Pathfinder 2E Are their simple options?

[Particle_Man]

Does Pathfinder 2 offer options where you can just add in the numerical advantages to your character sheet once (like just add to your saves or initiative or attack bonus or whatever) and then not think about them again? It is possible to design a whole character like that in this system? If not, how close can one get?

 

[Arakasius]

Pretty close yeah. So several things here.

1. Much less static buff options. Basically you’ll do dmg from a spell or dmg + mods from a martial type. The few you’ll have that add static buffs you should be able to bake in. (There are exepctions like longbow users being less accurate at close range)

2. Much less in battle buffs. This is they key thing. Prayer isn’t around, bless is simple, haste is very simple (and doesn’t change your math) Regardless there is a lot less buffs and concentrating like 5e restricts how many you can use.

To answer your question it’s pretty easy to make a fighter and almost never have to change the math, occasionally adding a couple points for something like bless.

 

[zztong]

I've made around 15 characters and I found there were some Feats that just added simple numbers to characters. Fleet, for instance, adds 5 move.

But there are a great many Feats with conditionals built into them. Your mind gets quite a workout if you try to estimate the relative value of each Feat. Tomorrow will be my first playtest session. I'm in a game with lots of casual players. They didn't handle PF1's conditional feats very well in that they often forgot to apply modifiers they were due. Give me more than a handful and I start missing them too.

 

[Charlaquin]

It depends on how you define simple. I would say that the significant majority of options are quite simple, but if you consider simple to mean “I don’t have to remember I have it,” you might have trouble building a character with only simple options by that definition. There is very little straight numerical advancement from Feats. That comes almost entirely from level and gear, while Feats expand what you can do. Class Feats let you do new things with your class features, Skill Feats let you do new things with your skills, etc. You probably *could* make a character with very few special actions if you wanted to, but especially at higher levels it will be tricky to completely avoid taking options that you specifically choose to activate.