Playtest Investigator 1 in 5-08 The Confirmation (contains spoilers for that scenario)


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I was playing an investigator in the PFS scenario 5-08 The Confirmation.
I tried to go for a more skill based build focused on social skills and urban encounters so less heavy weapons and armor. I tried to circumvent to low combat abilities by using alchemical weapon which i could craft cheaply.

Precise build::

Follows PFS rules (20 point buy, 2 traits)

Human Investigator

STR 13
DEX 14
CON 10
INT 16
WIS 12
CHA 14

Feats (I had no real idea and was really scared by the low AC):
Toughness
Fast Learner

Traits:
Resilent (+1 fort saves)
Fashionable (+1 to some social skills)

Skills (11 skill points, yeah):
Bluff
Craft Alchemy
Diplomacy
Disable Device
Intimidate
Knowledge Arcana
Knowledge Local
Knowledge Planes
Perception
Sense Motive
Use Magic Device

Combat Gear:
6 daggers
3 alkali
3 alchemist's fire
3 shard gel
Leather armor

Vital statistics:
hp 12
AC 14

we had a big 7 player group:
Investigator 1 (me)
Ranger 1 (archery)
Rogue 1 (melee)
Bard 1
Druid 1 with badger companion
Cleric 1 (negative energy channeler)
Mauler 2 (Tiefling Onispawn)

Stuff we encountered:

2 spider swarms
Bad initiative roll, spiders acted first swarmed the whole group.
So i spend the first round of combat moving out of the swarm and retrieving an alchemist's fire. By the time i finally got to act at the end of round 2, the cleric had channeld and the rogue used his alchemist's fire, there was only 1 swarm with 1 hp left which i killed with the splash damage from a missed attack with the fire.
So even in an encounter where 4 out 7 people were unable to deal any damage i didn't do much. Only good thing was i made both fortitude saves while swarmed.

social encounter with Ouri
The bard had the higher diplomcy skill, so all i got to do was doing an assist roll, YAY...

3 mites and a centipede
Bad positioning at the end of the group and bad action economy (having to spend a move action to draw a dagger because of BAB 0) meant all i got to do was missing with a thrown dagger.

1 ooze (don't remember what it was exactly]
Mediocre initiative meant i got to deal 2 damage with the splash damage from a missed alkali, it died before i got to my second turn.

the Minotaur
The minotaur dropped Janira in the first hit then attacked us. I used
my expiditious retreat extract and spent rounds 1 and 2 to sprint to her to stabilize her. By the time i got to her and would have been able to do something the combat ended. I did an untrained heal check to check if she is still alive, rolled a 5 (for a total of 6), used inspiration, got a 1 (so still failed). Luckily she had already stabilized and the cleric healed her with a wand.

4 skeletons
I won initiative, went to the front to get them with a wand of burning hands we had found earlier, and rolled a 1 on use magic device. Then the mauler punched them to dust with some additional damage from the badger and the druid with his quarterstaff. All i could do was providing flanking positions while missing with a dagger, which would most likely not have dealt damage anyway.

other stuff
There were a lot of checks for knowledge religion, nature and dungeoneering, 3 skills i hadn't picked, so not much for me to contribute. While i had hoped to use an inspiration-powered intimidate in combat for demoralizing, everything but the minotaur and the mites was mindless, so that didn't work out. Only good roll was a natural 20 on the day job check which gave me an impressive result of 33.

Conclusion.
Most of the time i felt rather useless. My combat abilities were pathetic, i did a whole of 3 points of damage from missed splash weapons. Out of combat i either had the wrong skills (knowledge), someone else had the same skill but better (diplomacy the bard, identifying potions the cleric's detect magic and spellcraft), or i rolled crap (heal, UMD). I used all 3 points of inspiration, and it never changed a failed roll to a passed roll (2 times the roll still failed, and 1 time using acrobatics to get to Janira the roll would have passed anyway). The only good thing was craft alchemy providing me with cheaper stuff and additional gold. While i was sort of expecting to suck in combat it was quite a bad surprise that i also sucked in the skill department. While having many skill points is sort of nice, with so many skills depending on different attributes you get a lot of average but not great bonuses so you will get outshined by the specialists. And with most skill checks being done by just one guy and everbody else supporting, the investigator falls flat in bigger groups with lot of skilled characters.

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