Again, thank you for trying to see the glass as half full.
They can't just
say such a thing. Where's the rule that allows it?
Sorry but at least in official Adventure Paths, each and every DC is "appropriate" to your level, meaning that even a small bonus totally wrecks your chances.
If you assign climb DCs on objective analysis "this cliffside is hard but not impossible" you might assign it DC 20. Adding +5 or even +10 (to climb it a special way, such as with a weapon drawn) is then fair when a mid-level hero makes the attempt.
But official APs seldom (read practically never) work that way. If the cliffside is encountered at level 5, the DC might be 20, yes. But if at level 10, it will be DC 27 (or thereabouts). If at level 15, it will be DC 34.
The point here is that any bonus or penalty can't be much more than +1 or -1 or the activity is rendered practically impossible. Meaning that saying "even without the Combat Climber feat, you can climb and fight if you make a Climb check at disadvantage" will in practice mean "you need the Combat Climber feat", since noone in their right mind will keep doing something they might only have a 25% shot at.
Gosh, no. There's nothing wrong with this at all.
But unless we're houseruling there must be a rule to allow it. How to respond to players who feel stupid for taking feats that others don't need? And so on and so on.
I would love to be allowed to do these things, but where's the guidance?
I have never seen a game that leaves
less to GM discretion. Yes, I know Paizo said they had GM discretion as a game design goal. But I can't see even the faintest trace of it anywhere. This game nails
everything down, to the littlest insignificantest thing. Just look at some of the feats - they make the smallest tweaks to the most obscure actions.
Nothing is left unregulated and thus up to GM discretion.
The lesson 5E drew is that by trying to be "clear" you let yourself be drawn into a never-ending fight to provide more and more detailed clarity.
The lesson PF2 failed to draw was that 5E in a big part was successful because it rejected this approach and trusted the GM.
Not create thousands of feats?
No really. Being able to crawl or swim or climb slightly faster are things that should come - no, needs - to come automatically with a higher skill bonus. The implication of all these feats existing is that any hero that doesn't take them can't do them.
Worse, it means that monsters are strangely stunted in the most wonky of ways. (Monsters and NPCs don't take feats. Yes there is a rule saying "you can stat up monsters using PC chargen rules if you want". No, Paizo don't use it. Approximately 0% of official monsters and NPCs take levels, classes, feats and such) Example: I recently had a monster suggest athletical challenges to see who's the strongest or fastest.
My player, happy with his recent feat pick,
Cloud Jump suggested "long jumping". That idea quickly crashed and burned once we realized the monster could never jump longer than its Speed (30 ft) despite a very respectable Athletics skill bonus of +35. The DC is the number of feet you want to jump, so 20 feet would be DC 20 and so on.
You can't jump longer than your speed, full stop. The only way to break this rule is to have the feat Cloud Jump. Read the errata! It's abundantly clear that without the feat the rule says you can't jump longer than your speed, full stop.
So even if the monster wanted to aim for 40 feet (rolling a 5 on its d20) it can't aim for more than 30 feet, since that's its speed. With the Cloud Jump feat this limitation is voided, and your DC is slashed by two thirds. So the hero could go for 60 feet easily.
Making basic movement hinge on specific and non-interchangeable feats like this is exactly why I confidently say the PF2 model is irrevocably and utterly busted.
It should be trivial to realize that the solution "but give the monster the feat" is nonsensical. Nobody wants a situation where every monster must take literally hundreds of feats into consideration. This feat should never have existed. The rule limiting jumps to your Speed should never have existed. It is just one out of a thousand rules that mostly exist to justify a feat.
The game would have been simply better if all of this was just stricken from the game. Which is exactly my point. Rip out a dozen pages out of the rulebook and the game just works better. Rip out another dozen pages, and the game becomes better still.
Something is
clearly wrong with the approach with which Pathfinder 2 has been constructed.
Customization is good, but this is not the only way to go about it. In fact, of all possible ways to go about it, this is likely among the very worst.
I disagree. "Shifting gears" is just about the best praise 5E could be summarized as. 5E managed to reinvent the game, shed a truckload of old rules deitrus, and move on to huge huge success.
Despite Paizo having access to 5E for five years, they were unable to replicate any of it. In fact 2E doubles down on exactly the polar opposite of what 5E so very clearly have proved beyond a doubt what gamers want.
The skill actions themselves are slightly fiddly, yes, but they're not even close to where the real problem lies.
Sure I don't need a separate Balance action from a Tumble Through action from a Squeeze action, but that's a minor annoyance compared to what I'm talking about: that you might be Legendary in Acrobatics but you would still squeeze
5 feet per minute 
unless you have taken
exactly one specific feat out of the several thousand that's on offer.
I would say that for each PF1 modifier or exception they cleaned up, they added two new modifiers or exceptions. There is nothing simple or easy about PF2. It's insanely cludgy and fiddly and hard to remember and hard to calculate and you roll endless d20s and other dice...
But Paizo can't do this? How will they keep selling books if they can't shovel new feats out by the hundreds...? /s
