So I'm trying to stat out a character that is at once a top notch fighter, AND who has tons of skills (knows lots of languages, some weird lore, geography, and of course has quite a few physical skills maxed out) so I need a lot of skill points, even if the guy has 18 INtelligence...
Problem, the guy has no spells nor any trait that would make him a ranger (animal companion, fighting styles, favored anemy...) and I'd like something that is good for languages and possibly lore. Would there be a fighter archetype with tons of skills, or a bard archetype that swaps magic and performance abilities for fighting ?
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Your best bet is the lore warden archetype, freshly reprinted in the Adventurer's Guide. It's pretty much exactly what you're looking for. ^_^
If you need to fluff out your class skills further and get a little defensive boost, a one-level dip into inspired blade swashbuckler might not be a bad idea.
Actually, the dip will be into basic fighter, as the character is envisioned as able to wear heavy armor (and his barbarian or rogue levels won't provide that, and the guy is no paladin)... there are no rules against multiclassing between a basic class and its archetypes, I guess...I'll have to recheck.
Thanks for the tip, as a non PFS player, I'd never have thought of that particular archetype.
You can't multiclass fighter with fighter archetype.
Heavy armor proficency can also be provided by a dip into cavalier, the armored hulk barbarian archetype or a feat.
No problem for that, thanks again, I'd forgotten about the cavalier too, but given that by the time he gets heavy armor proficiency, the guy is high nobility, that makes sense.
There is also Student of War, if you're not opposed to prestige classes.
Perfect scholar monk gets bardic knowledge - though no armor
The investigator can trade out alchemy for a luck pool, thus making it the skills guy and with the level dip for heavy armor. Investigators are great combatants, and great at skills, getting 6+int of skills.
If you want heavy armor proficiency and a bunch of knowledge class skills, the Battle Host Occultist is a reasonable choice. You'll be down a BAB, but pick Transmutation as your school and you'll have standard action bane a few times a day and a +2 enhancement bonus to a physical stat.
You'll also get Arcana, Local, Nobility, Engineering, History, Planes, and Religion as class skills, as well as Linguistics, Spellcraft, and Disable Device.
Perfect scholar monk gets bardic knowledge - though no armor
The investigator can trade out alchemy for a luck pool, thus making it the skills guy and with the level dip for heavy armor. Investigators are great combatants, and great at skills, getting 6+int of skills.
When talking of a luck pool, you rever to the Sleuth archetype, right? Funny, the character in question is foremost a warrior, but yeah, the sleuth deeds go well with what he can do... might experiment with that.
I have an investigator, he's foremost a warrior too.
start with str 18, trait for armor expert for mithral armor and mutagen.
If you want take a dip of heavy armor rage and the extra rage feat and you have TONS of combat boost from that.
now you wont be as good without alchemy since you'd be missing out on heroism and barkskin, but you'll still be good.
Caster is excluded, I'm working on a very defined character, and he abhors anything even smacking of sorcery, kind of the AD&D1 barbarian, except he has only a few levels as a barb, and a lot of levels of something else, and the ideal something else is what I'm looking for, given his huge linguistic accomplishment, and the fact he's not as ignorant as his barbarian/fighter trappings would make one think.
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Slayer is a good fit for this character, it's a ranger (6+int skill ranks) without the nature theme. You can use a feat for heavy armor.
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You know what, you might have nailed it down... after all, cross class skills don't cost more to take than class skills in this game, and I'm not sure the bonus for class skills reflects on the number of languages you know...
So, no regret about having linguistics as a crossclass skill, even if it'll have to be maxed out or close to.
Fun fact: the Slayer's Studied Target class feature gives you a bonus to knowledge checks when trying to figure out info about the creature you have studied, so it also supports the "knows stuff about using swords and also a lot of other stuff" theme.