Vanguard... what party roles can it fill besides tank?

[SITZKRIEG!]

It may sound silly but I tend to make characters up based on cool art and/or figures I find (or buy in the latter case) and I have one that seems custom made for a Vanguard (heavy armor and big shield). What roles can a vanguard fill in a party besides the obvious tank? I tend to play combat casters because I enjoy for the variety of having both straightforward attacks to choose from as well as off the wall spells but I'm not sure I'll get that with the vanguard. I didn't play a solarian despite liking the look of them for the same reason as I didn't feel there was enough variety. Coming off of playing a barbarian in D&D, I'd prefer to avoid another rinse/lather/repeat playstyle character.

Sincerely,

Vinnie the "Tank but not just a Tank" Vanguard

[Garretmander]

Eventually they can become decent at battlefield control, what with reach and multiple reactions that can be combat maneuvers (to trigger other people's reactions as well).

But, yes, tank is their primary role and what most of their class features support.

[Peg'giz]

Hence SF has no aggro mechanic I don't think you can apply the concept of the classic MMORPG roles (Tank, DD, Healer) to it.

Instead I would go more with the party roles mentioned in this video Party Roles Dungeon Dudes

And I think every class can fill almost every of this role, it's just a matter of the build, euipment and how to roleplay your character.

I would tackle this from the roleplaying side:

What is the motivation of your character?
How does he learned his skills?
Is he a team player?
Is he soldier or commander?
etc.

Once you have figured out the character personality (and maybe played it for 1 or 2 levels), you will get a got idea of your role in the party and then you can adapt and evolve your character into this.
(I'm no friend of completely pre-determinate character (builds), as this removes one of the core principles of roleplaying for me: that a chaacter shoudl evolve from the actions and stories this character experienced)

[Gaulin]

Vanguards deal very respectable damage, with proficiencies in advanced melee weapons and heavy armor, and entropic strike hitting eac. Also full bab and a ton of health. Keep in mind that theres not a ton of feats and abilities that are really needed to do a lot of damage - other than weapon focus there's very few ways of increasing attack. And while there are ways of increasing damage, it's not usually so gamechanging that it separates a DPS character from a non DPS character. Also if you want to go ham with a big unwieldy weapon, spending a move action to spend EP to deal extra damage is also an option.

Later on you can do cool stuff like attacking multiple enemies by blasting with entropic strike, making vanguard really good against multiple enemies. And they have pretty good skills, though I don't think they can be called a skill monkey.

Vanguard can also pair really well with some classes because of accelerate, making other classes even stronger with aoe damage. I remember reading a player who paired up with a Solarian and they just demolished things together.

So really aside from being a caster, healer or skill monkey, vanguard can fill a variety of roles. Tank, DPS, control, and everything in between.

[SITZKRIEG!]

Thanks for the advice above. I don't think (at least single classed) that the class is a good fit for my playstyle then but I appreciate the ideas. I may have to rethink it from the ground up instead as I'm looking for a bit of variety.