Investigator Majordomo


Advice


Just stumbled across this archetype, wanted advice on whether or not it's any good.

Looking at a guide for investigators it says that any archetype that results in losing alchemy is terrible, but that guide didn't mention this archetype so I thought I'd pop over here to the forums to get people's opinions.

Liberty's Edge

The Guide predates the Archetype, but it's still correct. Giving up what amounts to spellcasting from a good list for even a fair number of Teamwork Feats is a bad trade that you shouldn't make, generally speaking.

I mean, at 10th, you have 4 Teamwork Feats you can give to everyone 4 times a day...but that's instead of 1st through 4th level spells, and takes an action to do.

If you were only gonna dip a level or so of Investigator anyway (for Inspiration, one presumes), Majordomo might be a decent call, but as a primary Class? No. Don't.

Which is not to say you couldn't make a workable character out of it. You could. The baseline Investigator is just flat-out superior.


Let's go through the archetype bit by bit.

Paper Trail (Replaces Trapfinding):
Eh, the ability is ok. It roughly amounts to a linguistics check VS bluff if the MD can take 20 (with a 1/2 level bonus tossed on as gravy). If it works the MD gets to see if the writer of a document was making crap up or was nervous for some reason. The ability is circumstantial, but in an intriguey sort of campaign it's a reasonable trade for trapfinding. Let's call this a wash. I kinda wish this was the only trade the archetype made. It doesn't get better from here.

Inspired Manager(Replaces Trap Sense):
Frankly, the ability to slightly reduce the time of activities which take several hours to do is so circumstantial that it is near worthless, but Trap Sense isn't exactly stellar either. I would call it a slight downgrade on the whole, but both abilities are so insignificant that it really doesn't matter. There's also an effective Int bonus to some kingdom running stuff that almost nobody cares about.

And now we get to the big one...
Delegate(Replaces Alchemy and swift alchemy):
The MD get a few things from this. Lets break them into sections

Teamwork Feats:
First off, a teamwork feat at first and every 3 levels after first. While Teamwork feats aren't terrible, they really aren't stellar in most parties unless you can share them for free. Even when you can share them, what you will probably get is some bonuses while flanking (which is what most good combat teamwork feats do). Getting a whole bunch of them doesn't really help either, since your allies are not going to get all of them too unless they have all of your feats. However, the MD does get a way of sharing a couple of feats at a time, which brings us to...

Sharing Teamwork Feats:
The MD can share a teamwork feat to all allies within 30 feat by blowing a standard action. At 4th, it becomes a move action. At 7, this bumps up to 2 feats. 10th it becomes a swift. 13th is 3 feats. 16th lets the MD share a teamwork feat for the entire day, but it disappears while allies get short term feats. This isn't terrible, but it pales in comparison to Infusion. It doesn't come close to making up for not having alchemy.

As well as all that, at 4th level the MD can use it to give someone a non-combat feat for a task they focus on for several hours. The book uses Cooperative Crafting as an example, but the only way I can think of for the MD to qualify is the Master Craftsman route, and sadly this still makes it the best use for the ability I can come up with. Yep, Cooperative Crafting and Master Craftsman. The best. Try to process that for a moment.

Oh yeah, the ability lasts for 3 + investigator level rounds, and the MD gets uses at the same rate they get teamwork feats (1+1 per 3 levels after 1st). Unfortunately, until fairly high levels this means that the MD doesn't have enough uses. 3+level rounds is an encounter, and the MD only has 4 uses by level 12. If the MD wants to share a non-combat feat or two then the party won't get teamwork feats for most combats until they are fairly high level, especially if the MD wants to hold back a use of the ability for an opportune moment. This is not good. It really should have been 3 base + 1 per 3 levels instead.

Overall, this ability doesn't come close to alchemy. It's probably going to amount to +2 attack and +1d6 damage when flanking for most combats. Compared to handing out Enlarge Person or Shield Infusions, this is weak. There aren't enough uses, and the out of combat ability is terrible.

Well, I think it's fair to say that the guide's advice still holds for the most part. 1/10, would not swap out bottled spellcasting for.

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