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So, the 'Why I don't trust Paizo' thread warped into this, and I've decided to make somewhere for the discussion that lets it be on-topic to the thread.
I will aim to keep this OP fairly impartial, but will probably fail to do so.
The questions this thread seeks to address are:
- How able should a given class be able to utilize a combat style, such as Archery or Dual-Wielding, that it is not typically associated with?
- How much investment should this require, and how effective should the result be?
- What is the current state of this in Pathfinder 2E? How does this compare to the first group of answers?
- How much of this will be fixed with future archtypes and feats? Is it acceptable to wait for that?
Some useful things to define:
Combat Styles: Which should be widely supported? What even defines a combat style? My personal list of combat styles anyone should be able to opt into and become competant in, for a CRB, would be Archery, Sword & Shield, Two Handed Weapons, Dual Wielding, and Unarmed Combat.
Effectiveness Floor: The minimum amount you can be useful and still feel okay with your character, like you're contributing, that you're fufilling the basic fantasy that yoru character is competent at the things you designed them to be. A Healing Cleric has a very low effectiveness Floor. Just by using Channel they can be seriously contributing and feeling good at their goal. A high level fighter might have an Effectiveness Floor that they need a level-appropriate Magic Weapon to reach, and where they feel impotent and dead weight without it to increase their damage.
Effectiveness Ceiling: How high can a thing be optimized? Most useful to talk about the distance from it. How far from the Effectiveness Ceiling of Archery should a Druid using a bow be? A Fighter should probably be closer to it, because he lacks all of the other fancy things a Druid can do.
Feat Tax: A Feat required to meet the Effectiveness Floor. In Pathfinder 1E, Archery had Precise Shot and Point Blank Shot as a Feat Tax for Archery, because playing an archer without them frequently felt terrible.
Luxary Feats: Feats that make a combat style more effective, but aren't required to feel competant. In a high-optimization, high-difficulty game, these might start becoming Feat Taxes as everything below optimal is bad.
Are things like Double Slice Feat Taxes, that the style feels bad without, or luxaries, and the style feels reasonable with no feats in 2E? Is access to Trained proficiency in weapons too restricted at level 1, making archer-wizards and unarmed-druids impossible at that level? Is it okay that such builds are only possible after a certain level?