It always depends on what you want your character be able to do, and where you want the character's focus to lie. UnMonk is a rather good class (for a martial class), and gains a lot throughout the levels - most importantly, more attacks, flying kick range, and ki powers.
Scaled Fist isn't actually that different from a regular unMonk:
- You really want something to improve your will save (most commonly Steadfast Personality).
- You're guided towards unarmed (with Dragon Style bonus feats and must-pick-Elemental Fury), although Ascetic Style is still doable.
- You're pre-set to focus on different skills.
Of course, that also means Scaled Fist's gain is rather small:
- The better bonus feats are almost useless because a) you have to spend normal feats to patching up your will save, so there's no net gain, and b) the only one where ignoring the prereqs would be really nice (Shatter Defenses) only becomes selectable at the level where you want to pick the feat (Medusa's Wrath) that's the biggest reason you'd want it
- For skills, the Cha focus is completely wasted by being forced to dump Int on a 4 skill rank class, which means not many skill ranks to spare on diplomacy or UMD. That your only charisma based class skills are intimidate and perform (i.e. bluff, diplomacy, and UMD aren't) doesn't help.
- On it's own, there is nothing else that charisma does.
- Theoretically, it is possible to get charisma to attack and damage rolls, but you need five feats for it to work, and that's without anything to improve will saves.
Unless you want to multiclass, of have a specific character concept in mind, I wouldn't bother with it to be honest.
You can take Irrepressible instead of Steadfast Personality if you feel feat starved. It isn't quite as good, but it covers the will saves that make you hostile to your party members if you fail them.
What race do you want to play? I'd highly recommend something that gets a boost to both STR and CHA since you're gonna be hurting on point buy a bit. Tieflings and Aasimar are a good way to do this but there are some other races too that are more uncommon (Nagaji come to mind). Humans can do this too but you're giving up everything that makes Humans a good race for the privilege so not terribly recommended.
Steadfast personality uses the table not the text
I have absolutely no idea what you're trying to tell us.
for roleplaying purposes I don't want some stern ascetic, but something with more of a charming rogue vibe (without stepping on the actual rogue's turf).
Well, the good news is that the Rogue class is horrible for playing for playing a "charming rogue" (seriously, one of the worst classes you can pick for that), so that shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Mechanically I want a fighting character with some versatility (as in: not useless outside of battle)
Well, for a martial character, unMonk is pretty good at that, but don't expect miracles. Your skill ranks are pretty limited, especially since you can't push int.
I highly recommend grabbing Empty Body as a ki power early on (6th level, as Scaled Fist locks in your 4th levle ki powers). I presume I don't have to explain how the ability to fly, be invisible (and mostly unaffectable), and walk through walls, all at the same time, can be used for lots of crazy non-combat stuff.Other ki powers with non-combat uses: Ki Metabolism, Water Sprint, Abundant Step, Augury, Burst of Insight, Calm Spirit, Message, Psychic Reading, Gaseous Form, Object Reading, Remove Disease, Hypercognition, Neutralize Poison, Purge Spirit, Restoration, Share Memory, Retrocognition, Sessile Spirit, Entrap Spirit, Shadow Walk, Prognostication, Repress Memory, and Earthquake.
So far the group consists of a fighter, a rogue, and a sorceror, with something cleric-y possibly on the way. So the basic functions are covered.
Well, you shouldn't really have much trouble being a contributing party member when compared to a Fighter and a Rogue (I hope it's at least an unRogue). Just in case, no class is anything like "mandatory" in Pathfinder (especially not Rogue), I hope those players didn't pick the classes because they thought they had to,
I personally do not like Unchained Monk, but I especially dislike it for multiclassing.
Meanwhile, I LOVE it for Multiclassing. Sure you lose out on a good Will Save but you get full BAB growth and a Flurry of Blows that doesn't suck when you switch classes. If you never plan on getting style strikes you don't need to worry about unarmed progression since you can just wield a Templesword or something as your primary weapon. Even if you do decide to go unarmed, now that Handwraps can be enchanted we can just live with dealing 1d6 melee damage as our base weapon dice per attack since its so much cheaper to buy into Unarmed Strike builds.
While I hate to upset a pure Paladin/Monk multiclass because I love it dearly, I do have to point out that my favorite silly Dragon Disciple build revolves around taking two levels of Scaled Fist Monk, two levels of Divine Hunter Paladin, two levels of Draconic Blooded Sorcerer and then transitioning into Dragon Disciple at level 7. By taking the Favored Prestige Class feat before we actually enter Dragon Disciple, we can use our 7th level feat to take Prestigious Spell-caster to sync up with our Caster Levels so we never miss out on a spell-level. The end result is 16 caster levels giving us 8th level spellcasting and 14 BAB.
Taking only a single level of Scaled Fist Monk and taking a level of Sorcerer instead reduces our BAB by 1, gives up Evasion and a Monk Bonus Feat, but does give us three more spells known (One 7th, one 8th, and Form of the Dragon 3) and a third use of our breath weapon (17d6 DC 18+Cha).
steadfast personality table says "use your charisma modifier on saves against mind affecting effects". there was an errata that says use the table not the text
https://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1gw#v5748eaic9tmj
Steadfast Personality: In the current version (2nd printing errata), the table and the text are inconsistent. Does the feat apply on all Will saves, or on Will saves against mind-affecting effects?
The table is correct. It only applies against mind-affecting effects
I'm aware of this. It's still stronger than Irrepressible because "charms and compulsions" are always mind-affecting; everything Irrepressible covers is also covered by Steadfast Personality, and Steadfast Personality protects you against some things that Irrepressible does not (illusions like Color Spray, notably).
And the Champion of Irori prestige class is a wonderful option for this character (go Water dancer or Nornkith monk). It combines the best of both classes wonderfully.
That's not really true for unMonk. Flurry of blows is advanced by the prestige class, but Style Strikes and Ki Powers aren't. Even if you took another level of unMonk, you couldn't get a workable Flying Kick range, and since CoI levels don't count as Monk levels for prereqs, you can't even get an early Pummeling Charge. On the Paladin side, you only progress Smite Evil, none of the real goodies the class has (Lay on Hands progression, Mercies, spells).
@TheWombatStrikesAgain: This may sound strange, but I highly advise you to ignore everything Scott Wilhelm wrote. He made the exact same argument here and it became clear that not only has his idea of a monk character very little to do with what most people mean when they say "monk", but his entire position rests solely on unfounded subjective preferences and not at all based on anything factual (for instance, he still ignores the -2 penalty to Flurry). He seems to be rather obsessed with Still Mind and the crappy Monastic Legacy feat, as you can see from talking about it at lenght in this thread, when that's utterly irrelevant for a Scaled Fist.
I bet there are a lot of people that don't own the book that don't know that steadfast personality doesn't apply to all will saves, since sites like nethys and pfsrd only list the text portion.
Both d20pfsrd.com and Archives of Nethys use the FAQ'd version.