The Blue Fairy's page

One of my players made a goblin paladin, and had much the same rant as you do.

It's true: I was deeply disappointed that my goblin paladin (adopted by halflings!I took the feat, the language and everything! I even wrote backstory!) couldn't utilize a Halfling Riding Dog as his allied steed. I wound up going with an allied weapon instead (because it seemed super dumb to drag a horse/pony through Sombrefell Hall), but I pouted.

Noted, thanks! I already have this one on my list; Rough Rider and similar abilities really need to allow you to select those other options with paladin/cavalier/other options that normally require the mount trait, even though they don't have the mount trait.

For what it's worth - it was really nice to see that this is on the radar to be fixed. Thank you! :)

Roll twice is fine, roll thrice is kind of "wrong", and unnecessary especially since you're already really good at the rolls.

How about (effects are additive):

Untrained: the usual -2 penalty
Trained: no penalties or advantages
Expert: +1, can now Take 10
Master: +2, can now roll twice at the cost of 1 RP
Legendary: +3, can now Take 10 in threatening situations

Ignoring for a moment that I still really loathe everything about Resonance - I like the core ideas behind the progression you laid out. The bonus D20 at Master seems like it would be rewarding without being bloated, and I like the idea that as you advance you can more freely accomplish basic tasks in more dire circumstances. Even taking a 10 out of combat at Expert feels like a reward for dedicating yourself to that skill, rather than how it is now with the Assurance feat tax.

I like it for thematic reasons, too. "Out of combat" doesn't mean "stress free", thus allowing the perks at Expert proficiency to still feel heroic without (IMO) being overpowered. And I like the idea that as you hit Master and Legendary the mechanics shift to mitigating the chance of pointless, ridiculous failure rather than ensuring blinding success every time.

Totally necro-ing this for a second time (*waves at Arden Oakwald*). Has this ever gotten official clarification?

It would seem a little weird to me that investing in familiar-enhancing feats (like Improved Familiar) on a familiar-focused archetype of a familiar-centric class would nullify huge sections of the archetype in question.

My gut feeling is that these things should be compatible - perhaps with some limitations - but still synergistic. If I were house-ruling this, I'd probably agree with Edgar Lamoureux's original response, and say you don't get different sizes/forms of the familiar in question if you have Improved Familiar. I don't really see any problem with regular vermin familiars working as per standard. I'd think the archetype would override and allow it as a modification even if the Beast Shape II spell alone does not allow vermin.

Thoughts? Redirect to where Paizo has already answered this? :)

Azih wrote:

Funnily enough both of those concepts (and classes) are pretty gear light so I guess I should be making a gear heavy class next. Maybe a fighter or a paladin.

Have fun. Gear selection is actively more painful than spell selection.

Oh you get two level 3 items? Well f!%~ you, there are only six that exist (that aren't consumables), and two of them are wands and one's a staff.

↑↑↑

/sets table 11-2 on fire

I think the community has killed this game for me. I like aspects of this game, and dislike others. Nothing is perfect. However in trying to keep up with the forums and get answers to questions, the sea of toxicity against this game has permeated into my every interaction with it.

I was hyped to run this game, the same as I was back in the days of the 5e playtest. In the month it took for my normal hangout to open up again and let me run it, the reputation of Doomsday Dawn had spread to the point most people in my city have written it off. And the Playtest itself, despite being free, is so dry that I cannot convince anyone to actually read it. Hell our store is still fully stocked on copies of the Rulebook, both regular edition and the special edition with the leather-looking cover. And they've had them out on the shelf since the day before the digital release.

So we're sitting on a game no one wants to play, and nobody can say anything positive about. The only points of discussion are the game's flaws, of which it does have many, but none of what it presents new to the table is being explored.

I don't know why you're blaming the community for not liking the PF2ePlaytest and "killing" your fun. Isn't it Paizo's job to put forth an engaging and interesting game and not our job as "the community" to fake enthusiasm and pretend their new game is totes awesome? I'm being very literal here - they are paid to create games and presumably paid to do it with competency and skill.

If their new 2e materials aren't selling and people find their awesome new game off-putting and bland... that sounds a whole lot like Paizo's problem.

We don't owe Paizo our support and money. They aren't doing us a favor. We aren't actually required to act grateful when we individually or as a group feel they are doing shoddy work. They're trying to make money off of us (like most businesses). And we're evaluating whether we want to pay them for their product.

I was extremely loyal to the D&D brand from 2nd edition, through 3rd and 3.5. And WotC dropped the ball on 4e. Hard. All the brand loyalty in the world didn't make me willing to spend my hard-earned cash on that dumpster-fire they called 4eD&D.

I feel the same way here - I really love PF1e, and I want to love PF2e. But I'm not a braindead cash cow - I'm not going to pay for something I think is objectively bad just because it has Paizo's name plastered on it. I'm not going to hype it up to my friends if I think it's bad. Paizo doesn't pay me as a member of their marketing team, sorry.

But I love(d) PF1e enough to slog through the (often infuriating) PF2ePlaytest. I love(d) PF1e enough to give feedback and try and help address what I see as glaring flaws in their new edition in and on forums I know Paizo is monitoring and reading. Because, current criticism notwithstanding, I want PF2e to succeed.

What you seem to see as pointless forum toxicity, I see as (mostly) loyal Pathfinder players desperately trying to help save something they love. Because we want to give Paizo our money. They simply have to make it actually attractive for consumers to do so.

See? Beard pox. That's one of my players.

... so... itchy...

... I'm the GM here. And my players are avoiding consumables like they are all contaminated with beard pox. And they are doing this on one-shot playtest characters that they only keep for a session or two... that does not bode well for the attractiveness of consumables in the context of a campaign...

This. Consumables are so, so bad. You pay for them at least twice (money + use/resonance), maybe three times if you crafted it yourself (crafting resonance + money + use/resonance).

There are SO MANY consumables on their by-level Treasure Tables, and I have never felt more jipped while picking my items. There aren't necessarily good permanent magic items at every treasure level for every class, but at least permanent magic items give a more tangible benefit for their constant resonance cost.

As it is, item selection is a frustrating chore that - on all three playtest characters I've made so far - leaves me with items I don't really want and wouldn't have bought normally, but I had to use up my by-level item slots. And those consumables we're railroaded into taking? Nobody is using them. At least not in our games. I've seen one, maybe two, healing potions get used, and that's it. It feels terrible to be practically forced to take items that you then don't want to use.

The treasure tables and item selection rules alone (especially in conjunction with resonance), should they make it into the final product as written, are enough to turn me off to PF2e permanently. What a mess.

In PF1e, when everything was primarily gated by gp/price and your budget/lvl, I had no problem filling out my inventory with a few consumables. Item selection was fun. I looked forward to putting my inventory together on a new character. I had choice. I had RP potential. Now I have a bunch of short, limiting tables full of resonance-expensive one-shot items. And I can hope that the items I actually need/want are spread between these short, limiting tables in such a way that I am allowed to pick them. It's not even the power-level of the item that's in question, or whether I should be able to have it - it's now about whether I need/want two 4th level items, but their chart says I need to pick two 5th level items and only one 4th level item.

tl;dr - Resonance is bad and I hate it. The treasure tables are bad and I hate them. Your mileage may vary. :/

The Blue Fairy wrote:

Things like Resonance make way more sense as optional-for-home-play, but mandatory-for-Society-play rules rather than being hard-coded into the entire balance of the game.

Just my opinion:

Resonance (for consumables) is terrible for PFS. The current setup for healing really needs a Cleric in the party, and you can't guarantee that for PFS.

That really just brings us back around to "Resonance is a terrible mechanic". You can't force home-games to bring a heal-battery Cleric every time, either.

I'd, personally, like to see Resonance done away with entirely.

But if the devs feel they simply must include the Resonance mechanic for "balance reasons" then I think it should explicitly be limited to a required-for-Society-play and optional-for-home-games mechanic.

This game fixes the "powergamers destroy modules in pathfinder society" problem and the "designing APs is difficult when characters values can be vastly unpredictable"problem

The game is designed around Paizo's needs, not ours.

This is the conclusion I have also come to. They have PFS tunnel-vision because that is what affects them the most.

Nevermind that the vast, overwhelming majority of Pathfinder games are home games. Nevermind that tons of groups homebrew from their published materials, or only occasionally use their Adventure Paths. Nevermind that dealing with powergamers and munchkins is a very different animal in private groups than it is in official PFS games (for starters, you can just kick someone out of a private group if they are a constant problem).

Things like Resonance make way more sense as optional-for-home-play, but mandatory-for-Society-play rules rather than being hard-coded into the entire balance of the game.

The echo chamber is intense, and I can't see how they're going to avoid alienating large swaths of their established player base if they insist on pretending that PFS is their bread-and-butter (spoiler: it's not), or that their frustrations as designers are universal problems of the played game (spoiler: that's not always the case).

We tried inoculated and inured and those were universally panned. The editors came to our rescue and came up with fortified, which we tried but sounded too much like fortitude, and then bolstered.

So... you didn't like the way the right words sounded, so you went with wrong words?

I'm with some of the other posters that "inured" makes way more sense.

If you want a short simple word that has less positive/negative connotations, I'd probably have gone with "Exempt"

I agree.

I like the idea that monsters can be custom-built to meet the needs of the story. I do not like that this would be used to create metagamey monsters that are built to prevent optimized PCs from surpassing said monsters over a large range of situations

Monsters should not be built just to thwart PCs

This. I've played under GMs who arbitrarily create monsters and NPCs who only exist to thwart whatever it is that the PCs are trying to be good at. I don't play under those GMs anymore.

Challenges are fun, repeatedly being told that your character investments are meaningless is not fun.

Did you build a monk that is especially good at grappling? SURPRISE! Everything you ever encounter is now super good at escaping grapples for no logical reason whatsoever!

Did your sorcerer specialize in fire spells? WOOPS. Sucks that you never seem to fight anything that doesn't have fire resistance anymore. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The Pathfinder2ePlaytest feels like those GMs, and I am just as unwilling to play under those conditions especially if they are baked in to the game.

For actual creature style monsters, like giant scorpions, hydrae, or dragons I'm fine with them working differently. They are different after all. My issue is with humanoid creatures using humanoid equipment. Those are things that clear and plain rules exist for. If a Drow Noble Cleric attacks with a rapier, that rapier can only do 2d6 damage if it is a +1 rapier. That's the rule. Their stats skills and everything else might be made of wacky nonsense, but if their equipment is the same equipment the PCs use, it works the same way...

... I can honestly say were I, as a player, to encounter a humanoid opponent of the same type as myself or another party member, experience them doing an amount of damage that would require a magical weapon, then be told after defeating them that their weapon was mundane, I would probably not return to playing that system. I don't enjoy being lied to.

I agree with Scythia's points.

I don't play games with GM-cheese. I don't play TTRPGs to be in competition with the GM who can be as OP as they like. I play TTRPGs to experience challenging, engaging storytelling in cooperation with my party and GM.

I don't like different rules for NPCs, and most especially I hate it for NPCs that could theoretically be PCs. When our group ran through The Sunless Citadel back in the day, we totally adopted Meepo the Kobold Dragon-keeper into our party. PF1e commonly included and noted NPCs in their adventure paths that could easily be adopted by a PC whose character died. That trope, that playstyle, is gone per the PF2ePlaytest rules. Please see the goblins you fight in the very first adventure for the Playtest - not a single one of those can translate into a PC. If we'd had a character death (we didn't) and one of our players wanted to RP one of those goblins turning on Drakkus and seeking out the PC party to help them: welp. Sorry. No. That goblin is going to be a DRASTICALLY different creature by the time you have run them through PC generation. And that doesn't make any damn sense. It's immersion-breaking. It's limiting to the story. If I want to strictly go out and murder-pwn a stat-block with no real potential for RP - I have video games for that.

NPCs always win tied initiative (because the gods, apparently, just don't love the PCs).

NPCs have auto-hit versions of abilities PCs have to build around and for: grab is an auto-hit NPC ability, grapple is something PCs have to attempt; knockdown is an auto-hit NPC ability, trip is something PCs ATTEMPT. It's demoralizing. It feels awful.

NPCs just die at 0 hit points, which ignores the plethora of RP situations in which you might want to try to save that person/thing you're fighting. Maybe you want to question them. Maybe they're possessed: who knows? If I want different dying rules for my character/party and the entire rest of the known universe, again, I have video games for that. I can't tell you how many paladins and good-aligned clerics we have had in our groups with the attitude of "We will kill the thing trying to kill us if we must, but we'd rather disable and take prisoners where we can. Maybe we can save some of them or at least bring them to justice." That is no longer a valid, go-to tactic for good and neutral parties.

NPCs have arbitrarily huge bonuses that PCs can't even dream of hitting. Again, demoralizing.

I won't convert over to PF2e as it stands. It's 4eD&D all over again and I skipped that entire edition for a reason.

Making heavy armor and low-level magic heavy armor this weird exception that is calculated and bought differently throws their Treasure Tables way off for character creation.

While creating a 7th level paladin - a class that is railroaded into heavy armor - for Part 3 of the Playtest adventure, PCs are allowed x1 6th level item, x2 5th, x1 4th, and x2 3rd level items, plus 125gp (i.e. - standard treasure according to their tables).

+1 Heavy Armor and a +1 Magic Weapon are both 4th level items. I can only have one 4th level item. At first glance that feels like having to choose when everyone else in the party can easily pick up a magic weapon and magic armor. In fairness, I could just outright buy +1 Heavy Armor for 100gp. Which still felt pretty punishing, just in a different resource - I have to spend 80% of my money to keep up with everyone else, while still taking allllllllll of the drawbacks of heavy armor. That my class requires. Balanced or not - it felt sucky.

Agreed. I'd also like to see more mundane items made of special materials make it onto the treasure list.

If the devs wanna limit magic and magic items so much, I want more play with nonmagic items.

Give me Darkwood Tents with reduced bulk, give me Mithral Healer's Tools, Cold Iron Manacles, Adamantine Thieves Tools, etc.

Also consider giving special materials minor boons of their own for non-combat items.

Off the top of my head: maybe Darkwood Tents gain a small circumstance bonus in severe weather. Cold Iron manacles slightly increase the DC to escape for fey and fey-blooded creatures. Maybe Mithral Healers Tools reduce the DC on your Medicine checks by 1 (out of combat). Adamantine Thieves Tools can't gain the broken condition from normal use.

To be clear: I'm not attached to any one of the above ideas, I'd just like to get more mileage out of non-magic Expert-quality++ items and special materials apply, attractively, to more than just weapons and armor.

*A.A.S.H. = Affair at Sombrefell Hall

Also:
R.A.W. = Rules as Written
Ability Score Abbreviations: STR, DEX, WIS, et cetera…

For A.A.S.H. in the 2e Pathfinder playtest, players are required to create a seventh level group of all healers - two of which must be clerics who channel positive energy. I already have thoughts and opinions on paladins (I hate the ultra-restrictive Lawful Good alignment prerequisite but I love the idea of religious warriors and templars), so I called dibs on the paladin in our group with the idea that I’d be able to give more concrete feedback on the design elements I care about if I’d actually playtested the class in question.

So I sat down to start making my paladin.

It’s been two days.

I am so far down the proverbial rabbit hole that El-ahrairah is farting pixie dust.

First, I need to pick my ancestry!

Let’s get this out of the way: I think, per the 2e playtest rules, humans (and half-humans, at the cost of one feat) will make the strongest paladins out of the gate. Arguably they make the best everything, but the fact that they take no penalties and can freely choose two ability bonuses automatically gives them a huge advantage over every other ancestry especially with paladins. A paladin’s main stat is STR. Humans are the only race that can, if they want, have an ancestry bonus to STR without leaving a negative modifier elsewhere as they progress with their stat build. No other ancestry is freely given a bonus to STR. Humans have the best ancestry feats to pick from between General Training and Natural Ambition alone. Their only real weakness is their lack of any kind of Low-Light or Darkvision. Overall they make an extremely strong choice for a paladin with virtually no drawbacks.

I just, personally, hate playing humans. I am a human in real life. Gross. That’s not what I’m sitting down to a tabletop fantasy RPG for. So I looked at my other options.

Dwarves (+Con/Wis; -Cha): The bonus to CON is appealing, but WIS isn’t very important for paladins anymore. Taking the hit in CHA, however, is harsh since it’s a paladin’s explicit secondary (and “spellcasting”) stat. Darkvision is a plus, but the Unburdened feature of dwarven ancestry is pretty meh considering how slow dwarves are to begin with - it’s less of a perk and more of a janky workaround to make their exceptional (*cough*unnecessary*cough*) slowness somehow theoretically still viable in armor and... that’s it. Mechanically speaking, when building a paladin in the 2e playtest, I found dwarves a not terrible but not great choice for a paladin. Which was super weird considering how iconic dwarven paladins are in most classic fantasy.

Elves (+Dex/Int; -Con): Neither DEX nor INT are particularly critical for paladins. Since paladins are first and foremost a frontline melee class, the penalty to CON is off-putting. Low-Light vision is better than nothing I suppose and a couple of the feats could be helpful, but nothing about elves really seems to redeem the drawbacks they bring to the class.

Gnomes (+Con/Cha; -Str): Bonuses to CON and CHA are really attractive, but taking a penalty in your primary stat for a paladin is not. Even so I think it would be easier to make a strong gnomish paladin with fewer disadvantages to compensate for than, say, a halfling or an elf. Low-Light vision is okay, and I find their feat selection better than others (your mileage may vary). The lack of any kind of major size penalty solidifies gnomes, I think, as a sub-optimal but still very viable choice for a paladin in Pathfinder 2e R.A.W.

Halflings (+Dex/Wis; -Str): Much the same as what I said above for gnomes, but with the added disadvantage of DEX and WIS being much less enticing bonuses for a paladin. No Low-Light vision. No Darkvision. In my opinion, halflings probably give you the worst starting point for a paladin and a lot more to overcome than other ancestries.

Goblins (+Dex/Cha; -Wis): And here we are. Following humans, I think goblins make your strongest mechanical choice for a paladin in the R.A.W.

And that was a strange realization to come to. Goblins, unlike other small races like gnomes and halflings, don’t take an innate penalty to STR which is kind of a big deal if you’re trying even half-heartedly to optimize a paladin. Goblins get a bonus in a paladin’s secondary/casting stat with CHA which is quite attractive. The bonus to DEX is kind of meh on the surface but the plain fact of the matter is that literally every build for every character I can think of in Pathfinder 2e can get full mileage out of a simple +1 to DEX. Even full-plate heavy armor allows you to apply a +1 from DEX to your AC. So that mandatory ancestry bonus to DEX that goblins get is basically a free +1 to AC, even for heavy armor wearers like fighters and paladins and even if they never look at their DEX again. The negative modifier to WIS feels like it should be a bigger deal than it really is. Paladins get a lot of juice via their class features/feats to help bolster their will saves (really, all their saves) if they want it. Beyond that, WIS only really seems to matter for Religion skill checks, or Medicine skill checks if you decide take the Hospice Knight paladin class feat. Goblins get Darkvision. Goblin ancestry feats are a mixed bag and, in my opinion, overall weak and situational. But I think that’s true of most of the non-human races in 2e. As noted above, there are no size penalties anymore.

I think the primary “disadvantage” you need to overcome on a goblin paladin is simply the RP. As with most unusual race/class combinations, that dilemma is almost always solved by a backstory along the lines of, “But I’m the weird one for {reasons}.”

Having looked at my choices and come to the conclusion that empirically my best options are either human ancestry or goblin ancestry, I had a small existential crisis before deciding, with great hesitation, on a goblin paladin (let’s call him Scabby). And I guess I’ll be the weird one for {reasons}. We’ll get to that. Please stand by.

Choosing my race has cost me 1 pt. of Sanity.

I got about three quarters of the way through building this - admittedly, very weird - paladin before a question arose in my gaming group that brought my character creation to a dead stop. I don’t have a concrete answer. Neither does my GM. Neither does anyone else in my group.

How does a Halfling Sling Staff work?

A Halfling Sling Staff is listed as an Uncommon Martial Ranged Weapon of the Sling weapon group. It does a listed 1d10 damage with a range of 80ft, (x1) reload, (x1) bulk, and requiring (x2) hands to wield. It is a halfling ancestral weapon and it is Propulsive, allowing you to add ½ your STR modifier to ranged damage rolls.

What I (and members of my group) see as valid interpretations of the RAW:
1.) The Halfling Sling Staff is exclusively a ranged weapon, as it is listed under “ranged weapons” and does not explicitly say anywhere that it can be used in melee. This is supported by the Sling Staff belonging to the Sling weapon group. I don’t agree with this read (for reasons I will cover below) but it is a valid interpretation of the text presented.
2.) The Halfling Sling Staff is both a sling and a staff. It says so right in the name. If I, as a GM, introduced a weapon into my homebrew campaign called a “Sword Bow”, I think most people would assume and expect this weapon to somehow function as both a sword and a bow. The listed 1d10 damage for a Sling Staff applies also to melee attacks since that is what is listed in the entry.
3.) The Halfling Sling Staff is still both a sling and a staff (itsayssorightinthename!!!), but it is PRIMARILY a ranged weapon (hence: sling group and ranged table). Use the provided 1d10 damage stats for ranged and reference the “staff” on the Simple Melee Weapons table for melee damage (1d4). I think this is probably the most fair and balanced implementation, but I also think there’s the least support for it in the actual text - it doesn’t tell you to reference anything, and that would be kind of a big deal.

Other points of note:
‣ If a Halfling Sling Staff can’t be used as both of those weapons please, Development Team, for the love of Gozreh, name it something else. Like… “Halfling Longsling”. Or call it a “Titan Sling”. Anything, at all, else. Thanks.
‣ It doesn’t make logical sense that a Sling Staff can’t be used as a melee weapon. It’s a wooden stick. Staves are weapons. Clubs are weapons. The sling part is a small scrap of leather at one end. Heck, even crafting tools are improvised weapons in 2e. But it’s somehow impossible for my character to thwack an enemy over the head with a sling staff? Golarion space-time forbids it?
‣ Sling Staves are uncommon weapons in the new 2e, which means that NO ONE can use it without spending AT LEAST one feat, at least two if you’re not a halfling. It can cost up to three if you play a class with extreme limitations on weapon proficiencies. That’s a steep cost for basic proficiency. It would make sense for weapons listed as Uncommon, and bearing that kind of potential feat cost, to be “better” and/or have unique advantages (like a sling staff having the flexibility to be used at range and in melee).
‣ Almost every incarnation I have ever seen of this weapon in tabletop is both ranged and melee. Your mileage may vary, of course, but I really couldn’t help pointing out precedent (per my experience).

No one I’ve spoken with in our gaming group, including our GM, knows the answer to: how do Halfling Sling Staves work? There are valid points and counterpoints to each of the three reads on Sling Staves that we have identified. Unless a Dev decides to clarify the rules for Sling Staves in the next week and a half our GM is going to have to make a judgement call, and possibly put it to a party vote. In the meantime, my character is stuck.

Attempting to pick a weapon has cost me another 1 Sanity pt.

I tried to look at special materials in the meantime just to theorycraft while I’m stuck. I thought Darkwood would be a strong choice for my weapon (if Sling Staves work in 2e the way I originally assumed)

Did you know for an item to be made of Darkwood it must be Master quality? Did you know they list hardness values for Expert quality, apparently non-existent Darkwood? Furthermore, no one in our group can figure out how you are supposed to build items from any of the special materials. How many items levels do special materials add to the base item, for starters? What level item would a Darkwood Sling Staff even be? Or mithral full plate armor?

I don’t know. We don’t know.

Browsing special materials has cost me 1 Sanity pt.

Our GM has been playing and running tabletop for 40+ years. I’ve been at it for almost 25 years. Everyone in our group has a good amount of experience under their belt, from a wide variety of systems. And all of us are finding large chunks of Pathfinder 2e Playtest downright indecipherable.

For now, I am sticking with the playtest. But I really don’t know how many more two or three day character creation rabbit-holes I have in me. It’s not streamlined. It’s not clear. Many of the mechanical design choices have very, very strange implications for the world itself (like goblins making extremely strong paladins).

And since I’ve spent more than ten minutes typing this I have acquired the Exhausted condition (because typing is so tiring) on top of my Sanity loss. I must rest. Happy trails, friends, and may your next character build go smoother than mine.

Edit: Necessary correction, thank you to ENHenry for catching it! :)

Disclaimer: OP and I are in the same playtest group. I was the Bard (badly) providing assistance.

I just wanted to agree that the way our GM presented the flavor-text surrounding the new lock-picking mechanics was really great (props to: Requielle). OP has let me play with their professional lockpicks and practice locks, and the fundamental idea of lockpicking as a potentially dangerous but rewarding process has a lot of potential. It succeeded in evoking the feel of the real thing.

That said, watching the actual written mechanics play out? Frustrating. Expensive. It seemed much more time-consuming and difficult than it should have been. I can completely understand why so many parties have defaulted to smashing things rather than letting the rogue (or whatever) handle it.

I don't necessarily like that Ancestry feats are a required part of your build, especially considering how VERY LIMITED the Ancestry Feat selection actually is. In the core materials, most races have x10 Ancestry Feats to pick from (Half-Orcs & Half-Elves have some additional options at the cost of x1 Ancestry Feat).

You will be required to pick x5 of those x10 total Ancestry Feats by 17th level. And as noted above - many (most) of the Ancestry feats are WEAK, highly situational, or have thematic/RP problems later (as VinDrago notes: Why does a half-orc spontaneously develop darkvision at 5th level? How would my Halfling get intraining and practice with Halfling weapons while adventuring with, say, a bunch of humans? It's arbitrary, non-immersive gating).

Forcing me to take feats I don't want isn't fun. The Ancestry Feats either need to be reworked OR we need A LOT MORE OF THEM to choose from right off the bat.

Oh! But there IS a way to open up access to more Ancestry Feats via the Adopted Ancestry General Feat! Except that feat is so broken I nearly wept while trying to make it work for my 4th level Sorcerer "In Pale Mountain's Shadow".

Adopted Ancestry: