FrozenNorth
Hero
Here’s something funny. I played 8 levels as a sword and board Dex-based Eldritch Knight. I never felt sub-optimal (and I had several utility spells).I don't like that type of game design. I much prefer a type of game design where you can pick a fighting style or character type that is a relative power level where you do things differently, but not sub-optimally. If the two-weapon fighter and the two-hander fighter do roughly the same amount of damage with maybe the two-hander guy getting a higher weapon die while two-weapon guy gets an additional attack, then we have much closer balance and less of a feeling of the two-weapon guy being mathematically less valuable than the two-hander guy in nearly every circumstance.
Same group, PF2, I was begging my DM to allow my wizard to retrain out of Ray of Frost for Electric Arc after 3 sessions. When I took Ray of Frost I didn’t think it would bother me that it was sub-optimal but it did.
So what was the difference? In PF2, I didn’t just feel sub-optimal, I felt useless. The other characters were dealing 10+ per hit, and regularly hitting twice in a round, whereas I was doing 7 points of damage (with a high of 9).
When I first started PF2, I was concerned that that I had 3 AC less than the champion, because I was afraid that a monster would sidestep the champion and drop me in one turn. This fear was overblown, because it simply wasn’t worth the monster’s action to move around the champion and drop me.