The Duelist could eventually do it, but not soon enough for you.
Consider a Bard, perhaps. Also a witch/fighter elderitch night ("Hexblade").
The Duelist could eventually do it, but not soon enough for you.
Consider a Bard, perhaps. Also a witch/fighter elderitch night ("Hexblade").
Bard is an excellent option, especially with some of the more debuff friendly builds like Savage Skald or Arcane Duelist.
Consider Ranger as well, opting for a more AC-based build around sword & board. Animal companions may start to suck at higher levels, but they continually make strong intimidation experts. Hell, with you and your pet both doing AoE intimidate checks you should be able to reliably hit everyone who isn't immune to fear. Ranger would also be a good choice if you want to disarm, trip, or sunder (shudder) enemies- other good options for a melee debuffer. At higher levels you'll quickly qualify for the critical debuffs, which pair well with a Scimitar or other high-crit weapon.
The Duelist could eventually do it, but not soon enough for you.
Consider a Bard, perhaps. Also a witch/fighter elderitch night ("Hexblade").The Bard seems like it'd suffer the same problems as the Monk in terms of survivability. I'm not concerned about damage, but it does need to be survivable and able to debuff reliably.
How would a Witch/Fighter play out?
With a variety of debuffing spells and hexes, with mage armor as a spell. Take toughness and favored class bonus hp, I'd say it could work. Start off as a level 1 fighter/ level 4 witch, take one more level of witch and go into elederitch knight.
A Mobile Fighter with Improved Dirty Trick is the first thing that comes to mind.
Mobile Fighter gives up the higher levels of Armor Training, which you won't need if you're wearing medium armor, and gains some good abilities. Dirty Trick offers a variety of debuffs based on CMB, applied as a standard action. Improved Disarm and Improved Trip have the same prerequisites as Dirty Trick, so you can add those maneuvers to your repertoire easily.
The Duelist could eventually do it, but not soon enough for you.
Consider a Bard, perhaps. Also a witch/fighter elderitch night ("Hexblade").The Bard seems like it'd suffer the same problems as the Monk in terms of survivability. I'm not concerned about damage, but it does need to be survivable and able to debuff reliably.
How would a Witch/Fighter play out?
A witch based EK is going to fare a little lower than a Bard in terms of AC (bards can use shields), and even worse if you choose not to focus on dexterity. Arcane Armor training will help, but without mithril it's hard to get medium armor and also eliminate your spell failure- unless you plan only to use hexes, which don't suffer from spell failure (if I recall), though the DC won't rise once you get into EK.
A bard's AC isn't terrible at 5, though. Assuming a +1 chain shirt, 14 dexterity, and a +1 heavy shield you're looking at AC 20 with no spell failure. Arcane duelist gains access to medium/heavy armor at 10/16 (I think), but most people feel its too little, too late. Choosing dexterity as your primary offensive stat helps, and makes the bard a capable melee combatant in terms of staying power.
I still think you should consider Ranger, however. Scimitar, Breastplate, Heavy Shield, & Dex 14 nets you AC 20, higher if you enchant your armor or squeeze in a higher dexterity.
Really though, if you wanna focus on medium or lower armor you're going to have to take dexterity as a primary/strong secondary stat to remain competitive. Dex 18 fills in the strongest light armor (ignoring mithril), and dex 16 fills in the strongest medium armor (again, ignoring mithril).
