Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
4e and 5e have this kind of stuff too. For example, the 4e "Bloodied" condition and the 5e "Psionic" tag, dont have mechanics in themselves, but other mechanics can refer to them.Yeah, things like this are probably some if the more confusing aspects of PF2e.
Many/most actions in PF2e have traits (or are triggered by other actions' traits), and some of those traits have traits (e.g. the interact trait has the manipulate trait, having the invisible trait can grant the hidden trait, etc.).
The book is good about tagging things, but it's a level of complexity that requires mental bandwidth that doesn't seem worth the effort in many cases.
It just needs to be clear, when a flavor text clarifies there is actually no mechanics, but there can be mechanics elsewhere relating to it.
I agree, reducing complexity as much as possible ("but not simpler" than that) is an important goal.