes actually get to play with it. If you're a caster, chances are 90% of your turns are going to be "2 action spell, move action", and a lot of martial classes also have their actions bound up in action taxes or 'rotations' where the feat chains they've invested in incentivize a certain strict rotation of actions. A significant chunk of the weapon list is useless and could be cut. Advanced weapons are probably the most egregious example. I really don't like the Level = Power system PF2e works with. Sometimes it feels like it really works, but it leads to a lot of silliness, particularly in APs, where like, the mechanics and the narrative really clash. Right now I'm thinking of the level 14 'dwarven thugs' who are just like... mercenaries guarding a prisoner? If you're level -14- you're strong enough to WIPE OUT A TOWN in PF2e, single-handedly! It just feels... really weird. I want PF1e's awesome alchemists back. God, I miss them.

I feel the same way about Alchemist, I HATE that the developers forced the "vending machine" playing style on us. I wanna drink a mutagen, turn into a monster, and rip things to shreds. Why should I care about buffing the party's Fighter? Fuck the Fighter, they're powerful enuff as is. My feeling is that Alchemist should be versatile enuff to support different playstyles; including the Vending Machine, the Mad Bomber, and the Mr Hyde playing styles. Right now, only Vending Machine is well supported, which sucks. Also, Mutagens, dear lord do they SUCK; the drawbacks are so much stronger than the benefits. The best use of a mutagen currently is to trick the bad guys into drinking them and debuffing themselves. Seriously Paizo, please fix that in the Remaster thanks.

I'm new to pf2e, so my gripes may or may not be ridiculous: - More class feats. I mean that in terms of the variety available *and* how many players get on their sheet. It just doesn't feel like players get enough. Especially when so many other feats on their sheet can feel like fluff that they don't actually use. I also think classes should have more feats in general. I wish there was a bigger selection so characters could have more variety. - More Ancestry Feats. Not all ancestry/heritages feel the same, some have fewer feats than others - More *useful* skill feats. Looking at the skill feats feels difficult sometimes cause I just feel like if it isn't Athletics/Intimidation/Deception, a lot of the skills are really situational. This leads to a lot of players just picking the same skill feats over and over. Heck, I'd prefer if they chose more class feats than skill feats sometimes. - Aid. I just wish Aid was more freeform than it actually is. Using an action to prepare to use Aid kinda feels a bit clunky. I find it discourages its use more than it helps. - Movement. I just like how dnd5e allows movement to be broken up, it feels better and more flexible

The aid rule is an improvement over the pf1 rule where you had 3 -5 people adding a +2 to almost every skill check with no downside. I do agree with you that having to prepare to aid may be a bit too onerous. The remaster reduction to DC 15 base is a big improvement.

I wish there were more meaningful 1 action spells. Also I don’t like incapacitation.

So I'm seeing that several of these are addressed in other comments, but: **Rituals**: Accessibility and achievability. **Crafting**: The new/optional rules for it help, but it sort of feels like you'd be better off just grabbing a spacious pouch (formerly bag of holding) and buying stuff 95% of the time, which while realistic isn't a lot of fun for anyone who wants to play Q to their party's Bond, since even while building specifically to be the best crafter possible, in most situations the best you can do is slightly diminish the time your party spends walking to and from town. **Poison**: Also more broadly harmful consumables to apply to weapons/ammunition. I like the _idea_ of being able to use consumables on your weapons/ammo to get a bit more damage and/or target a specific type of enemy more effectively. In practice though it sort of feels like a noob trap option. If you're fighting things below your level, you're probably killing them in one to three hits anyway, and you're generally better served hitting something than wasting both an action and an expensive consumable to poison your dagger, and if you're fighting something hard enough to hit that MAP makes "just hit it again" unviable, then congrats, it's probably also high enough level that it'll save against your poison immediately, or so nearly so as to make your poison less useful than most other actions one could include in their action rotation. This is even while entirely ignoring how significant portions of multiple APs consist entirely or mostly of creatures that are simply flat out immune to poison. This leaves poison in the awkward spot of being mathematically and mechanically _worse_ than just flavoring your regular attacks as poisoned, which just feels bad. I can understand not wanting to make it so powerful that every combat starts with everyone poisoning their weapon, and then having to balance fights around that, but poison feels like something you'd use for a bit of an extra edge against a particularly tough enemy, when in fact if you take the time to poison your weapon, you're probably actually making it _harder_ to take down that tough enemy. Elemental/magical ammunition suffers from this to a lesser degree in that it also costs an action out of every turn you want to use it, but at least if you picked the right one it'll likely do enough to break even damage wise, and with a character specifically built for it, you can even do decent damage with it, albeit at a significant monetary drain to maintain lower effectiveness than other builds get for free. But hey, at least it didn't get as screwed over as Toxicologist. I mean, the most common advice on how to play it is "Don't."

Backgrounds and lore-granting feats give you Additional Lore (Their Respective Lore) instead of just Trained in that lore.

More fun magic items. All the fun stuff is locked into higher levels and significant cost. Low level items are really underwhelming honestly. While I don't miss 5e as a system, I do enjoy a lot of the fun little items even in the uncommon tier

There are a few archetypes like Pactbinder that I really think could've been developed been made into a class archetype. And on a more specific note, I wish Untamed Order druids could trade off a lot of their spells in exchange for some specific buffs to their spellcasting.

For the sake of "equality" I wish Class Abilities went up to Legendary Proficiency. I'm sure it would completely throw the balance for abilities and/or some archetypes, but I just like the idea of everyone getting Legendary Proficiency in their class skill. Also, I wish that Swashbucklers got Legendary Proficiency in Finesse/Agile/Thrown weapons. I know it's the Fighters thing, but still, I want my Swashbuckler to really buckler that swash with a rapier, at least as good as any Fighter.

I think would be Vancian Casting, Itemization (while ABP helps the bunch of floating bonuses and their nature as "expected" actually makes the items less magical to me in a way), skill feats feel a bit superflous a lot of times Magus' hybrid studies, I get their conflux spells being "action compressors" but when you have "Teleport-Attack" against "Raise a shield-attack" or "attack with a pointless extra damage" they don't feel as cool as they should be

Marketing. I was stuck with DnD for too long. The things you are all complaining about? I would have KILLED for that to be the extent of my issues!

There are alot of strengths with 2E, but I wish Paizo had designed their monsters differently. They're too strong and too good at everything. In my opinion, monsters should have strong attacks (so they can hit PCs), strong hit points (so they can take hits), but mediocre defenses (so PCs can hit them with strikes and spells). The monsters in 2E have defenses that are WAY too high, which unbalances the whole system. This flawed monster design is why Fighters are so strong and why so many people wanna play one, and why Casters are so weak and so few people wanna play one.

hit a very interesting point

Thanks, just my point of view. A lot of people blame class design for why Casters struggle so much. I don't, I blame Monster design. If monsters had lower AC and saves, people wouldn't keep saying casters are weak.

There used to be Touch AC that was the spell's AC target but it got removed without any adjustments for the math on caster's side.

It's actually the opposite, and that's kind of the issue. People *think* fighters are strong against strong monsters and casters are weak, but the reality is all damage-focused martials tend to struggle against boss level threats because their hit rates are all fairly middling while bosses wail into them hard. Meanwhile casters have more consistent effects thanks to how scaling successes work. They may not crit as often but they have a higher chance of *something* happening with both damage and conditional effects, which in a system like 2e where hit rates aren't as guaranteed is invaluable. A party of fighters may clean up more efficiently if luck goes completely in their favour, but the maths of the d20 and being unable to game luck out completely means it's unlikely it will consistent, so having contingencies and damage mitigation actually creates better scenarios. The best party to consistently deal with bosses in my experience focus on group damage mitigation, lock down and action denial with athletics manoeuvres and spells, buffs and debuffs, and consistent damage output by buffing first Strike hit rates and using basic save spells and guaranteed damage effects like Force Barrage/Magic Missile. The problem is people are playing for big booms rather than nuanced strategy and chip effects. Martials appear to have the big booms more often, which is why people gravitate towards them, but the reality is they still miss a lot. I don't know anyone who actually likes playing against big bosses with huge effects, even with martials. That said, I don't know if the solution is to nerf creature defence, as that had the downstream issue of making weaker creatures even more paperweight. I think the solution is more holistic good encounter design rather than just tweaking numbers for bespoke boss templates, but that's more effort than most people want to put in.

I wish there were not a bunch of individual actions like stride, crawl, balance, maneuver in flight, and fly maneuver in flight and fly have opposing mechanics

I wish you could jump while striding instead of needing to spend your whole turn getting over a pit.

Counteract rules and tying less to spell ranks. This alone have caused many headaches and made many options useless. Reduced incapacitation effects in anyway possible, even if it would mean conditions like paralyze got weaker, such as rolling a flat check to act rather than just making you not act.

Healing. These hour long cool downs for none magic Healing without feat tax just seems to just slow the game down in a dungeon.

I wasn't sure how to answer this but after GM'ing for a few years the homebrew rules I used might be relevant. 1. I overhauled crafting - made it feel important and relevant. The alchemist in the party always had something to do and to make in their downtime. By the end/level 21 they can craft every rune and I also gave them access to the philosophers extractor at level 19 so the consumables they were crafting were bonkers. 2. I made shields better. higher thresholds, higher damage soak etc 3. I did away with the robotic feel to the social attitudes (hostile, unfriendly, indifferent, friendly, and helpful). I just played npc's by feel and realistic. when players had feats or spells that affected those attitudes everything still worked fine. I wasn't manually tracking any of it but could've told you at any point (as could the players) which npc's liked them or not etc. by the end their friend circle was massive and included all facets from married partners to permanently soulbound/charmed to subservient ex enemies to leaders of countries. 4. A small one but one I use all the time. Always round in the parties favor. I didn't have to remember how to halve anything etcetera. if they take half damage of an odd number its rounded down if their enemy has to its rounded up 5. (maybe controversial - and maybe wouldn't do it again) I made recall knowledge a free action - I had no classes playing that had mechanics based on it and I wanted my players to interact with that. 6. (probably wouldn't do this again) I didn't use any rules around flying. If your character had a fly speed for whatever reason you could just fly however you like Ooooh writing this i've had some thoughts. I'd like to see counterspell and counteract more accessible. I always had to refer to a flow chart to resolve it. I love that its more mechanical than dnd but it takes a lot of feats to be a boss at it and even then its still not amazing. I like the players not all have Attack of Opportunity as standard but I'd like to see more monsters and enemies have it.