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The most important thing to know is that intelligence gets you extra trained skills at character creation, but does not impact the number of skills you get to increase to expert, master, or legendary ranks: This is set by your class as either 3 legendary skills (for most classes) or 6 legendary skills (for rogues and investigators). Intelligence is generally considered to be the weakest stat in PF2e for this reason.
Knowing 'stuff' generally involves the Recall Knowlege action, so you will really want to familiarize yourself with this and the related rules.
Mechanically, the Lore (Int) skill reflects a narrow speicialized field, which is typically rewarded with a lower DC for relevant recall knowledge checks. If you were trying to identify a vampire, for instance, the Religion skill would use the normal DC, while Lore(Undead) might get a -2 adjustment to the DC and Lore(Vampire) might get a -5 (all such adjustments are at the GM's discretion, of course).
If you want to be an intelligence-based skill monkey, you probably want either an Investigator or a Mastermind* racket Rogue, as they are both intelligence-based and get the double the normal number of both skill boosts and skill feats.
Alternately, an Enigma muse Bard with the Bardic Lore feat has incredibly broad (but fairly shallow) knowledge...
You could do something like a a Gnome with the cursed background and your curse is that you have been magically aged. Gnomes dont suffer from traditional aging, instead they suffer from the bleaching so this curse is really weird.
I feel witch with spinner of threads could be a fun match for that aging curse.
Its as if your character is cursed to experience time in a way that is not natural for a Gnome making you appear aged but with that have come these witch powers that allow you to interact with these fate based witch powers.
Edit:Maybe you have been cursed with a fate that belonged to a human or something else that ages normally. Or fate swapped and some human out there is experiencing the bleaching while you age like a human?
At level 2 just take the Loremaster archetype to get really good at lores on top of the witch class abilities.
This will make Intelligence your main thing since witch has int as its key stat and you can make cha a secondary good stat by putting it at +3.
Wellspring Gnome with Occult as the tradition your connected to kinda represents your connection to some occult origin of the aging curse more so than normal Gnome primal innate magic.
Gnome Obsession gets you started early with a lore and comes with assurance for it. That lore can be changed anytime you have a day of downtime. When the party knows what they will face with a day of down time in between makes this kinda useful.
As a gnome you can pick up innate spells with your ancestry feats (wellspring heritage starts you with a cantrip as well) these will use cha as the casting stat while your witch spells will use int. Its at least a consolation that your cha is getting both use for cha skills and innate spells. Just have to decide how into dex or con you want. Wis is the defensive stat that gets left behind here but chalk it up to your character knowing a lot but being oblivious to their surroundings
All right, here are some options! You're coming from PF1, where charisma can do anything if you have the right options, so I'll start off with PF2's closest equivalent.
Thaumaturge is an excellent skill specialist using charisma. Diverse Lore lets you roll your scaling, charsima-based lore skill on any Recall Knowledge check, although there's a -2 if it's not about creatures, curses, or haunts. This by itself makes it the best class for generalist lore recollection. You can supplement that by taking the Tome implement, which lets you pick two trained (and eventually expert) skills every day. Further investment gives you master and legendary, the only way in the game to flexibly make a skill master or higher. It also gives you a +1 circumstance bonus on Recall Knowledge checks while you're holding the tome, replacing a regular success on an Aid check by an ally. If you fully invest in the Tome, it eventually gives +2 instead, although much later than Investigator gets a similar benefit.
As an additional trick, because you're making all of your Recall Knowledge checks with Esoteric Lore, Unmistakable Lore means never critically failing a knowledge check.
Over on the Investigator side, Flexible Studies lets you pick a skill to be trained in daily, and Pursue a Lead gives you a +1 circumstance bonus that eventually scales to +2. You'll need the Loremaster archetype (or Dandy or Bard) if you want a universal lore skill, but that will only be trained and at high levels, expert. What Investigator does have over Thaumaturge is double the number of skill increases and skill feats. That means six legendary skills instead of five (two chosen flexibly) for a Tome Thaumaturge, and being able to take Additional Lore a few times for anything you need. The Alchemical Sciences methodology has the additional benefit of being able to prep Cognitive Mutagens, which give a substantial boost to Recall Knowledge and the intelligence-based skills, at the cost of being terrible at combat for a while. It also means no critical failures on knowledge checks, and high level versions give you training in a skill of your choice- something nice to be able to do in the middle of the day instead of just during prep. Because it's so harsh on combat abilities, though, this is mostly an out-of-combat research tool.
(We are expecting some small tweaks to Investigator in a few months when Player Core 2 comes out.)
If you like the flexible skill selection thing, Elf is a great choice. They have feats that eventually let them flexibly make a skill expert, and even change up their flexible skill during the day, rather than just at the start of the day. Imperial bloodline Sorcerer gets a focus spell that makes a skill trained for a minute, but unfortunately it doesn't work on lores, which makes it a lot more limited.
The best ancestry for Lores is the rare shisk. Otherwise, I think elf or gnome have the best feat support. For pure, intelligence based knowledge builds I don't think the investigator can be beat, though many people don't like how the class performems in combat. You basically need to pick up out of class back up actions for when you'd roll bad with Devise a Strategem and don't want to Strike. But that aside you get double skill feats and skill increases, and a floating circumstance bonus to most knowledge checks. The Additional Lore and Unmistakable Lore feats are good default skill feats. (Name of enemy faction) Lore, (Name of most commonly encountered enemy type) Lore, or (Creature types tied to Religion or Nature) Lore are your best picks, plus out of combat lores that are specifically called out. All of that depends on your GM (or player's guide) working with you to foreshadow those things.
The Inscribed One is probably the best caster for knowledge, but it loses a lot of combat power unless your party needs another flanking partner.
That said, there is a much simpler path here, especially if you are still interested in mixing charisma and intelligence. Thaumaturge with the Diverse Lore feat at 1st level. You know have one skill that can be used for all Recall Knowledge checks called Esoteric Lore which runs off charisma and will automatically scale to legendary. Most people consider the Thaumaturge a much stronger base class than Investigator. You won't be getting those sweet -5 DC reductions from highly specific lores, but the Time implement will get you two floating skill increases per day and you could put those in lores.
Blue covered gnomes already, but the key elf feats are elven longevity (for floating skill increases) and Ageless Patience (for out of combat knowledge stuff.) If shisks are allowed it will be easy to spot the lore boosting options.
Let's see... absolutely maximized skills might be an human Investigator with the Alchemical Sciences methodology and the Rogue multi-class archetype and then loading up on Additional Lore feats.
Human can net you Skilled heritage which gets one of your skills to expert or Versatile Heritage which can net you another Additional Lore feat.
Investigator has good starting proficiencies and proficiency progression on par with Rogue while the Alchemical Sciences methodology allows you access to a range of skill boosting alchemical items.
The Rogue Archetype provides Rogue Dedication (an additional skill proficiency) and later Skill Mastery which allows you to bump one skill up to master proficiency and another up to expert.
Finally, Additional Lore grants you another lore skill and automatically progresses it up to legendary proficiency. Depending on how willing your GM is to let you apply lore skills in interesting situations, a selection of campaign relevant lores can be quite potent.
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Some additional thoughts:
-Human also gives access to Cooperative Nature and Cooperative Soul, both of which improve aid checks immensely and ensure that even if you aren't the best at a skill in the party, you can still buff the one who is.
-Acrobat Dedication takes acrobatics up to legendary proficiency if you can fit it in.
Investigator isn't terrible. It does have a pretty bad reputation that is at least partially deserved.
Mostly you are going to want to have a backup plan for when your Devise a Stratagem roll comes up a 3. Common options are 'shoot a different target' and 'cast a cantrip that you gained from an ancestry feat or spellcasting dedication'.
My current character is mostly support in combat, the party face who solves everything out of combat so it kind of feels like Investigator would be the same minus the high cha, so in a way a downgrade from my current character...?
Is this a common feeling for player coming from PF1 ("optimized") builds to PF2?
I actually asked my gaming group about what 'PF1 optimized' means due to this thread. The result basically came down to that it is a euphemism for 'brokenly OP but only does the one trick'.
No, PF2 doesn't really support that. It has a very solid power ceiling. At any character level I can fairly quickly and easily calculate out what the maximum skill bonus for that character should be (before accounting for bonuses such as item bonuses or circumstance bonuses). Similar with AC, Saves, attack bonus, etc. And mostly without needing to look at what feats or class abilities you have (knowing class is needed for AC and attack bonus for classes like Fighter, Gunslinger, Monk, and Champion that get number boost perks in those areas).
The benefit of this is that PF2 also has a fairly solid power floor. Your crazy character ideas will probably work fine and be perfectly reasonable from a mechanical standpoint. You won't feel like you are dragging down the team or that your character is being totally outclassed by other characters of the same level.
PF1 also had a lot of optimizing for versatility too. A Druid could be built to out-Fighter the Fighter while still being a caster, and Occultist or Spiritualist could be built to basically do everything. I played a game where I had seven different character sheets, all with their own feats. Oracle was notable for being a class you could build to use charisma for basically all stat functions. I think that's a bit more what's being discussed in this case, characters who specialize in "everything".
PF2 has clear boundaries with only a little flexibility. A character eventually gets up to three legendary non-lore skills. Skill monkeys get up to six, and there's an archetype or two that adds another. Magical buffs normally only ever give you +3 to hit or to skills, with very special occasions going to +4. You can get legendary in casting, armor, or weapons, but never two of those together.
In PF2 you will be specialized in a small number of things, rather than being able to dump all your resources into one focus or being able to make everything better than "normal" all at once. It takes three or four party members to really cover everything.
One serious issue with Investigator is that you are forced to Strike with both your Int and another stat. If you don't use Int for Devis a Strat, you don't get the bonus damage. And you may very well be striking w/o Devis a Strat >50% of the time, so you cannot leave the other attack stat low.
I don't think a single other class in the game has to deal with that b$*&!!&+. Even Alchemist has the possibility to abandon Class DC and use items that lack it.
Even in the most idea situation, you still only get to Pursue a Lead against 2 foes. Even in the rare times you actually get to have a pursued target before the fight starts, the ability is still limited to that one foe in a fight likely including many. It's as tragic as it is pathetic.
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Meanwhile Rogue just needs off-guard. Not some class-exclusive action, just a foe condition (which also provides +2 to hit) that can be triggered many different ways.
For Mastermind Rogue, there's plenty of Feats/abilities can enhance Recall Knowledge, but only the raw Investigator stuff can help Devis a Strat. Meanwhile Investigator has to spend a Feat to get off-guard, *after* a Dev-a-Strat pop, and has to pass that off-guard to an ally.
Investigator is such a hamstrung class, they even get a worse version of Rogue's skill feat abundance via limiting them to mind-only skill feats. Just, why.
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I must honestly say that I really did not enjoy my time as an Investigator, and I play Alchemists.
I honestly cannot ever recommend any play Investigator when Mastermind Rogue is right there.
Really hard for me not to wish the Investigator had been an archetype, and not a class. Fighter is allowed to get Combat Assessment at L1 for pete's sake. Investigators would *love* to be able to get a 1-Action [Recall Knowledge + Strike], but noooope. They have to spend a Feat to put RK inside a Devis a Strat roll.
Good point about familiars. I like Pipe Fox for a second opinion user, at least if you're allowed to swap your skilled like a regular familiar. (I like it even better if you can swap your bonus language.) With Dishcern Shecrets you get a pretty swell constant source of bonuses.