But doesn't that make the game worse if you do want to care about your plan for healing and how many minutes it takes?
I believe the Medicine rules were created in a PF1 mindset, where it is not inconceivable to keep pressing on (or at least being attacked) at low health.
But PF2 is simply not designed for that. Sure, a moderately experienced GM can calibrate encounters that work for a wounded party, but if you're running stock Paizo AP encounters, it significantly increases the risk of a random TPK. It's just no fun. The game is so very clearly fine-tuned with fully healed heroes in mind.
(It's not that fully healed heroes don't go down. They very much do. But the action economy can spiral out of control if that happens early. Look at it this way: if you're at half health every monster that hits you gets in a critical, so to speak. You just don't want to give them that handicap.)
So. Since the rest of the game presumes you rest up between encounters (again unless you or the adventure quite specifically sets up something else), the rules for Medicine, focus-based healing and so forth comes across as hopelessly out of sync. Those rules are very complicated indeed.
And I'm asking the naked-emperor question:
Who says the rules need to be that complicated? Why do you need to make that many die rolls? Why are you asked to make decisions like going for a DC 25 treat wounds or settling for the DC 15 one? It's just a run-away clutter catastrophe imo.
But that's not the clincher. There are several ttrps with highly detailed rules. The clincher is that while highly simulationist rules might suit some games,
it does not suit PF2, a game where you simply heal back up fully everytime you get the chance! Trust me, you don't care if it takes you 20 minutes or 40 minutes or 60 minutes. You do it because it is utter reckless not to! And since the healing is free (other than the time consumption) there just aren't any compelling reasons to rush it. PF2 just isn't anything like old D&D. Everything that matters is different.
This thread is for those of you that sees the wisdom in this line of argument. I'm not forcing anyone to abandon the complicated, time-consuming, analysis-paralysis-prone core rules. I'm just showing a different way, where you shuck all the minutiae without losing anything that's good about Pathfinder 2! I truly believe more people would play Pathfinder 2 if Paizo had had the courage to relegate the official rules for Medicine et al to a variant in the GMG, and instead printed something comparably quick and simple to these rules in the CRB!
