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Yes. His fort save would be solid. I very rarely say something without any basis. I didn't say best, or superior, I said solid.Archeologist's Luck applies to saves. His fort would be pretty solid.No; it'll be a bit better than a regular bard's; it'll be nowhere close to a barbarian, a paladin, or a dwarf fighter.
"Solid" isn't good enough if you're routinely in melee with a lousy AC (and a 2hPA's will be). Being "solid" 75% percent of the time means you're poisoned-or-worse and about to get wrecked 25% of the time. So, you really do want "best" if you're going to be a melee front-liner.
A dwarf fighter is likely to have a fort save of +6 or +7 versus poison at 1st level, and a raging human barbarian +4 or +5. The dwarf fighter will have exceptional AC and about half again as many hitpoints; the barbarian will have almost double hitpoints and do almost double damage in a 2hPA capacity, as well as access to automatic rage powers like Guarded Life. The barbarian is proficient in martial polearms; the archeologist is not. The fighter and the barbarian want to be attacked (because they've built up feat-chains exploiting AoOs in such situations; the archeologist does not want to be in close melee at 10th level.
Numbers (I won't bother checking) which instantly collapse if the Ark ever does fail a save to acquire a sucl condition on a fairly sizable list (or goes unconscious), immediately ending his luck bonus.First level: 2 vs 2
Fourth level: 4 vs 4
Eighth level: 6 vs 6
Twelfth level: 8 vs 8
You sound like you've had some bad play experiences that you are still holding onto. If you're getting too emotionally attached, I'd recommend taking a step back for a bit and reassessing.
Oh, please; the "bad experiences" I have at PFS tables are watching an endless succession of players bring perfectly good skill-monkey classes whom they've mutilated into glass cannon 2hPA roles while starving the abilities their classes were designed for. They putter into the mid-levels becoming increasingly useless, then get their faces torn off. Then they come here and wonder aloud why their strength rogues got slaughtered; they whine that the class -- rather than their build strategy -- was suboptimal. But then they see a new class of skill-monkey ("Archeologist!") with rogue flavoring, instantly forget why their last character croaked, and build the very same high-strength 2hPA-role human that didn't work for them previously in a d8 light-armor/no-martial class.
-- Which is why I'm counseling against the 2hPA role. If you're going to 2hPA and be a real asset to the party, make a real tank and don't mess around. (A "reach-cleric" or some such is one of the few corner-case exceptions of classes that can handle themselves deliberately seeking out melee at higher levels...and even the cleric might be pushing it, as I've seen a fair number of those go down.)
An archer archeologist, otoh, would be pretty good. He jacks his DEX, takes Weapon Finesse as his only combat feat, and otherwise concentrates on being an awesome support character ("Magic? Hey, everybody; I have *spells*!"). Equipment is a nice shortbow or repeating crossbow, and an Agile/Keen rapier for emergencies or infrequent coup de grace opportunities. His AC is high and he generally avoids foolishness in combat, meaning him being rendered unconscious (or deceased) dead weight is seldom an issue.