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Hi, the past few days I had to think about about the Guardian, some of the issues the class has as it is right now, and how I would go about fixing them. I had a lot of (What I think to be) cool ideas and now want to share them across a few posts on this sub. This post is one of those. I will first write down the ideas I had as rules, and then later add some comments explaining my thoughts and reasoning behind those ideas.

Disclaimer: This is not me saying that this is what the Guardian SHOULD BE. I also don't claim that these changes would even necessarily be for the better. My goals with these posts is not to dictate how to make the Guardian properly. My goals with these posts is discussing potential issues with the Class (many of which have already been pointed out, some of which I haven't seen discussed much), talking about potential ways of fixing them and discussing game design in general, but primarily, my goal with this is just to share and discuss some cool ideas I had because I love homebrewing :). And how knows, maybe a Paizo designer stumbles across one of these and takes some inspiration, but that would already be far more than I would hope to accomplish.

Here is a list of all parts:

Reworking The Guardian Part 1: The Taunt Mechanic
Reworking The Guardian Part 2: Class Options
Reworking The Guardian Part 3: Class Mechanics & Subclasses

In my last post I want to first go into general class changes, then I want to discuss my idea of a subclass system. This constitutes probably the biggest departure from the original Guardian, but these are also some of the ideas I am most excited about.
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General Changes
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Key Attribute: Constitution or other
Hitpoints per Level: 12
Class DC: Your choice of Constitution, Wisdom, Charisma or Intelligence (Lv 9: Expert; Lv 17: Master)
Perception: Lv 1: Expert; Lv 11: Master

Progresses in proficiency with all armors including unarmed.
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Level 1 Class Feature: Guardians Resistance
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During your daily preparations you can choose 3 damage types. You gain resistance equal to half your level against those damage types (minimum 1). This stacks with resistances your armor might grant you. You can spend 10 minutes to switch one resistance for another.
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Subclasses
(The Defensive Strategies are explained in my post about class options: Reworking The Guardian Part 2: Class Options )

Every Subclass grants you a choice between different Key Attributes, a different Defensive Strategy, some upgrade to that Defensive Strategy and a unique ability.

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Strength-Based

* Key Attribute: Constitution or Strength

* Defensive Strategy: Hampering Sweeps
-> Bonus Effect: The enemy always has to attempt the save, even if they do not leave your reach, unless they use a Step action.

* Subclass Ability: Striking your allies triggers a Reactive Strike from you.

Dexterity-Based

* Key Attribute: Constitution or Dexterity

* Defensive Strategy: Tackle Ally
-> Bonus Effect: You can push your ally 5 feet into any direction.

* Subclass Ability: Whenever an ally you can see is subject to a hostile effect, you can Stride towards them as a reaction. Afterwards, you can immediately use one Guardian reaction as a free action if its requirements are fulfilled.

Wisdom-Based

* Key Attribute: Constitution or Wisdom

* Defensive Strategy: Danger Sense
-> Bonus Effect: You grant the +1 circumstance bonus on a success and grant a +2 circumstance bonus on a critical success.

* Subclass Ability: If an enemy you can see attacks an ally you can see and the ally is off-guard to the enemy, the enemy first has to succeed a check against your Perception DC using the relevant modifier (Usually attack modifier or spell attack modifier). On a failure, your ally isn't off-guard to the attack.

* Special: You become Master in Perception at 7th level and legendary at 15th level.

Charisma-Based

* Key Attribute: Constitution or Charisma

* Defensive Strategy: Command Attention or Challenge
-> Bonus Effect: If you take Command Attention, increase the area to "20-foot or 40-foot emanation". If you take Challenge, after it would normally end, the creature still is taunted 1 for an additional round. You only get the bonus for the ability you chose as part of this subclass.

* Subclass Ability: Successful Diplomacy, Intimidation and Deception checks against enemies make them taunted 1 for 1 round (taunted 2 on a critical success).

Intelligence-Based

* Key Attribute: Constitution or Intelligence

* Defensive Strategy: Guardian Lore
-> Bonus Effect: When you successfully Recall Knowledge about a creature/object, the first time an ally is you can see is subject of a hostile effect of the creature/object in question, they gain a +1 circumstance bonus to the relevant defense (+2 on a critical success).

* Subclass Ability 1: You can spend 10 minutes to grant one of your allies one of your Guardian Resistances while they are within a 30-foot emanation. If you do so, any Guardian Resistance you granted to another ally ends. If they leave that area, they loose the resistance, but they regain it if they enter it again.

Special: You become Master in Perception at 7th level and legendary at 15th level.

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Comments
As I wrote in my post "Reworking The Guardian: Class Options", I wanted to expand the scope of the Guardian from "Specific Heavily Armored Defender" to "Defender In General". So this is probably where I made the most extreme changes.

Key Attribute
As you can see, the Guardian can take literally every Score as their ability score, depending on their subclass. They can always take Con, which I thought was fitting for what thematically is the most defensive class in the game. You being able to take every other score is, on one hand, meant to give players as many options as possible, and on the other, is meant to embody the various different ways in which one can go about defending others. Want to be the classical Strength-based Guardian? You can! But you can also be the Dexterous Protector who is always where he needs to be, a Wise Bodyguard, who sees dangers coming from miles, or a Charismatic leader, who pulls attention to himself.

Hit Points per level
As I said, I think it is only fitting for the most defensive class to have the maximum HP per level. Not only that, but since their class features see them pulling aggro to themselves, I think they need the higher HP.

Class DC
There are multiple things to talk about in reference to the class DC.

Firstly, I made it scale faster. The Guardian's protective abilities rely on their Class DC so I think it needs to be on the higher side of Class DCs. Maybe not up to legendary but definitely close.

Secondly, you can choose CON or any of the mental stats as the score you use for it, but not DEX or STR. The reason why I did this is firstly, to balance the mental subclasses with the physical ones (Now some have better combat stats, in return the others are slightly better at protecting with their higher DC) and secondly because I think this gives players a difficult but interesting choice in regards to what they want to focus on.

Perception
I feel like a Protector needs to be decently perceptive. You need to spot a danger to protect others from it after all.

Guardian's Resistance
I think the Guardian should have resistances as a primary class feature, and for that, they need to be more general. The resistances as they are right now are too specific imo. Letting you choose between resistances also rewards you for planning ahead. And while I haven't added them to my other post where I list feat ideas, this also opens up the possibility for feats that allow you to change resistances during combat.

Subclasses
I might later invent some class-specific feats. I already have a few ideas, but this is gonna be a different post I might make some other day.

Strength-based
This is meant to embody the more classical form of Defender, akin to for example the Sentinel feat from D&D. They defend by being an immovable object you cannot get by. This is what most probably think of when they hear "tank".

Dex-based
This is meant to be more of a Guardian Angel, who is always there to protect you. The ability to make a full Stride as a reaction makes this subclass pretty mobile. One consideration you will have to make, however, is that there is some counter synergy with the speed reduction of heavy armor, which is why I considered giving it improved unarmored defense. However, I decided against it, because for one, I think this is the monk's thing, and secondly, because I think that it is an interesting trade-off. Either you maximize your defense at the cost of some mobility, or you sacrifice a bit of AC to maximize your mobility.

Wis-based
This is the embodiment of the wise protector who sees danger coming from miles away that I referenced in my other post. I think that this could be a very cool "archetype" to lean into. The better perception proficiency also sets it apart from other subclasses and reinforces this "Wise Protector" theme. I have also heard people discuss the potential of focus spells, and while I think the idea is cool and would really fit the mental Guardian Subclasses, thinking of a focus spell system is unfortunately far too much work for now xd.

Cha-based
This is meant to embody leaders, knights in shining armor, or braggarts who protect their allies by demanding the attention of their enemies. This is an aggro-taking based tank, that, as far as I know, is typical for MMORPGs. This subclass also has a lot of debuff capabilities in its kit.

Int-based
This is meant to embody the kind of Guardian that protects by planning ahead and being prepared for any form of danger. It is also the subclass I put the least effort into (I basically came up with it while writing). The giving allies resistances part is meant to reward planning ahead, although I am not sure if it accomplishes that well enough. I can also imagine a later feat or feature that just allows you to change a resistance on the fly. What this subclass might also benefit from, is a Prescient Planner-esque feat/feature, but for resistances or other prepareable defensive options. Needless to say, I think this subclass still needs the most work.

Hi, the past few days I had to think about about the Guardian, some of the issues the class has as it is right now, and how I would go about fixing them. I had a lot of (What I think to be) cool ideas and now want to share them across a few posts on this sub. This post is one of those. I will first write down the ideas I had as rules, and then later add some comments explaining my thoughts and reasoning behind those ideas.

Disclaimer: This is not me saying that this is what the Guardian SHOULD BE. I also don't claim that these changes would even necessarily be for the better. My goals with these posts is not to dictate how to make the Guardian properly. My goals with these posts is discussing potential issues with the Class (many of which have already been pointed out, some of which I haven't seen discussed much), talking about potential ways of fixing them and discussing game design in general, but primarily, my goal with this is just to share and discuss some cool ideas I had because I love homebrewing :). And how knows, maybe a Paizo designer stumbles across one of these and takes some inspiration, but that would already be far more than I would hope to accomplish.

Here is a list of all parts:

Reworking The Guardian Part 1: The Taunt Mechanic
Reworking The Guardian Part 2: Class Options
Reworking The Guardian Part 3: Class Mechanics & Subclasses

This will probably the longest post. Here I go into the primary class options my homebrew Guardians would be able to choose from. At the end I discuss some feat ideas I had, some of which should replace feats I turned into class features.
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Keyword Intercept:
Some abilities refer to this. These are the rules for intercepting

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Intercept
You attempt to redirect an effect away from an ally to yourself. Generally, only targeted effects can be intercepted. Attempt a check using your Class DC - 10 + your armors item bonus against the enemies relevant DC or 10 + the enemies relevant modifier.
-Critical Success: As success, but you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to the relevant defense.
-Success: You are in time. The effect targets you instead of your ally. You can still choose to split the damage like with the failure condition.
-Failure: You are barley too late. If the effect causes damage, your ally takes half and you can take the other half. You an your ally only apply half your usual resistances against that damage.
-Critical Failure: You fail to Intercept
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Level 1 Class Feature: Defensive Strategy
While all Guardians are specialists of protecting their allies, the way they go about doing so differs from Guardian to Guardian. Choose 2 of the following abilities. You Subclass will grant you a third one.

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Tackle Ally ⟳
Trigger: An willing ally you are adjacent is about to be subject to a hostile effect.
Effect: Before the effect resolves, you push the ally 5 feet away from you and enter their space yourself. This is forced movement. If their is not enough space for either, this ability fails. If the triggering effect was targeted, you also try to Intercept it. If the triggering effect was an area effect and the ally is now outside the area, they aren't affected.

Command Attention ◆ or ◆◆ (mental)
Duration: Until the end of your next turn.
Area: 15-foot or 30-foot emanation.
Effect: All enemies in the area are taunted 1. The area depends on the actions spend.

Danger Sense
Whenever you are in the presence of a hidden threat (Such as a potential ambush, traps, hidden weapons ect.) the GM secretly rolls a Perception check against a relevant DC (Usually the Stealth DC of the creature/object). On a success you spot the danger, on a critical success you or an ally of yours gains a +1 circumstance bonus on the relevant defensive stat for the purpose of the first check made to resist the spotted threat.

Hampering Sweeps ◆
Like the feat, but enemies can attempt a Reflex save against your class DC.
-Success: They get away
-Failure: They can't get away
-Critical Failure: They can't get away and can't take move actions for the rest of their turn.

Taunting Strike ◆ (flourish)
You Strike an enemy. If you hit they are taunted 1 (Taunted 2 on a critical).

Challenge ◆ (mental)
Range: 60 feet
Duration: 1 round.
Effect: The enemy has to attempt a Will save against your Class DC.
-Critical Success: They are unaffected.
-Success: They are taunted 1.
-Failure: They are up to taunted 2 (Your choice).
-Critical Failure: They are up to taunted 2 for up to 2 rounds (Your choice).

Blanket Defense ◆◆
Like the feat.

Body Block ◆◆
Area: 5-foot emanation.
Duration: Sustained up to 3 rounds.
Effect: Whenever the line-of-effect of a ranged, targeted strike/ability/spell intersect the area, you can attempt to Intercept it. If the effect is a burst, line or cone and you are between an affected ally and the areas origin, you can attempt the same check as the one when you would Intercept, but it has the following effects:
-Critical Success: As success but you get a +1 circumstance bonus to the relevant defense instead.
-Success: Only you are affected and you take a -1 circumstance penalty to the relevant defense.
-Failure: Both you and the ally are affected as normal.

Covering Statue
You always provide Standard Cover instead of Lesser Cover to allies and allies can Take Cover behind you to upgrade this to Greater Cover.

Guard Ally ◆
Targets: An ally adjacent to you.
Duration: Until the end of your next turn.
Effect: As long as you are still adjacent to the target, you can Intercept all targeted effects the ally is subject to. If the ally moves, you can Stride up to your speed as a reaction, but you have to Stride towards the allies current position.

Guardian Lore
You gain "Guardian Lore". You can use "Guardian Lore" to Recall Knowledge about offensive statistics and abilities and about ways of mitigating them. Your proficiency in Guardian Lore increases to expert at 3rd level, to master at 7th level and to legendary at 15th level.
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Feat Ideas

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Taunting Strength --- Feat 2
When you succeed at an Athletics check against an enemy, they have to make a Will save against your class DC. On a failure they are taunted 1 for 1 round (Taunted 2 on a critical failure). If you Athletics check was a critical success, they decrease their degree of success by one step.

Slowing Strike ◆ (flourish) --- Feat 6
Make a Strike against an enemy. If you hit, they need to make a Fortitude save against your Class DC. If your hit was a critical hit, they decrease their degree of success by 1 step.
-Critical Success: They are unaffected.
-Success: They take a -5 foot status penalty to their speed for 1 round.
-Failure: They take a -15 foot status penalty to their speed for 1 round.
-Critical Failure: They are Immobilized for 1 round.

Ground Stomp ◆◆ --- Feat 8
You stomp the ground so hard that it becomes uneven and difficult to walk through. The ground in a 10 foot emanation becomes difficult terrain. All creatures in the area must attempt a Reflex save against your Class DC. On a failure they loose 10 feet of their next Stride action. On a critical failure they also fall prone.

Don't Run! --- Feat 10
When an enemy is taunted by you, moving away from you is difficult terrain.
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Comments
I want to start by saying, that while there was a lot of though behind some of these, other more just proof of concepts, and I realize that these options are probably not balanced yet.

There are a few things I tried to accomplish with these changes

I think that the Guardian is thematically closer to an Archetype than a Class. Its about protection in two very specific and niche ways. I think, that while for archetypes to have a very specific/limited scope/theme, classes need to be more open ended, or if they are specific in theme (Like the Thaumaturge) they need to have a very strong theme. And even those very specific classes (Thaumaturge, Psychic, Gunslinger) usually have a lot of choices and different ways of being played/build. I think this is something the Guardian still lacks. I come back to this in my post about Class Mechanics & Subclasses, but I tried to expand the theme from "Very specific video game-esk semi-tank" to being about "Protection in various different ways".

I wanted to provide players with interesting choices and make it so that different Guardians can actually be very different.

I tried to balance some broken options.

I turned some Feats that I think are very fitting for the class into general class options that you can take at level 1.

I wanted these abilities to fulfill the "tank" fantasy better. Gameplay of tanks generally centers around positioning and space-control. So I added some abilities that allow you to engage with that aspect of strategy.

Now lets discuss specific options:

Intercept
I find it weird how, in the original guardian, this has a very impactful ability and "absolute" ability had no check associated with it, while the ability that is just a debuff has. I feel like it should be the other way around. So I added a check. In return, I made it more applicable. Now you can not only use it to block damage, but you can even use it to "tank" debuffing effects for your allies, widening the scope of what you can protect your allies from.

Tackle Ally
This is basically the "replacement" for the original "Intercept" class feature, so what I wrote for "Intercept" also applies here. Additionally, I think the ability to control your allies' positioning and, for example, push them outside of the range of an attack to protect them from follow-ups or out of a spell's area opens a new dimension of strategy.

Command Attention
I feel like a Tank class needs an option that allows it to take aggro from multiple smaller creatures around it at once. This ability also plays a lot with your positioning. I also think that it makes sense for this to be automatic. This avoids a lot of weirdness in regards to who you want to fail and who you don't want to fail and makes the ability both more consistently useful and simple.

Danger Sense / Guardian Lore
I want to start by saying that I got the idea for these options from the Rules Lawyer Playtest stream, where they discussed the Guardian at the end. One of his players said how he wants the Guardian to also have protection-themed exploration abilities, and I couldn't agree more. I think a "Protection" class should also have options for indirect protection. Both in reality and in fantasy, "protecting" not only includes physically putting yourself between the attacker and your protectee (Usually you needing to do that means that something went wrong), proper protection primarily means seeing potential dangers coming and knowing how to avoid or deal with them. These two options play into that aspect of protection.

Hampering Sweeps/Blanket Defense
I think these feats are just so thematic, cool, and fitting for the class that they should be primary class features. Hampering Sweeps also needs a small nerf, of course, because, no, I don't think a level 1 Guardian should be able to literally bind a god if that god had no teleportation spells prepared xd. In regard to Blanket Defense, spending a whole turn on this, I think, feels bad, and I think that the ability is also balanced if it only causes two actions.

Body Block
This is meant to be the classic Reinhard/Braum shield-esque ability, where you can literally use a shield, or in this case your body, to intercept ranged attacks against your allies. This also makes positioning really important.

Taunting Strike
This is supposed to be a cool option if you want to mix some offense into your Guardian.

Covering Statue
Together with Taunting Strike this allows you to have an extremely action-efficient Guardian, if you wanted to. You could then use those actions for something more action-intensive. This could open up a lot of cool build ideas.

Slowing Strike
This is meant to provide the Guardian with another option to control the battlefield and indirectly protect their allies. This also particularly adds some cool ranged Guardian support I'd imagine.

Ground Stomp
I am honestly not sure right now since it has been some time since I read through every single feat, but I feel like the Guardian currently lacks some sort of soft AoE CC. This should provide this.

Don't Run!
I feel like this is just a typical tank-space control ability that synergizes well with other class options. I think this opens up a lot of tactical possibilities for the class.

Hi, the past few days I had to think about about the Guardian, some of the issues the class has as it is right now, and how I would go about fixing them. I had a lot of (What I think to be) cool ideas and now want to share them across a few posts on this sub. This post is one of those. I will first write down the ideas I had as rules, and then later add some comments explaining my thoughts and reasoning behind those ideas.

Disclaimer: This is not me saying that this is what the Guardian SHOULD BE. I also don't claim that these changes would even necessarily be for the better. My goals with these posts is not to dictate how to make the Guardian properly. My goals with these posts is discussing potential issues with the Class (many of which have already been pointed out, some of which I haven't seen discussed much), talking about potential ways of fixing them and discussing game design in general, but primarily, my goal with this is just to share and discuss some cool ideas I had because I love homebrewing :). And how knows, maybe a Paizo designer stumbles across one of these and takes some inspiration, but that would already be far more than I would hope to accomplish.

Here is a list of all parts:

Reworking The Guardian Part 1: The Taunt Mechanic
Reworking The Guardian Part 2: Class Options
Reworking The Guardian Part 3: Class Mechanics & Subclasses

This will be the shortest post. Here I just go into how I would handle the Taunt mechanic. I would introduce it as a separate condition.
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First I want to introduce the following as a condition:

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Taunted

If you are taunted, you are so by at least one given creature (Unless otherwise specified the creature that gave you the condition). You need to be aware of that creatures presence, otherwise you aren't taunted.

The taunted condition always includes a value. You take a circumstance bonus equal to this value to all your checks and DCs made to affect the creature you are taunted by with a hostile effect. This bonus does not apply however if it would turn a success into a critical success, or a failure into a critical failure.

In return, you take a circumstance penalty equal to your taunted value on checks and DCs made to affect any other creature you are not taunted by. If a hostile effect includes the creature you are taunted by in its area, this penalty can only turn successes into failures or failures into successes.
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Comments

I changed "Taunt" from being an ability to a condition because I want to base multiple other abilities and class features on the Taunt mechanic. I think you could get really creative with Feats and class options that way and I already had some ideas (As you can see in other posts of mine if you are interested).

I also made some changes to how Taunt works to make it less punishing to use, while still keeping its original risk/reward dynamic. These changes include the following:

* Making the bonus unable to cause crits: This has, in my opinion, multiple positive effects

** Firstly, it just makes it a lot less punishing to use while still playing into the "I take hits for you" fantasy. Being crit always sucks, even for a tank (Ask your Barbarian), but this makes it so that, while you will take more hits, those hits will be ones you generally can take with your high HP and resistances.

** Secondly, this synergies well with your innate resistances against damage, because resistances are a lot better against smaller chunks of damage.

* Making the condition an overall win: A +1 that can only turn normal failures into normal successes is half as impactful as a normal +1, meaning that overall the ability is more of a benefit than it is hindrance. This allows this condition to be used more as a core part of the class rather than a mechanic that only works in niche situations.

* Making the ability still be useful if an effect includes the Taunting creature: I don't think that including the Taunting creature in an effect should just completely turn off the ability. Firstly, this feels really bad as the Guardian, and secondly, this leads to a weird counter synergy, where you want to be close to your allies in order to use some of your other abilities, but also want to be as far away as possible in order to not include them in AOEs. I think having AOEs be a consideration that a Guardian must make (And thus having to balance between being close to allies and keeping a bit of distance) could be interesting, which is why I kept a less punishing form of it (As discussed earlier, what I did effectively halves the impact of that bonus), but honestly, I could also get behind completely removing that line too. It would also simplify this already quite complex condition.