CapnZapp
Legend
Don't give up Frozen.Except it wasn’t a 5e comparison.
I was responding to jmartkdr2 who said “if 2 floating modifiers is more than you can deal with - PF2 is not for you”.
I responded that it was more than 2 floating modifiers - the 2 modifiers mentioned did not take into account the specificities of any combat.
I pointed out that in my experience of low level PF2, there was generally at least one additional modifier on pretty much every attack. From what I’ve read, you agree with this and jmartkdr2 also agrees with this.
I specifically use examples from my game to try to avoid white-room theorycrafting. One example was a bonus to hit, the other two were penalties to AC, which affect the exact same attack.
If I wanted to white-room theorize, I would point out that claiming that there are 3 bonuses on an attack is itself inaccurate, because the attacker, in addition to having up to 3 typed bonuses, could at the same time have up to 3 typed penalties on the attack.
Anything else is misrepresenting my position.
Pathfinder 2 combats can very easily become super intricate indeed, where you have to juggle lots of positive and negative modifiers and conditionals on the fly.
You can easily gain +1-1+2+1-5-1 on any given attack. That's, I dunno, a +1 modifier from Bless perhaps, a -1 modifier from fatigued, a +2 modifier from flatfootedness, a +1 modifier from a weapon quality such as Sweep (that really is turning a -5 MAP modifier into a -4), and a -1 modifier from enfeebled. Monster abilities regularly impose conditions on you that come and go throughout a fight. Spells too. Afflictions such as poisons and curses play a huge part in this game (as opposed to say 5E).
These modifiers aren't static throughout the fight either. They can apply only to your very next attack, until the end of your turn, until the beginning of your next turn, or until the monster's next turn, and so on. Individually and differently.
You are absolutely required to calculate and recalculate everything on the fly.
And so far we've only talked attack (and skill) checks.
Then we have damage. As you level up you start rolling heaps and heaps of dice. And this game loves to modify damage through weaknesses and resistances. A damage calculation like 3d8 slashing plus 1d6 fire plus 1d6 electricity plus 12 or 17 depending that's modified by -5 for slashing resistance plus +10 for electricity weakness that becomes 3d10 plus 1d6 plus 1d8 plus 17 times two plus 1d10 minus 5 plus 10 when you score a crit followed by applying persistent 2d6 that's lost when you pass a flat DC 15 check is not rare at mid level.
For each and every attack you make that round.
Again, some of us handle that "math load". Many of us Paizo customers I suspect (and, frankly, hope!)
I wouldn't dream of downplaying the game's complexity level, though.