Castatra's page

Taking the focus off of combat for once, let's build the ultimate skill-build. Of course skills like Intimidate and Acrobatics will remain useful in battle, and remaining combat relevant is certainly a plus, but not the focus. It might be a lot to ask but if it were easy it wouldn't need optimizing. ;)

What I'd like to see is an amazing party face, a top-notch diplomat and a bluff with no equal. A practiced skill-monkey, perceive and disable any trap, a stealth capable of hiding in the smoke from a tea light candle and pickpocketing the sod who lit it. Street smart and book smart, knowledge of all things one could ever consider useful, and many things that couldn't be. Essentially, we want this master-of-all-trades to be as good at as many useful skills as is possible.

The earlier, the better, but any level build is fine. Let's see what the optimized out of combat character is capable of. Have at it!

-Atra

Oddly enough, searching the boards for the word "tank" turned up nothing. As is, I have a pretty good idea of what classes in Pathfinder best fall into certain roles from an optimization standpoint, relatively arguably, of course.

The role of tank eludes me though. Where logically a class proficient in heavy armor would be the immediate go-to for a prime tank role, it's not necessarily the case, with class abilities akin to certain attack deflections and damage reduction to consider, and even if innate heavy armor prof. classes are ultimately the best, there are a fair amount of classes that fall into that category, with multiple options in each.

So, that being the case, what class/PrC do you consider the most efficient tank, and under which options available through the PRD make it so? To keep it less subjective, I'll add the stipulation that everyone defines their own idea of 'tank' and should be capable of fulfilling that definition from roughly levels 5+.

I look forward to your responses and, hopefully, builds in regards to this.

(also, brand new to the forums and posting from my phone, so please excuse any spacing or subsection designation errors this thread may have. Thanks.)

-Atra