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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 8234017" data-attributes="member: 12731">What do I mean by this pretentious title?I mean that after extensively play testing the game (we have a single session left of the entire levels 1-20 Extinction Curse campaign), there are two "hidden" issues that bugs us greatly:1. The hero/monster dichotomy2. The martial/magic dichotomyAt a given level, a monster is simply* more powerful than a hero. Most egregiously, this applies to NPCs too. Monsters and NPCs (generally) have far superior attack, damage and AC values. This feels very jarring. When you're a Fighter with Legendary proficiency, and you STILL face enemy soldiers, assassins, kings and whatnot that have you beat on "fightery values" (such as attack bonus or AC) by a whopping 5 or 10 points, it really distracts you from immersing yourself in the game world.At the same time, monsters use the exact same magics as heroes. Since Pathfinder 2 does absolutely everything it can to prevent spellcasting heroes from dominating the game, this means that magic is ALWAYS trumped by the sword. What I mean is, that many monsters have spells and other innate powers. But nearly without exception the monsters are FAR BETTER served by simply ignoring their spells to instead eat your face. The only exception is monsters presented as pure spellcasters that ALSO are higher level than you. The entire notion of Incapacitation is to a large degree meant to stop low level monsters from spamming save or die spells at you, since if you need to roll 3 or 7 on one save, that's okay, but if you need to do it a dozen times, that strategy becomes overwhelming. Fair enough, and so Incapacitation ensures you need to roll a 1 to be inconvenienced by most spells. Except for these monsters, it's a FAR better strategy to simply ignore the spells and swipe at you with their claws. The problem can be described thusly: Monsters feel like they have values maybe 5 level higher than heroes. For physical combat only! Not only does this take the shine off your cool new AC or Striking weapon damage, but it also means monsters are rarely served by wasting two actions to cast a spell. This applies at level 1 and it applies at level 20. You will NEVER be able to feel proud of your newly increased stats - leveling up ALWAYS means facing new monsters that outstrip your values...In summary, the balanced provided by Pathfinder 2 just doesn't work. It feels bad.It sucks the fun out of the game when you realize the only place left for magic is in two special cases:a) high level heroes. At high level player character spellcasting classes finally become powerful, but this is only because players are very free to choose the very best spells. Monsters are routinely given spells that are best classified as "useless". The culprit is often spelled "Incapacitation".b) spellcasting monsters higher level than the heroes. And even then, there are many cases where the monster will STILL sport a higher DPR by simply ditching spells and using physical attacks. The single worst case of this phenomenon I encountered is exhibited by the enemy alchemist Thessekka. Given the choice between the weakest class - the Alchemist - and its bombs, and its robust monster physique, the comparison becomes outright ridiculous. But check out the numbers for yourself: [URL unfurl="true"]https://pf2.easytool.es/index.php?id=6404[/URL]*) Of course, since heroes will win 99% of encounters, the situation is really more intricate than that. Just to take a single example: monsters have rarely any recuperative powers (and those they do have are nearly always feeble). This is of course because a drawn-out fight where combatants rarely go down make for dull boring and slow combats. So in the end heroes do outclass monsters. But that does not change or excuse the facts discussed above.</blockquote>

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