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All right, here we go! I have the physical copy of the rule book. I'm not the type of guy who can sit down and read it cover-to-cover, so let's make a character!
The concept: Peter Caligat is a studious human man whose skin induces hypnotic suggestibility in people. He uses handshakes to win people over. He follows a strong personal code of ethics, but is ultimately interested in tapping ancient power for his own uses. Peter has a talking cat familiar named Tuna, who always refers to him as "Boss". "Yeah, Boss!" "Sure thing, Boss!" "Uhh, Boss?" Tuna is very loyal and friendly cat, and has his own entirely non-magical charm.
Class: Since Peter has been built as a Wizard in both PF1 and 5e, he will be built as such here.
Ancestry: Human, of course. We can rule out half-elf and half-orc heritages, leaving Versatile and Skilled. Because we have a lot of starting skills from Int as a Wizard, we'll go with Versatile (get a general feat). We'll select that at the end. For our ancestry feat, let's grab another wizard feat. We won't really need it; Wizard's gets a ton of stuff at first level.
Background: Peter is a scholar in his background, so we'll go with Scholar. It grants training in Arcana, Nature, Occultism, or Religion, and the associated Assurance feat. Arcana might seem like the obvious choice, but Peter's research tends towards the occult and religious. In the end, Assurance does less on skills you've got a high ability score bonus on, so we'll pick Religion. Now, he can breezily recount the myth of one of Lamashtu's lovers, now buried beneath a mountain, whose power he seeks to seize.
Quick stop to tally ability scores:
Class: Int
Ancestry: Int, Dex
Background: Int, Cha
Free: Int, Dex, Cha, Con
Class: Wizard, as mentioned. His thesis is "Applications of Anthropomorphism in Familiar Bond Catalyzation: How Talking To Your Cat Helps Them Talk Back", since studying myths is usually left to bards. This gets Peter Tuna, and gets Tuna an extra daily familiar ability choice. Enchantment school, of course. A point of focus gets Peter a one-action enchantment to keep an opponent from harming him for a turn. Thanks to human, we get two feats. Let's grab Counterspell and Reach Spell. If we wanted to, we could skip one of these, grab the Familiar feat, and switch the thesis to something to do with spell prep, but Tuna's spending one familiar ability every day on talking, so let's get ourselves the extra abilities for focus regen and another cantrip, or maybe some defense. We don't have our handshake yet, so levels 2 and 4 will need to go towards Conceal Spell and Silent Spell.
What about that general feat? Well, the biggest thing Peter still needs is some focus on Diplomacy. Looking at the options, Glad-Hand seems like the only one really suited, and we'll need to wait until third level for that one. Let's take the opportunity to beef up our stats with Canny Acumen to raise Fortitude to Expert. We can retrain later into Toughness once Wizard grants Expert Fortitude.
It's getting late, but I might do some leveling or spells another time.
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Looking back at this, it's probably good to make a few tweaks. Peter's primary gimmick is his charming handshake, which PF2 doesn't yet do as well as PF1, at least for Wizard. (PF1 gave enchanters a touch SLA for rounds of Charm Monster, and had a prestige class, Enchanting Courtesan, that could reduce enchantments to touch spells for bonuses.) There is a Charming Touch first-level domain spell for Cleric that would be almost perfect (it only works against targets that might find you attractive). Fortunately, we can also just ask the GM if it'd be okay to swap- Wizards and Clerics seem to have focus spells that are comparable in power.
The only thing we have representing that right now is Concealed Spell at 2nd, upgrading to Silent Spell at 4th. Concealed Spell is a metamagic (one extra action) that lets you hide your spell manifestations, and then roll stealth to hide somatic/material components and deception to hide verbal components. Silent Spell is still one extra action, but it removes the verbal component from the spell, so you end up casting it in the same time as a regular spell! (This doesn't allow stacking metamagic, though.) You also get to add the benefits of Conceal Spell for free, now with no Deception check.
What's this mean for Peter? Well, I'm going to want to give him an unusually good stealth check. Since we're only boosting it because it helps a mechanic rather than because it suits his character directly, it'd be nice to get some additional expert-level skills. Counterspell isn't all that important for him, so let's swap his ancestry feat from "extra class feat" to "extra general feat" and his heritage from "extra general feat" to "extra skill trained, advancing at 5th" and pick Stealth. We could trade out some charisma bonus for extra dexterity, but it'd be nice to keep a decent charisma bonus.
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Stats:
10 Str, 14 Dex, 12 Con, 18 Int, 10 Wis, 14 Cha
Level 1:
- Assurance (Religion) skill feat: can always get 10 + level + proficiency on Religion checks.
- Familiar Thesis: Tuna the tabby cat. Daily choices are speech (Common), extra cantrip, and floating as desired. Tuna also acts as his Arcane Focus.
- Focus Spell: (see earlier posts)
- Arcane Focus: 1/day re-cast a spell.
- Reach Spell: +30ft. to spells.
- Canny Acumen (Fortitude): expert Fort saves
- Bonus human skill: stealth
Skills (9): Religion (background), Arcana (class), Stealth (heritage), Occultism, Diplomacy, Stealth, Deception, Society, Crafting
Lores (1): Academia
Level 2:
- Conceal Spell: roll Deception and Stealth to conceal spells
- Quick Identification
Level 3:
- Expert skill (Diplomacy)
- Gladhand (from general feat): roll diplomacy to improve attitude with -5 at the start of a social encounter; you can ignore a failure/crit failure by making a regular check at the end of a minute of conversation.
Level 4:
- Lie to Me: use Deception instead of Perception to tell when somebody's lying in a conversation with you (doesn't work for things like speeches where you can't trip them up)
- Silent Spell: Upgrade to Conceal spell; saves an action, makes spells silent, and now only requires a stealth roll.
Level 5:
Stats:
10 Str, 16 Dex, 14 Con, 19 Int, 12 Wis, 14 Cha
- Expert skill (Stealth) (From heritage)
- Expert skill (Arcana)
- Yay, the class increase to Reflex means that thanks to Canny Acumen, we are now expert in all saves!
- Clever Improviser: Use trained skills untrained, and get Untrained Improvisation: half-level to untrained skills and advances to full-level at 7th.