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Inspired by Deriven Firelion.
On paper, I was never really sold on the remaster changes to investigator's combat efficacy as being sufficient to make the class worth playing over a slightly reflavored rogue. And since I'm now back in the GM saddle, I don't know when I'll get the chance to try one any time soon.
So to anyone who has played a remastered investigator, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Even more so if you also played the premastered one as well.
The primary benefit imo was cleaning up the gap between best case and worst case investigator. The new language and phrasing gives GMs a lot more permission to be nice to Investigators in ways the class desperately needs it.
But also for the most part the class' very low ceiling didn't get removed. A number of feats remain as feast-or-famine as ever. It's probably the worst martial in the game in combat and still relies very heavily on the GM to throw them bones for their out of combat 'advantage' to actually come into play. Skillful stratagem is technically something of a boon, but it hasn't felt super high impact in practice for us.
Play experiences should be more even (we were already generous to the investigators at our tables so not much changed) but... it's still the worst class in the game by a noticeable amount.
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I played a pre-Remaster Investigator through Fall of Plaguestone. Which is a pretty good fit. The theme of the campaign is to investigate and find out what is happening to the town and then stop it.
But even with it being a good fit, I did not once manage to get the free action version of Devise a Strategem in the entire campaign.
The character overall wasn't bad. Still got to do a lot of the non-combat investigating things for plot progression and such. I did go the route of Wizard Archetype so that I had a backup cantrip for when Devise rolls low.
I have only played a Remaster Investigator very briefly. Only at level 1 in a non-AP game that fizzled out pretty quickly. But in the about 3 combats that we had, I got to use Devise as a free action in most of them. Which does greatly help the action economy.
It doesn't turn the Investigator into a high DPR character. There is still a lot of the build power being put towards non-combat things. Investigator's Precise Strike doesn't have the punch of Swashbuckler's Precise Strike with a Finisher even though both can only be used once per round. And both are outclassed by a Rogue making attacks with Sneak Attack multiple times per round.
It doesn't help with any alternatives to do when Devise rolls low. No, being able to fail at a skill check instead of an attack roll really doesn't help much, especially since you are forbidden from making a Strike against that target until the start of your next turn if you choose Skill Strategem. Still your best options are to attack a different target entirely, or have a backup cantrip or something else that doesn't qualify for Strategem use.
But the change does make Investigator decent at action use during combat instead of bad at it. When you roll low on a Free Action Devise, you still have all three actions for the round left to find something else to do instead of only two. So you can move in addition to casting a cantrip.
Honestly I don't think the class changed a ton. The main thing that changed is that its easier to get the free action Devise now, and you have something else to use your Devise on if you roll lousy.
Those are themselves big changes that help the class feel a lot better in play. I've got an Investigator in my SoT group and they are WAY happier now than they were before the remaster gave them that... but the other issues are largely the same. I agree with what Squiggit said: the low end for the class got raised more than the high end did.
So if the question is "is it worth playing over a Rogue" in terms of power? No, not really. Rogue is still better (especially with its own remaster buffs that it frankly didn't need).
But if you like the flavor, Investigator is now in a place where it doesn't feel bad to play the way it used to.
... So if the question is "is it worth playing over a Rogue" in terms of power? No, not really. Rogue is still better (especially with its own remaster buffs that it frankly didn't need).
But if you like the flavor, Investigator is now in a place where it doesn't feel bad to play the way it used to.
It honestly baffles me how extremely conservatively Investigators were improved upon given how complex the class is. Often times, complexity is more taxing, but it gets rewarded with more power, which doesn't seem to be the trade off the Investigator is getting compared to a Rogue. Instead, we got the easiest classes to play(Fighters, Rogues and Barbarians) getting a ton of straight buffs and no nerfs.
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... So if the question is "is it worth playing over a Rogue" in terms of power? No, not really. Rogue is still better (especially with its own remaster buffs that it frankly didn't need).
But if you like the flavor, Investigator is now in a place where it doesn't feel bad to play the way it used to.
It honestly baffles me how extremely conservatively Investigators were improved upon given how complex the class is. Often times, complexity is more taxing, but it gets rewarded with more power, which doesn't seem to be the trade off the Investigator is getting compared to a Rogue. Instead, we got the easiest classes to play(Fighters, Rogues and Barbarians) getting a ton of straight buffs and no nerfs.
Honestly: PC2 was a very mixed bag of a book. Fighter and Rogue were PC1, which aside from Wizard I think was pretty decent to every class (Wizard got whacked by the OGL pretty hard and so far the new schools have not made up for it).
PC2 feels much more like a book where they simply ran out of time and so some classes just didn't get the attention they needed for bigger reworks. Investigator falls into that bucket. I'm not sure if they were deliberately conservative in how they approached it, or if its more a case of "we only have X time, lets do the most important thing and move on."
I don't know that, but it fits with several of the problems I've found in the book (including how generally messy the Oracle remaster is).
I really don't know why Rogue got buffed, though, lol.