Not cynical so much as sadly realistic - people actually did the math, hardcore optimizers who know the rules inside and out (the sort of people who invented Pun-Pun for fun), and in almost all cases, it's harder now to do Combat Maneuvers with Pathfinder's system than it is with the original rules, even after you spend two feats instead of one to be 'good' at them. Things like Power Attack (the primary source of any non-heavily optimized melee character's damage) got nerfed into near-uselessness. On the flipside, Kat enumerated most of the nice boosts casters that totally didn't need any buffs got for free.<br/><br/>But yeah, this is more than a bit off-topic. I'm pretty much in limbo until we get to Sharn, when I'll get to split off for my own solo adventure thread.