Best way of having Pathauto based off node title, but not tied to it?
The contributed module Pathauto will provide you a setting to set your own alias urls in the add content page.

Suppose you are adding a content of type basic page (using node/add/page), at the bottom there will be an url path settings tab where you can uncheck the 'Generate automatic URL alias' option and set your own path alias for the page.