I dug around a bit but couldn't find anything about this particular issue, which is a bit surprising since I feel like investigator is a prime class to start with when working toward sleepless detective.
At level 2, the sleepless detective gets the Follow Clues rogue talent. It also says that if you already have that ability, you can track at normal speed without the -5 penalty.
The investigator has a talent called Perceptive Tracking, which does the exact same thing as the Follow Clues rogue talent, but with a different name. My question is, would Perceptive Tracking be considered the same as Follow Clues for the purpose of the sleepless detective ability?
I'm sure most GM's would houserule that yes, since they do the exact same thing, they would allow it, but since this will be a PFS character I am curious of the RAW here.
My guess is "no," which would be a bummer since I wanted to go with the Lepistadt Inspector archetype and that forces you to take that talent, but there is just enough ambiguity in the wording that it might be possible:
At 2nd level, a Sleepless detective can use Perception to follow tracks as per the Survival skill, as though she possessed the follow clues rogue talent (Advanced Player’s Guide 130). If the detective already has this ability from another class, she can move at her normal speed while tracking with the Perception skill without taking the usual –5 penalty on her Perception checks.
Since it says "this ability" instead of "this rogue talent," I'm hoping this left enough room for interpretation that it would be ruled as the same ability. Does anyone know if there's an official ruling somewhere that I missed?
Bump.
Technically (ugh, that word), no, they'd be different abilities. The only ruling I'm familiar with that involves counting different abilities as the same ability involves archetypes:
It depends on how the archetype's ability is worded. If the archetype ability says it works like the standard ability, it counts as that ability. If the archetype's ability requires you to make a specific choice for the standard ability, it counts as that ability. Otherwise, the archetype ability doesn't count as the standard ability. (It doesn't matter if the archetype's ability name is different than the standard class ability it is replacing; it is the description and game mechanics of the archetype ability that matter.)
If we apply that logic to this situation, there's no "counts as" text, ergo they aren't the same ability.
If we don't apply that logic, we still have no rules text to lead one to say that they're the same ability for such purposes.
While in this case it seems silly, consider if, instead of allowing Perception to follow tracks, both abilities did something like "the character gets a +1 dodge bonus to their AC" and see if it still seems silly.
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Yeah, unfortunately, if this is for PFS or a game with a GM who goes strictly by the wording in the rules, they are different abilities.
On the plus side, Sleepless Detective is a great Prestige Class for an Investigator. I did a 1 level dip in it for my non-archetype Investigator in PFS to pick up INT to a lot of useful stuff, a d6 sneak attack, and detect magic as an SLA so I can identify items with Spellcraft.
On the minus side, when I finally got a chance to adventure in Ustalav and tried to intimi-- impress a potential source of information with the fact that I was a member of the Sleepless Detectives... the GM had no idea what the prestige class was or who the Sleepless Detectives were.