
![]() |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

So, a bit of background: I'm a video game player, as I assume many of you are, and one of my favorite games of all time is Dragon Age: Origins. I love the story, the lore, the combat and the character customization. Everything just really pops with that game. My main character, after several attempts at playing trying to find a character I really liked, was a greatsword-wielding, heavily-armored Rogue. Since gear was equippable based on attribute requirements (Strength, Dexterity, Magic, etc.), you could do that. It sounds weird, but stick with me.
In Dragon Age: Origins, Rogues didn't have ANY two-hander-oriented abilities. They had 3 general ability trees, one for generic rogue stuff, one for two-weapon fighting, and one for archery. But the game calculated sneak attack as a critical hit with bonus damage, and with the right combination of abilities, I managed to make an effective character with lots of utility. It was a ton of fun.
When Dragon Age II came out, I was excited about continuing to adventure as this jack-of-all-trades, soldier-ish character. I got through the tutorial, to the first town, went to a shop, and... I couldn't equip greatswords. It's not that I didn't have the stats or anything, but my character was simply physically incapable of wielding a greatsword, despite having done that in the entire first game. I gave the game a little bit of a go after that, but that was the end of it. Why?
Because the rule that had been put in place was arbitrary. There was no reason my character shouldn't be able to wield a Greatsword, but the game designers decided that I didn't have any authority on that decision, and removed some of my agency as a player for... really no discernable reason.
A lot of the PF2 class design feels arbitrarily limiting at the moment. Why can't rogues fight effectively with two-handed weapons? It's... arbitrary. Why do fighters and paladins need to wear heavy armor and be almost entirely in melee? It's... arbitrary. And that's not to say those other options aren't necessarily available, but because all combat options come from class choice at the moment, and class is so limited in what it provides, you can't really specialize outside of the very specific scope of what classes allow. Starfinder did a wonderful job of allowing pretty much any class to do anything well given appropriate feat and talent investment, but Starfinder was also a very closed system: It's space opera, so pretty much everybody is supposed to use space guns and space swords. I get that fantasy isn't as contained in its scope, but why is there only one really "meh" option for Wizards/Sorcerers wanting to mix it up in melee? Why is the Shield cantrip so punishing(10 minute cooldown)? Why can Rogues only sneak attack with agile/finesse weapons, but we only have one-handed agile/finesse weapons? Too many class features enforce an archetype rather than encourage creativity, and if this were a video game I'd probably think it was alright and entertaining, but not terribly engaging.
TL:DR - Class structure is too rigid in the playtest, and class features force certain playstyles. They should be opened up, at least a little.