In the Pathfinder Society I’d like to create a Fighter (using Pathbuilder 2E) that’s good at grappling creatures. But there seems to be so many ways of doing this.
It seems like taking Monk/Wrestler as a L2 Archetype Dedication would be advantageous, but since I’ve never played a pure Fighter I’m not sure if their feats would accomplish the same thing without the overhead. (It’s PFS so no Free Archetype.)
I want a character that does good to great, consistent damage (hence Fighter as base class), with the ability to pin down a tough opponent to make them flat-footed, so others can land hits easier.
I’m really on the fence with the Barbarians I’ve seen in PFS, so far. They’re usually the first PC to fall in battle, and when they hit they tend to hit hard, but I’ve not really seen that they hit often enough to make up for constantly having to spends time and resources during combat to stop them from outright dying.
I’ve never played Monk either, but it looks like a great class. My personal issue is that my character concept for my PC is a human fighter, with a great backstory. So now I’m torn between going with the idea that fires up my imagination (which I always advocate players do), or going with the ‘better’ option and basically meta-gaming my PC.
Animal Instinct Barbarians are actually a bit tankier than normal barbarians, especially once you get the Animal Skin feat which basically ends up boosting your AC by 1 when Raging rather than reducing it by 1. They also get damage resistance to piercing and slashing damage, which is the main damage type that many monsters do by default. But yeah I can see what you mean, though I’m the health tank in my Extinction Curse party while our Champion is the AC tank, and AC tanking is usually better overall.
Thanks for sharing your experience and insight!
Funny you should mention HP vs. AC as I watched a very interesting YouTube video on just that dynamic a few months ago, and if I remember correctly (overall) AC is the better option to increase if you have that choice.