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Wanted to try my hand at making an investigator in the new system. I've got a PF1 elven investigator that I didn't find terribly satisfying, so we'll see if PF2 makes her a little more exciting.
Cerise had the Spiritualist archetype (which contributed pretty strongly to her being a rather bland character to play). Out of respect for that, we'll avoid alchemy, and see if we can give her decent saves, especially in will. Her inspiration is Ruby from RubyQuest, so bonus points for any of the following: a third eye, ability to fight with a meat hook, having been dead.
As a general note, this will be done in order, no looking back. If we pass up a prerequisite for something nice later, tough luck! That earlier option didn't win on its own merits. We will also usually only consider the current level of class feats, since taking something lower often feels a bit bad after level 2.
Picture of Cerise by a friend.
Level 1:
Investigator gives +2 Int
Elf gives +2 Int, +2 Dex, -2 Con, +2 floating. Investigator's most important stat is Wis, so we'll put the floating score in Wis.
Background: Detective. +2 Wis, +2 Dex
Free choice: +2 Wis, +2 Dex, +2 Con, +2 Str
Final stat array: Str 12, Dex 16, Con 10, Int 14, Wis 16, Cha 10
Background benefits: Trained in Society, Underworld lore, Streetwise skill feat.
Ancestry options: Ancient Elf will let us get a little occult flavor in. Well, it would if we had an Int or Wis occult class available for multiclass, so we'll settle on Wizard. Trained in Arcana, and our cantrips of usual preparation will be Detect Magic and Read Aura. We'll also grab Ancestral Longevity, allowing us to pick up a daily trained skill.
Class: Between Empiricism and Forensic Medicine, I'll go Empiricism. (As a note, this is a point where an occult detective methodology seems like it'd be cool- some divination spell access. The three options are very good, though.) Trained in Society becomes a free choice. Trained in one Int-based skill (Occultism). That leaves 1+6+2 = 9 skills to select; we'll get to that.
Class feats: My favorite first-level feat is covered by Empiricism! Nice. That lets me pick my also-favorite first-level feat, Flexible Studies. We're now picking two trained skills every day, which is awesome.
Trained skills: (Pick five skills of 17 to skip having trained: Performance, Lore, Intimidation, Athletics, Crafting.)
Society, Occultism, Arcana; Acrobatics, Deception, Diplomacy, Medicine, Nature, Religion, Stealth, Survival, Thievery; Underworld Lore.
Flexible picks are generally Crafting and a Lore relevant to the work at hand.
Will use a rapier as her primary weapon.
Level 2:
(For the sake of expedience, we'll be glossing over skill feats and improvements. While those are a big part of the class's kit, they also take up a lot of time. Cerise will delve into the occult, and maintain her various social skills. She will probably take advantage of both Underground Network and Biographical Eye from the new skill feats.)
Class feat: Framing Case, no question. This allows selecting the intended "boss" for the day without worrying about needing to drop it for other things.
Level 3:
General feat: Great Fortitude (I forget the exact name). We get Lesser Bardic Knowledge at this level. (Does this always get us the lower DC of the appropriate Lore? With the number of skills we have trained, it's not doing much otherwise. But, Skillful Lessons is the star of this level, so we don't expect much from whatever accompanies it.)
Level 4:
Class feat: Detective's Will, as we told ourselves we'd focus on Cerise's saves. Guided Observation would be a disappointment to take, although Predictive Purchase is tempting.
Level 5:
Lots of nice stuff! We get more studied damage, our accuracy goes up, we get an ancestry feat, and we get our ability boosts.
Ancestry feat: Elven Instincts or Ageless Patience.
Stat boosts: Wis, Con, Dex, Int (in that priority).
Level 6:
Class feat: Ongoing Investigation, for constant multitasking. With On the Scene pointing stuff out for us, we have an easier time justifying Investigate over Search, and we can also do both at the same time if we want.
Level 7:
Yay, more Perception and damage! General feat is probably Expeditious Search.
Level 8:
Class feat: Blind-Fight, no question. Clue Them All In feels like a big waste of a feat, and I wouldn't take it at level 1 if it were offered. Blind-Fight is pretty cool, giving a number of nice benefits and definitely encouraging the carrying of some paint.
Level 9:
Awwww yeah, Expert Longevity! That's one flexible expert skill every day. We also need to retrain our level 3 General Feat, because we now get expert Fort from our class. Toughness sounds like a good idea. Take the Case increases to +2, helping our investigations and some will saves. Plus, to top it off, we get more Studied Strike damage!
Level 10:
Class feat: Ooh, a difficult choice. Just One More Thing is stylish, and helpful for social situations. Suspect of Opportunity saves one action per round on one fight every hour. Sweeping Study gives ~20% of the benefit of Studied Strike on failed checks. We'll go with Suspect of Opportunity, because saving the Study Suspect is a really big deal.
Stat boosts: Boosting Wis or Dex doesn't help us for another five levels. This decision will suck at level 15, but it's time to switch to Str and Cha. +Con, +Int, +Cha, +Str.
Level 11:
Deductive Improvisation is… not doing much for this character. With a flexible Expert and Trained every day, and with checks not usually being gated by proficiency beyond trained, this is just kind of there. +2 to will saves, and successes are crit successes? That's enough to be excited about!
General Feat: With no general feats coming online that the character qualifies, this will be something small that was skipped over earlier. Wish I could spend a general feat on a first-level class feat.
Level 12:
Class Feat: I'm not taking Reason Rapidly. When do I need to make more than one Recall Knowledge in combat? I'd be much better off taking the level 1 feat Known Weakness to let me combine Recall Knowledge and Study Suspect! Let's see if Foresee Danger benefits me with any regularity- Dex and Wis are the same, Trained vs. Master proficiency. My armor gives… +1 base, +2 from magic. So, I get +1 AC as a reaction and negate AC penalties. Next level armor goes to expert, but Perception goes to Legendary. This feels like it's balanced well with the level 1 Rogue reaction for +2 AC against one attack, which is enough that I'm not going to feel very good taking it. On top of that, this directly conflicts with my level 10 choice, as it's a reaction with a very similar trigger.
Level 12 is the first level where I don't want any of the class feats- they're usually giving a worse-than-level-1 benefit, with the possibility of shining on rare occasions. Time to take Just One More Thing, my second-place 10th level choice.
Suggestion: I feel a much more fitting perk for Reason Rapidly would be rolling Recall Knowledge on all observable enemies as part of initiative (with the same restriction that you can't use reactions and free action perks). I'd take Foresee Danger if it applied to attacks by them until the start of my turn, since then it's not inferior to a level 1 Rogue feat even with (currently) maxed Wis bonus.
Level 13:
+2 AC! +2 Attack! Legendary Perception! More precision damage! Also, Universal Longevity ancestry feat allows shuffling skills in the middle of the day! What a level, folks.
Level 14:
All right, back to some good stuff. Plot the Future is… yeah, I'm taking that. Sense the Unseen is tempting with Blind Fight. Studied Bypass is, let's see… +4 damage if it's being reduced? Maybe try to take advantage and get magical painbow rapier? That's decent. But Plot the Future is at-will GM consultation and practically psychic. Super cool!
Level 15:
Evasion and +3 damage make this a very satisfying level. Don't know what I'll do with a general feat at this level, since we already get a skill feat to use on our legendary skill advancement. Hopefully we get some more legendary skill feats in the APG! Also, now we pay the piper when it comes to skill boosts: we have three 18s. Retroactively, probably good to take the one of the Cha, Int, or Str boosts and put it into Wis.
Level 16:
Implausible Purchase would be pretty nice, but we don't qualify. Didactic Strike is nice, even if it only works on crits. Let's go with that.
Level 17:
Great Resolve! Heck yeah, will saves for daaayyyysssss. Plus, more precision damage! Ancestry feat is gonna be grabbing from some lower level options.
Level 18:
Class feat: Fun choices here! Reconstruct the Scene really does feel like it ought to be lower, though. Might be good to slot into that level 12 gap? Trickster's Ace fits the character very well, though, so we'll go with that.
Level 19:
+2 AC, something about Clue In (I just… don't care about that feature at all), use legendary skill uses if you have mastery (I can't see that ever applying), and Investigator DC (not being used for anything) goes to master.
So.
+2 AC, mostly? (At levels 15-20, though, the extra skill increases are are their most valuable, so I get it, but Master Detective doesn't make Cerise better at anything except helping her allies on the knowledge checks she herself fails.)
Level 20:
Capstone: Looks like I don't have a choice, because Infallible Research has a level 6 prereq I don't have. Can it just… not? What's the point in locking it up, when the level 6 option is a nice addition to the capstone but isn't being added on to?
Whoa. Both capstones have a prereq? That's a bit of a problem. If you don't select either of those, you don't get a capstone.
Anyway, Everyone's a Suspect is… well, it's nice in some situations, but I'm mainly interested in Take the Case on somebody to save me an action in combat, and there's not much synergy with interacting for a minute. I've already got a decent option to get that perk, so this capstone is mostly just saving me a minute when I want to get +2 on a check to investigate somebody I met? Plus, this is level twenty! At the very least, I feel like this should allow some much-expedited combat studying.
Conclusion:
The Good:
Low and mid levels are almost all very exciting! Lots of cool abilities that felt powerful and flavorful without being things I would feel ought to be available to any class. I pretty much always felt happy with what I got at a level, whether it was even or odd. Great job!
The Meh:
I don't care about anything that builds on Clue In. The ability itself is fine, but it's just a small perk.
Investigator cares about intelligence as much as a bard does.
The Ugly:
The highest levels (19, 20) really lack the satisfaction that other classes get. They focus on the class's core mechanics, which boil down to +2 on certain skill checks and some damage compensation. Those are good, but just removing some of the restrictions on when you get those is a very dry way to close out the game.
This is a really interesting way of reviewing this. I like it
Notably I like how you didn't go back retrospectively and therefore spotted the potential flaws like prereqs for the capstone
Whilst you can see those by reading the intention of the game (I believe) is you shouldn't need to look ahead. Perhaps this is where re-training comes in. But your reasoning throughout implies that you wouldn't retrain something to qualify for the other capstone...?
Hopefully they will find a way of either making Investigator get more out of Intelligence or making Wisdom the key stat...
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Yeah, this is an interesting analysis that, IMO, shows some of the problems Investigator currently has (most notably the 'Int being your third highest stat at best' thing), while also showing some of the good stuff that Investigator has in terms of skills and non-combat options.
Hopefully they will find a way of either making Investigator get more out of Intelligence or making Wisdom the key stat...
Hopefully the former. Int not being the key stat is sort of a conceptual deal breaker for me. And, I think, a lot of other people as well.
Thank you, I'm glad you liked my approach!
Retraining to meet capstone prerequisites isn't all that fun. Let's consider it. We look back at level 6, and it looks like my newfound insightfulness means I stop investigating things as I go along. I'd probably trade out level 12 instead. Hopefully the group can spare a week. It really makes me inclined to look at capstones without prereqs.
Maybe that's unfair. Rogue's got prereqs on all their capstones, but those are all skill-based. Alchemist's level 20 is just +2 AC. And 12 comes right after a hard choice on class feats. But, 12, 19, and 20 are the levels where I'm not excited about leveling up. I don't need that fixed to enjoy the class, but it's the feedback I see as most important to give.
(And, I should note- 17 out of 20 levels in a playtest absolutely nailing it? That's amazing.)
being able to give anyone +1 attack that stacks with almost everything as a reaction every round...
*every 10 minutes
Combat Clue dosen't change the frequency of Clue In, just its trigger and bonus.
As it is right now, is not that good of a Feat, IMO (Which is unfortunate, it's the kind of thing an archetypical investigator would do in combat more than once per fight).
being able to give anyone +1 attack that stacks with almost everything as a reaction every round...*every 10 minutes
Combat Clue dosen't change the frequency of Clue In, just its trigger and bonus.
As it is right now, is not that good of a Feat, IMO (Which is unfortunate, it's the kind of thing an archetypical investigator would do in combat more than once per fight).level 19 feature allows to clue in every round.
that exactly was my point.
Ah sorry, i didn't read properly, my bad.
Still, i think that waiting to level 19 to make viable a Feat you take at level 2 is still meh...
Ah, I completely forgot about item bonuses to perception. I retract my concern about level 12; that's pretty awesome and well worth taking.
Thank you!
The every-round Clue In is probably better than I'm giving it credit for. It's not my jam, but that's fine; I'm being catered to levels 1-18, which is plenty.