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Half-Elf Animal (Deer) Instict barbarian.
1- Shield Block, Class feat doesn't matter
2- Sentinel Dedication for heavy armor
4- Steel Skin Skill feat. Class feat doesn't matter, probably Fast Movement, though.
6- Armor Specialist, Attack of Opportunity
8- Bastion Dedication
9- Monk Dedication Via Multitalented
10- Quick Shield Block
12- Flurry of Blows
14- Furious Grab
So basically, you combine Heavy Armor with a sheild for AC while still swinging a D12 weapon with reach (starting level 7). Your "Weapon" also has the Grapple trait, so you can immobilize enemies at 10 feet. If they don't have reach, they can't even touch you.
And while you have 1 less AC than a sword + shield fighter, you're still dealing much more damage, have more HP, better saves and damage resistence. Also some temp HP when you rage. You could even drop AoO and get Renewed Vigor for some more staying power.
Monk and Flurry is not striclty needed but it does improve your action economy by a decent amount. Could also get Predator's Pounce instead or in addition to it.
And honestly, even Bastion is more Icing than really needed. You can just go with Sentinel, Reneuwed Vigor and maybe mighty Bulwark or something. The important part is being a heavily armored Deer Instinct Barbarian with a shield.
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I've done a solo frontline Swashbuckler. You get Dueling Parry, Buckler Expertise, or Nimble Dodge. You choose between Fencer with Goading Feint or Gymnast with Disarming Flair. From there you can grab things like Guardian's Deflection, Attack of Opportunity, and Vivacious Bravado.
You end up quite difficult to take down.
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If by "tank" you mean heavily armored vehicle that can more forward and put pressure on the enemy, while exerting control over the area, then yes, fighters do this pretty nicely.
IMO tanking by just standing there and (not) getting hit isn't great in Pathfinder. Whenever you're fighting monsters above your level you're going to get hit some of the time, and get crit some of the time. That's okay, if your AC is good and your HP is good and enemies die quickly enough, you'll make it through. 2E characters can be pretty tanky in that sense.
I think champions and fighters are particularly good at tanking right from level 1 because they not only have good defenses, they also have a way to prevent enemies from ignoring them and walking on to hit the wizard in the face. Champions use their reactions to punish the enemy whenever an ally gets hit. Fighters have attacks of opportunity.
Ironically for champions, their class works the best when they're not the only one in melee, since if their champion reaction never gets triggered, that's a comatose class feature. Fighters have less trouble with that - you could say that their main class feature is having +2 to hit and that's a big deal.
I think for both of them (as well as monks), it's a good idea to encourage at least one other player in the party to also build for melee. A fighter and champion playing hammer and anvil together for example. Because if only one PC is in the fray they're still going to be in trouble from getting targeted by all the enemies. With enough monsters the GM can find enough natural 20s to make it hurt. But with two PCs the pressure eases up a lot.
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To be honest, if you just want a character who can survive at the frontline, you can just slap Sentinel and/or Bastion on a variety of characters.
A Warpriest in heavy armor can take a beating if he has time (and resources) to heal himself back up again before takign too much damage. At the mid levels, you can gain a good amount of temp HP each round from Replenishment of War.
A Bard could wear heavy armor + shield and use Inspire Defense or Dirge to increase his effective AC. In theory at level 20, you can get Marshal for Inspiring Stance while having Inspire Defense running permanently from Eternal Composition and even add Dirge of Doom into the mix, preferably with Lingering Performance. Shifts the power in a fight by roughly two levels in your party's favor.
A Mutagenist in Full Plate + Shield and with Juggernaut mutagens should also be able to take a beating. Having a good supply of stuff like Mistform Elixirs doesn't hurt either.
A Ranger works fine with sword and shield. Get Flurry + Twin Takedown if you want to use Shield Bash. Or just go Precision + Gravity Weapon. I'm currently playing a dwarven Ranger wielding a d10 reach weapon with Precision + Gravity and the damage is pretty Decent. Shouldn't be much worse with a d8 1handed weapon. But you'll probably REALLY want Reactive Shield on such a build since Hunt Prey and casting Gravity Weapon isn't exactly action economy friendly.
A Ruffian Rogue could also work, I guess. But I haven't looked into that racket enough to comment on it.
A wit Swashbuckler I think could make a very good tank. Their exemplary finisher gives a -2 on attack rolls against the target and they can get a +2 AC from Dueling Parry and the associated stance. They have good saves and good movement. I could see them doing a sort of dancing, finisher move, tanking role while insulting the living crap out of the enemy.
A warpriest, as well as a bard, might take some hit from an enemy of the same level, but might be oneshotted by 2 critical hits in the same round ( and against a lvl +3/4 they are far from being rare on a non monk/champ, given the -2 ac and the low hp pool ).
Well, neither the fighter nor the swashbuckler have a big advantage over a caster when it comes to AC. Assuming the same armor and dex, a swashbuckler has the same AC as a caster for the first 18 (!!!) levels. The fighter gets Expert 2 levels earlier and surpasses the caster after 16 levels, but even that isn't an advantage for like 80% of the adventuring career. And I've seen our shield-fighter drop from level+3 enemy crits pretty often. Usually with so much damage that his extra HP didn't help at all.
Still, the lower HP is an issue of course and you probabaly shouldn't try tanking with a Kobold Bard. But choosing one of the studiert ancestries goes a long way. Dwarf, Unbreakable(-er) Goblin or a hold-scarred Ork make for sturdy characters. I "upgraded" my half-orc witch to full orc during the planning of the character and those 4 extra HP left me standing multiple times in the first few levels.
All that being said, a martial 10 HP class will of course be better at face tanking than any caster, as it should be. I just don't think the difference is quite as insurmountable as you might think.
But anyway, I think the Barb I posted earlier is the best build I can offer for what you are trying to do.
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A wit Swashbuckler I think could make a very good tank. Their exemplary finisher gives a -2 on attack rolls against the target and they can get a +2 AC from Dueling Parry and the associated stance. They have good saves and good movement. I could see them doing a sort of dancing, finisher move, tanking role while insulting the living crap out of the enemy.
With thier ability to debuf the enemy, they do make an OK tank
Not a character who can survive frontline, but one who can take the boss on him ( and eventually another enemy ).
This depends heavily from "how dangerous you are" for the boss perception if it's an intelligent creature.
A healer can easily be threatened as most danger enemy for a boss after it heals someone. Same could be said about damage casters when they cause tremendous damage against a boss.
The main concept behind good champions is that they can protect and counter enemies thats tries to focus their attention agains such danger party member to make it notice that is inefficient to try to kill the healer/damage dealer of the party before the champion.
Thinking this way is hardly to use an alternative class as tanker hole. But not is impossible.
A warpriest, as well as a bard, might take some hit from an enemy of the same level, but might be oneshotted by 2 critical hits in the same round ( and against a lvl +3/4 they are far from being rare on a non monk/champ, given the -2 ac and the low hp pool ).
Unless the enemy has some kind of Deadly or Fatal into it's critical, or your char is already low HP, it's unlikely thats 2 crits would kill your char.
Imagine the following situation. A lvl 7 party that's facing a GOLIATH SPIDER lvl 11, that has +24 in melee attack and causes 2d12 + 12 of damage causing 23 as mid damage per attack.
At this level your tank probably already have +1 full plate armor and a Sturdy Shield with at last hardness 10. So you AC is about 30 (10 +7 from level +7 from armor +4 from specialist +2 from shield).
This champion will be a human and Con +4, so it's total HP is 106.
The chance of this spider to do a crit againts this char is rolling 16 or more, it's about 25% of crit chance from a monster 4 levels above of you. But this is the chance for 1º atk only, because of MAP the 2º and 3º attack back to natural crit.
So considering it crit the first attack and the second just hit normally. After blocking the second attack with the shield this champ will take 59 of damage and will stay with 47 of HP.
If we do the same thing with a fighter with same stats, the main difference is that's AC is 28 instead of 30, so the 1º crit up to 35% and 2º up from natural to 10%. Still hard for this enemy do more damage than they to the champ. But let's consider that the second hit roll a 19 and make a crit too, you will take 82 dmg and will be with 24 HP, but still alive and stand.
In both cases you will ask for heal to avoid being killed next turn. There's no much difference at all and reme,ber that receive 2 sequential crits is rare even to so strongest foe.
The main difference happens is that if the enemy is a little more intelligent than a spider, it can concentrate their attacks on weak party member, and here where the champ really makes the diference, because it can protect their allies and even counter attack in response.
As interesting alternatives to tank you can also do the classic pre 1e warpriest (just put a heavy armor feat) and even having less AC at high levels (that you can solve with a Sentinel or Champion Dedication) or a Battle Oracle with Shield Block feat, or even better a Cosmos Oracle with Medium Armor Feat + Sentinel Dedication + Shield Block feat (so you will combo you 2+half lvl resistance against physical damage with shield hardness) and as a healer you probably be the primary target from most enemies, but you also can heal yourself automatically protecting the other party members.
Deny Advantage is a source of AC vs enemies of the same level or lowerwhixh usually applies to the adds bosses usually have. Hence I'm throwing the Ruffian Rogue with the bastion dedication into the ring.
Versatile Heritage or Viking Shieldbearer Ancestry feat for Humans get you shield block at lvl 1 and unconventional weaponry gets you an agile trip weapon in the Kama or Kukri.
Alternatively you could pick up the Duelist dedication to extend a Parry AC buff to a adjacent allies.
@YuriP: Calculations are quite different imo:
To be honest I miss my avg calc of damage too, is not 23 as I said, but 25. Anyway will no make diference for that example.
For example, a lvl 9 warpriest vs a lvl 12 or 13 boss:For Example, a lvl 13 Blue Dragon would deal:
3d8 +12 piercing +1d12 electricity.
Average damage 27+7 = 34
Average critical hit = 34x2 = 68
68x2= 132 damageThe warpriest might have 98 hp ( +2 const ) or 107 ( +2 const toughness ) or 116 hp ( +3 const + toughness ).
A shield block would have reduced the damage by 10 ( Sturdy lesser shield ), and then the warpriest would have gone down.
Any 10hp/lvl instead would have had 134 hp + 10 from shieldblock.
A lvl 12 copper dragon would have done even more damage
3d8+12 piercing plus 2d8 acid = Average 27+10 = 37 ( 74 on a critical hit. x2= 148 ).
I am not saying for sure that the warpriest would have gone down and the fighter would have survived, because average damage is not a thing when it comes to RNG, but it is true that the odds of being alive would have been on the combatant.
I completely forget about toughness!
But against a Blue Dragon we don't even need to double crit to kill someone. If the Jaws + Draconic Frenzy hits you can easily one-turn kill anyone depending of RNG of the damage! 😝
To be honest if a dragon crits I will be way more worry about it can breath again than the afrait of kill the tanker. 🤣
Have you considered alternative champion/monk builds instead of looking for alternative classes? Might not be the most optimal choice but could make those classes more interesting.
Maybe a shield-wielding mountain stance Champion? Or a full plate gorilla stance champion?
Or a (Temple) Sword and Shield Monk using the otherwise rarely utilized Ironblood Stance and Surge? That resistance to all damage is juicy and I think it should stack with the damage reduction of shield block.
And I assume you know about the Stick-y monk control build with a Bo Staff? That one's a personal favorite of mine with lots of options how to spend your turn.
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Well, that bolded bit is the rub, isn't it? All casters will need to invest a general feat and a class/archetype feat into getting heavy armor to compare with fighter. Half of them will need to invest a class/archetype feat to compare with swashbuckler. Hitting the Dex cap/Str req is also a not-insignificant threshold for many casters. I'm not saying it's impossible or even really that difficult to meet the martials' AC, but there's still a noticeable difference in resource expenditure.
Well, neither the fighter nor the swashbuckler have a big advantage over a caster when it comes to AC. Assuming the same armor and dex, a swashbuckler has the same AC as a caster for the first 18 (!!!) levels. The fighter gets Expert 2 levels earlier and surpasses the caster after 16 levels, but even that isn't an advantage for like 80% of the adventuring career. And I've seen our shield-fighter drop from level+3 enemy crits pretty often. Usually with so much damage that his extra HP didn't help at all.
With the possible exception of the Bard, pretty much all caster classes have rather weak class feats on average. I don't find it hard to spend half or more of them on Archetypes. And if you go medium or heavy armor, you don't really need Dex either, so you can focus on getting your Strength up as your secondary ability score.
The only caster classes without any armor make poor tanks anyway, because they are stuck with 6 HP per level. Those who already have armor need either only Sentinel Dedication or Sentinel plus a single general feat for full scaling heavy armor proficiency. That's really not that hard to do.
And you still have all class features of your base class, which can include 10th level spellcasting or other Shenanigans like Mutagens, Sneak Attack, Hunt Prey, Rage and so on. None of those rely on your feats so much that you can't sacrifice one class feat (plus maybe one general feat).
Other than the Fighter, Monk and Champion, you need to pick up heavy armor anyway if you really want to maximize your AC. Even a Swashbuckler would have more AC in Full Plate. That's not to say you NEED heavy armor to make a good tank, mind you. But it does help of course.
So yeah, I stand by my assessment that Monk and Champion are hardly the only classes that can be hard to kill. They just need fewer resources to get there. Everyone has to decide for themself if the investment on another class is worth it. But the possibility is definitely there.