The character I had the most fun with in D&D 5e was Dwarven Cleric of the Forge Domain. I enjoyed how his AC was among the best in the game given his bonus magic item, heavy armor and shield proficiency, and soul of the forge ability. I also didn't focus much on healing with my character often using the phrase, "I'm not that kind of Cleric!" in response to requests for anything other than mission-critical in battle healing. His favored spells were Guiding Bolt, Command, Silence, Hold Person, Spiritual Guardians, and Shape Stone. The use of Channel Divinity to turn gold into tools with a ritual was also handy for creative RP solutions to problems. I liked being able to open up with a hold person attempt or guiding bolt before wading into melee with spiritual guardians up and rarely taking hits that forced a concentration check.
Is anything remotely similar possible in PF2?
I'd ask about my Loxodon (Humanoid Elephant) Warlock but I'm pretty sure that entire playstyle is off the table in PF2.
A dwarven war priest with a shield, a high wis, and the bastion archetype could be a lot of fun for you. I think you'd have a lot of fun with calm emotions and if you focus your skills on crafting and athletics, the ability to shield block, and then get a free disarm attempt is a nasty mean ability to have as a reaction. If you do that on the enemy's turn, they basically are stuck with a -2 to penalty to attack for the rest of their turn, and have an increased chance of actually getting disarmed.
The wealth domain will be fun for you and both of its powers will fit your build idea. Powerful defense in PF2 is as much about damage resistance/avoidance as it is pure Max AC. Worrying about concentration checks is much less of an issue in PF2.
The warpriest and champion in the party I GM for prevent an obscene amount of damage between the two of them.
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In my opinion, a Cloistered Cleric with the Champion archetype gets you most of the way there on its own. (14th level feat for Expert heavy armor kinda stinks, but it's overall less hassle than Armor Proficiency and/or Sentinel, and offers space for nice defensive general feats.) Pick a god with a melee weapon, and perhaps a Harm font if you want to focus on not-healing. Grab equivalent control/support spells to the ones you liked, or other useful ones (not much to emulate Guiding Bolt, that spell was kind of absurd). Grab a Champion feat here or there to bolster your melee, maybe Talisman Dabbler to fit the Forge aesthetic, Traveler's Any-Tool or one of those feats that let you avoid tools, and there you go.
For Warlock, go with Witch or Bard depending on the specifics of what you liked about it ("that playstyle" is overly broad given Warlock is one of the few 5E classes with significant customization). Oracle also has a few all-day sorts of abilities.
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You might also consider a Champion, leaning on either the Deity Domain/Advanced Deity Domain, to get some of the casting flavor, or a cleric dedication for more.
It depends if your mentioning of 'favored spells' are 'preferred spells when not attacknig with weapons' or 'preferred spells, and always casting'. If the latter you want a spellcasting base class. If the former the mix-in of a dedication can be enough, but your spell DCs would be lower so the control type spells wouldn't be as strong as you're used to.
I think the War Priest w/ Bastion or Sentinel sound more correct, but its worth comparing the the Champion chassis just in case.
I don't have access to his character sheet at the moment, but let me see if I can add a few details into the mix to help paint a clearer picture of who Uthrik Stonetumble was.
He was originally a smith, a proper god-fearing dwarf, but not of the clergy. He initially viewed his calling as a burden as it keeps him on the road too often to craft anything truly grand. Where we ended off, at level 7, he'd come around some and used shape stone to craft a small temple just outside of the city the adventure was set around.
He was gruff and not especially charismatic, but gave people nicknames (often more than one per person) based on their deeds and gave names to the magical weapons he found or forged. He was opinionated (who would have guessed that xD) but didn't step up to offer his opinion outside of the party that often.
He was more martial focused usually casting one or two spells max before wading into the thick of things in support of our multiclass barbarian/bard, though he was flexible and had a crossbow he could also hang back and defend the party warlock who was our main source of DPS. He didn't focus on healing but would prepare a few in low-level slots (1st and 2nd level) for emergencies.
He could make life a pain for any encounters with lots of weaker creatures, and let our warlock save his AoE for the hard encounters, due to his spiritual guardians. If he had to fight at range he kept a guiding bolt or two ready, along with command, and a hold person or two. He prefered his crossbow to his cantrips and his hammer to casting himself to exhaustion as it's better to have a spell or two in reserve than run on empty after a few battles.
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I'd think you would like create the closest concept to that with a Champion character, potentially with a multiclass cleric archetype (or go Divine Sorcerer) to potentially grab some spell casting slots.
Sounds like the Ritual would be something to ask the GM for a similar type of ritual for you to know in 2nd edition. I don't know of one specifically like that, but Rituals certainly do exist and can be done by anyone with the required skill, which in this case, presumably Religion.
Spells that are save or suck, such as Hold Person (2nd ed would be Paralyze which isn't divine, unless a god gives it to you as a domain spell) generally have the Incapacitate trait on it making it less effective against your upper end opponents. Also second edition isn't one where you stack on a whole bunch of pre-buffs and wade through untouched. If that is the part of it you are wanting to recreate, that would likely be hard unless fighting opponents that are consistently less powerful than yourself.
You might enjoy spells like Spiritual Weapon. Giving you that spiritual smashing sort of vibe.
Due to the availability of non-magical healing between fights, you should be able to choose to generally only use your healing powers in combat if that is how you want to go with it.
If you really want to go all out on the Cleric side, you can look at the Cleric with Warpriest doctrine, and look at Sentinel and/or Bastion archetypes to up your ability to use either heavier armor or improve your shield use.
If you (and the rest of the players) want a wider range of choices for your character, you might have the GM look over the Free Archetype optional rules or Double Class Feats, and potentially use Paragon Ancestry rules. The way the rules work, having a few more feats of your level and less doesn't generally give you that much more power, primarily just versatility.
Also second edition isn't one where you stack on a whole bunch of pre-buffs and wade through untouched. If that is the part of it you are wanting to recreate, that would likely be hard unless fighting opponents that are consistently less powerful than yourself.
Neither is 5th, he just enjoyed great AC due to having a +1 shield in addition to his +1 plate armor due to his class feature and then he got an extra +1 to AC at 6th level due to a class feature. That would have fallen off at higher levels but at low and mid-levels he was a tough nut to crack without any pre-combat buffing.
You might enjoy spells like Spiritual Weapon. Giving you that spiritual smashing sort of vibe.
I never used it much in 5e as there were better options but if it's the best PF2 can do I'd take it.
Due to the availability of non-magical healing between fights, you should be able to choose to generally only use your healing powers in combat if that is how you want to go with it.
You've got that backward he didn't heal in combat unless he was forced to. He saved his slots for topping people off post-fight or, more often, for when somebody took a big hit. I have no interest in playing a heal bot or party buffer style cleric.
Battle Oracle might also work. High charisma, though I suppose if you just concentrate on buff spells and maybe summons, you could get away with low charisma.
The dwarf basket-weaving swordsmith (it was a forum joke that got out of hand) cleric I played in the playtest was built along similar conceptual lines.
I revised her as a battle oracle for fun, and she seems to work well enough.
Edit: I see your spell selection now, and that is an issue. You need a high casting stat to use those spells effectively. I think Battle Oracle is mechanically closer to what you want to play, it is a charisma based class, so that would be a big change for you.
I might personally be willing (were I the DM) to let someone swap to Intelligence from Charisma, which would even fit with the crafting vibe, but wisdom is a bit too powerful.
Edit: Just got hit by a blinding flash of the obvious. Cha and Int are the least strong stats in PF2, but are some of the easiest to roleplay having a high or low value in those stats.
No conclusions, just seemed interesting to me.
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If you want to be the holy guy w/ AC & melee prowess > spell prowess then Champion w/ Cleric MCD. That sounds most like what you did, except in PF2 you wouldn't need to prebuff before entering melee.
This fits the playstyle you first described best, though your offense with spells will be subpar and you'll have to use items for awhile for your spells since you'll have few.
Only go spellcaster if spellcasting is your primary focus (as in your default action or your "it's a boss" tactic) because that casting will cost you. You may be able to invest a lot to get a good AC (but not as dominant as before, since in PF2 hitting happens) and a mediocre melee offense (and yes, that's including w/ investment & buffs), yet IMO that requires cutting into spellcasting too much to gain too little.
So I wouldn't recommend a caster since it seems like spells were secondary to your previous PC. Trying to juggle both duties in PF2 would likely lead to disappointment.
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Yeah, my issue is that I'd like to have the option to pop an effective offensive spell or two and then wade into melee with enough offense and defense to make a difference. In our 3-player party, my cleric was a glue character who juggled CC, tanking, and emergency healing while he barbarian/bard handled athletics, grappling, and melee damage while our warlock handled ranged blasting and either large crowds of nasty boss creatures. The warlock once conned Uthrik into casting silence on a room in the name of us sneaking up when in reality it was to cover for how horrific the 'Hunger of Hadar' spell is so the rest of the party wouldn't question his methods.
I'm not sure this kind of specialized group that all handle their role without much overlap into other roles can really work the same way in PF2.
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Yeah, my issue is that I'd like to have the option to pop an effective offensive spell or two and then wade into melee with enough offense and defense to make a difference. In our 3-player party, my cleric was a glue character who juggled CC, tanking, and emergency healing while he barbarian/bard handled athletics, grappling, and melee damage while our warlock handled ranged blasting and either large crowds of nasty boss creatures. The warlock once conned Uthrik into casting silence on a room in the name of us sneaking up when in reality it was to cover for how horrific the 'Hunger of Hadar' spell is so the rest of the party wouldn't question his methods.
I'm not sure this kind of specialized group that all handle their role without much overlap into other roles can really work the same way in PF2.
PF2 is literally trying to avoid a character like you just listed who can launch an offensive spell while having an enormously high AC and combat ability. And be effective in all those areas. The idea behind PF2 is to avoid all in one characters that were so common and easy to make in PF1 and 3E who obsolete other character's roles.
5E does this same thing. I still recall no one wanting to play a single class paladin after we allowed multiclassing in 5E because a caster class with a few levels of paladin was better at smiting than a full class level paladin.
PF2 says nope. Champion's do this well and you will never do this as well as a Champion no matter how hard you try because we want the Champion to do this well so that a player investing in playing a Champion is hands down the best at being a Champion.
You don't seem to like that element of PF2. Yet it is a key element of the game to avoid these issues that existed in 3E and PF1 and I think exist in 5E. If you invest in a particular class, others will not step on your toes.
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PF1 actually handles characters like that much worse than PF2 does...outside of a very narrow level range where a character can cast spells effectively and fight in melee. The difference between the two systems is that PF2 spreads out the way you bring those abilities together over more levels, but it does so much more evenly.
A war priest in PF2 absolutely can cast a spell here and there and then focus on swinging a weapon once a round and then raising a shield. With a low charisma dwarf, you might as well go pretty heavy on wisdom and it will be a long time before your casting feels like it is falling behind at all. Your martial abilities will not allow you to make a lot of double attacks in a round, but swinging once and then doing something else is super manageable, especially with the ability to self buff.
The first level wealth domain ability might feel a little lack luster, but it can completely mess with enemies on the first turn and be just as effective as command at wasting some actions, only on multiple enemies at once, as long as no one rushes forward and immediately starts attacking.
The advanced domain spell is right up this character's alley.
You would not have to take an archetype at all with this character, however, if you are going low CHA and not planning on casting a lot of heals or harms, the cleric feats are not going to be that exciting for you and I think you will find a lot to like in several combat focused archetypes. You can spend hours looking at the different combinations and coming up with some really cool ideas that will let your cleric throw down with spells that have good effects even on a success, and then follow it up effectively as a melee character, as long as you are not trying to keep up with the pure fighter in the party.
PF1 actually handles characters like that much worse than PF2 does...outside of a very narrow level range where a character can cast spells effectively and fight in melee.
If I was playing a PF1 cleric I'd have access to a lot of power to make myself into a melee beat stick. Not as much as 3.5 mind you, but still a ton of power.
The character we're talking about here is from 5e though.
A war priest in PF2 absolutely can cast a spell here and there and then focus on swinging a weapon once a round and then raising a shield. With a low charisma dwarf, you might as well go pretty heavy on wisdom and it will be a long time before your casting feels like it is falling behind at all. Your martial abilities will not allow you to make a lot of double attacks in a round, but swinging once and then doing something else is super manageable, especially with the ability to self buff.
I didn't actually self-buff that much with my 5e character. It was kind of nice not to have to hand the DM a list of my daily buffs, their level, the exact order I cast them in, and which sources of turn undead checks I was draining from to power my divine meta magic to make them all last 24-48 hours though. Even I'll admit that a character with a massive to hit bonus striking against touch AC, with permanent flight and haste, and spell casting on top of it was a bit much for a premade adventure.
The first level wealth domain ability might feel a little lack luster, but it can completely mess with enemies on the first turn and be just as effective as command at wasting some actions, only on multiple enemies at once, as long as no one rushes forward and immediately starts attacking.
The advanced domain spell is right up this character's alley.
I may have to look this up. Can I find this on one of the SRD sites or will I need to invest in some PDFs?
You would not have to take an archetype at all with this character, however, if you are going low CHA and not planning on casting a lot of heals or harms, the cleric feats are not going to be that exciting for you and I think you will find a lot to like in several combat focused archetypes. You can spend hours looking at the different combinations and coming up with some really cool ideas that will let your cleric throw down with spells that have good effects even on a success, and then follow it up effectively as a melee character, as long as you are not trying to keep up with the pure fighter in the party.
My main shtick was tossing out some single target magic early to waste enemy actions or make them save-or-die, evaluate if I needed to pop my spiritual guardians for AoE damage, and then wade in to engage things with my great AC, decent saves (reflex aside), and good enough HP. My hammer's damage was usually pretty secondary to just being tanky enough to hold off a couple of enemies.
The archives of nethys website has all these options for your perusal.
Yeah, you'll want to look under Setting -> Domains for that.
I still think Cloistered Cleric with the Champion archetype would serve a good bit of your needs. Spellcasting gives you plenty of options for control and buffs to engage in melee with, and you'll have the spare class feats to get cool stuff — the main thing being that in the most extreme encounters, you'd need to rely on your spellcasting more than your weapon arm.
That's just me, though. Champion with a reliable focus spell or two could do very well if you're alright with less spellcasting, and it would certainly make you a great tank.