Electronics Technician, geek, happily married, and an aspiring author. Come check out my serial, “No Need For A Core?”
I'm going to regret posting this on my discord where my GM can see it, yet I am going to do it anyway...
I'm going to copy my reply from your cross-post to the PF2E instance as this one seems more active overall, and maybe someone will have some more thoughts or insights.
My first thought is to make sure you start off with Amped Shield and use the block each turn if you would get hit, that gets you three turns of reducing the damage of one hit each turn. And buy scrolls / a wand of Mage Armor. You do not want to take up a Spell-Known slot for it.
Hmm, Automaton has reinforced chassis, but unless you were already planning on having a strength of 16+, that seems less than ideal.
A human can just simply grab armor proficiency at 1st level (Via General Training). If you really want to commit, spend your first general feat to then upgrade it to Medium armor. Watch that Strength requirement for armor though. You might be better off getting the toughness feat for that general feat. Ouch, just realized proficiency does not auto-scale from this feat.
Spending two class feats to get Mountain Stance seems expensive (martial Artist archetype -> Mountain Stance), but does stack with Mage armor.
1 class feat for Sentinal dedication gets you light & medium proficiency up to Expert.
You could be a Well Spring mage, then no one will want to be near you in case you blow up! (just kidding … or am I?)
That’s all I can think of at the moment.
So, this gaming group started a Me, My Wife, Friend A, Friend B, and a couple that friend B met more recently.
For various reasons, Friend B dropped out about the time I started running a new game for the group. A little later we decided we wanted to slowly increase our numbers to buffer the ability to play if someone was missing.
I picked up a player from Reddit who had never had a chance to get into a PF2E game, all his attempts had met with DOA groups and I wanted to improve his experience. Later on, I picked up another player from Royal Road, she and I both publish serials there and follow each other's stories, and started chatting.
Edit: Oh, and all this is online, excepting the couples none of us live within convenient distance from each other. Though ironically, the other couple moved last year and are now only two hours away from us.