Why is reach on a weapon innovation not available until 17th level?

[PossibleCabbage]

It seems like the point of comparison is the "Lunge" feat from PF1, which gave you reach for attacks (but not AoOs) for a -2AC penalty, available at BAB +6 so 6th level for fighters, 7th for other martials, and 9th for gishes. The Inventor class doesn't get AoOs without multiclassing, and the ability to make more than one is extremely expensive (it costs a level 20 feat) so we're basically getting Lunge without the AC penalty 6-10 levels later.

I get that some abilities are just assumed to be less available until higher levels than they were in the previous version of the game (notably flight), but reach is less valuable in PF2 because of the aforementioned scarcity of opportunity attacks.

Sure, reach is one of the very best weapon traits but Giant Instinct Barbarians can get +5' reach at 6th level, +10' of reach at 12th level, and +15' of reach with a non-reach weapon at 14th level. It seems like extensibility were a 9th level innovation instead of a 17th level one, you'd at best pull even with the giant barbarian for 3 levels until they get even bigger.

[Kyrone]

Most likely because of how inventors can combine certain weapon traits and how they combine with reach like per example being able to grapple an enemy from 15ft away from them (thing that giant Barbarian can't do until lvl 12 with a second feat) and unlike the giant Barbarian they don't get the AC penalty or have to grown bigger for that (that might no be possible on corridors and inside rooms).

Fighter do have Lunge, but it's a specific "metastrike" meaning that they can't combine with other "metastrikes" and to do with AoO they have to be in a stance and be at least lvl 12 for that.

[PossibleCabbage]

What if we made both entangling and extensible level 9 innovations? There's no way to get two of those.

[TiwazBlackhand]

I feel like making Reach a Lvl 17 power is definitely over valuing it.

I mean since you can take (virtually) any martial reach weapon as your base weapon, what exactly can you get away with by being able to ADD reach to a Non-Reach weapon earlier? (Agile, Agile Reach, that's about it)

You'd probably need to remove the thing in Extensible where it stacks with reach, so no 15" spears at 1st level.

[Exocist]

Reach is level 17, but still better than most of the other level 17 traits honestly.

Damage dice size doesn’t really mean too much at 17th when you have so much flat damage from property runes and weapon spec, backswing and forceful have to be a bad joke, 7 starmetal is cool but doesn’t really do anything right now...

[Dubious Scholar]

Exocist wrote:

Reach is level 17, but still better than most of the other level 17 traits honestly.

Damage dice size doesn’t really mean too much at 17th when you have so much flat damage from property runes and weapon spec, backswing and forceful have to be a bad joke, 7 starmetal is cool but doesn’t really do anything right now...

That's really more of an indictment of the other options though. For how much text is devoted to innovations they are pretty underwhelming aside from Construct and a handful of options on the others.

And I agree that the weapon die increase isn't a huge boost (it tops out at +4 average damage per hit), but it's probably too good to be at the 9 tier? But it's barely more than adding a property rune (1d6=+3.5 average), and only at major striking. Which, of course, means adding an extra property rune (and proccing more weaknesses) is probably the way to go.

[PossibleCabbage]

Weapon innovations at low levels should be things like "add a trait to a weapon that doesn't have it." But at higher levels we should get things that weapons can't normally do at all.