Lyee's page

The only PF1 products I have are the Bestaries, because I like the art.

Everything else? Physical or PDF, it's not worth it to me. Someone will make a wiki, or a tool, or an SRD, and that will be a better way to browse, reference, and find content for me since I've never much cared for the tactile nature of the physical products and PDFs are just worse to search.

PF's adventure paths are something that isn't online, which I used to like. But now I homebrew and, despite playing tabletop at least 6 times a week, I'm wondering if I'll put any money towards PF2. I'd like to. I'd like to support a cool system (if it pans out as well as I hope). The products offered just aren't anything I want. I'd feel like I'm donating to a charity.

The products I'd actually pay for are cool stuff integrated with Roll20 (other platforms are a nice idea, but in realistic terms I'll stick with that specific most popular one). It's digital tools. (Imagine if the monster building rules that have been talked about... came with a little widget to automatically adjust monsters, apply templates, etc? How awesome!). My players would like character-building stuff that lets them automatically level. What about an online resource where all the books I buy are compiled together, and when I search for a specific monster, it includes the art and a premade token? That's value to me, rather than Googling the art not on the SRD and then making a token manually.

There are many that still play with physical books, and Paizo will make good money there. There are many that still love the Adventure Paths, and Paizo will make good money there. There are many that just prefer the PDF presentation to the practicallity of an SRD. Paizo will also make money there. But there's a notable group like me that plays online, likes the power of an SRD, and doesn't play Adventure Paths. There's just... nothing to buy.

Tempted to say Planar Adventures but the last book has so much fluff it's pretty cross-edition.

I'd be cool with an entire book of spells/powers/items just to steal those effects and put them on homebrew monsters/items/classes/etc

I'll be GMing, definitely.

So the first thing I test is how it feels to homebrew NPCs and monsters. I definitely won't be using PC rules for my NPCs, as I never have, so it'll be easy to see if it's intuitive, if it's quick, if it's easy/difficult to balance, etc.

Yeah, on Spell Roll vs Skill, I think the main reason for that is the Sorcerer, who can definitely be really good at Spell Rolls with arcane spells and be Untrained in Arcane.

* Fixed Powers/Resonance system: I have no idea where this ended up, just that it changed. Hopefully Powers feel a lot more character-defining than in the playtest.

* General buffs to utility magic items. Making magic items less impactful on weapon-damage/ac/skills.

* General buffs to utility magic, buffs, and debuffs.

* General buffs to skill feats.

Most of these have been stated or implied, but without seeing the implementation it's tough to say if I'll be satisfied with where they're at.

Also all 'pets' have been seriously nerfed into the ground with the Minion trait and being seriously stripped down. Summoning just isn't really all that good, so a class dedicated to it is just the master of a bad tactic.

This seems narrow-minded. The PF2 devs are aware enough of how actions work that a pet-focused class would not have the Minion trait, or have enough class features to overcome most/all drawbacks of the Minion trait. I'm not sure what you expected a Summoner to have for class features if you thought they'd summon something on par with an animal companion without features to bolster that tactic. We have no idea how Paizo will approach this, but I trust they would do more than you imply.

I see no reason it couldn't fit the direction of PF2 (but I hope we never get a poor implementation of a swarm summoner that ends up going through 20 actions a turn).

I've hard large PCs without issue, since I tend to be fairly lenient on squeezing rules. Medium doors might slow them a bit, but they only have serious issues if a door was aimed at small creatures.

But yeah the small/medium distinction is mostly a non-thing in PF2E

Yeah, on the rare cases I built a character in PF1, I searched each racial traits for what could replace it and basically came up with 3 or 4 slots I could put a racial ability in, happy they made that the default assumption for PF2, although I do wish the level 1 race budgets were more interesting.

My groups tend to see things from a very party-focused standpoint. They have a toolbox as a group, more than as individuals. If the Wizard has less ability to scry, teleport, or conjure food, they all feel nerfed and like their adventure is less fantastic, I really hope PF2 casters still provide that high fantasy wonder of PF1.

Every time I mention the high degree of flexibility 2e has over 1e- specifically the customization options- they have a fit, acting as if 1e is superior in that regard. My /dude/ were we playing the same game?

Not sure who 'they' are, but I've heard no one reasonable make this claim based on CRBs. People I know who will stick with 1E for customization reasons do so because 1E has been out longer and has an absurdly larger library of content as a result.

I think there's an argument that the tactical combat gameplay for snares would be way better if they broke through retroactive and just became

GM: "The enemy moves from here to here-"
Ranger: "Hold on, I use a reaction, even though I only just stepped into this room for the first time, there's a snare there now, roll a reflex save"
GM: <rolls to avoid snare that is now there.>

But that feels... really 4E, going a bit too far against the standard ideas of cause and effect. I think the bomb-thing like you brought up, where you say "I lay two snares in the room" before combat, but can retroactively have their position change/decided.

Retroactive preparation things is something I've only run across in someone's homebrew Shadowrun rules whereby the more players did research and scouting on a target the more "chips" they got that during the run they could exchange for "I prepared for this, ha ha!" and get some piece of specialty gear, booby trap, etc.

I think it could be interesting, but it could very easily go bonkers.

Retroactive planning is part of two systems in City of Mist.

You can investigate things and get Clues which you can use immediately to ask a question or later to say you retroactively asked a specific question and got an answer. There's also the Juice system, which is basically the same thing but for more direct preperation such as having a useful item or getting a contact to help you.

I play it and those retroactive systems work fantastically, would love them in 2E, I'll probably homebrew them in if not. My 5E games already use City of Mist's Montage system.

I think the Ranger's niche should be "I was prepared for this encounter." I would actually like Hunt Target to take 2 actions but be way better. That way a Ranger who got it off before combat would be at a significant advantage. I also want the Ranger to be able to do things like treat his weapon as dealing different damage types with several actions, for snares setting the battlefield in their favour to meaningfully powerful.

I'd push for this. Bonuses to initiative, maybe able to reposition self and allies after initiative is rolled but before any turns are taken, to show they're prepared to act quickly and to be in good positions. Bonus against creatures you studied/researched/knew to expect for some reason/tracked/etc.

Ok, but resonaance was long ago confirmed to be cut from the final product, why are you necro-ing resonance threads?

Really we don't have an up-to-date enough version of PF2 to provide meaningful feedback on many issues such as Resonance since so much is changing without us seeing, and the system was incomplete content-wise anyway.

It's bat guano crazy that they would slaughter this sacred cow.

I like the suggestion, but if going that way I start to feel you aren't assumed to have the components, and it has a weird campaogn-specific aspect to some components to see if they come up for your spell? If you are still assumed to have the components and it's just an extra action that sounds neat.

Too late to significantly work this into core, but maybe for one of the first three splats as extra options:

I see the ranger's mechanical niche as a bit of a leadership role - I think 4E had a class called warlord that worked like that? - to expand, I see them literally leading the group as a trailblazer, with decent mobility, unmatched tracking, good stealth, and an intuitive understanding of every environ. During travel, they keep their finger on the pulse of threats - poisons and diseases in the air, creatures in the area, knowing nearby settlements. As combat starts their reactions and instincts allow them to sense enemies and advise allies, they can get around well, being adaptable here, possibly focused on support with buffs and heals and usually a pet, possibly focused on weaponry. After the fight, many rangers will use medical knowledge to patch up wounds and conditions, magical or not.

That's a lot in there! And some of it would be optional stuff relegated to class feats. Stuff I imagine as 'baked in' to the levels and unavoidable until some PF1 style archtype system comes in would be a bit of tracking, a bit of mobility in difficult terrain, a bit of instinct about areas and creatures, especially creatures being tracked, and in combat probably a fighting style choice, and then bonuses to the whole team's positioning and initiative from the ranger's understanding of the situation.

...How can it interact with the MAP? It has no roll at all. It automatically succeeds if the attack hits. There is no Grapple action happening, just applying the Grabbed condition, so it does not want to refer to Grapple. Grapple is entirely unrelated to Grab.

I believe this is intentionally vague. There are so many countries and regions of countries, and so many laws and exceptions in each, that such a book is not only absurdly nieche, but any useful version of it would be unviably large.

I believe the common way to handle this at-table is that the players go with follwing 'common sense' laws, plus unusual laws they are aware of. If there is an unusual law, or difference in law, that the players are not aware of and their characters are, then the GM warns the player about it before the character breaks it if that would have notable consequence, alignment or otherwise. Similarly, players can ask about their characters knowledge of the law and the GM makes up what is most consistent with the region and interesting for the narrative.

Captain Morgan wrote:

gwynfrid wrote:

It would make sense for it to work that way, if Focus Spells were an optional feature for all the classes that have it. But that is not the case. It's a baseline feature for clerics and non-universalist wizards. So, it this was tied to Cha, it would be an undue burden on these classes (less so on clerics since they already have Channel Energy tied to Cha).

Well, as written clerics already have that burden. What if all characters had it? Like, what if focus spells were all as potent as channel?

Exactly this, except maybe not quite as game-defining as channel. And also there needs to be more support for NOT focusing on it. I would really like "Charisma-dumped Cleric who never really gets any use out of channel energy" to be a viable and effective (and most importantly feat-supported) build in the final version.

No, at least as game-defining as channel. I want those class features to be defining if focused on, really being a focal point of the character, not exclusively window dressing or utterly ineffective choices during combat.

I agree that builds that ignore them should be supported though.

Does this help you?

Expert: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eshL-0v3gtqqQSj0RrKr8fDfheYaY-PxUCR5-KX eRn4/edit

Yep. I'm done with 2E - not because 2E's bad, but because it's incomplete and I don't see myself giving further useful feedback. I check in once every week or two to see if devs have posted news. I'm cautiously optimistic about the final result, but I don't think the published playtest was ever considered a full system people were going to play all the way to 2E's release.

The crux isn't that many people want to play the full extent of every concept from level 1, but to have the full set of seeds for their concept. If my idea is a mage that throws meteors and turns into a fire elemental, I don't want that from level 1, but I might want fire magic so those things have something to naturally progress from. If I want to play a heavily armoured mage that uses magic super adamtine full plate, it might be reasonable that there's some armour option at level 1 for that to grow from.

where the line is drawn is the question. Is casting in armour too strong for level 1? What about limited flight as some races might get? A swim speed? Having an animal companion? What levels is it valid for these to come into play? If it's above 1, what seeds can a character plant early to grow ino them? Every option must be examined individually, and these answers might change as teh game evolves and splat books happen.

Lyee wrote:

While I'm personally happier with the PF2 style more-challenging content, I can see someone who prefered the 1E easier content to be annoyed that offical content in 2E is likely to be not-for-them without giving the characters extra levels than what is recommended, and as many/most groups just run as written, that makes finding a group that runs the game they want much more difficult. Perhaps having the advancement track at the start of each adventure module be split into a 'gritty' and a 'heroic' track where the heroic track ends up 2 levels higher, would solve this?

That's fair. Although instead of a split track in every AP, maybe just a general note along the lines of "for an easier experience, add a couple levels to the advancement track"?

I say split track with the first module in mind, so that in a standard 1-5 module, it would go 1-7 instead so no levels are entirely skipped. For all further instalments in that AP a simple +2 note would work.

Yeah, I feel like PF2e actually does a great job of supporting that playstyle by just letting you run lower level encounters - suddenly you will be critting left and right and steamrolling monsters.

Now if what you want is for level-appropriate challenges to be a walk in the park, then basically what you are saying is that you want the game system to lie to you about what a challenging encounter is.

That happened a lot in PF1e, and I'm happy to see it being fixed in 2e. That way I can run challenging games and you can run less challenging games, and we both have the tools to know how to build the game that we want to run or play.

While I'm personally happier with the PF2 style more-challenging content, I can see someone who prefered the 1E easier content to be annoyed that offical content in 2E is likely to be not-for-them without giving the characters extra levels than what is recommended, and as many/most groups just run as written, that makes finding a group that runs the game they want much more difficult. Perhaps having the advancement track at the start of each adventure module be split into a 'gritty' and a 'heroic' track where the heroic track ends up 2 levels higher, would solve this?

So I'm going to start off saying I think the better solution is to give casters just as useful, or more useful spells, then they currently get, but in a narrower band. As outlined here.

But that's not really feasible for the initial release of 2E. Frankly, neither profiiency bumps or skill feats feel very impactful in the playtest, so how they change those by release will be a big part of how much the OP's suggestion will affect anything.

GM: "With your +24 untrained Computer Science skills, your Barbarian can fix the missing DLL problem of the alien spaceship AI by reinstalling, but he can't debug the mutex semaphore issue; that's Expert only."

This is a desirable outcome for me, unironically.

Yes, it is a 68% chance to get rid of the acid in the first round, if you take all your actions to get rid of it. But if you have 5 rounds, it is a 99,7% chance though (0.75^20). As much as more rolls you have, as more stable your outcome will be.

???

If you use an action to get rid of it, it's 30% to get rid of it first round, and every subsequent round.

An action doesn't give you a DC 15 check to remove it, it changes the check at the end of your turn to DC 15. After the first action, no other actions help remove it.

Big agree! My biggest problem with 5E is that roll numbers remain similarish during levels, so expressing the high-level characters as extremely competent and veteran adventure heroes feels like a farce when I know they have non-negilable chances at failing low-level tasks (although outside of save-or-suck effects it's not as much of a combat issue due to HP/damage scaling). 2E solves this quite elegantly.

Yes, it's definitely not something you can haphazardly throw onto existing 2E (or any other system). That said, I imagine a Transmutation-specialist wizard would play VERY differently from an Evocation wizard in this system, and the issue of one being better would be the exact same situation as one class being better than another - sure, it's an issue, but people still play most or all of the options and the cooperative, varied, and creative natures of the game makes it work.

While I think this as a suggestion is too late for PF2E, I'd like to throw out my ideal solution to this because throwing your opinions into the void of the internet is cathartic.

Personally, I love the fantasy of the super-powered world-altering high-level spellcaster. I want a game with Create Greater Demiplane, and Greater Teleport, and Plane Shift, and True Ressurection, and Greater Scrying, and Greater Invisibility, and (Overland) Flight, and Passwall, and Meteor Swarm, and Dominate Monster, and Dragon Shape IV and so on. All the things that can be absurd in some situation).

What I do not want is all of that to be the standard book filler for almost every wizard as he levels up because the opportunity cost for a wizard to get these massive utility options is negilable. For a cleric, the opportunity cost to have access to such things (if on the cleric list) is literally zero, as you can choose them on any given day without planning ahead for them or locking yourself permentantly out of other options.

I would like to see narrower options, with no 'universalist' wizard. Wizards would be specialized around a small number of schools, doing a number of awesome game-breaking things, just not all the awesome game breaking things in a single character. Clerics would be more wrapped up in their domains, possibly with no generic cleric list at all, sorcerers the same for their bloodline, etc. Just as awesome options, but not all of them at once.

Yes, that's what it looks like, provided you succeed at 2 Crafting checks, one to reverse engineer the formula and one to rebuild the item. If you fail at the first check, you're left with the raw materials and they can't be reassembled. If you succeed at the first check but fail at the second, you're again left with the raw materials (minus 10% if it was a critical fail).

So, you have some risk of losing half the value of the item, on top of the time spent in the process. I guess, assuming the downtime is available, I would go for it every time the DC is low enough, like for example a 80% success chance on one check, meaning 64% for two consecutive checks.

?

Assuming OP got everything correct, there is no second check if you were going to sell it anyway, as you get full value for the raw materials, so putting it back together is silly.

+3 to-hit is 50% more damage if the fighter hits on a 13, cleric on a 16, or if the cleric hits on a 10 and the fighter a 7

Yep. DC is 10+thing.

It's mathmatically only 0.5 worse than rolling, and is more consistent. It makes play faster than roll-offs all the time and I really appreciate the system

The crit-success values might need to come down. For a 12th level party, a success is CON*12 hp, which for most characters will be 12 and in some cases 24, with the fighter and barbarian getting more.

???

I would expect 90% of characters to start the game with minimum +1 con, go to +2 at 5, and +3 at 10. A level 12 character with only +1 con in 2E sounds very odd to me.

Considering my first draft of Treat Wounds, before there was an offical version, was just a 100% heal: I also don't see it being even slightly an issue you heal half your max? It's a crit from an (at least) trained person! That should be a lot!

The other way to have skills still scale up a lot and encourage specialisation, would be to increase the proficiency modifiers, for skills only, from -4/0/+1/+2/+3, to -4/0/+2/+5/+8 (or similar) - this gives effectively the same total bonus you have with items.

Pros:
* Characters are item independent
* Proficiency ranks in skills matter notably outside of skill feats
* Lets alchemist item bonuses stop clashing

Cons:
* Unevenly benefits extra skill increases, aka rogue.
* Breaks the symmetry of the system - skills would be the only thing with different bonuses from proficiency

It's a close thing to me, but I might go for it.

Session 2:

The Three Oracles
The nearest geographical location was the cave of the three oracles. They wanted to visit here for a few questions, since it was an info-spot and that led to better decisions with the rest of their day (in theory). It's a reasonably tough climb up to the Oracles, with strange smoke rolling down the hill. For 14th level characters, probably pretty trivial DCs. The PCs decided to make it doubly trivial by all using fly, either the boots or the spell, and making it to the entrance which was covered by a wall of smoke. Yup. All had casual fly. High levels are awesome like that.

Miller took the lead, walked through the smoke, and called back that there was no immediate danger. The fumes were a bit heady, and Beetmul nat-1'd a fort save, being the only one to fail and get a -4 to Will saves for the day. They met the oracles, asked some basic questions, learned there was definitely a dragon, and it was a she. Learned there were primal druids on this island a long, long time ago that worshiped the volcano. Ol' Koot agreed to go on a vision challenge, dispite warnings he might die. The oracles throw magical powder into the bonfire they're sitting around and Koot's mind went elsewhere to have a vision.

He saw glimpses of the island, and of the fortress, and of the fortress' interior! He recieved many hints about what was to come, and eventually saw their goal: The Last Theorem, now finally knowing exactly what it should look like. But from the vision of this, a horrible creature made of pure thought, a type of Mindform called a Dream Devil broke loose, and Koot had a 1-on-1 battle in thoughtspace. Koot had few offensive spells, and at one point it looked like he might run out and die here, but a critical failure by the Mindform against Fireball had him defeated. It was probably more power level of a level 12 monster than the level 11 I had it down as. He got a reroll to use in the next week, decided after seeing the dice roll.

Finally, Miller asked what gift Whark would like, but managed to word it like a lawyer. He learned that besides gems, gaudy things, and Besmara's forgiveness, she would want revenge against the person who slighted her tomorrow. (there's going to be at least three chances at this). They left some food and good booze, and moved on.

The Three Oracles was the only bit of information about the smoker really given in Doomsday Dawn... and utterly failed to be fleshed out there! I set it as an easy answer to any question that wouldn't break the module, plus the dream fight and free reroll as a bonus for their exploration. Koot was the only one who saught a vision, and the least up for a 1-on-1 fight, so I figure I judged correctly with the stats of the opponent.

Lavatap
They headed right to the recently-burried-by-lava-burst tavern, Lavatap, and met Sissidhie, its owner, a nice fire giant lady. She gave them the basic rundown about an explosion from the rockface spewing out lava and revealing a very small cave with lava elementals that no one's scoped out yet. Rurtug used Stone Tell and got some background information from the hardened lava: They learned there was a staff on an altar generatin the lava. Playing talking lava was fun, it had an interesting view of the world, it liked other lava, didn't like having cooled down.

They planned a raid on the cave to steal the staff. Koot used Clairvoyance and learned the shape of the cave, and that the altar had old primal nature runes all over it. He gave Beetmul a Quicksilver elixer, someone Hasted Beetmul, Beetmul went invisible, and went to get the staff. It was secured in place by a runed, trapped, metal clasp. He nat-1'd his first attempt, causing a firey explosion he ducked out of the way of (Evasion for the crit succcess), but attracted the surrounding lava elementals. With his Quick Unlock feat, he managed to turn things around and finish getting the clasp undone with a single crit success! He grabbed the staff and, with his final action for the turn, began to bolt out of the room. The lava elementals sent waves of heat vaguely in his direction, but the whole group had taken Salamander Exlixers, because volcanic island, so they were fine. As Beetmul got out, Koot and Rurtug each threw up Wall of Stone spells to blockade the way and seal the lava elementals in.

Since Beetmul had been unable to pass nature checks to understand the primal magic of the runes, and didn't have any society feats for interpreting lost languages, some secrets were missed, but they got a Greater Staff of Fire with no combat, which was neato. Discussing it, they decided it would make a better gift for Whark than their leftover funds could otherwise buy.

Perhaps I put too much description into the staff over the altar. Still, their ability to Blitz an item-retrival task was great to see, and a fun warmup for the vault raid ahead.

Final Prep
The group got back to town. Koot and Rurtug went to the brothel, Beetmul studied images drawn from Koot's vision and aced a few checks to gain some insight into what lay ahead, Miller purchased some rubies to bling up the staff to be more attractive to Whark, which he aced the crafting check on. The brothel-goes spent extra gold for a great time and some information on gala guests's brothel habits, however they plan to use that.

That night, Rurtug and Koot get home at 5am. Rurtug curls up with the newly decorated Greater Staff of Bling Fire since goblins like fire things.

Beetmul wakes up early, gathers the atmosphere of the day, learns a few anti-curse charms are circulating due to rumours of cursed gambling tables at the gala, and curses from sea hags or Besmara. Miller has a very greasy breakfast, during which he sees an adult red dragon heading in the direction of the fort. Eventually Koot and Rurtug get up, Koot makes drawings of all the flags for ships that have arrived, and sees what he knows about them. The group goes to the gala!

And we cut for the week.

Final prep maybe gave them too much time, they didn't do a ton here, but I'd rather give them too much time and have them feel at fault for preparations not made, than not enough and feel screwed over. Another fun session with good RP, Rurtug came more into his own this time and Beetmul was the star of the staff-snatching mission.

I try to have skill item bonuses not mandatory, because I threw 10-2 away a long time ago, and utility items giving things such as invisibility/flight/truesight/transformation will often be far more useful for your money. I also put the costs for adding them to other items as not-too-cheap, ideally, and might push them higher.

The ABP system I'm looking into using:

Weapons
* You gain an extra damage dice every 4 levels.
* Potency runes are gone
* Weapon quality still determines to-hit
* Property runes unchanged

This results in up to -2 to-hit at high levels because Legendary quality only gives +3 to-hit against a +5 potency's +5. This is fine. Monster math will account for it.

Armour
* Potency runes are gone
* Armour quality works the same
* Property runes the same

Max AC down by 2 for not having Potency, but that's fine, monster math will account for it. Saves don't get buffs, but saves overall were too high since things failed too often. Monster DCs will be adjusted if needed.

Skill Items
* Skill bonuses from items still exist. When crafting, you can make any item with an additional item bonus by increasing its cost by 150/750/2,500/10,000 for a +2/+3/+4/+5. Additionally, the item becomes at least level 5/9/13/17. An item can only give an item bonus to a single skill.

Item bonuses were a nice way to specialize. While everyone got relevant potency runes for weapons/armour, skill items were more personal and not a problem. DCs will not always assume you have these, so they should make you stand out and be special. Letting you graft the bonus onto any item should reduce every diplomatic character having the exact same ring, or so on.

The weapon/armour stuff is easy for me to adjust monsters to, because I only use homebrew monsters so they'll be built initially with this system in mind.

I feel Treat Wounds ia about in the right place, but might remove the crit failure condition. Bedrest might need a buff though. Would 100% not nerf Treat.

While I still support higher accuracy, I also support lower HP (possibly lower damage-per-hit if things become too deadly). Now that hit dice are maximized, and you have extra racial hit points at first level, the effect of con on HP is almost halved. I was considering dropping all class hit points by 2. Barbarian to 10, Fighter to 8, etc. Same applied to monsters of course.

My proposal:
Embrace untyped bonuses. Barbarian rage bonuses are super core and should stack with everything. Untyped. Bards Inspire is core to it and shouldn't invalidate half the game's buffs. Untyped. Specific items, feats, and spells aren't that core to everything. Typed.

So, with the three arguments for keeping ability scores over just using the bonus being:

1) Feel, backwards compatibility, etc
2) Dice rolling
3) Uneven scores (such as 19) being more awkward

I don't care for the first two reasons, so am looking for a nice way to solve the third. One solution I'm toying with is:

* Modifier instead of score
* 3 boosts at 5/10/15/20 instead of 4.
* Max of 4/5/5/6 modifier

With existing rules, aiming at maximizing specific stats, the modifier array looks like this:
1: +4/+3/+2/+1/0/-1
5: +4/+4/+3/+2/0/-1
10: +5/+4/+4/+3/0/-1
15: +5/+5/+4/+4/0/-1
20: +6/+5/+5/+4/+1/-1

With the modifier-only rules, they look like:
1: +4/+3/+2/+1/0/-1
5: +4/+4/+3/+2/0/-1
10: +5/+5/+4/+2/0/-1
15: +5/+5/+5/+3/+1/-1
20: +6/+6/+6/+3/+1/-1

It gives pretty similar results overall. A total of +1 more at 15 and 20, same total bonus at 1/5/10/15. It gives less benefit to a jack-of-all-trades going for a bunch of +4s, but since character strengths are interesting I'm okay with this.

I really don't see the appeal of skill ranks at all. Like I've not played a PF1 character who put more than 0 but less than [Level] ranks in a skill, since it's pretty much pointless to do so.

I've frequently had 1 rank in class skills, or enough ranks in something to hit a threshold such as auto-passing a specific ride check.

I've long come to accept that Armour Check Penalty and Max Dex are way overblown, and much harsher penalties than real armour had, which was designed to be easy to move in, because you had to march and fight in the stuff.

The point of these heavy armours are to fill a fantasy about slow but impervious fortress-like characters, and to provide a mechanical balance because seeing people wear a variety of armour is interesting.

High fantasy, content-diverse, deep system that's homebrew friendly.

I'm definitely on board removing potency runes entirely, and sticking to weapon quality for to-hit bonus, level for damage dice, and property runes stay as-is.

5/9/13/17 or 6/10/14/18 for extra dice might be okay, if 4/8/12/16/20 turns out to be on the powerful end.

Yeah. Taking someone from 4d12+5 to 4d4+5 is still over a 50% damage decrease, and that's before property runes like fire, keen, swift, etc. Disarming might need a really minor buff, but they can 100% fix that. I'm way more happy that the heroic fight can punch something for significantly more than the city guard, or actually deal damage in an anti-magic field, than I am worried about disarm.

Can... can we just give the dice based on level? An extra dice at 4/8/12/16/20?

I have no issue with the level 12 Wizard doing 4d8 with a mundane weapon. It's not far better than a cantrip. Especially if he's not boosted strength. Doubly if he's not an expert in the weapon and it's not an expert/master weapon. I can't possibly imagine it breaking everything.

It solves the fighter-gets-proficiency-early issue. Especially since when it's based on proficiency... fighters had no reason to be getting dice before barbarians, or monks, or rangers, or paladins - these would all be getting potency runes at around the same level. Just give it to them at that level.

Frankly, PF1 monsters didn't have statistics like PCs anyway.

Most monsters I saw had approximate stats decided out of nowhere, then hit dice, attributes, skill ranks, natural attacks, and feats picked to reach those stats as closely as possible, then arbitrary natural armour to get their exact AC target and special abilities PCs can't choose thrown on to to make the monster unique.

All PF2's system does is take out the 'hit dice, attributes, skill ranks, natural attacks, and feats picked to reach those stats as closely as possible' - you skip to having it matched without needing that fiddly middle bit. It's already how AC worked, due to natural armour being entirely arbitrary, and how the number/type of natural attacks worked for getting to DPR targets.

NPCs are a different argument, but I don't assume that's what people mean when they say 'monster'.