Quote Originally Posted by Kobard View Post
You are also forgetting that players flanking make it easier to hit (and thereby critical hit), so a lot of movement is also about positioning for better attacks, but opponents are also not standing still either, especially if they are also utilizing tactics. Plus, enemies will also have three attacks, which gives them opportunities to crit as well. So raising a shield helps mitigate against enemy crits.
Symmetrical tactics cancel out, and dominant strategies will emerge. We saw this with "I full attack" in PF1e, after all - the best option for both parties 90% of the time was to stay still with the enemy at the edge of your attack range and make as many attacks as they can. I suspect this dominant strategy will involve Heroism heightened as high as you can take it (as that +1/+2+/3 status bonus has to come from somewhere), most likely from a cleric so they can double up as a healing tap. After that, you probably want fighters for crit fishing due to the damage and critical effects. We'll have to wait and see if shield raising is a better option than simply attempting to kill them faster with your last attack, but I am sceptical in the long run unless you can't hit them at all with the 3rd attack. Flurry rangers are possible, but the action cost has the same issue as the shield raising where it may just be better to continue attacking unless you can't hit at all on the 3rd.

Putting attacks in the same pool as things like movement, shield raising, or hunt target only makes doing those things relatively worse, not better, as they're competing with the action type that actually directly moves the combat closer to completion. This is part of why move/standard/swift worked so well - not all actions are made equal. PoW is probably the my favourite paradigm to approach melee combat from simply due to it using the action system to more interesting and dynamic effect than just full attacking every turn.

While looking into this, I forgot the stupid "If you're X class, roleplay it Y". Whoever thought that was a good idea should heck right off. Awful prescriptivist garbage.