Pathfinder 2E Is this character legal, effective and cool?

[Particle_Man]

I am trying to get my head around pathfinder 2e and with the player’s core book 2 (and 1) am trying to put together a character map from levels 1 to 20. Sorry for the messy formatting.

I guess I was hoping for answers to three questions:
1. Is this character legal?
2. Is this character (reasonably) effective?
3. Would this character be cool/fun to play?

So I would be going for a catfolk swashbuckler (wit) with the feybound background and the acrobat archetype. Here is what I have so far:

Skill feats

2 quick jump
3 cat fall
4 powerful leap
6 multilingual (fey, ? (Aklo?)
7 Kip up
8 graceful leaper (acrobat).
10 wall jump
12 swift sneak
14 sign language
15 legendary negotiation
16 cloud jump
18 legendary sneak
20 legendary linguist

General feats

B die hard
3 ancestral paragon (catfolk dance)
7 ride
11 super taster
15 canny acumen (Fort save)
19 legendary code breaker

Ancestry feats

1 Cat’s luck
5 lucky break
9 luck of the clowder
13 black cat’s curse
17 reliable luck

Class feats

B. Bon mot
1. one for all
2. Charmed life
4 acrobat dedication
6 contortionist
B quick squeeze
8 tumbling strike
10 derring do
12 tumbling opportunist
14 impossible riposte
16 felicitous riposte
18 incredible luck
20 panache paragon

Catfolk (9 lives)
Swashbuckler (wit) with acrobat archetype.

Fey bound background (fey’s fortune, fulfil request from fey that knows your name).

+4 dex (class, ancestry, background, free)
+3 chr (ancestry, background, free)
+1 con (ancestry)
+1 str (free)
0 int
0 wis (-ancestry, +free)

Ability score Improvements:

Dex/chr 4.5/4
Dex/chr 5/4.5
Dex/chr 5.5/5
Dex/wis 6/0

Trained Skills (with improvements to expert/master/legendary by levels)

Acrobatics, 4/7/15*a
Athletics, 3/7/15
Diplomacy, 3/7/15*s
Fey Lore,
Society, 11/13/19
Stealth, 5/9/17
Survival

Initial equipment: swashbuckler quick pack but change crossbow to short bow. Add grappling hook, duelling cape, fine clothing. 3 gp, 7 sp left over.

Uses a nickname and rarely reveals actual name.

Maybe Desna for a God?

 

[W'rkncacnter]

1. the character isn't quite legal - you don't have enough ability boosts as you level (though i assume that's just because you're ignoring the other two) and when i replicated the build in pathbuilder i couldn't find a way to pick up survival at level 1. i did manage to pick it up at level 15 since i boosted int at that point so i didn't waste a boost at 20. that's fairly minor, though - the rest of this is legal (though some things will require dm approval due to rarity, like your background).
2. it's pretty hard to make an ineffective character in pf2e, but you've done a pretty good job of leveraging your strengths. the only thing i noticed is you don't really have any finishers. you might wanna shift things around so you can grab at least one.
3. if you wanna play a highly mobile, hard to pin down tumbler, i'd say you'll have fun.

 

[Particle_Man]

Thanks on ability boosts! I misread that as only two boosts at levels divisible by five.

For skills (and Int 0) I had Fey Lore from the background, Acrobatics from Swashbuckler, Diplomacy from Wit, and 4 more (Athletics, Society, Stealth, Survival). If I am wrong I can drop survival - that was more just for flavour matching the catfolk background.

I guess I was relying on the free confident finisher all swashbucklers get. Maybe I should look at the ones on offer and see if something really stands out.

Thanks for the feedback!

 

[W'rkncacnter]

For skills (and Int 0) I had Fey Lore from the background, Acrobatics from Swashbuckler, Diplomacy from Wit, and 4 more (Athletics, Society, Stealth, Survival). If I am wrong I can drop survival - that was more just for flavour matching the catfolk background.

ah, i see what happened there - pathbuilder let me pick diplomacy despite wit already picking it.

Thanks for the feedback!

np

 

[Particle_Man]

Ok changed the class feats to get a finisher (and improve the basic one):


B. Bon mot

1. one for all
2. Charmed life

4 acrobat dedication

6 precise finisher

8 dual finisher

10 derring do

12 the bigger they are

14 impossible riposte

16 felicitous riposte

18 incredible luck

20 panache paragon

Changed improvements:

Improvements:

5 Dex/chr/con/wis 4.5/4/2/1

10 Dex/chr/con/wis 5/4.5/3/2

15 Dex/chr/wis/str 5.5/5/3/2

20 Dex/wis/con/str 6/4/4/3

And bought a main-gauche (ok for defense and handy for dual finisher later on).

So a bit less acrobat but you cannot have everything. Or at least I don’t know how, and this seems to work.

 

[Particle_Man]

Also if I have Luck of the Clowder and Lucky Break, can my allies within 10’ also rerolled a failed skill acrobatics or athletics skill roll vs a single effect, or does this only apply to failed saving throws?

 

[Gammadoodler]

Also if I have Luck of the Clowder and Lucky Break, can my allies within 10’ also rerolled a failed skill acrobatics or athletics skill roll vs a single effect, or does this only apply to failed saving throws?

Late to the party but a couple general notes. A fair amount of your feat space is devoted to ripostes, which rely on the enemy critically missing, but Swashbuckler AC scales more slowly than other martials in the system, and it doesn't look like you have any feats to boost your AC or lower enemies' attack.

Enemy crit fails on attacks do happen, but they're typically on 2nd & 3rd+ attacks (unless the enemy has a MAP avoidance ability..which I've seen fairly often) and on lower level enemies (who are often less threatening because they miss more often). So the reaction to riposte may come up less often than you'd like for how many feats are devoted to it. (It'll also be a competing reaction with your One for All - Aid reaction which, especially in the higher levels, has high-extreme value as an ally strike buff..and a high reliability trigger.)

TL;DR: You'll likely have fewer opportunities to use Ripostes than you might think.

And a word on Derring Do. It's a great feat, but it's usage does depend on having a plan to use skill actions that would have the 'bravado' trait (which for you would be Tumble Through, Bon Mot, and the help reaction on One for All) after you have panache and before you do a finisher and then regain panache. By the time Derring Do comes online, One for All 's value is going to be high enough to make it a difficult action to justify skipping on your turn, which would leave you with two floating actions on your turn. One or both of these will often be taken by move and strike/finisher.

Your turns likely will start with panache from the One for All reaction, and Tumble Through includes enough movement that you'll probably get to the baddie to use it, but it has no crit effect and exposes your PC to movement-based reactions. Bon Mot offers a significant will save/perception debuff, especially on a crit, but would either leave you without the action to move or to strike(if you needed to to get in or out of reach of your target), and your party would need will/perception-targeting abilities to take advantage of it.

TL;DR: While Derring Do is a great feat, it's more useful on a build with higher value skill actions that focuses more on keeping panache from turn to turn rather than using finishers.

All this said, I expect that you'd start to see all these things play out at the table long before you get to the level where these build decisions play out. And that might be more of an overall moral of the story. Build plans, especially on classes that have turn cycles (like the swashbuckler, magus and some others) are going to be challenging to evaluate until you've had some more time at the table with your party.

Building PCs is fun and it does help with getting a handle on the mechanics..Would just recommend holding it loosely.

Edit: I did forget about Wit's exemplary finisher feature at level 9 that gives the penalty to attack for an enemy you hit with a finisher. As such, ripostes are a bit better at least against the one foe you hit with a finisher..if you hit. Maybe still worth considering some way to buff AC in parallel if you want to lean into ripostes, but could be hard to find the actions/reactions to fit it in.

Edit 2: with respect to acrobat feats, mileage may vary, but I have had to use the Squeeze action exactly zero times as a medium-sized melee martial 17 levels into a published adventure. And any strikes you make before you perform your finisher mean your finisher has MAP making them less likely to hit and crit. The action compression might be worth it..but it might be worth looking into ways to reduce the MAP you might take for making a finisher your second strike instead of your only strike.