Int based skill master build


Advice


Hi
So I am looking for some inspiration for a new character, Int based.

My DM has decided that our next campaign will be 2e - we have been playing dnd and pathfinder 1e before so I am not familiar with 2e rules at all yet.

Initially I wanted to do an old lady (aged curse) lore oracle very focused on knowledges and skills and had some fun ideas for a Int/Cha build but with 2e that build is not gonna work as all the weird feats/traits I had planned are gone. So I'm looking for new ideas!

I would like a Int based character, with loads of skills and lore. Do not need to be the best in battle but I do like optimising my characters (I know 2e does not really allow that but it's what I am used to doing )
I am considering maybe Investigator with a ranged weapon. Not interested in rogue or bard as I just played those classes.
But also open to playing spellcasters (maybe wizard?) but I read some things have been nerfed to make wizards more balanced at higher levels and that sucks...

Does anyone have any suggestions for a cool build? I like having some quirky personality traits so weird builds for flavor also fine!

Also if anyone has any suggestions for a quick guide for 2e rules let me know :)

Thanks everyone!

Shadow Lodge

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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.

*Please note that there are open questions on how the mastermind's special mechanic actually works given the general Additional Knowledge limits.

Alternately, an Enigma muse Bard with the Bardic Lore feat has incredibly broad (but fairly shallow) knowledge...


Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

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.


As a bump up for a caster, there's also spells like Timely Tutor, that give your familiar a modifier of level+stat on any Lore you wish at the spot.

While not amazing modifier, since you cast it on the spot, you can always get extremely specific Lores that come with a -5 on the DC.


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.


Master Han Del of the Web wrote:

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.

---------------

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.

Keep in mind that you can pick up Skill Mastery multiple times unlike most feats.

So multiple extra Master proficiencies.


Thank you all so much for your input and help! I basically realised I definitely need to read up on PF2 rules because skills seem to work very very differently!

I had completely discarded Thaumaturge because honestly I didn't know what the hell they did haha but will definitely read up on the class.

Investigator still seems like a good choice, but I am a bit worried they would be completely useless in combat.. as I feel that is what my current character does and I do want to change it up at bit.
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?
Should I just go with something simpler the first time I'm playing 2e?

Our dm is quite chill and let's us choose from all available books and even 3rd party (if not broken rules and you can convince that it makes sense for the characters backstory) so I usually try to make builds that are slightly overpowered in non obvious ways and I get away with it and find it super fun - but I think I need to understand PF2 rules better before I can try to make a character.

Basically I have a lot of research to do!
Thank you for all your ideas, all your replies are very much appreciated!
Open to more suggestions too, I will re-read after doing a deepdive on 2nd edition


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'.

MissPenguin wrote:

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.

Dark Archive

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You need a few things:

1.) 18 INT KAS class (Witch/Wizard are best)
-> This gives a special lore skill (from another archetype), Arcana, and Occultism off your best stat.
-> This gives nature and religion off a save stat that isn't best, but won't be dumped.

2.) Easy Access to advanced familiar with scaling familiar abilities (Witch and Wizard are best)
-> The familiar traits you want are: Independent (free action to ready), Second Opinion (gives a reaction to give a aid on any recall knowledge for a +1/+2 circumstance bonus), Skilled (Loremaster Lore), Skilled (arcana/occultism/nature/religion) or 7 total abilities which you can do by L6 with a witch or familiar thesis wizard with the enhanced familiar feat.

3.) MC into Loremaster for specialized lore
-> Lets you roll recall knowledge on anything.
-> Use the L4 skill feat to help buy yourself out of this to take the cleric MC.

4.) MC into Cleric for Domain Initiate (Dreams Domain and Knowledge L1 focus spells)
-> You want to take the dreams domain focus spell (Sweet Dreams), which takes 1 min to cast, but lasts 1 hour and gives a +1/2/3 status bonus to INT or CHA skills.
-> Then you can use syncretism to grab the knowledge domain focus spell which lets you roll at advantage.
-> In general dreams is better for your INT skills (or ones you have good bonuses for) and knowledge is better for your worse recall skills (maybe special lore skills or nature/religion)

5.) Arcane or Occult spell list so you can take pocket library and/or share lore as a prepared spell to get access to a status bonus until the dreams domain spell comes online for the build.

Obviously the build is made significantly better by a free archetype rule which can effectively get you everything by L8. If the GM is willing to let you skip your exit feats you can ancient elf cleric at L1 and enter lore master at L2, domain initiate by L4, and synecrtism by L6. I have some metrics on this kind of build vs a thaumaturge to show how it beats it up in all metrics except the general recall knoweldge (see here).

Another fun thing for INT based class is an INT psychic that uses the gathered lore unconscious mind. When you unleash your psyche you can use an action to prepare to aid anyone in 30ft using your occultism modifier. Now that the aid DC is 15 and it is tied to a skill you can bump to master/legendary ASAP you can be dishing out +3 to +4s to aid another by L9 with feats like helpful halfling (also consider the human cooperative nature feat at L1 for a +4 bonus to aid checks). By L11 you're essentially auto critting the aid with the sweet dreams domain spell up.

Another thing you can do off a rogue or investigator is dive through multiple skill proficiency archetypes that have skill feats. that lets you essentially enter an archetype only having to spend 1 class feat on the dedication and then 2 skill feats on the exit feat taxes. If you want some non-free archetype examples I have skill boosting archetypes/builds 1 to 3 here. Build 8 even has a investigator MC alchemist that at L8 actually gets the calculated splash for INT to splash damage on bombs (so INT to hit + INT to damage + extra persistent from using the alchemical gut familiar option).

In general if you don't want casting, rogue with a 18 DEX/16 starting INT will be your best bet IMO vs. investigator. Its just a superior chassis and the thief rogue can dump 2 stats (STR + either INT or CHA) so you will have bad CHA skills, but otherwise maxes save stats including your attack stat.

Another funny option for skill builds is the sleepwalker archetype. At L6 the vision of foresight feat lets you spend 1 action to roll any skill check a t advantage while you're in your sleepwalking trance (1 action to enter and lasts for 1 minute). At L18 you can even make it 'permanent'.

As other's have suggested a thaumaturge with diverse lore gets both the 'int functions' and CHA functions and they are a really consistent martial (see the PFS build link I had above for a number of them). Combo that with the dreams spell (which can give +1/2/3 status bonus to CHA skills) or sleepwalker and you can be 'ever useful' in all situations (except maybe ones that require magic solutions specifically).


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.

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