OrochiFuror's page

Noooooooo, what will I do on my break time at work? Read some books that I have piling up that need reviews? Ugh, fine.

I have an idea that will blow your mind.

When you spend an action to strike, you can say your large sized barbarian chops into the enemy with one mighty swing of their giant sized ax, while your kobold dragon barbarian takes a smaller ax and with far greater speed does nearly identical damage with multiple hits.

Spending one action, doing a strike, are just game terms to lead you to rolling damage. If you can't find a way to flavor things to make sense to you, that's largely a you problem.

I agree that trying more enemies of lower level will help this party greatly.
You only have one single target damage dealer and they are squishy.
If the kin is earth then they can take some hits and athletics to control some but that's still a weak front line.
So making your bosses be minion masters who either send wave after wave of minions, create minions every round or somehow have a way to keep lots of -2 or -3 minions around would give your 4 AOE capable characters some juicy targets.

Otherwise, casters can often fit into the role of force multiplier, meaning that without a strong fighter/barbarian/etc to be the base force in your group, you aren't getting much out of your efforts.

OrochiFuror, "natural weapon" is a PF1 designation that might lead to thinking an unarmed attack counts as a weapon in PF2. It doesn't, so you can't put your Banner on it (w/o GM permission of course).

I never played PF1, so no, your assumption is wrong.

It's not a big deal as a second look over my build there's only 2 or 3 abilities with brandish that I would miss, everything else still works.

Feels strange that a fan works but hand wraps don't, banner streamers on your wrists feels fitting for this sort of thing to me.

On the side topic of sales, it would be really stupid for any shop to not try and fulfill a reasonable order of things they normally carry, with reasonable increasing after multiple purchases. Shops don't want to miss potential sales like that, supplies might be a limiting factor though.

Since you can use them on one handed or two handed weapons, what is this limitation trying to prevent? Just to make sure you don't have two free hands? To what point?

I have an idea for a character who uses their banner on a natural weapon, there are still a good number of non brandish tactics, but I wonder why? What could you do with handless brandish that would warrant such a restriction?

Nothing against the art so far, but I hope we get dragons that have sleeker and more regal looks and not so craggy. To me scales are about smoothness, all snakes are extremely smooth and most lizards are as well. Some feathers could be nice as well.

I hope there will be some support for summoners to choose all four traditions while using dragons. Hopefully where ever they might be planning to fully remaster summoner is at least in the conceptual phase to tie in with any changes that might effect Eidolon choice. Also new dragon specific feats for summoner would be awesome, one of the most notable things summoner needs IMO (more Eidolon specific feats, not just dragons).

Honestly, I'm of the opposite opinion. I want to see fewer niche ancestral languages. The proliferation that language is tied to race (rather than culture) is a bit of an outdated idea. It also creates this kind of weird idea that dwarves, regardless of where you find them, will speak one common language in Dwarvish. Really, there should be multiple dialects of Dwarvish, and off-shoot languages, and and and... I'm getting ahead of myself.

All that being said, I do agree on Kobolds. However, rather than just saying, "They speak Kobold unilaterally across the world," I'd like to see a small section of various Kobold languages, possibly based on the source of their obsession or locales. Again, dialects would be great, here.

I know all of this is a bit moot, since the core philosophy is, "The game needs to have...

Agree.

So having an ancestral language often makes sense only in a physiological sense, not a cultural one. I don't think most humanoid ancestors should be able to fully speak draconic, they just don't have the mouth shape and other anatomy to make the same sounds dragons would use for communication.
So with the tag system that Paizo uses, languages should often have tags associated with them for physical requirements to speak it, and denoting a language that has many dialects. So a language that might have started with one ancestry could have physical limitations and dozens of dialects that some might be mixes of other languages. So any dwelling of creatures could be denoted as having X dialect of Y core language.

Language is complicated and often just a hassle in game terms, but having a setup for people really interested in those sorts of things would be interesting, especially if there were anyone at Paizo with an interest in fleshing it out more. I understand that it's far easier to leave the broad strokes of ancestry language and leave it open to any GM to infer or make those specific adjustments, or to denote specifically for any one settlement when such a thing is noticeable.

Making them elite is a genius keyhole solution, I love that

I was able to summon an elite silver dragon since I asked my GM if I could summon max level for the spell and do ice damage since everything in the spell range was fire and he took pity on me. It still did nothing, enemy crit saved against breath, it missed 6 attacks and two AoO. It's still a good start to a solution for high level summons though.

Teridax,
1:that's part of the point of a summon is to have a monster that goes all out.
2: bone croupier is not a valid summon due to being uncommon. Find a few examples of common creatures that have powerful abilities that still work with a level difference of 5-7.
3: as with #2 the majority of abilities a monster can bring are made near useless by the fact they will be five to seven or more levels bellow what you are fighting. Any summon against a boss or mini boss is edging close to a full level of success behind on all checks. That makes them so far away from solo an enemy that they struggle to make any offensive effect on the battlefield.

Raising the level of what you can summon means not only will their checks be better, but their abilities and raw numbers will as well, so I don't think that's a good solution. I think after level 10 when your summoning things -5 level to you, increasing their effective level by one or two via elite template would help keep their math relevant to your fights while not bringing in powerful abilities.
Their should be some level of buy in, like a feat or item, but summons should be more then buffers and roadblocks.

I'm not really a caster guy mainly because I don't like vancian casting, but also because I dread the idea of having to micromanage 10+ spell slots from 7th level onwards when I could be playing a martial or kineticist for a simpler, and arguably more efficient, experience.

Non-casters were always easier to play than casters but the excuse used to be that casters were more complex but also stronger. That isn't the case (necessarily) in PF2e anymore, so I feel vancian should be tweaked or removed in a future edition to streamline it a bit.

That or offer an alternative for those that don't like vancian like I do.

I don't even think casters are all that complex, at least in a turn for turn combat to combat sense. You only have 2-4 slots per level and only the top two, sometimes 3 are ever worth casting for pure number effects. So even out of 12 slots it's fairly easy to tell if you have the right tool for the situation your in. I played a druid to 20 and was surprised by how often most of my spells were not great for the situation I was in. Easily puts you in the mindset of just bring the best of the best spells. It's fairly easy to opt out and just bring chain lighting, fear and slow in all your slots and still be useful.

I think caster super complexity is an illusion of the fantasy of the perfect caster that has all the right spells in the right slot for every occasion. I have yet to see that happen, it's far more likely you need the thing you didn't take or need something you took once multiple times.
So it might actually be better to try and make things as simple as possible.

Casting might do better in future editions being more like the kineticist, even if it's flavored like a wizard adding to his spell book via feats. Otherwise casters should be able to specialize in certain spells the way martials specialize in weapons and tactics that fit with their stats and abilities.
A strength based fighter isn't going to be tumbling through with a dagger the same way an illusionist shouldn't be throwing fireballs around. There can be different mechanics in play effecting how and why you build but I think that loops back into the primary topic of the ways and rate that you acquire power.

Could it be better if items either give you the power scaling or complexity so you have more control over the power level of your game?

As for mythic, I haven't played yet but it felt to me like the mythic powers should have just been wider in scope. Do more and be more useful in general then normal abilities. Not trying to be better numbers, but more effective in outcome. Most of them should be written like the versatile cantrips or kineticists apex abilities, having a half dozen bullet points of what you could do with that power instead of a basic save or strike. Having more flexible or more capacity in the success, like instead of lifting a rock you lift a pillar or side of a house) is kinda the only way mythic makes sense in a game about mathematical balance IMO.

PWL definitely flattens the curve for accuracy, for sure. It doesn't touch on a number of other factors, though, such as damage, so your level 20 caster casting desiccate would still wipe out most of an army of level 1 creatures. I also think power tiers go beyond numbers, as well, such that high-level characters can do things low-level characters can only dream of, like teleport across the planet or create natural disasters. If the GM's intent is to let the party progress in a way that keeps them at the same general power tier, then the variant would only cover part of that goal.

Having played through a few PWL games it doesn't really solve the problem, just makes it take a lot longer to scale out of control mathematically. The abilities, like teleport, are always going to be at the level of power they are set and there isn't much you can do about that.

I don't think high level FA games make characters so complex that they take longer to play. It's far more likely you forget the niche things you can do because they hardly ever come up, you keep just doing the few things you designed your character to do.

Thus I have some issues with how you can, with certain classes, double and triple down on an ability and forgo a fair amount of complexity while other classes don't have much room for that but excel at just grabbing lots of different abilities.
The difference in min-maxing a fighter compared to a summoner is night and day. Both gain power every level, and can be built to be more complex and more specialized respectively, but would generally be much weaker for it.

High level summons only being good because of free spell slots is a bit of an issue IMO. Otherwise the numbers are so bad that your summon can easily be ignored by the enemy because the potential threat is so low.

Wizard and Reanimator have options for broad +1 for summons, giving similar to the master summon feat line for Summoners and perhaps an item that all casters could use (say level 12 item or so) could help out higher level summons a good deal. Make it something you need to invest in. Just the option to make them elite, or anything that makes them have higher numbers without increasing the powers of what you can summon while also not fighting against party status buffs would be a huge help.

I would take that to mean the art of building, especially with FA, to fit the feats in early to get out of the AT earlier. Usually to grab another AT asap, likely to fit more ATs in then you could otherwise or to prioritize certain feats later on.

If you have overwhelming speed, then it's hard to argue with. I remember trying to use dragon form to get around a ground hazard. The reasoning for not allowing it was fair, as it was a test of enduring and overcoming, not avoiding. But in most other situations, it would be hard to say your 90+ speed doesn't matter.
As you get to higher levels, solving around problems should get more common then only resolving through them.

I don't think that is fair, people didn’t opt to worship a deity or be bound by their rules; they chose to play a class with healer mechanics and then had the deity and anathema forced on them. Their only option was to either accept those two or not play the class.

Some players may be hardcore atheists who strongly dislike the concept of worshiping anything and find it humiliating. Others may be very religious and find the concept too close to idolatry (remember the satanic panic). Some players simply played healers in other games, like MMOs, as a white mage or something similar, and wanted to do the same here. I don’t see the point of forcing a vegan to eat meat, and I don’t see the point of forcing someone who doesn’t want to worship gods into pledging divine servitude to a fictional character.

As others have pointed out, you literally chose the god servant class and then complain about serving a god. The cleric isn't even a healing class, if you end up with harm font then at best your as good as any class that gets access to the divine list.

It sounds like you don't know much about PF2, because just taking a quick glance at a class and assuming that it does X and that's your only option is going to hurt you and your players. Others have already given some examples of how to build healers with other classes.
Now that we have Guardians, we can finally say that there is always more then one option to fulfill even the most hard coded old-school quad of tank, mage, healer, skill monkey.

If you want more help on the subject I'd suggest doing a search in advice for creating a healer, it's been tackled a few times. Or start a new thread with a note on avoiding anathema or similar effects.

Eidolons can be human shaped. Therefore all eidolons can do what human eidolons can otherwise it wouldn't be balanced.
Having extra traits on their attacks just opens minor benefits and qualifies for a few feats. They get about as much value from those traits as most monks. The biggest thing this gives is using your weapon item bonus for the maneuver instead of your item bonus to the related skill, freeing you up to not get a skill boosting item if your summoner has no use for it.

For me it boils down 100% to the fact that having any anathema in the first place is opt in. There's only a few classes that have them in the first place, and in some cases are mostly ignorable. Looking at you Barbarian instincts!

Anyway, the fact that its opt in for me means you can't really argue against it. If you're not interested in dealing with the edicts or anathema, play a different class. Yes, it amounts to enforced flavor. But you're choosing that flavor by choosing the class.

Agree. All the anathema are opt in, and they are almost universally things a character choosing the associated option would naturally be inclined to do.

If you want a character to have an option but not it's associated anathema, you should think why a character would be drawn to that option and what beliefs they have. What would make them want that option but not it's anathema.
If the answer pans out to be because your making something silly or contrarian, then you should recognise that such things don't generally fit into Golarian, and you should talk with your GM about it.

Will and sometimes fort at low levels, will and reflex at higher levels. I would venture a guess that a majority of creatures you just need to look at them and you'll know what is their highest, if not then will is the safe bet.
Finding the low is often a bit harder, and if the medium is still slightly high with the low being very low then even the safe bet might not be great. Then that's when RK becomes important.

I also tell players the skills the scenario says they can use, but I also tell them that if they want to try other skills, they can. I make a DC call based on how they describe using the skill in the case they want to try something outside the encounter stat block.

I try to mix the gamist and narrative approaches.

Agree. Only allowing 2 or 3 skills, because the group should have most covered, is bad design IMO. Every character should get a chance to do Something in the encounter, even if it's a long shot.

Getting into a situation where you don't have the skills for a skill challenge so you have to roll 18+ sucks. Been there, done that, it's miserable and demoralizing as a player. It's part of your job as a GM to make sure the adventure doesn't dip into the un fun for everyone due to things not matching up. The only exception is when you foreshadow/signpost that going here and doing this will require x, y or z otherwise you will have a very bad time. Because then it becomes a clear choice to engage with that situation.

I hope you get to play often and have that connection flourish.

I have a friend who lost both parents in his 30's. It's been several years and I've done my best to be a good supportive friend since he has no other family around, none worth mentioning. I buried his dog for him earlier this year. He's very distant and makes it hard to connect and help though.
Hopefully everyone has people they can lean on in times of need, and aren't afraid to do so.

If your going to limit the FA to do with whatever role they have in government, then it will be unlikely to have much effect. You basically have to curate the list of options and thus prevent broken combos.

Taking all multi class options off the table did wonders for a few APs I've played through. That's where a lot of the power imbalance comes from.

Skill monkeys already have too much and regular characters are starved for skills past 7. Three skills maxed doesn't make for a well balanced character at all, specially when you have to choose between filling a weakness in the group and actually supporting your characters theme and personality.

This rule however massively favors skills that have more feats as well as those with feats that are more generally useful like aforementioned medicine and intimidate. While nature and survival would just give you some niche rarely usable options.

It's a step in the right direction, and it's infinitely more useful to have good printed variants then hope a GM has their own homebrew that you like.

So pretty much the animal companion is treated like a constuct.

They are a rules mechanic, and thus are made to be balanced for action economy and investment cost. This basically means they are an NPC that does what the GM wants until you use your abilities to get it to do things you want it to do. This means a LOT is up to GM preference.

Then again, sometimes it isn't always obvious which PC is 'the wizard'. Even before the war mage class archetype, the sentinel archetype (and using a general feat on Weapon Proficiency, such as with a human with the Versatile heritage or taking General Training as their 1st level ancestry feat) allowed 'the wizard' (or sorcerer, or psychic, etc.) to wear medium (or heavy with additional feat investment) armor and wield a martial weapon (like a dancer's spear) with very little investment...

If historically robed wizards got killed because of their ability to effect change, what intelligent wizard would still wear robes and not try to appear as something else. That's just survival.

The moment you drop a fireball or eclipse burst though, you invite trouble.

Can I get Double prey on my ranger for free while your at it?

How do you play with people who don't want to engage with you in a team based game? Well you don't. They don't want to play with a group then there isn't much you can do about it.

Being level 18 doesn't make much sense to scrap a character for a new one, why not save the commander for your next game? Then you can learn it as you go, and maybe have people who will be more willing to engage with the group.

I'll have a better idea in several months now that I'm playing my ranger/beastmaster. But from what I've seen from other players and running numbers versus previous groups effectiveness, I think the biggest problem is just needing a few companion items to fix common situations. We have wave rider barding to give swim speed, there needs to be a non-barding option for flight. Barding for many AC becomes useless as you can get 7-9 dex easily thus making dex based ACs vastly superior to STR based ones. Even savage companions get too much Dex for barding, that can't be intended.

So first off fix itemization for ACs to scale into late game better.

Second fix specializations and perhaps the Non-nimble advancements. The raw numbers don't add up.
A nimble companion can have 43AC, 206 HP, 33hit, 3d8+8 damage at 20.
A savage companion can have 36(!)AC, 228HP, 32hit, 3d8+14 damage at 20.

Not having magical barding that scales up or having a defensive proficiency buff really kills non-nimble companions.
Get them items for alternate movement methods as those become available to PCs and fix the numbers first and foremost.

Once companions are able to keep up with where PCs are bringing the fight and are balanced with each other so there isn't a clear right way to build them, then we can start having talks on how they are performimg. Because right now companions are just a mess that only holds together at low levels.

As someone who has never liked wizards, I hope when/if summoner gets reprinted that dragon Eidolons grant pick a list. Getting stuck with the all rounder list doesn't feel great when I only have 4 slots and want to do very specific things with them. I see a lot more primal spells that interest me then arcane.

As someone who's not fond of casters in PF2, arcane is sort of the poster of why magic is bad. Huge list that you only get 3 or 4 choices from per rank, many spells being anemic and resist or crit resist being the more common result of most castings. The size just sort of exacerbates the other problems. Having more unique spells that just do things would be far more enjoyable IMO.
I haven't played a caster in a year and a half, so maybe the lists have gotten better in that time, but the scuttlebutt suggests otherwise.

Having the largest tradition list is great for Schrodingers wizard, otherwise arcane hasn't really stood out much other then being THE legacy list. Now that the other lists have really been fleshed out, hopefully we get a bit of push for unique arcane only Arcane flavored spells.
All the powerful reality and magic warping spells got turned into rituals, so what does being an arcane spell at its core mean anymore?

Might be wishful thinking but if we get another shot at Secrets of magic, since it can't be remastered and needs to be redone almost entirely, would be nice to get another deluge of spells and hope to balance out the number of uniques a bit. Just to really hone in on the flavors of each tradition.

Haven't played an animist but one of the core problems I see is that the benefits of Embodiment of battle are easily overshadowed by the fact your a divine caster and should be giving similar hit bonuses to your group. It's sustain so your slowed 1 and step to sustain is mostly useless if your already flanking in melee. Third it tanks your spell dc's by 2 points and that's rough, A lot to give up for so little.

As an aside I don't see where your getting a second reaction for RS. Also circle of spirits doesn't sustain in and of itself, and while I understand it's role in your setup, it's a level one feat anyone can take and a 9+ medium can achieve the same for less actions.

So if you think that's a really good ability then it might heavily depend on your group. If you don't have much front line you can act as a decent martial, but in a group with two heavy hitters you should be buffing their to hit so they can Slam down and wreck enemies.

If you think liturgist is too much, maybe make it so you can only sustain spells from your current primary apparition.

I'm going to be blasphemous and say new things that have nothing to do with PF1.

Lets get more gish options that blur the weapon and casting proficiency lines. More martials with focus abilities. Take some inspiration from more modern fantasy. Something mixing FF red mage chainspell, magus double spell strike and Battlezoo dragon mage Spell echo. A martial class that can self buff with economy boosters to make that viable, so many books I read have gish characters that it's hard to not think this is becoming more the norm. A spell casting front line class, not good with weapons but able to mix armor and magic to control the battlefield, do magic damage and take hits. Perhaps a curse eater type theme with a class that triples down on things like Brutal bully and Flamboyant cruelty, able to inflict debuffs and consume them for greater effects and a big damage boost.

There's still room for lots of new ideas, so I hope they don't slow down and get more experimental. We just have to hope for fixes and expansions on all the parts that have already released.

When people mention Barb not having an AC penalty to rage anymore, they don't also mention Barbs have low level access to speed and heavy armor. So a +2 AC swing and faster then other heavy armor users, no archetypes needed.

Some classes feasted heavily. Its strange to look at cleric, barb or rogue with all they got and then look at ranger still hanging onto mediocrity.

A socially awkward person who's shut out in polite company but is a happy go lucky, can't shut up introvert when hanging out with their returned or spirit friends. Emo/punk/goth with a heart of gold.

Abby Sciuto. Can Abby be the iconic necromancer?

Is it ok that monster encounters built for your level are a threat while a trap built for your level isn't? I think that's the primary concern. It doesn't matter that they can be used better, it's that they have to be used better to have impact.

Saying you don't have a problem because your group uses them better and knows how to solve them beforehand doesn't really matter. Traps out of the box work in most other systems, so why don't they have something that just works here?

The trap needs to accomplish something. Someone, not the GM, put it there for it to do something. If it doesn't actually prevent people from going further then there's no point for people in world to use them.
That means most traps need to kill, contain or otherwise dissuade people from passing.

There's plenty of ways a solo monster can be a threat on it's own. Are people fine with the same not being true for traps?

For a bit of a side issue mentioned here. There is almost always some form of time crunch, unless you just ignore it.
First you character ages, why are you heading back to town when you stub your toe or wait around for 6-8 hours healing unless you think it's life or death. I do my best not to play my characters like they are Michael from Click.
Second how often are you just a short walk from the comforts of a well stocked town that can fix all your problems? As adventurers your likely off a ways into less charted places and if you spend days going back and forth to a place then someone else could take advantage of that.

You might choose to not play the game in a living breathing world, but I find that much less interesting.

Ed Reppert wrote:

One of the problems with the class-based system design is that you end up having to shoehorn all the myriad concepts of which players can conceive into whatever classes you have available. Too often there's no good fit.

I personally feel it's often the opposite: for any given concept, there's usually multiple ways of achieving it within the system. It's just that despite this, there's still this all-consuming desire to have a ready-made, prepackaged class that is explicitly called the thing you want it to be called, and nothing less will do for some players. You could have a stealthy, agile character who's lethal with a shuriken, packs a bunch of smoke bombs, and even uses a bit of magic to turn invisible and teleport around, but because that character wasn't built using a bespoke class called the Ninja, they're not a real ninja. It's the flipside to class-based design where it creates a desire for ready-made classes to satisfy very specific character concepts, even when those characters can already be built using existing options.

Agree. I realized at level two that my thaum build was a ninja. Good at sneaking, diplomacy, single handed hidden blade, could do mild magics from scrolls, able to climb with acrobatics, versatile skill selection, action efficient for movement and parry when needed.(FA with Acrobat and Spirit Warrior.)

A classless system suffers heavily from having to make sure no combo is too good, without tons of guide rails like PF2s multi class it ends up meaning everything has to be very subpar.
Some people have character building or conceptualizing methods that just don't mesh well with a class based system.
There's certain archetypes, like acrobat, spirit warrior, wrestler or beast master, that really open up a lot of options to your character build. They broaden what your character concept can be beyond your class in significant ways, I hope we continue to get more such archetypes.

Best to unlearn all of PF1 before you try digging into PF2, else you are likely to do many things wrong.
Fighter starts with more accuracy then anyone else in all weapons and through Weapon Mastery they continue to have the best advancement in accuracy with their chosen weapon type.

Your level is what boosts your chance to hit as you go. There's no flat way to improve basic hit chance. You can build for reducing MAP so your more accurate with multiple attacks, double slice to get two attacks at your full bonus and such that will make you more effective.

Every class scales up their basic capabilities at a set rate. The only thing you can do is choose feats to make specific actions in specific situations work better for you.

Sounds more like it's about terrain and major landmarks or armies. Nothing else. No single building or complex unless it's a major site above ground. Doesn't tell you what direction an army is headed so in a few hours you might be critically outdated on info. It's nifty but you'll have to be on top of things to make good use out of it in most situations.

If it's a choice, then tell them no phones and do something else related to the game. Shake some dice, watch and politely be involved in others turns, plan every part of your turn out and have the dice and such ready to go, or miss your turn. It's very disrespectful to waste other peoples time and your not much of a friend if your choosing to do it.

If it's due to neurological issues then take them out of combat. Split the party and let one group do combat and the other can be doing skill checks that can effect combat. This will require a LOT of work on your part but you can design your encounters to have gimmicks that require people be off to the side doing something else like hitting a switch or solving a puzzle/ picking a lock etc. Make the out of combat characters have few options so they don't need to think too much about things during their turn or set it up so they are working on the puzzle aspect while it's not their turn. Make your combats rare and more like a set piece and dramatic with very intentional layouts.

I hope they will go with what works for them. If they have two class ideas that developers are interested in doing, great. If they only have one passion class and another would be to fill the quota, then hold off on the second class and fill more archetypes, class feats and options for older classes that fit.

I understand that rehashing and fixing older content doesn't bring in the money, but when I get an option that makes a new build or fleshed out a character concept to work it makes me glad I purchased that new book.

Xenocrat wrote:

Taunt doesn’t have the emotion or mental trait, so it’s not really a taunt at all. You’re not making the mindless zombie mad at you.

I just wish we had called it something else like "mark" instead. As in "you have decided to pay specific attention to that enemy." I hate, hate, hate the idea of "you can draw enemy aggro with an ability that controls them" in a game like this.

Distract or distracting presence. Taunt is terrible because it is a videogame term, there's too much baggage there.

Can't wait to get a hold of it, the play test looked terrible but sounds like they went and buffed up every angle possible to make it into something worth using.
What's the difference in static damage reduction compared to what intercept does?

It's basically only viable for monks in a group that does heavy buffs and debuffs. Grabbed and frightened 2/3 or clumsy 2/3 gets you a +4 or +5. Even with +5 your -8 attack on a boss is risky. So you'll need a bard or get something like heroism to make God breaker work. At that point anything will work, but you'll still likely be the coolest one with those mods.

I don't think I could play another druid, most of the things I used have been taken away.
With FA, I had +2 status AC from dragon disciple for my battle forms. +2 to hit in all my battle forms from strength. Got to master attacks from sixth pillar.
I still didn't measure up to the fighter and rogue just tearing through bosses in my group, but I did very well.
Chain lightning or eclipse burst round one, reaction dragon form or kaiju form, chase things down, trip or FoB as needed.

Most of that is gone now.

To the topic at hand, saying feats aren't part of your class identity seems very short sighted to me.
Even with medium armor it gives you room to not focus on dex, several classes have this option, it's not good on any of them so why would you expect different here? The only actual late game advantage would be getting heavy armor and bulwark, so you would be free to grab cha or int.
Free shield block is just that, free, more room for other general feats.
Your order can lead you into dragon form, monstrosity form or kaiju form with improved form control, also can get wind caller and invoke disaster, coupled with effortless concentration you get flight and free lightning strikes that can feed right into taking a form.

Would be nice for the other orders to be nearly as good.
So in a way, yes the druids greatest advantage is it gets free feats. Really good feats. The thing that most casters are very bad at.

PF2 is made with lots of room for just make a GM call. Not nearly as much as some other games, but it is intended to have table variance.

To me though, if your going to down play any part of the text, might as well down play all of it, your in homebrew territory at that point.

Being large, being small, having tendrils instead of hands, just things that differ from the standard. Centaur for example simply can't do several typical adventuring type activities, like climbing a ladder or crawling. Hand waving those differences away for ease of use does a disservice to the very core of the identity of those differences IMO.

Required for it to work just means if there's rules for it then you know you can do it, instead of requiring buy in from your storyteller.
PBtA "experiences" is a new thing I've only seen in daggerheart, none of the other rules light systems I've seen have an open ended rule like that. Most tend to be sticking very close to a specific theme and thus the rules are more like a board game with very set options.

Not that I think PF2 or many of the other systems I've seen do a good job of having those rules, being physically nonstandard is usually seen as a problem to fix for ease of use. I love the variety of options in Rifts for example but that system leaves much to be desired.

I think that table consensus is great for any system and helps improve everyone's experience when everyone is like minded, however when that's required for someone's idea to work then that's a problem for people like me who rely on random online groups.

I haven't played any PBtA, I've only played Overlight and read the rules for several other games that all seemed very theme focused. While few games give much room to be non standard humanoid, it feels like rules heavy games are more likely to give you tools to express that experience without having to rely on someone else.

I don't watch any TTRPG content creators other then the Mythkeeper for Golarian lore, so I don't really know what people are looking for in that regard. One of the live plays I watch recently did a game of Lancer while a few members were away, everyone was new to it and seemed to enjoy it. It's not something I would be very interested in but several people in chat were very into it and knowledgeable. They have also played a few other systems as short specials and that seems like a good way to expose people to new systems.
It's not likely to make a lot of engaging discussions unless the content is about the social aspects of the game, so I think that's likely the common outcome.

Hasbro is mining D&D for cash, that will eventually kill it unless someone else buys it.

My issue with rules light is that it rarely properly represents certain things, they all have certain assumptions about your character and going outside that box rarely works. It's hard enough in 5e and PF2 to be large and have that be a meaningful part of your character beyond visuals. So long as there's mechanics that fit my strange characters I would be happy with lite or crunchy rules, there just needs to be lots of options.

Also D&D into dagger heart is basically just following the money. We'll see if it holds up but we've always known the big $$ isn't pathfinder. Many people would like dagger heart to replace 5e as the big standard rules light that everyone plays and makes content for, so they can do so with less guilt at supporting a greedy company.

When/if the time comes that people don't just wholly watch D&D content, then pathfinder and other games can get more coverage but it has to get the views, and with that market twisting as it has been it doesn't seem likely.

Shadow and dread are ones I look for on many of my characters, because they help with things my characters tend to do. The majority of other runes, and indeed many other items in general, do not. Most niche items aren't worth keeping around and remembering to use in their rare situation they would be useful. Most groups I've played in tend to sell things that aren't readily useful.

Most bonuses and effects are so small that you have to use something 10-20 times to have it actually effect a roll or a situation. So it's far better to have something your going to use every day then something you might use once or twice ever.

A horned dragon in the open should wreck most parties. If you get within 40 feet, it can charge and carry you 160 feet away in one turn.
The ability to separate PCs makes them more deadly then similar threats.
Your either prepared to deal with what it can do, or your likely dead. Even if your equal or higher level it's abilities make it a huge threat.

Without the speed it would still be a massive threat, charge, impale, fly up or over hazardous terrain. Getting free might not even be desirable at that point, fight one on a mountain and it drops you off a cliff.
I agree there are certain monsters like dragons that by the numbers work, but some of those abilities really have the opportunity to be much more threatening then the numbers suggest, and I don't think monster level is really able to reflect that. Ancient dragons have uncommon to suggest they could be problematic but a lot of people don't like the rarity system being used that way and adults don't have uncommon but can be very problematic.

The big question becomes, by the time you would face such threats, should you be ready to face literally everything around a corner, or are some creatures more worthy of some tag to express their complexity?

A reliable, free 5 foot push is incredibly powerful if you have some slam down martials in your group and some difficult terrain or jagged berms type ability going on. Enemy has to move into reach with you again, making it just as good as slow, and can trigger RS.