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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The-Magic-Sword" data-source="post: 9648754" data-attributes="member: 6801252">I like it as both a player and a GM, one of the big reasons is that I never really liked gentleman's agreements to control for optimization in a party, and I really enjoy the whole character optimization side, so the game having a no-nonsense attitude about game balance feels much better-- the play itself is also a lot of fun because of how much more you depend on moment to moment tactical decisions to deliver effectiveness than the PF1e/4e game generation, which were much more, in my experience, about clicking your build buttons and powering through the situation. 4e's roles were very nice, but it made the tactics more abstract for me compared to what I have now because the effectiveness could be so self-contained once you 'clicked the button.' So when you combine that and the balance, I can optimize to give myself a lot of cool build tricks, use them in fights to answer different situations, and everyone in the party can contribute well. In terms of Magic Items, they're one of the places you can squeeze some additional output in, especially for casters who can use them to have denser adventuring days in terms of castings, but martials have more choices to make in their equipment due to runes and talismans.But another thing that I like is that items are really nice in the context of exploration mode-- the game is a sleeper in terms of dungeon exploration. Hazards are well realized, treasure can be plentiful and useful, and both subsystems really like rewarding the party for balancing between searching, investigating, detect magic etc as they move along and the profusion of spells and spell-like effects encourage a worldview where you might have traversal obstacles or other gimmicks to use them with. So having scrolls of problem-solver spells you don't necessarily want to prep daily is always nice, or items like <a href="https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=2456" target="_blank">this</a>.It's a semi-gygaxian skilled play dynamic by way of lock and key dungeon design and the metroidvania, you present problems and those problems probably have intended solutions (or 'default solutions' as I think of them), but the profusion of problem-solvers allows for players to bring their own keys that might fit into many of your locks and thereby take a different, possibly easier route through the prepped content.</blockquote>

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