I've been playing with two builds, Elf Wizard/MC Champion and Elf Fighter/MC Wizard (but can swap out practically any caster for the Wizard bit. Can swap the ancestry around on the Fighter first one too.
My version of the martial-caster has always been more armored than the pf1e magus, so that was part of the criteria for how I approached the two options. Getting to medium or better, heavy armor early on was critical.
The Fighter MC Wizard looks like a build I'm super excited to play. Gets good proficiencies (of course), AC and to Hit stay strong throughout. High Strength - heavy armor + elf speed + nimble + fleet, you have a very fast agile, armored warrior. Most of your feats go into your spell casting, but I think bespell weapon is always tempting but probably delayed until later in the build -- doesn't work with cantrips and you won't have haste early on to be able to reliably setup cast, strike w/o needing to move)) Your spell DC's will lag, but dim door is still great, wall spells for controlling/separating mobs, some of the fighter mobility feats. Basically you can probably safely make a beeline for backline casters/range and drop a wall/cloud spell between you and the party. You wouldn't want to solo a boss this way, but a supporting glass cannon is your primary prey. You can still count on your martial DPR to take down the foe once you've isolated them. Elf works best IMO (Seer elf for extra cantrip, speed), gnome can probably work close to as well.
The Elf Wizard/MC Champion, on style and feats looks like fun, but when I revisited the numbers, it was at -6 to hit relative to the Fighter/MC wizard (-4 from expert versus legendary weapons, -2 from needing to split some initial stat boosts to CHA instead of STR, those could be remedied by going Sorcerer instead of Wizard on reflection now), and -2 on AC (expert versus master). Champion of course for the armor proficiencies starting at level 2, Elf for canonical knightly weapons that have progression through expert via ancestry feats)....
You can bypass Champion cha requirement with half-elf taking the human Multitalented feat at 9th then picking up the armor at 14th if that's what you took champion for and not the early level proficiencies.
The downside of comparing anything to Fighter/anything, especially at level 20, is that fighter is way ahead of everyone, even martials. Everyone else seems to cap out around 11, with martials getting to master and casters to expert. I doubt the game is balanced for fighters, so I'm not sure being -2 to hit behind other martials is that bad. But yeah, if it's based against fighter, everyone loses.
The Elf Wizard/MC Champion, on style and feats looks like fun, but when I revisited the numbers, it was at -6 to hit relative to the Fighter/MC wizard (-4 from expert versus legendary weapons, -2 from needing to split some initial stat boosts to CHA instead of STR, those could be remedied by going Sorcerer instead of Wizard on reflection now), and -2 on AC (expert versus master). Champion of course for the armor proficiencies starting at level 2, Elf for canonical knightly weapons that have progression through expert via ancestry feats)....I don't know if it helps what you're aiming to do, but you might want to look at Half-Elf Fighter / MC Wizard with multi-talented at 9 into Champion. That is, if it's important for you to wear Heavy Armor at any real proficiency.
You can even take your Ancestry Feats to make you more elf-like!
Ancestry: Human
Heritage: Half-Elf
Class: WizardClass 2: Fighter Dedication
Ancestry 9: Multi-Talented (Champion)
Class 12: Expert Wizard Spellcasting
Class 14: Divine Armor ExpertFour feats gets you to Expert in Martial Weapons and Heavy Armor without requiring more than the strength needed. :)
Not really what I'm looking for (since it has no armor proficiency until you get to level 9), but if making a one shot/high level character it could be interesting. Does let you stay int-based caster which is nice.
But as I think this thread has highlighted, almost everyone looks for a different mix of mixing martial/caster. I think PF2 is doing a great job of providing that flexibility, if you're able to be a bit flexible about _how_ you achieve your desired mix.
Not really what I'm looking for (since it has no armor proficiency until you get to level 9), but if making a one shot/high level character it could be interesting. Does let you stay int-based caster which is nice.
But as I think this thread has highlighted, almost everyone looks for a different mix of mixing martial/caster. I think PF2 is doing a great job of providing that flexibility, if you're able to be a bit flexible about _how_ you achieve your desired mix.
You could pick up the Armor Proficiency Feats at the start through general or ancestry feats and then retrain them out as soon as you do end up getting to 9.
Alternatively, you could go Fighter w/ MC Wizard which may give you a better bang for your buck for what it is you're trying to do.