I have two skills to prepose:
Sleuth: this is deductive method applied to gathering of clues. The questioning of witnesses and suspects. The presenting of the facts in a logical fashion. This organizes several die roles for perception, diplomacy, and sense motive all in one roll.
second;
Carousing: It's amazing the information you can get with a little small talk and a lot of booze can get you. A good time was had by all and the new friends you' ll find... WEARING YOUR SOXS!!!
So you want to split "gather information" out of diplomacy and further split it into two skills? Would you also be giving characters bonus skill points to offset this?
Diplomacy didn't strike as a method of interrogation for law enforcement. Let alone, of use to find clues pertinent to a criminal investigation. I didn't mean to throw the game out of balance. It was about thirty years ago that TSR put out a game called TOP SECRET, it was a wonderful game. My friend Ross gmed for us. It was more like GET SMART than The BOURNE SAGA and 007 wasn't even in the house. They had a table in the manual that I think was called the Contact Table. It broke the technique down that you would use to question an npc. Who is fooling who, you only get as much as the gm is going to give you to get the story told, I just thought "sleuth" would look good on my character sheet.
One thing that I've played with is allowing Profession skills to substitute for multiple other skills but in narrower contexts.
You could roll Profession (Slueth) for instance in place of Diplomacy to gather information but not to impress a Baroness. Likewise you could use it in place of Heal to tell how someone died but not to stop bleeding. Replace perception to methodically analyze a crime scene, but it wouldn't help spot an ambush on the road, etc...
YES!!! it wouldn't be an all inclusive skill. it just a way to focus the game on the kind of adventures I like to play. Small things that focus the mental side of spectrum.
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I think having to use Charisma as a stat is a penalty enough for face skills. This just sounds like you are throwing away skill points.
Sleuth might have a place, but it seems weird and it seems like it could be a Wisdom or Charisma skill, but Carousing is literally Diplomacy with beer.
As other have said all of these things are already covered by other skills. By creating more skills you are actually making it more difficult to run the type of game you seem to want. One of the problems with 3.x was there were too many skills and not enough skill points for most classes. This is step backwards instead of an improvement. Now your characters have two more skill they need to put ranks into which is going to stretch them even further.
Honestly, I wouldn't mind a Knowledge (science) skill for identifying technological and alchemical items, and information drawn from various scientific fields of study. I know Knowledge (engineering) does a lot of the above, but since some settings like Golarion have a mixture of magic and science fiction (just look at Numeria, but also the entire alchemist class), having a dedicated skill to these sorts of checks would be handy for story telling as well as adjudicating how a character with a comprehensive knowledge of the various interplanar realms that exist alongside the material and knowledge of every kind of aberration in existence from memory cannot also have a comprehensive knowledge of the fundamental laws of physics or thorough understanding of biology.
I'm considering incorporating it into my games at this point since it has come up fairly often.
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One thing that I've played with is allowing Profession skills to substitute for multiple other skills but in narrower contexts.
You could roll Profession (Slueth) for instance in place of Diplomacy to gather information but not to impress a Baroness. Likewise you could use it in place of Heal to tell how someone died but not to stop bleeding. Replace perception to methodically analyze a crime scene, but it wouldn't help spot an ambush on the road, etc...
Yeah, I wouldn't complicate things by adding a new skill, but this is a good way to handle it if someone wants to make a character who can do some forensics and interrogation but not negotiate a treaty or perform surgery.
Note that there is some RAW support for using profession for things other than just earning money.
You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the profession’s daily tasks, how to supervise helpers, and how to handle common problems. You can also answer questions about your Profession. Basic questions are DC 10, while more complex questions are DC 15 or higher.
rainzax's "Under 20" rule seems reasonable for tasks that would normally be covered by other skills.
(Also, spending time and money carousing sounds like a good reason to add a circumstance bonus to Diplomacy checks. Maybe homebrew a trait to improve the bonus if you want to play a particularly good Carouser.)
There are probably a number of ways to get the effect you want that doesn't involve adding very limited new skills, which is not a good solution.
Carouse for example could be added as a (pretty weak) trait:"When in a situation where alcohol is imbibed you can add your constitution modifier instead of your charisma modifier when using diplomacy to gather information."
Sounds like these new skills are already covered adequately by other skills. I like the Profession (sleuth) idea though.
One thing that I've played with is allowing Profession skills to substitute for multiple other skills but in narrower contexts.
You could roll Profession (Slueth) for instance in place of Diplomacy to gather information but not to impress a Baroness. Likewise you could use it in place of Heal to tell how someone died but not to stop bleeding. Replace perception to methodically analyze a crime scene, but it wouldn't help spot an ambush on the road, etc...
I do something similar with my player by allowing him to substitute his low Ride skill with his higher Acrobatics score to do things like fast dismount and soft fall. More complex ride maneuvers require a Ride check though.
Sleuth is a nice touch but I would use it to fill a different role. I am often frustrated by the fact that there isn't a good "investigation" roll in pathfinder like there is in 5e. Some more basic reasons for this would be for finding a shop in a large city that is going to sell what the character is looking for, really any time someone is filtering through a lot of information for something specific it feels weird to tell them to roll perception, im not sure why. It could be argued that this is what perception is, but maybe I'm just coming from a different headspace.