Pathfinder 2e is Great. you can play an Unarmored Swashbuckler or Bikini Clad Sonja or even a Cutesy little Assassin without being punished for trying to intentionally avoid the aesthetic of obvious armor. Unarmored Characters in PFZ2e Learn a Skill that other Editions and Clones of the d20 game system and most OSRs gate behind high level class abilities or high level feat chains. how to dodge, block, parry and roll with the punches.
in addition to a system that rewards teamweork over spamming attack out of selfish mindless greed. requiring characters to be adaptable instead of building around the same game loop, and everyone being expected to share the burden of the role of support. you gotta have backup weapons or at least backup tactics. and with the near removal of opportunity attacks and renewed emphasis on mobility, combats have the potential to actually be dynamic. and even better is there are downsides to playing whackamole with an unconscious character in the same day.
most Armors have the same Sum of Armor Bonus plus Dex Cap that can't be cheesed. the main 2 Outliers being unarmored dodge focused characters and heavy armored juggernauts. where you are making an intentional decision between more accurate ranged attacks or better melee damage, grapple, trip and shove modifiers and hauling more loot.
PF2e reigns in the Power of Dexterity and Wisdom Quite well.i recommend it. especially since initiative is Percption or any Skill you can justify, and Perception aint a skill every character can max anymore.
i mean, i can appreciate the D&D AC Abstraction, but it doesn't mean i like it myself. it means i comprehend the abstraction enough to understand that Dexterity and Armor were intended as separate paths of damage mitigation, but it treats them mechanically the same because either you dodge or parry the hit, or it fails to get through your armor, depending on the narrative of course. it also reduces the amount of chart and table referencing. if you are Familiar with Rolemaster or BRP, the Sheer Amount of charts you need to resolve one damage roll because of called shots and damage reduction based on hit location, makes a single turn take nearly as long as it takes the resolve an exalted turn with all the badly formatted charms you have to reference and obscure keywords with a lack of clear language on a rulebook not actually optimized as a reference guide at all because it tries too hard to be a Fanfiction.
this is the issue with Armor as Damage Reduction is it never stops there, now you need a mechanic to take a penalty to ignore the damage reduction. then you get called shot rules, where now you need Separate Armor Values and Penalties to hit each Location. which leads to every player putting the maximum possible AC bonus on every hit Location to the point of completely murdering player expresssion. what would be worse than Dex being treated the same as Armor for AC is all the Chart Referencing in Rolemaster.
