I haven't played in PFS, so take my thoughts for the ramblings that they are.
What I would expect from the games that I have been involved in though, is that the teamwork Rogue is going to have a lot more opportunity do use their special abilities than the one that wants to be on their own. Lone stealth and pounce missions don't mesh well with a cooperative squad/team-based game.
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I haven't played in PFS, so take my thoughts for the ramblings that they are.
Same here.
I'll just remind you that with PFS, you don't know your other players most times, so you might end up the only melee for instance. So this means the teamwork build might see more or less use of special abilities depending on the actual party you get.
Myself, I'm more often ranged/spell so I'd be happy with anyone that's going into combat so I can say at range.
EDIT: You might want to pump your medicine more and maybe fit in battle medicine if you can: not knowing who you're playing with also means you don't know the amount of healing there is and it never hurts to be able to patch yourself up in an emergency.
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my impression in 90% of games is the Rogue is very squishy and typically doesn’t have amazing defenses.
This lead me to believe I was helping my team by playing “tag” with the enemy by hitting and running because you can’t deal damage if you’re dead. So the idea was to help me help them by staying out or combat and striking once maybe twice and picking defensive feats like mobility, skirmish strike, tactical entry, and other hit and run tactics to capitalize on mobility, stealth and sneak attack without being the guy constantly down and having to be rezzed mid combat.
That seems like a pretty fair assessment to me. Rogue defenses aren't really any worse than most other martial characters, but their HP is a bit lower given the same stat array. They are not very good at holding up a front line.
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I do participate in Org Play.
Links for the two characters.
At current, it is probably not worth looking at anything past level 14 since the highest level scenarios are currently 9-12 and the highest level SFS scenarios are 11-14.
Mix of characters
At the periodic game days the groups tend to be mostly stable. You will have the same set of people that can make it on that day and time. You will get to know their characters and they will get to know yours. In my experience the mix of character classes will change with location, but it is relatively rare you would have a worst case scenario of all the same class. You will also have people that show up irregularly or even might be visiting from out of town. It isn’t always the exact same group, but it likely is about one third or more the same people.
At conventions, it is generally a much more random mix. This is where you can get situations where there are six of the same class at the table.
Hopefully you have a few people who have multiple different characters to choose from. That greatly reduces the chances of everyone being the same class. You can help here by having more than one available character as well. The group will spend maybe five minutes discussing and settle in.
Flexible cooperative characters work well
As for what works best, a flexible character that can fill more than one role in the party. Having a primary and secondary role your character can fill is always a good idea, it is even better in PF2 Org Play.
Rogue is the skill master. Make sure you have Athletics and Acrobatics at Expert relatively soon. That will allow other people to Follow the Expert for those skills in exploration mode. Not all classes can really do that, the Champion and Cleric being some of the most limited in skills.
Have a social skill. It may not be your best skill, but having at least one will help a lot with some of the skill challenges. Intimidate and Deception both also have combat applications so those are not bad choices.
I have seen groups struggle quite a bit when there is no out of combat healers in the group. Fortunately the Medic archetype and Champion class give good out of combat healing and some ability to do in combat healing. You don’t need to be a dedicated spellcaster to provide healing.
Although they are always welcome, you can generally get by without a healer in combat provided the group can completely heal between encounters. There are some adventures where that isn’t true and it is always better if a group has some in combat healing.
If you ever build a spellcaster, have a mixture of spells. Look for spells that still have an effect when the opponent makes their save. Don’t overload with all the same sort of spells. Have a few scrolls of the special purpose spells.
As a combatant, make sure you can do both melee and ranged combat. You will usually be better at one than the other, that is expected with many characters. Rogues generally are weaker at ranged combat. Make sure you aren’t useless when it is the wrong sort of combat.
Figure out what you can do that helps a different character class. The easiest example of this is a bomber alchemist should check if there are any rogues in the group. If there are, take more bottled lightning than you otherwise would. There are other examples, but that is probably the most obvious one.
The two builds you presented
Neither of them has enough Medicine skill to keep a group going. You do have Medicine at Trained on both builds which is good. Think about getting Assurance on Medicine and maybe the Battle Medicine skill feats.
It looked to me like both of the builds were rather focused builds. Might want to broaden them a little with some things that are more for out of encounter mode.
I am not seeing a lot of things to help other characters. Think about some skill feats like Lead Climber or Quiet Allies.
Although I could bring the two builds up, they were a little hard for me to review. I don’t use Pathbuilder so that is likely some of the issue. Next time think about giving stat blocks at one or two different levels. That would make it much easier to review them. It would bring the conversation more into focus because the type of challenges tend to change as you climb in level.
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The biggest strength of the Rogue class is how many skill increases they get and how many skill feats they get.
I think you are underestimating the effect of proficiency. You might want to examine Gisher’s Guide which compares when various classes can get better proficiency. Remember each bump in proficiency is worth +2, the same as four higher attribute.
The reason for not taking medicine is my ancestry gives me a negative to it and it just seems like there are plenty of wis primary or secondary classes that would take it to make up for it. I chose to focus on stealth, thievery, deception, acrobatics and athletics. Again my strength is only 10 so pretty bad so I figure a Fighter would take lead the expert or a strength champion or Barbarian or some other strength focused class who would also naturally take athletics.
Not every strength based character is going to have above Trained proficiency in Athletics. It is entirely possible that a Champion will not even be trained in it.
As for Medicine, a 5th level character in most classes would have two skill increases and four (including the one from most backgrounds) skill feats. That is the same as a 3rd level rogue. There are several skill feats that are very strong for Medicine skill including Assurance, Battle Medicine, Risky Surgery, Continual Recovery and Ward Medic. Although the Investigator can be better, a Rogue has a big advantage over most classes when it comes to non-magical healing.
Even if you aren’t going to focus on Medicine, strongly consider getting the Assurance feat for it. At 3rd level you would always be able to do a normal Treat Wounds and succeed at healing someone with it. It wouldn’t even matter if you never made up for having a normal goblin’s wisdom since attributes don’t matter when using Assurance.
I tried to focus on my characters strengths which would be breaking and entering, stealing, scaling buildings and getting inside, scouting to a degree, disabling traps (probably not finding them though probably a ranger would do that)
How often do you think you will be asked to steal something for the Pathfinder Society? I can tell you right now I’ve been on far more missions where we were asked to prevent a theft than to pull one off. They do exist, but they are not common.
Now I will say that Disabling Traps takes a big investment for most classes. I’ve heard a number of players complain about how many traps require higher than Trained proficiency in Thievery. A Rogue can much more easily afford the skill increases and has class feats like Trap Finder that make them even better.
Overall I think you should consider how to do things as a group. In many cases you will want to get the whole group into that building, Lead Climber might be nice. Quiet Allies can help a lot if the group is to sneak past something.
One of the tenants of Society Play is to cooperate.
I think both of your builds are a bit too narrowly focused. It is much better to be able to handle a wider range of activities than to be optimal at one thing.
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Wisdom 14 is enough to get serious about Medicine, especially if you increase it later and pick medicine early as your choice for expert/master skill upgrades.
I've seen Gang Up and Opportune Backstab be really strong. Gang Up makes it much more likely that you're in a position to use Opportune Backstab. They go well together.
But yeah, they want you to be in melee then, and are you squishy? Well, a bit, not crazy squishy. Currently you're going Twin Feint, you could consider picking up a shield instead. And if you're doing decent Wisdom anyway, Trap Finder becomes more attractive.
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Alright, some things that you may not have realized you get because you are a Pathfinder agent.
All of this is from the 2e Guide to Organized Play, most of it from the Character Creation section.
You get Lore Pathfinder Society. If you want instead you could use the optional Schools training to select from a list of lores and get a free feat at 5th level.
I don’t see any languages on that sheet. I might be missing them. As a Pathfinder you get one additional regional language and have access to all common and uncommon regional languages.
Looking at the build a bit more carefully.
You will want to select Medicine for your Assurance feat. Looks like there is a box to select it on the left column just below the feat.
You only have one Rogue reaction that I see. I’m not sure you will get good value from Preparation.
I quit looking at what you did after level 12. It will take you a while to get to that point and you will likely discover things along the way that cause you to modify your plan.
You will be good at out of combat healing and have Battle Medicine for in combat healing. Continual Recovery will really help with the out of combat healing. You will want to have your Healer’s Tools worn and will need a hand free in order to use them in combat. This probably means sheathing one of your dogslicers when you want to use Battle Medicine. Quick Draw would help mitigate this a little bit.