if the alignment/code will work with the party, make a paladin. 2hander fighting is not real feat intensive, so you can do it well with other melee classes. the pally can take hits like a champ thanks to being able to heal himself as a swift action, and smite will take his damage from good to great against the BBEG. put your Str and Cha as high as you can- Dex will help with AC and open up combat reflexes (especially useful if you use a reach weapon), and Con can be helpful but unnecessary (have +Cha to fort save, and swift heals to compensate for lower hp).
Heavy Hitter? Damage Mitigation? Sounds like a barbarian or fighter to me.
Barb may seem less defensive but Invuln rager gets you DR. and More HP to soak the damage. And if you worry about barb being to "simple" to play just look at rage cycling and 1/rage powers and finding gear to mitigate the fatigue. It can be a fun type to play.
While i would never dissuade someone from going Pally lets face it, its not a class for everyone. so if role playing the Holy warrior(gasp) is not your thing, I suggest the Defender of the weak. There is a fighter optimization guide linked off the class guide sticky that basically teaches you different fighter types and the defender of the weak fighter is a heavy AC sword and board shield basher with like a long sword. i built one who did well several campaigns ago with a half orc using the toothy racial trait. he had 3 attacks a round before he got iterative attacks. he had tank AC and dealt damage with melee weapons like it was going out of style. with feats like step up to keep people from 5' stepping away and shield slam to give him free bull rush attack he kept the ranged and caster characters clean. Look up the fighter class guide and try defender of the weak. its feat intensive with TWF and shield bash etc. but its a lot of fun!
Fun fact about having SKY high ACs. People ignore you and go for squishies. But to someone without a good heal check cant tell that the raging barbarian is any worse for wear than he was 60 damage ago.
If you do go fighter use your bonus feats to make reach weapons super awesome. Dwarf with a helmet for up close threats.
Heavy duty front line combatant? Just roll a paladin, don't even bother with the shield. Between full plate and paladin's damage mitigation you won't miss the +2 to hit. Grab a 2 handed weapon, reach or typical great-sword both work fine. The idea behind going melee is not just soaking attacks (tank isn't a role) its dealing damage. Being able to soak attacks is part of being able to deal damage (you don't need to stop all of it, only enough to buy time to get the killing done).
If you don't want the paladin (due to party or GM reason, some people have a fallen paladin fetish). Then a fighter specializing in 2 handed combat is best. You can go for an archetype, but they do give up some nice things for being more one dimensional. Still worth looking into though.
Alternatively you can avoid the full BAB classes and go combat cleric. A cleric of Gorum (negative energy) when built correctly can almost keep up with a fighters damage ability. Rage domain gives some nice bonuses, as does channeled smite and proper use of buff spells. Tactics domain gives you a nice potential boost to going first (important for buff reliant builds) and eventually the free use of any combat feat. A combat cleric is only a little bit behind a fighter in BAB, with buffing its not hard to make up that deficit. In terms of damage mitigation, offense often removes the need for defense. And if nothing else you can cast cure spells after combat. One thing I have been looking into is using the aasimar specific feat chain that lets you pull and push the enemy with channels. Its a bit of a trap in terms of dpr but honestly its actually not a bad "tanking" ability since you can use it to pull in enemies into melee range while doing mild damage.
i was really considering a sword and board 2 weapon fighter feat and sheild bash or slam to give me the extra attacks and the feat where it allows me to use my sheild w/o deducting my ac after my turn. i would like to bea able to deal a fair amount of dmg while still able to tank for the party. any ideas or suggetions? we already have a paladin who almost broke our group apart because of his diety rogathian i believe( the one who says sacrifice is good if they commit and evil deed)
Tanking isn't really a role. Damage mitigation is, but anybody can do it (and should) and AC buffing at the expense of offensive ability is a terrible sacrifice you don't have to make.
2-3 feats and -2 to each of your attacks is not a small sacrifice, especially since you are doing it for +2 AC and a 1d3+1/2str attack. Use those feats for other things that have more value. Heck expertise + dodge gets you similar AC without so much offensive loss and gets you a good way towards the spring attack and whirlwind attack feat path (not to mention all the other expertise related feats). In comparison the TWF+shield group of feats spend all of their efforts in penalty mitigation + minor AC buffs. Removing negatives vs adding positives...
There's a pretty good thread about the Mamoth Lord Prestige Class. If that ain't a front line fighter I don't know what is. I'll see if I can find the link.
i was really considering a sword and board 2 weapon fighter feat and sheild bash or slam to give me the extra attacks and the feat where it allows me to use my sheild w/o deducting my ac after my turn. i would like to bea able to deal a fair amount of dmg while still able to tank for the party. any ideas or suggetions? we already have a paladin who almost broke our group apart because of his diety rogathian i believe( the one who says sacrifice is good if they commit and evil deed)
It can work moderately well imo, play it like a TWF fighter with a few more feats (shield bash). Luckily, fighters have a fair amount of feats if nothing else.
Still, if you have a melee paladin, you may feel a bit superfluous. You can try to go heavy on defense (but not at the expense of defense) and use antagonize to focus the heat on you, I guess.