Champion may well be a good choice. Very tanky and can actually allow your party members to get closer. Can also do some decent healing with lay on hands. As a party you also want to look at getting battle medicine probably on at least two of the characters. Even better, may be if someone adds Medic archetype as that allows for slightly more and better battle medicine.
Thing to keep in mind is that every character has the ability to heal in PF2 through battle medicine and/or treat wounds. Someone should probably take a few of the medicine feats (continuous recovery, ward medic and battle medicine being the big 3). But yeah, literally everyone can take those.
I definitely recommend going for Champion. You can get a lot of damage mitigation through shield use, reactions, and legendary armor proficiency. Champions can also be effective out of combat healers (and good limited in-combat healers).
Just changing that might be enough to get your party on track, but I would also like to float the idea of going with the Free Archetype variant so that everyone in the party can pick up a little more versatility. With that rule, you could multiclass into Cleric and get some limited casting without falling behind on important Champion feats.
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We were supposed to start as a 4 men party for a 4 members adventure from level 1 to 4 but we endend up being 3 because of work and RL problems.
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Turns out our DM is not good adjusting difficulty so we ended up having encouters for a 4 men party with us being only 3 and me being the only frontliner taking damage from all the enemies. Useless to say I end up being on the ground everytime (been lucky with my death rolls) and i can't do anything but heal sometimes and stay on the ground.
I ran into the 3-player party when I began my Iron Gods campaign. Reducing the difficult is 1st-level encounters is almost impossible, so I instead gave the party members an extra 1000 gp (100 gp in Pathfinder 2nd Edition economy) for equipment. That was not enough.
Next, I offered them a 1st-level NPC to accompany them, such as a town guard or a priest acolyte. They chose a friendly NPC that they had already encountered, Val Baine, who had no levels. I made her a 1st-level bloodrager to fill in the melee role while keeping to her backstory. I do not recommend this for your game. Val became a GMPC. Most GMPCs drain the player fun out of the game. Due to a prior escort campaign, I had the experience to play Val as an assistant to everyone, boosting the decisions that the players made instead of overriding them.
The simplest solution to the 3-member party is to give everyone an extra level. A 3-member party is only 75% as strong as the module expects. An extra level makes the party 1.414 (the square root of 2) times stronger. (75%)(1.414) = 106%, close to the 100% needed.
Also, I second WatersLethe's suggestion of the Free Archetype variant. It won't make the characters more powerful; instead, it will make them more versatile. And a 3-member party is short on versatility. (Okay, extra versatility does permit more kinds of tactics, which can help a lot in combat.)
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Okay, a few things.
1. In general, a new GM leading new players through a new system is not a great place to experiment. Keep it simple. If the adventure is made for 4, add an NPC rather than trust that the encounter will be adjusted correctly.
2. New players won't have great tactics, meaning they won't take advantage of every weakness and open up more than their fair share of explouts for the monster. In general, I advocate tuning on the easy side, and increasing the difficulty for balance, rather than starting out difficult and trying to make it easier. Trying to hit the difficulty exactly is hard - if something goes wrong, you won't kniw if it's the encounter design, the character builds, the tactics, or the dice. Change one of those variables at a time.
3. Warpriest in 2e doesn't function like warpriest in 1e. Warpriest is not a simple frontliner. Go for fighter , champion, ranger, or barbarian at first. Try other melee classes (melee rogue, warpriest cleric, warrior bard, mutagenist alchemist) as you become better tacticians. They're not easy to play.
4. Don't pigeonhole characters into well-defined roles. In other games, the focus was getting one roll to exceed the DC, in 2e, there's more group checks, and the difficulty is set by the lowest modifier vs a DC. Sorcerers should have Acrobatics or Athletics to escape Grabs, archers should have melee weapons, and everyone should have a plan on how to revive every character in case they go down, even if it's carrying around a minor healing potion in your backpack. The party should be able to attempt every Recall Knowledge check, preferably twice.
Play a sprite alchemist and hide in the rogue and sorcerer's spaces.
It's not on you to singlehandedly fix the party unless you enjoy that. Everyone should work together. The least your fellow players could do is take Medicine and the Battle Medicine skill feat. If they're not willing to adjust their concepts to help the group's functionality, it's inconsiderate to you who are willing to completely base your own concept on what they're lacking.
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Thanks for all the help, really appreciated.
So, as I can see, lot of you are suggesting to go for a Champion. Anything particular about how to build it to be usefull for this party? As i said i'm a novice and i never builded a Champion so if any skill/feat could help me make it more usefull for the party, let me know.
(We use the free archetype rule and, since some of you talked about that, no the other 2 party members are not planning to invest in healing stuffs :<)
I'm going to suggest something that's slightly off the wall, but not too far.
First, the obvious "rules": you want to maximize AC and to-hit. In some systems that might get you branded a filthy power-gamer. In PF2 though it happens pretty naturally if you go with the obvious choices when building a character. If you're building a champion you get heavy armor proficiency, which gives the best AC (1 over other armors). It doesn't need a lot of Dexterity. Now, your class gives you a choice of Strength or Dexterity as key stat. Strength helps you to hit and hard. Dexterity doesn't do enormously much for you. So... Strength all the way.
Now for something a little less obvious. Intelligence. Champions are good with shields, and since you're going to be the main frontliner, you'll probably want to use one. But shields get damaged and when you get higher-level shields, repairing them gets harder. So someone in the party needs to be good at Crafting. It probably won't be the sorcerer. Maybe the rogue will do it but probably not.
You could do it. You can boost Intelligence to 14 during character creation and be decently good at Crafting. And it allows you to make good use of your free archetype: pick the wizard.
The wizard archetype does several things for you:
- Arcana is a skill that gets used reasonably often so someone should be good at it.
- A couple of cantrips are handy to have. Since you'll have your hands full with a shield and weapon, you need a ranged attack plan that doesn't need free hands. You could pick Ray of Frost (long range) and Electric Arc (no multiple attack penalty, pick off weak enemies in two directions).
- It allows you to use scrolls and wands with arcane spells. In particular, you could pick up a Wand of Longstrider heightened to level 2, which will boost your speed by 10 for 8 hours per day (i.e. the whole workday). This solves a typical champion problem: being slowed down by heavy armor.
- You can take the basic spellcasting feat to get a couple more handy spells, like Jump and Haste.
I'm playing a fighter like this and I really enjoy the build. I'm regularly the one carrying the party through skill challenges because if you're heavy on both Strength and Intelligence driven skills, you almost always have something to contribute.
I can get behind Ascalaphus' idea. It also allows you to play a smart champion which no one is prepared for.
I think it's a great idea, but don't think it's that off the wall.
Basic sword and board champion, IMO: Get +4 STR. +1 DEX and half plate (+5) or +0 DEX and full plate (+6) will get max AC. Steel shield, later sturdy shield. +2 CON, +2 INT/WIS/CHA depending on the party. 1d8 one-handed weapon (longsword is classic, but warhammer or trident is fine).
No need to be fancy, it's a solid build that can work with any party. Lay On Hands gives infinite healing out of combat and one HP bump in combat. Position yourself so that you get to use a Reaction every round (either Shield Block with your magnificent AC, or the champion's reaction, which is even better).
Play it until it gets boring, then go for one of the more subtle melee classes. :)
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This doesn't directly address your concerns, but I'm gonna shamelessly plug my beginner's guide which may help with some of the character creation.
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43e0g?Captain-Morgans-Class-Selection-Guide#1
I would also definitely recommend Champion over Warpriest for the combat role that you have taken on in the group.
I also second the idea of Free Archetype variant rules for a 3-player party for published adventures designed for 4 players. And mathmuse's idea of adding 1 level is also a good idea for a novice GM that may not be great at changing the published adventure to account for the difference. Change the characters to compensate instead would be easier.
I would have each player run 2 characters.
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I am not sure Champion is optimal here, given you will almost never get to use your reaction, which is the big thing of the class.
I would go Fighter with a Barbarian dedication (for even bigger damage) or with Marshal dedication (for attack bonuses that come earlier than those of the Bard dedication).
Pure Fighter with sword and board might be good too since the lack of healing from your buddies means you want higher defenses, or even healing abilities of your own, such as provided by the Blessed dedication or the Medic dedication.
In my experience free archetypes go a long way in shoring up a 3 player party so I'd try to push your GM in that direction. The extra versatility can help cover all your bases as well as enable more complex tactics in encounters. What it doesn't provide are the additional actions you'd have with a 4th player so encounters might need a little tweaking in relation to the action economy. The other issue is that it's yet another choice to make with character creation; I've actually had complaints that there's too much choice in PF2.
I think it depends on what the others will be using. The medic archetype would benefit the party but I think that would be better on one of the other players as the champion gets lay on hands, you don't want to put all your healing eggs in one basket.
What do you know about the campaign you're playing?
the champion with free archetypes (which our DM is ok with) would be the best option.
'Best' is of course subjective. The Raven Black brings up a good point that if your other party members continue to try and stay well away from the enemies and leave you battling in melee on your own, the Champion reaction won't be useful.
But Champion is definitely still a good choice for converting your character to.
For archetypes, I am liking Marshal. That should give back some of the feel of the party buffing that a cleric would normally have through spells. Plus it will encourage your other party members to stay closer to you so that you can use your Champion reaction more often.