Has anyone made any catfolk PC classes prior to now? (using Axiom 2 or otherwise)
I'd guess they could be built similarly to the Thassian Gladiator. No excellent swimmers or hold their breath, but no widely feared and reviled either.
If people thought those two benefits were a fair trade off for the reviled penalty, just dropping those three featured might be close enough. (the AC bonus via thick scaly hides would be re-skinned to pantherish grace)
The "Widely feared and reviled" is Inhumanity, which is basically a freebie. It gives a -X charisma vs outsiders/+X charisma vs lizardfolk, which means you could easily drop it with no change of cost. Swimming/holding breath are linked, and dropping that will free up some custom build points: 2 at 0 points, 2.5 at 1, and 3 at 2-4. Perhaps you could replace it with climbing? Gaining the "Climbing" and "Cat Burglary" proficiencies at 0, "Attunement to Nature" (+1 to surprise rolls in wilderness) at 1, and Contortionism at 2 would keep the build at the exact same XP costs, and make the lizardman more catlike.
I created a race archetype for short catfolk but didn't get a whole lot of feedback: http://autarch.co/forums/house-rules/hr-races-katzchen
I never got around to actually writing up any specific classes, but I was mostly heading in the direction of roguish-types: scouts/rangers, nightblade-style cat-ninjas (or felinjas, as I liked to call them), and maybe something like a cat version of the gnome illusionist.
Thanks for the feedback, you two.
I'd like to end up with them having low-light vision, so it's good to see others have started to think about creating that as a power and giving it a prospective value.
I had pictured my cat-folk as being about the size of elves, but the idea of them being smaller like the Katzchen is also appealing.
In the campaign where I previously had catfolk (Dungeon World), they were called the Mjaldr and they were a sort of Romani analogue.