Thread by @djrhutton

I'm usually very positive about #pathfinder2e, but I've decided in fairness to my followers and people who see me annoyingly pop up on #TTRPG Twitter, I'm going to talk about some things I DON'T like about 2e. 🧵

Some stipulations:

1. I won't pick obvious common complaints, like the big three 'undertuned' classes (alchemist, warpriest, and witch), or crafting rules being boring, because we all know those. Also crafting is getting new rules in an upcoming supliment, which brings me to...

2. I won't pick anything that could just be fixed by adding more content (such as 'I wish x had more feats') or variant rules. I'm talking about intrinsic design issues that could only be fixed by errata, deep mechanics changes, or obvious patch content.

Okay, with that said...

1. Champion causes are too stingy. Alignment lock is archaic and restrictive. Indeed, champion as a whole is just too pigeon-holed into the tank playstyle that it's very inflexible in customisability. I still love it, but it could definitely be more freeform in its customisation.

Fixability: possible. A class archetype could trade its armor proficiency for some offensive bonuses instead, and future tenets could be more versatile in their alignment options and ability focuses, but it won't fix the existing causes without errata.

2. Damage spells trail off WAY too much. They're really only viable if you have them heightened to your highest or second highest spell level. Meanwhile, utility stays fairly consistent no matter what level you're at, with some gaining value as they become more readily available.

(haha wow okay my thread got cut off midway, let's see if I can get the rest)

Fixability: Not likely. This would require some very significant overhauls to the maths behind magic damage and how spell preparation works. It's probably too involved to fix with just rebalancing and errata. This is probably going to have to wait for a new edition.

3. By proxy of that, spell attack rolls not dealing half damage on a failure makes them SERIOUSLY unfun and risky. It would not be a problem except for the fact they don't get martial equivalent attack modifiers and have no way to increase them.

This is likely a vestigial remnant of touch AC still being in the playtest, but they didn't do anything to compensate after removing it.

Fixability: Not only would it require errata-ing every single attack roll spell, but Paizo seems to have no problem with the current design.

I just let my players do half damage on a failure. It brings it in line with other damage spells.

4. DC scaling on items is frustratingly obtuse and unintuitive, particularly magical and alchemical items, and items like gadgets and snares. Feats that make them scale with class DC like Powerful Snares feel more like feat taxes that eat feat slots than fun options.

Fixability: Well Paizo made Powerful Alchemy baseline, so they know it's a problem. But for things like magic items there's too much baggage to account for. It'll probably get a bandaid fix at best.

5. In a similar vein, shapeshifting is as obtuse as ever. It's more balanced than other d20 systems, but it's still got issues with being overly complicated mechanically and unintuitive to understand the balance of, and some forced redundancy for certain form chains.

Fixability: a dedicated shapeshifting class would be a great fit if people want to exclusively focus on shapeshifting as a flavour, but I don't think that'll help with existing spells and how it affects class options like wild order druids.

6. The undead archetypes in Book of the Dead were fairly underwhelming and I would have much preferred them be versatile heritages instead. I get making them archetypes could give them more in the power budget, but the feats that we're given were pretty bad anyway.

Fixability: Well that ship has sailed, so I doubt we'll see any changes. I'm just going to let my players pick the dedications up at creation to side-chain their builds, and not let them conflict with other archetypes or FA rules. And this is assuming I allow Undead PCs.

Anyway those are a few things off the top of my head, but in the end they're fairly minor complaints that are certainly not deal breakers. The system is still mostly fantastic, it's just to re-emphasise that even the things we love most aren't perfect or above critique.