.....oh me oh my, killing them? Have you forgotten what we can do, my dear? Magic is oh so convenient for....little problems like this. No, with a few cure spells, we can make sure death is the furthest thing from our minds. Did you know that there is a spell to regenerate body parts? So many, many possibilities.....
Ok, ok, noninvasive investigation. Am I to assume that we can't just spam charm monster until we succeed and ask it nicely to do things?
-Well, using a variety of weapons and energies to do minor damage seems important. Cold iron and silver scalpels, sometimes soaked in a solution of 'Bless Weapon'. Hmm...always so hard to apply other alignments.
-Did he recover near instantly? Fire and acid applied to see if it gets canceled.
-Might as well try putting it into the 'freeze chamber' and the 'jam room' to see if it has any energy resistances.
-Light Sensitivity? Try some daylight spells to see if it cringes.
-Try dumping it into a dark room to check for dark vision by seeing it if notices an intern. Add deeper darkness to check that it isn't using blindsight or tremor sense.
-Tongues spell to check to see if it speaks a language. Try Speak with Animals and Speak with Plants too just in case.
-Detect thoughts to see what it is thinking. Check to see whether it has anything like telepathy or the like while you are up in there.
-Can we get some bane weapons in here? That can narrow things down here a bit.
And most of this would just be preliminary work before more specific testing can be applied.
The answer to your questions largely depends upon the subject. Many races within PF are described as being created or modified by others instead of just the evolutionary process itself. How close are you trying to parallel the systems that you want ideas for to those studies done in reality?
Some of them you could just invent, owing no explanation to anything more than "this procedure works as a discovery process because of X", with X being the conditions surrounding the creature's origin/nature.
Assuming that you are asking for quasi-realistic examples...
-A good old fashioned set of doctor's tools from the 1800's might be available to the experimenter; that would reveal some basics about the subject's physiology and would require no more discovery sense than that possessed by a skilled fantasy healer.
-The person running the study could take tissue samples and expose them to various environmental conditions/substances/energies via alchemy (i.e. bullspit fantasy chemistry)
-The experimenter could feed the subject a weakly-magical fluid and then use Detect Magic to follow its route through the subject's organ systems.
-The experimenter could use leeches or some sort of fantasy equivalent creature to filter certain compounds out of the creature's fluids and study both the parasite and what parts it did not like (especially if the parasite's required dietary exsanguinations are known).
-Although ethically ambiguous, the experimenter might operate upon the subject(s) various organs or organ groups (removing an organ, severing interal connections, etc) in order to record changes in the subject's health or behavior. Yay Victorian era Franken-medicine!
-Comparative studies can be accomplished by carrying out any of the above on both the creature and creatures known to be genetically (or specially for a fantasy game) related to it.
-And if you REALLY want to be lazy, just create a battery of harmless biological discovery spells designed to gather the sort of information that you want. "Cerebral Scrying", "Detect Biological Compounds", etc.
-Behavioral studies are also possible but require long periods of time and many subjects, both for comparison and control purposes. I assume that you're inquiring about a single subject and being limited to a relatively short amount of time though so I didn't go into all of that. :)
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OMG, lol. I was jaw-jacking about the idea in general. Sorry about that. Just hook him up to the rack and have a squad of goblins tickle em constantly with feathers. The goblin shaman in charge can walk around with a quill and scroll, periodically muttering things like "hmm" and "interesting".
OMG, lol. I was jaw-jacking about the idea in general. Sorry about that. Just hook him up to the rack and have a squad of goblins tickle em constantly with feathers. The goblin shaman in charge can walk around with a quill and scroll, periodically muttering things like "hmm" and "interesting".
Also measuring tape. Lots of measuring tape. Ears, toe circumference, nose length, tongue length, width of spread hand, etc. Mostly because unnecessary manhelding is funny. (for extra oddness, make the player roll for toe circumference....)
Plus, since we are going on about a 'goblin scientist', we would be remiss if he actually wrote anything. He needs to scribble and doodle like crazy.
-The person running the study could take tissue samples and expose them to various environmental conditions/substances/energies via alchemy (i.e. bullspit fantasy chemistry)would the blood sample also work for this? Or do you mean actually cut a piece of tissue out from him?
Well in reality a biopsy usually just shears a small, circular amount of skin off of the subject. I don't think it would really even cause a single hp of damage unless you want it to. Just an "ow, sonofableach!"
Failing that, hair/fingernail clippings might work or urine/stool samples (yuck). Blood tests would work well; same as real world test.
A blood sample will tell you a few useful things about the subject's biology via alchemy/chemistry, but the limitations of the information gleaned is really up to you, the GM. If you're trying to simplify things, sure- just make a rules call and say that a blood test could work for what you need.
As for a list of useful spells, here's what I have off the top of my head:
Divination Spells:
Augury- Can tell you if a test is going to be effective before you even attempt it. Good to avoid wasting time on needless tests.
Blood Biography- probably what you're looking for with the blood test, but the information given isn't very biological in nature.
Detect Good/Evil/Aberrations/etc... there's a whole list of detect spells. Would give you the creature's type right away.
Detect Poison- can tell you if a creature is venomous.
Detect Thoughts- mentioned above already by lemeres.
Commune- you can ask your deity yes or no questions about the subject.
Locate Creature- you can locate other subjects in the area that share the creature's type within range.
Legend Lore- can tell you details about a person's deeds/life if the subject is 11th level or above.
Status- will allow the experimenter to keep an eye on its subject's position and general condition. Useful for studying a subject's health during experimentation.
Necromancy:
Blindness/Deafness- would tell you if a creature used these senses (but so would common sense, and it wouldn't debilitate your PC permanently, lol).
Clone- only useful if the PC is incarcerated for study for around 2d4 months. If used though, it'd create an exact duplicate of their body that could be exploited for experimentation without harming the PC herself.
You might check out the spell list over at PFSRD.com and use your imagination to combine the scientific method and spell effects. Most non-harmful discovery spells are going to be divination though.