I'll quote my partner's description of our upcoming game as it seems to sum up the issue best. "Another four hours of yelling at the dice". Basically, feats, spells, weapons, and all other player choices are utterly irrelevant compared to how much the dice gods love you that day.
For full disclosure I'm running a party of six through Doomsday Dawn. We've completed Lost Star and are partway through Pale Mountain. This issue might disappear at higher levels but nothing I've seen indicates the party is ever going to catch up to monsters. In fact, it looks like monsters are always ahead (especially if they have +3 higher skills than they should). I'll try to scrub details from the encounters but apologies in advance if you're spoiled.
The problem started with the first encounter. It lined everyone up for its AoE and all but one saved. Then it attacked and almost downed someone with a crit (rolling high on both the attack and damage).
Then the next encounter, where the party ended it in a round with sneak attack criticals. The monsters whiffed almost every Strike (except a crit against the animal companion).
The party skipped the encounter room but did choose the investigation room. Nobody made the roll, period. I suggested the animal companion try (mostly because I thought it was amusing), it passed with flying colors.
Almost the entire party made the check for the hazard, the Cleric decided to try destroying it. Not happy to learn it had an actual TAC, rolled... a 3. Annoyed, decided to try one more time... rolled a 3 again.
The next parts were less swingy, then they got to the boss. The boss tried, it really did, but all the bonuses in the world can't help when you roll a 1. This was even against the animal companion, where a 2 would have hit. It was otherwise a decent fight and then the Fighter got a Greataxe crit and carved off like 3/4th of the boss' HP instantly.
Then we started Pale Mountain. I'm not going to cover all the skill check problems (suffice to say, I don't think a single "expert" ever got the highest result), just the combats. And actually, just the one combat. The one that led to the frustrated quote at the top. I have to spoiler it though, as I can't scrub out the important parts.
The fight:
It's the Manticore, the most important part of which is that its tactics say it stays at range and uses its ranged attacks as long as it can. The party was mostly melee (which didn't help) but the only ones we're going to focus on here are the Sorceror, Ranger, and Monk. The fight took four rounds.
The Sorceror primarily used Acid Arrow (as it was the only thing with a long enough range to hit the Manticore) and couldn't get a hit. They were close several times but close doesn't do anything. Instead they kept blowing their highest level spell hoping the dice gods would favor them.
The Ranger was a dedicated longbow Ranger. They opened with Hunt, Recall, Strike and then then Strike, Strike, Strike. They didn't get more than a hit a round until they got a crit to finish it. I don't think they ever hit with their first attack (again, until the last round).
Then the Monk, dice MVP and beloved of luck. They had a crossbow (untrained) and a middling Dex. They rolled below a 16 once. They hit every round, even needing to spend one action to reload.
So my issue is that a hot dice hand appears to matter more than anything else in the game. The Ranger from the spoiler fight was built perfectly for that fight... didn't matter because they couldn't roll high enough. The Monk was literally the worst possible setup for it. Never rolled low enough for that to matter (well, once, on a second attack that would have needed a 20 to hit).
I also have some trouble with the heightening of spells, the description about what it is, is fractioned in 2 parts deticated to prepared and spontaneous casting, before you actualy started explaing what it is how it works to then explain the differences. Also for a sorcerer whats the utility of the Heightening Spells hability if it's not different from he's standard spontaneus spellcasting?
I think that we already have a lot of magic to choose from and having to spend a "learning spot" for each level above you want to use that magic its simply a waste and unnecessary. it would be better to jsut learn the standard level of the spell and when you meet the requirements you can utilize that spell at a higher level, so you would need to spend the "learned spells slots" only with magics native to that level and your heightened magics would serve to increase your casting options to each level instead of wasting space.
Also you created for each spellcaster class a "Heightened spell" ability. why do i need this to be an hability if its going to be the same for all spellcasters? just describe this feature in the session that explain the rules for spellcasting.
Ancestral Surge (spell): it is useless... it spend 1 action to ativate and last till the end of my turn. if I spend 1 more action i can make it last till the end of the next turn, all to gain a plus 1 on atack and save. For my sorcerer I wasn´t able to use this because i needed to use reach and widen spell feats frequently causing this ability to be useless. if this became stronger would be usefull.
Reach and Widen spell feats: I have to spend 1 reaction + 1 somatic action + the spell actions to get the effect... its too many actions spent and this blocks me from being able to use a 3 actions spell with those talents as well. just make it use only 1 reaction.
Move the weapon sizes description from the Fighter to the weapons sessions, this kind of rule that apply to all should not be allocated to the classes area.
Move the weapon sizes description from the Fighter to the weapons sessions, this kind of rule that apply to all should not be allocated to the classes area.
Those aren't weapon sizes. Weapon size in PF2 no longer changes the die type. That chart is there because there's a Fighter Feat (dual hand strike) that raises the die type. If it was about weapon sizes, it probably would have been by the Giant Totem Barbarian.
You are correct that the table should be in the equipment section though, because a few other class feats also increase die type, like Cleric's Deadly Simplicity.
