An argument against tight math

[Pirate Rob]

So in 3rd edition you could build all sorts of things and feel reasonable (at least at low level).

Example: You could melee with a fighter with a 20 strength, and weapon focus for that juicy +7 to hit.

You could also play a dwarven cleric who liked to hit things and had 14 strength and only a +2 to hit.

Playing the cleric involved a lot more okay, I can't flank this round so I'll cast bless and then move up, planning to step into a flank next round, while the fighter just always moved up and hit things.

Both felt viable though.

In 4e the math was a lot tighter and playing something like a dwarven fighter with 16 strength and an iconic axe/hammer for only +2 proficency for a total of +5 felt really miserable. (I think this eventually got fixed by allowing Dwarves to take +strength at creation) Compared to the other martials running around with an 18 and +3 for a total of +7 it just felt like you missed all the time. It was a horrible slog, I could just tell things weren't working right.

Pathfinder never gave me that sort of feeling. I could make characters that were weaker in parts but they'd get some sort of utility or flexibility in exchange and it felt fine. The math wasn't tight. Sometimes you'd fight sneakly little goblins with above average AC and other times you'd fight orcs, or even just humanoids with +0 or +1 dex and studded leather armor.

Just some yahoo's thoughts.

[The Once and Future Kai]

I don't really mind the tight math in combat... I'd like to see hyperoptimized characters be a bit stronger than they are now...but not by much.

Where I do mind it is out of combat. I think characters hyperoptimized for a certain out of combat speciality should have a much higher rate of success. Or they should revamp out of combat to require a series of rolls (but NOT like lockpicking - more like Fate's Social Conflict system). It's too all or nothing for tight math.

[Lady Melo]

I do have to say, even 4e's math wasn't this tight, they were not afraid to let you have +2/3/4 to a skill from background, race, feats, items, powers. While it was certainly more controlled than various 3rd edition styles you could still dig deep to be really good at something.

Sure the attack math was tighter, but buff's could easily range from +3 to +10 (scaling on ability modifier) to either attack or defense. Various build tricks could add up to getting a decent permanent bonus to certain attacks of defenses up to 4 to 5 higher than the math standard (but it would often be very costly and at the expense of other features). It honestly was a very nice balance, while there was complaints (even a feat tax fix) that players fell behind at higher levels the truth was they expected you to make that up with ever growing buffs (but people didn't like the feel of it, and it made combat sluggish, the alternative was to up monster/player success rate and just make everything more deadly).

The biggests take away: from my heavy experience with 4e (our groups prefered system for years until more recently), a side effect of 4e's tighter math (looser then PF2), was people often felt like they were "cheating" when clever play or role playing got better results then the expected values (i know that sounds weird at first but after a while of playing it sets in). Worse then that side effect is how constantly unexcited I see myself and other players in PF2 when they look up something they are interested in only to find it's a +1 bonus. Just today the idea that you could barely feel the effects of someone who selected alertness to flavor there character and got +1 perception, or wanted to play up the flavor of certain spells only to be deflated that a +1 would hardly even be felt, even with the full-well knowledge that "it matters more in this edition"

[The Dandy Lion]

The Once and Future Kai wrote:

I don't really mind the tight math in combat... I'd like to see hyperoptimized characters be a bit stronger than they are now...but not by much.

Where I do mind it is out of combat. I think characters hyperoptimized for a certain out of combat speciality should have a much higher rate of success. Or they should revamp out of combat to require a series of rolls (but NOT like lockpicking - more like Fate's Social Conflict system). It's too all or nothing for tight math.

This is my perspective, too. The new tighter math has a few problems with skills.

I noticed this when I realised my Barbarian was bad at handling fort saves because they only had 12 con at 4th level, and it's just as bad if not worse with skills.

One of them is that ability scores are now overwhelmingly important for skills (and saves). Having better training in a skill or save will not matter much at low levels compare to the ability score's differences, while in P1 you could easily compensate through traits, class features, training or items.

The scaling meant you could still be great at a check even if it was outside your 1-2 good ability scores. And I think that's really important. I realise it gets better with item bonuses but those still require significant financial investment.

Skills being so harshly tuned were especially bad for any mechanic that made sequential rolls. Swimming or climing against a vaguely CR-appropriate DC is going to be discouraging even for athletics expert strength-based characters due to ACP and requiring 3 checks in a round to get very far. I found that you either struggle and shouldn't even try, or you grab a feat (skill or class) that lets you bypass the checks entirely - typically stuff that grants swim or climb speeds.

[PCScipio]

There probably isn't a big enough difference between trained and untrained skills. In 4e that was a +5 difference (although there was no expert, master or legendary).

[Tholomyes]

I will agree somewhat with skills. I think keeping the math tightened from 1e's way is a good goal, but I could definitely see something like: you get two(-ish?) skill point per level, and your total skill points in a skill can't go above 3+1/3 your level (and maybe only 1 skill can get that high, and the others are capped lower, to keep from only developing only a few skills). That triples the effective proficiency bonus cap, but keeps it so the distance from the optimized character and the unoptimized character is usually within the bounds of a d20, except at high levels for the character who hasn't trained at all in a skill and kept their original 8 Ability score.