What is the best weapon for an Investigator to wield?

[Ventnor]

I don't think I'm the only one who thinks that the Investigator's Devise a Stratagem action is one of their coolest features. You get to predict if your attack is going to hit, and get to use your Intelligence to hit on top of that? Very cool. You even get to add some extra damage on top of that with the strategic strike class feature.

Of course, there are some restrictions on all that. For one, you're only adding your Intelligence to one single attack in a round. And if you want to do that, you need to be a ranged attack, an agile or finesse melee attack, or a sap (which is already agile, so not sure why it needed to be called out specifically?). The list expands to one-handed clubs with the Takedown Expert feat.

There are quite a few different weapons that fall under that category of course, so which is the best for an Investigator who wants to play the whole Sherlock Holmes "play the battle out in my head" schtick to the fullest? Here are my thoughts.

You're adding your Intelligence to only a single attack per round, as I said. This means that weapon properties that proc off of two or more attacks per round are not all that useful for you. The traits I can think of right now that fit this definition are agile, backswing, forceful, sweep, and twin. So once we remove all those from the equation, what are we left with?

For melee weapons, if you don't want to spend any other feats on weapon proficiency, my opinion is that the best pick is the rapier. It's common, sure, but deadly d8 is mighty fine if you're pretty sure your attack is going to be a crit.

In the uncommon corner, the Aldori Dueling Sword has a respectable d8 weapon dice. If you're okay with a smaller weapon dice, you get a bunch of combat maneuver-aiding traits on the scorpion whip, plus reach. The spiked chain gets you both a d8 damage die and combat maneuver traits, though you do have to give up a free hand.

As for ranged weapons, you probably want to stick with bows instead of crossbows or slings unless you archetype into Archer or Ranger for running reload, since spending a turn going Devise a Stratagem > Strike > Reload would leave you vulnerable to any enemies who closed the distance with you.

Anyway, that's what I think. What are your thoughts?

[Aswaarg]

I think crossbows are good fir ghe investigator because if you dsil the Devise Strategie roll, you dont spend the bolt (so you dont waste the reroll action). Following this thinking, the throwing agile/finess weapons are also good choices, you can throw them only when you are sure you are hitting, and if you fail you keep it.

All this is true until lvl 10, when you can get the feat "Ongoing strategy", letting you apply the precision damage to all your atacjs. At that point, you should get an agile weapon for nelee or a bow for ranges, forget about devide a stratagem if is not a free action and try to do as much atacks as posible (probably taking feats for multiple atacks)