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Posting this outside the playtest forums, as this is ultimately not playtest feedback. As has been mentioned a lot lately, the Slayer has quickly gotten a reputation for being the Ranger 2.0, with a similar theme of hunting monsters and heavy focus on a single marked target. I won't linger too much on that, as I think the parallels are obvious and there's lots of discussion on the subject already, but what I find more interesting are the arguments made to defend the Slayer's theme: specifically, the common defense is that the Slayer doesn't have to follow the Ranger's nature theme, and this I think is where the latter class in particular fails thematically.
Thematically speaking, the Ranger class has been a mess throughout tabletop system editions, because they were originally made to emulate the character of Aragorn/Strider from the Lord of the Rings, only to morph into this mishmash of quasi-Druid, terrain master, archer, beast master, monster hunter, and melee dual-wielder all in one. PF2e's version of the Ranger is arguably the best around, having succeeded at compartmentalizing most of that baggage into feats and edges, yet the core class still carries that legacy of being a warden of nature, a fairly specific character fantasy that many people don't find particularly appealing. It is understandable then that some people would want to play a character who hunts monsters, assassinates marks, or captures bounties without being saddled with that kind of flavor.
The thing is, though, I think the Ranger's nature flavor is something that really doesn't need to be core to the class: strip away the baseline Nature proficiency and flavoring of their class features, and what you get is a hunter, a class defined both thematically and mechanically by being extremely good at tracking and taking down single targets. This broader flavor opens the class up much more to your assassins, your bounty hunters, and your monster-hunting slayers, all of whom are just variations of this same kind of hunter template, while still leaving room for your nature-survivalist rangers still. With a properly-realized, multifaceted monster part system that wasn't confined to a single class's gimmick, it would be a lot easier as well to make the Slayer's current shtick a hunter's edge, where you just have these armaments that you can use monster parts to customize in order to take down your prey more effectively. All of these different characters could have easily just been one class, and that class would likely have had an easier time receiving new content over the years.
Part of the problem in my opinion, and a key reason why the Ranger tends to do poorly in other editions, is that the Ranger's core fantasy of being really good at navigating and surviving in the wild is ultimately an out-of-combat fantasy: this by itself is great, as not every class has a clear set of defining characteristics during exploration, but it also inherently conflicts with class design that largely serves to define what characters do during combat. I think there's also a similar problem with the Investigator, whose entire class fantasy hinges on things that are done largely out of combat, and whose combat capabilities are both thematically and mechanically weak. Were there a better separation between in-combat and out-of-combat character fantasies, then your hunter who marks targets to take down in encounters could just as well be a nature survivalist, a grimdark monster hunter, or an investigator on the case during exploration.
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I agree. Every time I've planned out a build for a ranger, I get to mid-levels and it falls off with too few or too narrow options and I lose all interest in playing one. It's got a lot of railroaded feat paths that seem to generally favor one of the hunter's edges. As much as it is one of the better implemented rangers, it is bland and basic at the same time.
Slayer feels like what I suspect to be testing grounds for the PF3 ranger. That or it's what a remastered ranger would have looked like if people hated the current ranger enough. It's the ranger I always wanted and what I expect many others would want from a ranger as well. It's different enough to justify it's existence but upon release, I think it's also going to completely overtake and overshadow ranger in that general conceptual territory.
I like the package the pf2e ranger offers; it and monk were the main reason I left 5e in 2019. The class lets me mark a target for extra damage and run it down with my animal buddy, all at lvl 1! My half-orc precision ranger with his hyena companion is still one of my all-time favorite characters I've played in the system. The memory of beefy first-hit-bonks with a two handed weapon and telling my dog to "sic em" still brings a smile to my face.
If memory serves I did lean I to one or two, tracking/terrain feats but that was me leaning into the class's nature flavor as opposed to seeking it out from the outset.
I'm not gonna die on hills for names or themes, but I hope that pf3e will still allow me mechanically do this at lvl 1 with some class. If Hunter still had all of that it would still serve just as fine as ranger.
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I like the package the pf2e ranger offers; it and monk were the main reason I left 5e in 2019. The class lets me mark a target for extra damage and run it down with my animal buddy, all at lvl 1! My half-orc precision ranger with his hyena companion is still one of my all-time favorite characters I've played in the system. The memory of beefy bonks with a two handed weapon and telling my dog to "sic em" still brings a smile to my face.
I'm not gonna die on hills for names or themes, but I hope that pf3e will still allow me mechanically do this at lvl 1 with some class.
Me too, the point I want to make here is that a lot of what makes the Ranger a ranger is what they do out of combat: ideally, I'd like a future edition to establish a better separation between combat, exploration, social encounters, and downtime, and give each character separate options and a power budget for each. That way, you could pick a hunter class for combat that could let you mark your prey and hunt them down, with starting options for bonus damage and an animal companion, and then for your out-of-combat options you could choose to style yourself as, say, a nature survivalist, a monster slayer, a bounty hunter, an assassin, an investigator, and so on. This would ideally mean that two of our 30+ classes don't end up being basically the same class, and allow more out-of-combat-focused classes like the Investigator to flesh out their identity better in a manner that doesn't require perfunctory combat mechanics each time.
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Me too, the point I want to make here is that a lot of what makes the Ranger a ranger is what they do out of combat: ideally, I'd like a future edition to establish a better separation between combat, exploration, social encounters, and downtime, and give each character separate options and a power budget for each. That way, you could pick a hunter class for combat that could let you mark your prey and hunt them down, with starting options for bonus damage and an animal companion, and then for your out-of-combat options you could choose to style yourself as, say, a nature survivalist, a monster slayer, a bounty hunter, an assassin, an investigator, and so on. This would ideally mean that two of our 30+ classes don't end up being basically the same class, and allow more out-of-combat-focused classes like the Investigator to flesh out their identity better in a manner that doesn't require perfunctory combat mechanics each time.I like the package the pf2e ranger offers; it and monk were the main reason I left 5e in 2019. The class lets me mark a target for extra damage and run it down with my animal buddy, all at lvl 1! My half-orc precision ranger with his hyena companion is still one of my all-time favorite characters I've played in the system. The memory of beefy bonks with a two handed weapon and telling my dog to "sic em" still brings a smile to my face.
I'm not gonna die on hills for names or themes, but I hope that pf3e will still allow me mechanically do this at lvl 1 with some class.
More modular but still not completely "classless" would be a fun direction for a new edition, yea
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I pretty much agree. I think that a lot of the nature things of ranger could have been skill feats that anyone that wanted a more nature based character could take and let the theme more open for you to hunt anything.
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I play an Outwit Ranger with the Investigator dedication in the style of an "urban ranger" who focuses on tracking down prey wherever they are. I think people focusing on the inherent "natureness" of the Ranger is understandable, but the 2e system allows for so much customization that you can play in a multitude of ways.
The type of players that dismiss my character immediately because I picked "the wrong edge" before even sitting down to play are my favorite. I cannot wait to field the question of "why aren't you playing a Slayer?" on top of the ever present "why aren't you playing a Thaumaturge"?
My answer is because I really, really, like what Pathfinder 2e did to the Ranger class.
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I couldn't agree more with this idea. A few days ago I even made a similar comment about rangers in another thread (I don't remember which one lol) but you managed to articulate what I tried to say there much, much better than I did.
I particularly never vibed too much with the ranger class in TTRPGs. In PF2e in particular, its probably the first time I didn't immediately dismiss it like I usually did in other systems, but I still didn't mind it too much. However, after seeing the slayer, I think I understood why I didn't care much about the ranger in PF2e; its design its a bit bland and boring. Its only feature innate to all rangers is hunt prey that is fairly boring and works more like an action tax, flurry feels like the poor man's fighter, precision like the poor man's rogue, and outwit feels like something that should probably be baseline for all rangers (its also boring).
Then you look at the slayer's bloodseking blade and its pretty much a mix of precision and flurry ranger into one package, with Monster Lore being a more mechanically interesting version of outwit (though kinda boring too since its a worse thaumaturge's Esoteric Lore).
Like John R. said, its clear feats favor a subclass over the other, and like Kyrone said, some feats like Swift Tracker feel like glorified skill feats. This leads to a design that I don't find particularly interesting, and this is honestly a huge deal since ranger is supposed to be one of the core classes of the system yet it totally lacks a true mechanical identity. I totally agree with the idea that the slayer is probably a testing ground for the 3e ranger, but IMO the slayer also currently lacks identity as well.
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I feel like the odd one out, here: I love my rangers, but can't get into the slayer at all. It's the most boring playtest class I've ever seen. I see no point in having a dedicated "killing monsters" guy in a game where everyone already kills monsters, and none of its unique mechanics grab me as interesting or fun. Rangers, meanwhile, have a very obvious core playstyle in mind, along with options that support multiple different character types. The class identity is weird and based on a bunch of legacy stuff that doesn't really matter outside of gaming/fantasy tradition, but I can still get a guy out of it. Meanwhile, I can't get a guy out of the slayer chassis that wouldn't be more colorful as a different class.
I'd also say the ranger and investigator and such having strong out-of-combat identities isn't so much a flaw on their part so much as it is a problem with everyone else, in that a lot of classes don't have anything to do besides unga bunga hit stuff, so exploration feels like the boring bit you have to muddle through in order to get to the fun part. I can see the appeal of better separating these two parts of the game so that expending a class's power budget on one side doesn't leave it wanting in the other, but at the same time I wish more attention was paid to noncombat elements in general. Why do the two strongest classes during one half of the game (barbarian and fighter) have to twiddle their thumbs during the other half? Shouldn't they have something to contribute other than the occasional athletics check?
I'd also say the ranger and investigator and such having strong out-of-combat identities isn't so much a flaw on their part so much as it is a problem with everyone else, in that a lot of classes don't have anything to do besides unga bunga hit stuff, so exploration feels like the boring bit you have to muddle through in order to get to the fun part. I can see the appeal of better separating these two parts of the game so that expending a class's power budget on one side doesn't leave it wanting in the other, but at the same time I wish more attention was paid to noncombat elements in general. Why do the two strongest classes during one half of the game (barbarian and fighter) have to twiddle their thumbs during the other half? Shouldn't they have something to contribute other than the occasional athletics check?
I do agree, I think it's pretty clear that a lot of classes have nothing going for them out of combat. When one asks "how does a Fighter or Barbarian explore?", the answer generally is: "the same as anyone else proficient in Athletics," and similarly their contributions to social encounters boil down to their skills. I think it's fantastic for characters to have fantasies that go beyond combat, and I think we could do with more of these.
The issue I wanted to point out, rather, is that some class identities are centered more out of combat than in combat: in the case of the Ranger, the bit about them being good at surviving in the wild is something mostly expressed out of combat that is largely distinct from their ability to hunt targets, and in the case of the Investigator, the crux of their identity lies out of combat, such that they only have combat abilities because that's what a class needs to function. Pathfinder, like many other tabletop systems, is a game that puts every character's ability to express themselves in combat, exploration, social encounters, and downtime all in pretty much the same bucket, which makes it difficult to flesh out identities grounded in a particular phase of play without the end result being either deficient in others or in need of perfunctory mechanics.
Thematically speaking, the Ranger class has been a mess throughout tabletop system editions, because they were originally made to emulate the character of Aragorn/Strider from the Lord of the Rings, only to morph into this mishmash of quasi-Druid, terrain master, archer, beast master, monster hunter, and melee dual-wielder all in one.
You are operating from a false premise.
The 1st Ed AD&D ranger was more "Jack the Giant Killer" and nature-based fighter/tracker (as the paladin was a church-based LG fighter) with a small dash of Aragorn (mostly use of scrying devices in a nod toward crystal balls being similar to the palantiri from the Lord of the Rings). The 2nd Ed AD&D ranger removed most of the Aragorn nods (other than tracking, which is not unique to Aragon in myth and fiction) and use of magic-user spells to add two-weapon fighting (based on Drizzt Do'Urden from the R. A. Salvatore books; the two-weapon fighting was a feature of drow elves [1st Ed AD&D Unearthed Arcana] and not originally part of the ranger class). D&D 3.x changed the damage bonus against "giant-class" enemies to more narrowly focused choices with the Favored Enemies mechanic. D&D 3.5 changed the two-weapon fighting to a choice between that and archery with the Combat Style feature; PF1 expanded on the available styles.
However, the ranger was always the "nature warrior" class; other than some specific "urban ranger" variants. The slayer is not nature-focused, it is monster-focused; allowing a class to be Van Helsing, Geralt, etc., which the ranger doesn't do very well.
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You are operating from a false premise.
The 1st Ed AD&D ranger was more "Jack the Giant Killer" and nature-based fighter/tracker (as the paladin was a church-based LG fighter) with a small dash of Aragorn (mostly use of scrying devices in a nod toward crystal balls being similar to the palantiri from the Lord of the Rings). The 2nd Ed AD&D ranger removed most of the Aragorn nods (other than tracking, which is not unique to Aragon in myth and fiction) and use of magic-user spells to add two-weapon fighting (based on Drizzt Do'Urden from the R. A. Salvatore books; the two-weapon fighting was a feature of drow elves [1st Ed AD&D Unearthed Arcana] and not originally part of the ranger class). D&D 3.x changed the damage bonus against "giant-class" enemies to more narrowly focused choices with the Favored Enemies mechanic. D&D 3.5 changed the two-weapon fighting to a choice between that and archery with the Combat Style feature; PF1 expanded on the available styles.
However, the ranger was always the "nature warrior" class; other than some specific "urban ranger" variants. The slayer is not nature-focused, it is monster-focused; allowing a class to be Van Helsing, Geralt, etc., which the ranger doesn't do very well.
Your story is made up. As noted here with a direct quote from Gary Gygax, Aragorn was the most direct inspiration for the original Ranger. The Ranger also has the Monster Hunter line of feats in PF2e, so it is very evidently made to touch on the fantasy of monster-hunting as well.
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Yeah, back in 3.5e i had locked hard on the idea of the Ranger as being the martial nature class for the Druid as Paladin was the martial deity class for the cleric. It really wasnt hard to compare the two especially because of how their got their respective divine spells.
It was coming into Pathfinder that it clicked for me that the Ranger was more suitable as a "hunter" type character with nature themed abilities largely because thats where they did most of their hunting, with a separate option for building a Ranger who did most of their hunting in urban environments.
My preference would be to acknowledge that Ranger is a hunter of anything anywhere anytime, and whom can suit either a woodsy, urban, or entirely other vibe beyond the one with the bow in the forest. We can do that, certainly, but the support does rather weaken outside of that environemnt.
Even so, while narratively I see considerable overlap in the aesthetic of the Ranger-hunter and thr Slayer-hunter themes, I dont know that they would necessarily be the same class if not for this. Perhaps the trophy hunting mechanic could have been folded into an archetype, but I don't know if it would have come out all that functional
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I think the similarities between the Ranger and Slayer go beyond just theming: Mark Quarry is effectively a more complicated and limited Hunt Prey, whereas Monster Lore is essentially Master Monster Hunter. I could easily see On the Hunt and Slayer's Arsenal being hunter's edges too, and have even homebrewed an edge in the past that quickens the Ranger for actions against their prey. Were the Ranger's nature flavor something you could add to the class instead of something that was baked in by default, you'd already be able to build a Slayer in theme.
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The problem is that the Slayer is not a Slayer it is a Witcher. Pazio should pay the licensing fee and call it what it is and make a Slayer from the 1E Slayer which was a great class. In the Witcher class Change the 3 different choices at first level let the player choose one a first level and another at 8th level and one at 16th level. Give the expert tracking skill feat at first level. That would make a balanced wide breath character.
So you'd prefer the class be named Buffy Van Hellsing Bloodborne Witcher? Because the material we've currently got does a lot more than just Geralt of Rivia, even counting only things that get explicit mechanical shout-outs.
Also it's cute you think Paizo's got Netflix Deal Money.
I do feel that if the Slayer's signature tools were made into their own range of magic items, which themselves relied on a monster parts system that was independent of the Slayer, then all you'd need is a hunter's edge that quickened you and you could get all of the mechanics of the Slayer on the Ranger. I don't think that's ever going to happen, because Paizo needs a class to publish and are committed to it, but the classes are very close.
Your story is made up. As noted here with a direct quote from Gary Gygax, Aragorn was the most direct inspiration for the original Ranger. The Ranger also has the Monster Hunter line of feats in PF2e, so it is very evidently made to touch on the fantasy of monster-hunting as well.You are operating from a false premise.
The 1st Ed AD&D ranger was more "Jack the Giant Killer" and nature-based fighter/tracker (as the paladin was a church-based LG fighter) with a small dash of Aragorn (mostly use of scrying devices in a nod toward crystal balls being similar to the palantiri from the Lord of the Rings). The 2nd Ed AD&D ranger removed most of the Aragorn nods (other than tracking, which is not unique to Aragon in myth and fiction) and use of magic-user spells to add two-weapon fighting (based on Drizzt Do'Urden from the R. A. Salvatore books; the two-weapon fighting was a feature of drow elves [1st Ed AD&D Unearthed Arcana] and not originally part of the ranger class). D&D 3.x changed the damage bonus against "giant-class" enemies to more narrowly focused choices with the Favored Enemies mechanic. D&D 3.5 changed the two-weapon fighting to a choice between that and archery with the Combat Style feature; PF1 expanded on the available styles.
However, the ranger was always the "nature warrior" class; other than some specific "urban ranger" variants. The slayer is not nature-focused, it is monster-focused; allowing a class to be Van Helsing, Geralt, etc., which the ranger doesn't do very well.
Yes, Aragorn was an inspiration for the AD&D ranger as I mentioned. However, it was never the only inspiration (your false premise). And you are completely disregarding the timeline of changes to the ranger in system versions.
The Aragorn influence was mainly the good alignment and use of scrying devices. None of the other 1st Ed AD&D ranger class features can be exclusively tied to Aragorn, instead of other sources of "nature warriors:" Jack the Giant Killer, Orion, Robin Hood, etc.
If the AD&D ranger were based exclusively on Aragorn, the class wouldn't have the damage bonus against "giant-class" creatures, wouldn't be able to cast spells, and would have a Lay on Hands (and possibly cure disease) type ability similar to the paladin.
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So you'd prefer the class be named Buffy Van Hellsing Bloodborne Witcher?
How did you guess the name of my OC do not steal Slayer character? /silly
Yes, Aragorn was an inspiration for the AD&D ranger as I mentioned. However, it was never the only inspiration (your false premise). And you are completely disregarding the timeline of changes to the ranger in system versions.
Please point to where I ever stated that Aragorn was the only inspiration. You are now putting words in my mouth to avoid having to admit that your version of events does not match up to the exhaustive timeline listed in the post I linked. Meanwhile, your own claim that the original Ranger only had a "small" dash of Aragorn is false; Aragorn is quoted as the main inspiration. It is you who are operating from a false premise.
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I mean, I agree insofar as it feels to me that the Slayer is the most unnecessary class we've added to PF2 at this point. There's nothing that you can do with it that I can't really do with another class- this genuinely could have been an archetype.
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Honestly, I always felt like Hunt Prey was just learning from 1E Slayer. Studied Target was just so utterly practical and smooth compared to the favored enemy system ranger was saddled with. Sure, it took actions at lower levels... but most people would take that over their class mechanics turning off entirely when they fought the wrong enemy. It just made sense to slap 1E slayer's core thing onto the new ranger, since it accomplished something similar with less grief to the player.
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I feel like PF3 really should have it so that each class is designed with at least 3 built-in subclasses for combat, then 3 picks for exploration, and 3 picks for social encounters. Ideally, there would also be a choice for class-based downtime activities as well. It's really hard to say, "These are the 3 pillars of adventuring", when some classes get nothing that natively interacts with one or even two of these pillars.
This would solve the Ranger/Investigator problem and ensure that each class feels complete within itself.
I feel like the sheer number of 'thank goodness the ranger is actually good in PF2e' posts we see indicates that we do, in fact, need a ranger with that particular D&D baggage (it's hardly the only one - fighters, clerics, druids, paladins and monks all stand out as 'this is not how it would be implemented in a fantasy game starting fresh but fantasy d20s need them')
One of the examples you cite contradicts your point, I think: the Champion is very different from D&D 5e's Paladin, and yet is an extremely popular class. Although there are certainly people who will always ask to have a class with a specific name stamped on it, I do think that if Paizo had done something similar with the Ranger, and allowed the resulting class to easily pick nature-flavored feats (which is already the case with the vanilla class), then players would still be saying stuff like "The Hunter is the Ranger done right."
(I should point out that Hunt Prey being also a good mechanic for bounty hunters and assassins is somewhat backwards - it exists because of trying to distill the ranger flavour into something workable in PF2e, not because a generic hunting mechanic was desirable for PF2e to begin with)
I don't see how this particular reasoning makes any sense. A generic hunting mechanic is desirable for PF2e, as seen with the Bounty Hunter using Hunt Prey. Hunt Prey came first for sure, but its benefits and applications are visible even now when the Slayer is trying, not very successfully might I add, to copy the mechanic for their own gameplay. I also think this misses the point of the OP, which is precisely that Paizo focused first on adapting the Ranger to PF2e, and only worried about how to implement non-nature hunters after the fact: had the initial process included making the class more environment-agnostic by default, with the option to style it around nature, the occult, and so on with feats, then all of those character fantasies could have fit more easily under one class.
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Thematically speaking, the Ranger class has been a mess throughout tabletop system editions, because they were originally made to emulate the character of Aragorn/Strider from the Lord of the Rings, only to morph into this mishmash of quasi-Druid, terrain master, archer, beast master, monster hunter, and melee dual-wielder all in one.You are operating from a false premise.
The 1st Ed AD&D ranger was more "Jack the Giant Killer" and nature-based fighter/tracker (as the paladin was a church-based LG fighter) with a small dash of Aragorn (mostly use of scrying devices in a nod toward crystal balls being similar to the palantiri from the Lord of the Rings). The 2nd Ed AD&D ranger removed most of the Aragorn nods (other than tracking, which is not unique to Aragon in myth and fiction) and use of magic-user spells to add two-weapon fighting (based on Drizzt Do'Urden from the R. A. Salvatore books; the two-weapon fighting was a feature of drow elves [1st Ed AD&D Unearthed Arcana] and not originally part of the ranger class). D&D 3.x changed the damage bonus against "giant-class" enemies to more narrowly focused choices with the Favored Enemies mechanic. D&D 3.5 changed the two-weapon fighting to a choice between that and archery with the Combat Style feature; PF1 expanded on the available styles.
However, the ranger was always the "nature warrior" class; other than some specific "urban ranger" variants. The slayer is not nature-focused, it is monster-focused; allowing a class to be Van Helsing, Geralt, etc., which the ranger doesn't do very well.
"What is a Ranger?" has always been the million dollar question. The class is all over the place flavour wise over the editions of DND and Pathfinder. The only thing that people can really agree on is that it has something to do with nature. The idea of them being hunters is also pretty common.
Being a monster hunter also tends to overlap with being a "nature guy". The defining feature of PF2e's ranger is literally called "hunt prey".
I think this is partially because paladin was already established as one of many similar classes, whereas that's not true of the ranger, and partially because paladin ahs been perfectly good all the while so 'good paladin' isn't something people are seeking out.
Ranger (and monk) genuinely is in that space where making a good version of them is something people actively seek out, with all their weirdness and accumulated baggage, so there's name recognition there.
(I think you could just stuff alternatives to nature hunting under the ranger to start with, if making 'aberration hunter' was important to the base class list, but I'm also not sure that 'hunter' is a strongly requested base class outside of specifically the ranger)
I feel the statement you're making is even more true of the Ranger, given that there are many competing conceptions of what the Ranger is supposed to be across different editions. Given that 1e alone had an actual Hunter class, but also the Vampire Hunter from a crossover partnership, the Inquisitor, and of course the Slayer, I do think there was room to make a hunter class that could be flavored as primal, occult, divine, or none of these depending on who and what you're hunting.
I do think though that there is a case of hindsight being 20/20 here: Paizo did a fabulous job adapting the Ranger to 2e, and while a lot of the CRB's content stood the test of time, the developers probably had bigger fish to fry than consider the detailed implications of what a nature-flavored hunter would entail when trying to implement characters who hunt differently. I think there's a similar observation to be made for the Monk, who is also leagues better than they ever were in previous editions but whose orientalist vibes haven't necessarily aged the best in a modern context. PF2e is nearly seven years old, and we're applying those years of experience and collective discourse to content that was released at its very start, so while I do hope that a future 3e does things a bit differently, I also suspect that when that happens, there will be discourse to be had on its own design over the years too.
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I feel like PF3 really should have it so that each class is designed with at least 3 built-in subclasses for combat, then 3 picks for exploration, and 3 picks for social encounters. Ideally, there would also be a choice for class-based downtime activities as well. It's really hard to say, "These are the 3 pillars of adventuring", when some classes get nothing that natively interacts with one or even two of these pillars.
This would solve the Ranger/Investigator problem and ensure that each class feels complete within itself.
I don't know if I would go so far as to say as to say that you should do all of that with subclasses per se. But a bit more broadly, I agree that every class should have some budget set aside for combat, for exploration and for social.
One of the big advantages of class/level-based game design is that it makes it easier to prevent players from (accidentally or intentionally) taking all build points from one of those areas and putting them into another. In point-buy game design that's a big thing to watch out for. You can end up with characters with such good defenses that anything that challenges them would automatically hit the other characters. Or characters that can only fight.
So I think keeping these budgets separate is important. Just because you're a barbarian, doesn't make it a good idea to let you build only for combat so you're twiddling your thumbs if you can't solve a skill challenge with Athletics. PF2 does a decent job at this - you can't get rid of all your skills, and ability boosts spread across 4 abilities.
Skills also give you a start of an answer of "what do you do outside combat". They're also class-agnostic. You don't need to write new skills when a new class launches, or new archetypes to opt into skills otherwise reserved for a class. I think subclasses for exploration/social could play a role too, but I'd like to keep the focus on game pieces that can be used by many classes. It's fine though if each class has some clear obvious choices.
Making these separate budgets more explicit could be good though, because it steers new class design away from "this class is light on combat and heavy on exploration" incidents, which I consider unhappy.
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I pretty much agree. I think that a lot of the nature things of ranger could have been skill feats that anyone that wanted a more nature based character could take and let the theme more open for you to hunt anything.Sometimes classes took good Skill Feats.
Resulting in fewer Skill Feats and a underpowered Class Feats.A notable example is the Rogues Plant Evidence.
That would be a very good Thievery Skill Feat, for campaigns in which planting evidence might be a usefull niche action.But it is hopelessly underpowered for a Level 1 Rogue Class Feat.
I think a lot of athletics related feats like wall run fall into that category. They could have made class specific skill feats, too, just like they have archetype specific skill feats. Huge missed opportunity.