Idea from 13th Age and making critical misses in combat meaningful

[Pirate Rob]

So in 13th Age, a miss does your level in damage instead of nothing and a critical fail (natural 1 in that system) do nothing.

This helps keep combat from getting bogged down because even if you're missing you're still making progress.

For PF2 it also allows critical misses to be incorporated into strikes. (At the moment it's a little odd that one of the most common rolls doesn't use the 4 tier success system)

The multi-attack penalty is still meaningful, and the change is most notable against higher level creatures where you are more likely to miss.

[Ediwir]

There is one fighter feat that does that.
Also, there are reactions that trigger on critical misses.

I wouldn't say they do nothing - against the wrong opponent, they can be really dangerous.

[The Once and Future Kai]

The only problem I see is NPCs having it. I don't think my often outnumbered players would appreciate the trade-off in that case.

[Nettah]

I don't really think the system supports that. Heck missing might actually be better than hitting depending on the character, but several of the 4th levels using a bow will only average 3.5 dmg on a hit. And 3 attacks would be waaaay to strong if you did "almost" guaranteed damage.

I wouldn't mind a change to critical failure being: "You cannot make any more attack actions this turn" Your change would never discourage you from using an attack while this don't really either it does "punish" you for rolling a 1 or trying a too difficult task sometimes. If your table wanted to punish this further you could even give a -2 penalty to your next attack roll as well.

[PossibleCabbage]

The Once and Future Kai wrote:

The only problem I see is NPCs having it. I don't think my often outnumbered players would appreciate the trade-off in that case.

13th Age handles this by dividing enemy combatants into two categories- serious antagonists who pose a meaningful threat and disposable baddies who are there for the PCs to beat up. The former get to use PC bonuses like adding miss damage to attacks, and use the escalation die, but the latter do not.

[rknop]

The other thing I really like about 13th Age is its "fail forward" section. This means that a critical failure on a skill roll isn't "my goodness, you suck", but that Stuff Went On.

Alas, this is really not compatible with PF2 anything like what it is, where you have lots of specified things about just what went wrong (e.g. your picks breaking) when you critically fail on things.

The fact is that 13th Age and PF2e are such tremendously different implementations of F20 that it's really hard to compare them. I feel like in some places that PF2e was trying to go after a 2e vibe, but it's also extremely rules heavy and specified, whereas 13th Age is deliberately much more rules light.