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With that party I'd suggest to the ranger to go flurry instead and I'd go fervor witch as Stoke the heart is just one of the best cantrips of all time.it especially shines on a multi attacking party like one with a Monk and a flurry ranger.
Sounds like a problem for the NPC's **Shrug emote**
In all seriousness though as a witch, if youre feeling like you also want to be party face, you can snag courtly grace and streetwise while pumping society in order to do a lot of what a ''face'' would be able to do.
For any other problems than cowtowing to the big wigs and gathering information, there's intimidating barbarian.
**Cue catchy little jiggle** When everything else fails... there's always... Intimidate**
Intimidate might cause trauma, resentment, mental damage and the frightened condition. Talk to your doctor before using intimidate.
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Bastion is solid if you want to use a shield. But isn't it a bit too defensive? Only you can say how agressive you GM is towards rear rank characters, or how reliable you front rank players are at positioning. But in the party you have described there are 3 martial characters who probably want to melee. I'd be more concerned about utility and buffing options rather than more defense. For sure Bastion would be a great choice if the front line was suspect.
The main limits with free archetype are actions and running out of resources.
You have the dex for a ranged weapon, and you are getting an attack cantrip. So you have a solid zero resource cost basic round which is important.
For skill actions Intimidation really helps you and the martial characters, Bon Mot is only going to help you if you take the right spells.
You have a good focus spell in mind with Interstellar Void. If you plan on casting it most combats then you won't run out of other spells too, so nice.
I really haven't talked much about your base class.
Divine Sorcerer gives you more spells and less hitpoints, Oracle gets you your second refocus ability at no feat cost (level 11) and some of the curses are actually useful. Cleric is more heals but only if you find a way to get some more Charisma to start with. Witch is terrible unless you really like the cantrip which AlastarOG does.
Both Divine Sorcerer and Oracle have ways of getting extra non divine spells based on their bloodline, domains, deity so they are very hard to pin down.
Angelic Sorcerer and Wyrmblessed (Sea Dragon) Sorcerer look good to me. So do Cosmos or Tempest Oracle. I'd stay away from Cleric or Witch. Keep to your concept.
With Oracle I'd pick up Vision of Weakness as you don't seem to have any high Int characters in the party and sometimes you need a clue.
For the Free archetype side I'd pick up extra spell casting slots from Sorcerer or Oracle or Cleric. Maybe also for a second focus spell that didn't inclease my Oracle curse. I'd also probably want a good Aid reaction. So Wit Swashbuckler for One for All and panache from Bon Mot, or Maestro Bard for Inspire Competence are nice pickups (take 3 feats and move on)
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My general rule of thumb before playing a witch: find out how your GM treats familiars out of combat. There is huge table variance there and lot of the witch's power budget went to their familiar.
The Oracle is always a slam dunk for flavor, and IMO they do just fine for power. A deciding factor might be whether you want the additional complexity the curse brings.
Question your GM about how they are going to handle Deity and their alignment with respect to Oracles and Divine sorcerer. There are some fairly significant variations. Divine Wrath and Divine Lance are important spells, but the way some GMs play it they can be useless.
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I recently discovered that weapons with both finesse and a maneuver (like the sickle, or witch's hair...) get to use dex for the athletics check so when I'm enfeebled I can still contribute that way if I'm stuck in a fight.
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The second printing of the CRB clarified that you can't use Dex for Athletics Checks. Finesse only lets you use Dex for Attack Rolls, and Athletics Checks are not Attack Rolls.
Finesse
You can use your Dexterity modifier instead of your Strength modifier on attack rolls using this melee weapon. You still use your Strength modifier when calculating damage.
Page 446: Attack Rolls. There was some confusion as to whether skill checks with the attack trait (such as Grapple or Trip) are also attack rolls at the same time. They are not. To make this clear, add this sentence to the beginning of the definition of attack roll "When you use a Strike action or make a spell attack, you attempt a check called an attack roll."
To clarify the different rules elements involved:
An attack is any check that has the attack trait. It applies and increases the multiple attack penalty.
An attack roll is one of the core types of checks in the game (along with saving throws, skill checks, and Perception checks). They are used for Strikes and spell attacks, and traditionally target Armor Class.
Some skill actions have the attack trait, specifically Athletics actions such as Grapple and Trip. You still make a skill check with these skills, not an attack roll.
The multiple attack penalty applies on those skill actions as well. As it says later on in the definition of attack roll "Striking multiple times in a turn has diminishing returns. The multiple attack penalty (detailed on page 446) applies to each attack after the first, whether those attacks are Strikes, special attacks like the Grapple action of the Athletics skill, or spell attack rolls." There is inaccurate language in the Multiple Attack Penalty section implying it applies only to attack rolls that will be receiving errata.
Somewhat oddly, this means that even Ranged Trip uses strength.
Investigators can use the Athletic Strategist feat to replace Str with Int for Athletic Attacks. Some spells, like Telekinetic Maneuver will let you use a Spell Attack Roll instead of an Athletics Check. Otherwise Athletics Attacks always use an Athletics Check based on Str.
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Thanks Fisher, I was pretty sure that was the case but i didn't have the time to fact check.
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Ah yeah, the discussions I saw about it were all pre-errata (including a link to an old dev post) but the errata makes it pretty clear.
That errata sidelined some of my build concepts until the Investigator came along. (grumble, grumble)
Seems like a bit of a strange direction though, as it seemed fair?
One of the design goals of PF2 was to avoid making ability scores entirely replaceable the way that they often were in PF1. Str isn't usable for ranged attack rolls, and it can already be replaced by Dex with finesse weapons. Letting Dex also be used for athletics checks would make Str largely unnecessary.
most of the weapons with the combination have low damage dice, and even then most of them are uncommon with whip, light mace, sickle, and rapier being the only common ones. rapier is the only one with a d6, but it only has disarm. whip would be the most abuseable but its still on a d4 and is a nonlethal martial weapon.
You missed the maine-gauche and the scourge, but like the rapier they only have disarm. :)
Here is my current list of finesse/athletics options.
Some of the uncommon ones can be accessed through ancestry feats, but those ancestries are usually uncommon themselves. Three are of note, though:
• Humans potentially have access to a wide selection of such weapons through Unconventional Weaponry.
• Post-errrata, Gnome Weapon Familiarity grants access to kukris which are 1d6 and have the much-desired trip trait. Since Gnomes are a common ancestry, this feat is available to other ancestries through Adopted Ancestry.
• PFS allows anyone to play kobolds and fangwire has grapple as well as a LOT of other good traits.
Monk or Monk MC also gives access to a number of uncommon weapons through the Monastic Weaponry feat.
It certainly makes the witch hair feats terrible, as the entire point of them seems to be the combat maneuvers.
Being skill checks does let you use Assurance, though. That's the standard approach for low-strength characters who want to perform such maneuvers.
Remember that you are opposing Reflex Saves rather than AC. Here are the typical saves by level. I've got some tables if you want to save some time doing the calculations.