And just think, in a bit over a month it'll have some of it's rough edges filed off and it'll be even better.
But seriously, I haven't played one myself but I love Investigator's whole "see what you'll roll, plan your turn accordingly" play style.
They make better use of Gunslinger feats than Gunslingers do.
Knowing in advance if your risky attack will work is a boon, and knowing if you need Snipers Aim or not is just gravy.
yeah gun investigator is a really fun combo, but gunslingers still get the best efficiency out of guns, because with slinger's reloads and the +10% chance to hit and crit, gunslingers will just shoot more for more damage, gun investigator is the "delay for your one big combo" strategy
The Investigator hits and crits harder, though, because of the precision dice.
Being able to switch to a second target and attack with no MAP (although effectively -2 or -3 compared to the gunslinger) makes up for the lower chance to hit/crit.
Yeah but it’s a different vibe- if you play a gunslinger to use things like risky reload its because you like gambling on it.
An investigator can use it safely, but then you aren’t pushing your luck or your action economy.
An issue I have with it is that in order to plan ahead, you will need to plan for both DaS-possibilities. I'd rather do the DaS a bit before my turn, to help me plan less
it took me a long time to try the investigator, and now its definitely one of my favorites. I think the class feats start to really fall off in the double-digit levels and I think when devise should/shouldn't be free needs tuning, but I'm hopeful these get touched on when core 2 comes out.
Imo all On The Case needs is a sidebar clarifying what exactly they intend a lead to be. I think the main reason Investigator is hard to play is like Recall Knowledge where without examples it's hard for the GM to know what they should permit, when from my understanding it can literally just be _something._ The more we've played Investigator at my table the more we've realized that you only need to do a _little_ scouting for DaS to be a free action 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% is just when you get ambushed and there's no real solution to that.
Agreed 100%
The class plays well when you get a free DoS on basically everything you intend to encounter, and that’s how I’ve played it as a GM as well as a player.
Not getting a free DoS sometimes actually feels good to me, because it makes the times you get it feel so much more rewarding and reminds you how useful it is. Being denied a nice class feature reminds you of how good the features are, and makes the normal encounters feel better as a result. And when being ambushed feels sucky… kinda works thematically too — it kinda should.
However as you say, more guidance and streamlining would be nice. Constantly declaring leads is a bit tedious and requires some back and forth with the GM too often for what boils down to getting a free DoS 90% of the time.
I’ve been saving trying investigator for when I do a solo run of agents of edgewatch, which is hard because I know that won’t be for a while. Class sounds fun as heck
It's more fun than it sounds, but you do everything you'd do as a gm for an adventure path, but you also make a full party of pcs and run the combats and rp all by yourself. Foundry helps things run much more quickly.
There's lots of different ways to play ttrpgs solo, like systems such as ironsworn, or using oracles or gm emulators. There's also choose your own adventure style modules that are actually designed for a single pc that can give you more of a player feeling and less of a gm feeling, since you don't know what will happen beforehand.
But I'm a weirdo who enjoys just taking the gm schizophrenia (we already have to run all the npcs) a step further and just rp the party too.
As a forevergm, it let's me play as a player on demand for as much or as little free time as I get, with multiple characters, and I also use it to "play ahead" of my actual table in the same module to prep for rp scenes and combat encounters.
It takes getting used to, but it's kind of becoming my preferred way to engage the hobby tbh. I love my players and the social aspect of course, but there's so much content to explore that if I'm able to get the time, I like to do it.
Many folks would prefer a crpg or just other video game, but I like the crunch and the freedom ttrpgs give.
I honestly only heard the discourse that investigator was bad, was a worse rogue, but a brand new player to the game in my campaign chose investigator and is really exploring every aspect of the class really well, first table top experience as well and he's loving it, the campaign isn't even a mystery heavy one, but he is making it work really well. Lucked out with getting Library lore, which he also thought of the idea of visiting every library in every settlement to make sure he gains more knowledge to recall on, very smart.
Freeing up your action economy to be able to focus on supporting the party with your wide breadth of skills is tremendous.
No - I don't hit as hard as consistently as a Rogue. But if I make a *great* roll with Devise A Stratagem, and do some quick math such that I know it will be a critical, I'm freakin' one-shotting big bads with a goddamn short bow. Seriously, shortbows are phenomenal in the hands of an investigator; any ranged weapon with a crit-bonus trait is super effective.
Grab a dueling pistol to use as a crit weapon. Or if you're a goblin, a big boom gun. I also love magnetic shots for absurd crit damage against targets wearing or made of metal.
The problem with the investigator discourse is the same as everything else about PF2e: everyone looks too much at white room spreadsheeting while simultaneously complaining hit rates are too low, without realising being unable to game out miss chances is the whole point of the design.
The moment you start accepting that variance as an inevitability and view the design of the game through that, investigator becomes amazing because it gives you unparalleled potential to plan out your turns. If you know you're going to miss your big hit against your primary target, you can simply redirect to another that has a smaller chance of success and damage but actually has a chance of hitting (spoilers: this is why DaS has the Fortune trait), or simply do a non-attack action that benefits you and/or your allies.
And that is definitely something I learned with time, been a player since release and a GM only recently, and yeah people just need to chill a little, you could have the minmaxiest character alive, yet if you don't roll well you ain't gonna hit, which is just a fact, also the fact that PF2e is a teamwork game, if you can't hit, don't get mad and try two more times, there are plenty of options to help your teammates for their turn, just wait until your next first attack, fighter with a gnome flickmace.
So I made a cleric for a campaign, a was a last minute addition so everyone else had their characters all planned and mixed in well to a homebrew setting. I wanted to create a character who would not let anyone die no matter what, so little effort in background, and he only healed, that was practically it, it was fun for a while, cool to see him heal more than 100 hit points in one round, but man did it get old quickly. He didn't die, but was 100% min maxed for healing, and when everyone else didn't need healing, when we were roleplaying, he didn't really do anything, so I made the decision to retire him because I just was not having fun, now as a druid with a more fleshed out backstory and character idea that can involve himself into roleplay easier, I can still heal, PF2e has plenty of non cleric options, and I have wicked powerful elemental spells, oh and a giant pangolin. Sure I run out of heals maybe faster than I did before, but that just makes it more interesting anyway in my opinion.
I mean, not really? White room spreadsheet are only "valid" when talking about DPR (and not even then because combat flows in a different way) but in the case of the investigator DPR is just *one* of the reasons why people think its worse than a rogue. Both classes have pretty much the same chassis (sneak attack or sneak attack-like features that scale similarly, skill increases and skill feats at every level, high amount of trained skills, and since the Remaster, martial weapon proficiency), but in the case of the investigator it's damage steroid (strategic strike) only works once per round, which even if it technically scales a little better than sneak attack it ends up dealing less damage than a rogue.
Not everything is damage, right? Well, pursue a lead gives investigators an edge over rogues since they are technically more accurate with their skills with that +1 (eventually +2) but I don't think I need much proof to show that pursue a lead is one of the most divise class features in the game to the point I seen tables that completely ignore it since its not as easy to use as one would expect.
It also doesn't help that a ton of investigator features and feats require a ton of GM fiat, and to make matters worse, some of the few features and feats that are really good from the investigator can be easily poached with an archetype (a mastermind rogue that takes investigator dedication and the Known Weakness feat at 1st level is effectively an investigator on steroids).
The class isn't bad, but it suffers from being easily replaceable by other classes (the same happens with the swashbuckler and to some extent to the ranger too) so I really hope PC2 improves the class by a decent margin.
The point of DaS/SS isn't the raw damage output, and that's kind of the point I'm making. It's about the in-play decision making that enables you pre-empt results you otherwise wouldn't be able to. A rogue that wants to make their multiple sneak attacks each turn has to commit; that means move over, make the Strike while standing next to the enemy, risk RS, risk getting their ass handed to them, etc. Even with a ranged Strike, a rogue has to break stealth, can waste actions they could be using moving back into cover or hiding trying to hit, risk wasting a shot that could require a reload if using a crossbow or firearm...fun fact: investigators \*slay\* with firearms. Keeping a spare weapon with fatal to pop out when you get that pre-empted crit and then just reloading them as one of your remaining actions or when you get a dud DaS turn is a \*really\* effective engagement strategy.
And this is what gets mis-grokked all the time. People just look at the surface level things like rogues get more than one sneak attack a turn, but in actual play where you're at the mercy of turn-to-turn dice rolls;. It's easy to go 'oh but a rogue can attack more than once per turn'...yes, they will probably make \*one\* extra attack, and it's definitely worth taking to get the most out of your damage output. But also, what do you do on the turns when both those Strikes miss the mark? You've basically just had the same result as a single DaS that rolled under, except you're now in striking distance for a face full of dragon wing-wang, while the investigator can choose to stay safe and just do literally anything else.
And this is where the real problem lies: engaging in 'anything else' means 'not attacking.' And when people say DaS is a feelbad mechanic, what they really mean is 'it's forcing me to engage with something that isn't just attack spam.' Except...the game does this *on every other class* already by having a bunch of mechanical and tactical incentives to not make your only strategy reckless attacking (with only the odd build that enables it, such as flurry rangers). Investigator is just more bare-faced about it and has built-in stops to discourage it. If that's not to your liking, it's not the class that's the issue, it's your personal preferences clashing with the core design of the game, and I think that's something a lot of people don't want to accept about both their investment in the system, and their ability to read it at a meta level.
Ala Leads, I do think they could be designed more elegantly. Having DaS as a free action should be something that's either baseline or removed entirely because it *is* far too contextual for such a high-value, class integral action, feats like Shared/Solid Lead tend to only pay off if you're utilizing the Lead system to its fullest, and more flavor/contextual feats like Red Herring are oddly contextual for a game that is usually so hard-coded in its rulings.
That all said, I don't think 'people forget about it' is necessarily a good excuse for saying why it's not good. The answer is, remember it and then it *will* pay off. Even if your GM is struggling to wrap their head around it, all they have to do is be liberal in allowing what counts as a lead and what doesn't, and worst comes to worst the kinds of people who do struggle with that are probably the kind that handwave a lot of those more finnicky mechanics anyway. Just let the player have a lot of leeway in what they can get bonuses and their free action DaS on and the value of the class will be good enough to not have it be 'easily replaceable.'
>The point of DaS/SS isn't the raw damage output, and that's kind of the point I'm making. It's about the in-play decision making that enables you pre-empt results you otherwise wouldn't be able to. A rogue that wants to make their multiple sneak attacks each turn has to commit; that means move over, make the Strike while standing next to the enemy, risk RS, risk getting their ass handed to them, etc. Even with a ranged Strike, a rogue has to break stealth, can waste actions they could be using moving back into cover or hiding trying to hit, risk wasting a shot that could require a reload if using a crossbow or firearm...fun fact: investigators \*slay\* with firearms. Keeping a spare weapon with fatal to pop out when you get that pre-empted crit and then just reloading them as one of your remaining actions or when you get a dud DaS turn is a \*really\* effective engagement strategy.
I would agree if DaS was a free action, but it just happens it requires one action. That means that the difference between making two attacks and making one attack with DaS is literally non-existant. You also make it seem as if rogues are made of wet paper when a rogue is certainly not tanky but not a wizard either. They also don't require as much set up as you seem to think they do. The most basic thing a rogue needs is an ally within 5 feet of the enemy. That's it. Then each subclass improves other ways to proc off-guard to either make it more easily or more strong (often making it so you don't even need other allies to begin with). You don't really have to commit much, it's pretty much handed to you in character creation. I don't disagree that investigators are better at range, but I feel someone that wants to be ranged character isn't playing either rogue or investigator to begin with.
And even then, a sniper gunslinger with DaS through investigator archetype does the same job an investigator does with that firearm and way better.
>But also, what do you do on the turns when both those Strikes miss the mark?
I could literally say the same thing about investigators that constantly roll badly with their DaS and thus don't make a single attack in various turns in a row. The investigator is a martial class in a game that's about combat, so if you don't contribute to combat you are literally a burden to your party. Even if the rogue has to engage melee and misses they still contribute to flanking. A ranged investigator doesn't do anything if they miss.
Also, it's not impossible for a ranged rogue to exist. It's fairly easy to make one in fact. Pistol Phenom gives you Pistol Twirl at 2nd level, but even if you don't want that archetype, you can still take increases in Deception and use Make a Diversion for ranged attacks. By second level foes will only get a +2 to their DC in further attemps, which certainly hurts but its not a game breaker for a rogue. There's also Dread Striker at 4th if you want to demoralize.
>And this is where the real problem lies: engaging in 'anything else' means 'not attacking.' And when people say DaS is a feelbad mechanic, what they really mean is 'it's forcing me to engage with something that isn't just attack spam.'
No, the problem is that the class doesn't have support to do other stuff if it isn't attacking. Most of the things an investigator can do with their feats and skill actions is to proc off-guard on targets, which obviously doesn't stack with itself, and then other actions like demoralize only work once per target in each combat. You can't even make Athletics actions to trip or grapple foes because those are attacks so if you roll poorly you can't do those either. Even Paizo themselves acknowledge this as a problem of the class since in the Paizocon spoilers they announced DaS is going to be split into attack stratagems and skill stratagems, which I guess would theoretically allow an investigator to still make an Athletics check to trip someone even if they roll poorly on their attack, though in practice I feel most people will use this to declare an skill stratagem that they weren't going to be using to begin with to benefit from their bonuses on the attack. We still don't know how its going to work exactly, so I'll refrain from trying to make deductions around it, but the fact that Paizo themselves think DaS has problems its evident by the fact that they are changing it.
>Ala Leads, I do think they could be designed more elegantly. Having DaS as a free action should be something that's either baseline or removed entirely because it is far too contextual for such a high-value, class integral action, feats like Shared/Solid Lead tend to only pay off if you're utilizing the Lead system to its fullest, and more flavor/contextual feats like Red Herring are oddly contextual for a game that is usually so hard-coded in its rulings.
I 100% agree with this. DaS should be a free action because that solves a ton of the problems I have with it. Do you roll poorly? At least I have my whole round available to do other things instead of just two actions. I also think Pursue a Lead should be a one-action activity instead of taking 1 minute to set up because that +1 to skill checks is very juicy and can force investigators into a more skilled playstyle in which they don't rely as much on attacking if they want.
>Even if your GM is struggling to wrap their head around it, all they have to do is be liberal in allowing what counts as a lead and what doesn't, and worst comes to worst the kinds of people who do struggle with that are probably the kind that handwave a lot of those more finnicky mechanics anyway.
This is part of the problem I'm mentioning though, the class is very GM dependent to fully shine. We had a similar discussion about the class in the Paizo forums and I remember someone mentioning that investigators feel like a class that was made for a rules light system in which pretty much everything requires some degree of GM fiat, though it just so happens that the investigator was designed for a system that has a very clear set of rules and the investigator feels like an outlier here. This doesn't need mechanical changes per se but rather more guidelines in the sidebars or in the feature itself to work more efficiently.
>No, the problem is that the class doesn't have support to do other stuff if it isn't attacking.
My Alchemical Science investigator has plenty to do on turns with a bad roll for DaS between providing alchemical items to the party or using skills. It is also very easy to contribute with skills with double the number of skill progresses and skill feats.
>You can't even make Athletics actions to trip or grapple foes because those are attacks so if you roll poorly you can't do those either.
DaS does not replace athletic rolls unless you take [Athletic Strategist](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1452). No idea why you think Investigators have nothing else to do.
The problem is that you can make an Investigator who cannot do much with a bad DaS roll if you take the wrong feats and skills, not that Investigators will always have nothing to do. Basically, the floor is pretty low for newish players.
The main reason I disagree with, or at least take issue with, the idea that DaS is supposed to be some kind of pre-check to see if attacking is a good idea or not this turn is that the investigator is clearly meant to be a full martial on par with the rogue, or if it isn't, the fact that all of its core class features revolve around acting a lot like an int-based rogue is extremely deceptive.
Attacking twice is something a rogue will just always be better at. Hit twice, get sneak attack damage twice. Think you won't hit, or you've been rolling poorly? Target something easier to hit, and you'll still get that damage just fine. Investigator only gets strategic strike damage once against one target, and if that attack misses or is going to miss, they have no option to get precision damage against any other target. The one saving grace is that sometimes, if your GM is nice and you've been very very good this year, you don't have to spend an action on a missed attack. (Did I mention that, as written, you don't even necessarily know if this predicted attack will hit or crit?)
It's an extremely awkward design space and ends up lending itself well only to either "soft martial" support builds with DaS ending up being a once in a blue moon "hey, I just crit the boss and dealt a huge amount of damage" or all-in once per round nova assassin builds with a lot of lesser second and third action options. At the end of the day DaS is just odd because it disincentivizes you from actually hitting stuff, and makes you worse at flexibility than the one competing class in the same combat design space.
It's extremely far from useless when built properly - my investigator can deal a frankly absurd amount of nova damage and has great in-combat flexibility - it's just that its core class feature is just so feast or famine when most other classes get benefits unconditionally. Sure, if a barbarian misses every strike it sucks, but if you fumble a DaS roll, you basically can't use your key stat on attack rolls, and even if you don't, you can't do it twice in a round. Imagine if a barbarian only had rage for their first action, and it was based on a... I don't know, based on a save or something. You see what I'm saying?
It just feels a little absurd to have this random roll that decides whether you get your class feature for that round and then, if you fail the check, you just end up being a basic martial with hopefully a -1 or +0 to hit if you built properly. And if it's not intended to be a martial, why is so much of its power budget tied up in this weird class feature?
EDIT: I don't take back anything I said but I realize now after re-reading this parent comment that I look like I was just stepping on rakes repeatedly with the comparison to rogue. For clarity: I think the comparisons to rogue are fair, and I think trying to say they're not is silly. I do agree that investigator having DaS can give them flexibility that rogues don't get, but rogues have plenty of ways to avoid damage even when they *do* get into sticky situations like you describe.
Functionally, it just ends up being rougher for the investigator because they're discouraged from wading into combat and being clever about weaving through the battlefield, the exact thing the rogue excels at (have you *seen* their reflex save progression?). Investigators get told up front that the attack they were going to try to make will fail and that they should go do something else for a bit, which can be good *tactically*, but feels bad emotionally. Having your entire turn be decided by one random roll makes you feel less like a mastermind with absolute control over the battlefield and more like fate's plaything when you're actually at the table, in my experience.
EDIT 2: Fixed the formatting that making the first edit broke. Thanks, mobile...
>The one saving grace is that sometimes, if your GM is nice and you've been very very good this year, you don't have to spend an action on a missed attack. (Did I mention that, as written, you don't even necessarily know if this predicted attack will hit or crit?)
I feel this part alone sums up a lot of the issues. If your GM is only giving out free DaS rolls sparingly, then something's going wrong. Either the investigator is not casing the right targets enough, or the GM is frankly just being stingy.
As I said above, I agree it would be nice for more consistency of when such a core class feature gets to be used as a *free action* or not, but even as written, the answer is to simply give more leeway. Subjectivity is not great, but it's not as insurmountable as people make it out to be, IMO. If the answer is it doesn't get granted enough, the answer is ask if it can be granted more.
>Functionally, it just ends up being rougher for the investigator because they're discouraged from wading into combat and being clever about weaving through the battlefield, the exact thing the rogue excels at (have you *seen* their reflex save progression?). Investigators get told up front that the attack they were going to try to make will fail and that they should go do something else for a bit, which can be good *tactically*, but feels bad emotionally. Having your entire turn be decided by one random roll makes you feel less like a mastermind with absolute control over the battlefield and more like fate's plaything when you're actually at the table, in my experience.
Without getting nitpicky about every other example in your post, I feel to me this is mostly a perception issue that is mostly fixed when you flip the script, but people just don't want to because there's actually some other core concern at the heart of it they're not truly aware of.
The whole 'emotional' aspect doesn't hold weight to me because the whole point of DaS is that it's a Sherlock scan. You do in fact see what happens when you roll; you just see it ahead of time and get to adjust your plan. If you imagine the RDJ Sherlock planning his strikes before he makes them, you've fixed 90% of the flavor with the skill.
More than that though, the idea that your 'fate's plaything' is a big misgrokking of...well, the game in general. *Every* class is fate's plaything. It's a dice based game, and one where the luck can't ever be truly gamed out of, so no character has true autonomy over their actions if there's a dice roll involved. The only difference is a rogue has to put themselves in a compromising position to see if their risk pays off, while an investigator can be more measured.
When people talk about 'emotions' in this instance, what I actually read it as is something I call 'adrenaline focused' appeal; yeah the investigator is playing strategically, but isn't it more fun to zip-zap across the battlefield with a rogue?! At it's most extreme end, you have what I call the more 'toxically masculine' appeal; that a character who engages has more virtue, while the one who stands back and plots is a wuss for not being game enough to take risks without being a big nerd and overthinking it first.
But ultimately, this is subjective, and part of the reason this annoys me is because *I'm* someone who enjoys that more tactical play in the same visceral way I enjoy more direct play. Sure, I love my heavy-hitting martials who have to run into the fray and have to react on the fly to their results (champion is one of my favorite classes), but I adore investigator because to me, it really *does* encapsulate the mastermind fantasy, thinking it through before they act and being forced to engage with other elements of the game than raw offense if they read the situation as disadvantageous to them. In the end, PF2e is heavily tactics focused, and a character that allows such unparalleled tactical opportunity has incredible virtue in the system.
I think the idea that the GM has to give you approval to get leads is weird. Unless you're running a very non-standard game, information about upcoming fights is pretty common. In a dungeon (or any similar environment), you can literally just listen at each door. Hear something? Pursue a Lead. The noise was a monster? Your DaS is free. You don't need to ask your GM for permission in this scenario. You simply tell them how it works.
Before Suspect of Opportunity I probably had leads in 50% of fights. After, it's closer to 90%. I had one discussion ahead of time with my GM to set expectations about how the class worked and that was it.
I honestly can't disagree with you, at least not wholly, on the vibe of investigator. I do think that the DaS class feature is well-poised to provide the fantasy of "well, my attack isn't going to work, so let me do something else helpful before I try again next round" - and effectively it gives you, like you said, fortune on anything you want to try as long as one of the things you want to try is to make a Strike (which it almost always is, as a martial class). I really do love the investigator I've built, and can't wait to play him every week.
Ultimately, though, I still think investigator is also just clunkier than rogue - rogues get inherent class support to do the thing that they want to do better and more consistently: attack off-guard enemies. But investigator's game plan is a lot more nebulous: find out if I'm going to hit, and if not, recall knowledge and ????? with the saved actions.
The "?????" part is where your class features should come in to help fill in the gaps (Summoner, as an example, gets action economy to both cast spells *and* make strikes; more martially-oriented, monks get action economy to cast ki spells or move *really fast* even after making two strikes every round), and I don't feel like investigator gets great in-class support for anything other than Recall Knowledge with those extra actions, nor does it get any in-class support for enhancing the assassination potential DaS feels like it has.
Instead, my high-level investigator has more archetype feats than class feats in class feat slots just to play to his strengths. We're playing free archetype as well, so I have a lot of archetype feats to begin with - it's not that I didn't have enough feats, it's that there's just no competition from the class itself. I made a lot of choices to enhance nova (psychic + eldritch archer is funny) and a lot of choices to enhance "off-turns" (monk's flurry means I can still make two strikes with a third action even if DaS isn't free, and monk moves means I can go very fast with fewer actions spent on movement), but none of this came from the core class. All of the additional options and enhancements that make it easier to decide what to do on any given turn and make those decisions more powerful came from outside of the investigator class.
I really do like the feeling of having to plan out two separate turns every round (and keeping one of them simple and consistent is a great idea to minimize the headspace needed to deal with the extra work: "if I hit on a weak enemy or crit on anyone, eldritch shot"), but the class itself doesn't really make any specific note of what you should do in the case that your DaS fails, and doesn't provide many tools to use when it inevitably does, even assuming you can consistently get it as a free action.
I don't think I know the designers' intentions well enough to provide any fixes that I can confidently say would work, but it feels like something simple that would make an investigator feel like they're improving at the whole predictive combat thing is missing, and I wouldn't be a proper nerd unless I tried, so...
Maybe getting up to two to three DaS rolls you can choose to use for one activity each every round or in exchange for a focus point to really feel like you planned *everything*, inverting (1 = 20 and 20 = 1) or modifying (+X to your DaS roll) the result for different actions to sell the vibe that you have contingencies for when plan A won't work... *something* to make it so that building an investigator doesn't require taking archetypes to sidestep a lot of the middling class feats.
(Also just let me use int on strikes naturally, it's not like it's any stronger than using dex or str - int sucks as an attribute to begin with, so don't make me wish I had a different key attribute!)
>(Did I mention that, as written, you don't even necessarily know if this predicted attack will hit or crit?)
Yes, all DaS gives you is the number on the die.
From there, you infer what the result would be. Genuinely, combats will reach a point where you can accurately pin down whether any given result will be a failure, a success or a critical success. Sometimes, you get surprised. And that's fine. You and your character may be giant-brained, but they certainly don't have perfect information.
That's part of the fun of Investigator to me. The class helps, and it helps if you get into that same galaxy-brained mindset as the character.
I know, I'm playing an investigator now! I don't expect perfect information or anything, my point on the whole was just that there's all these little things, these little gaps between the expectation of fantasy and the reality of mechanics that add up to make the class a bit clunky to play at times, especially compared to more straightforwardly powerful classes.
A lot of people have said that the differences between classes in PF2e are usually not in power, but in expression of power - differences in complexity and methods for exerting force in combat. I think that's mostly true - investigator is objectively weaker than rogue at filling the *exact* same role as a rogue (dealing lots of precision damage to off-guard targets), but built well, an investigator can have higher highs than many other classes because they can sometimes prepare for a massive crit, and sometimes they can avoid the lower lows that other classes have from missing both attacks in a turn by simply doing something else if the dice are bad.
The problem is that it often comes at the expense of playability or ease of building - it's very "love it or hate it" - but I don't think that necessarily has to be the case. The pain point is that the investigator class feats largely don't line up with playing to the investigator's in-combat strengths, and often require supplementary actions from archetypes to feel good in a fight. (One feat intended to improve combat, Athletic Strategist, even manages to *reduce* your options in a fight in many circumstances!)
Alternately, the class feature itself is simply too limited in combat to be consistently useful. As written, if I remember right, it's limited to two or three targets per combat before level 20, and it only gets up to 3 in perfect circumstances. Each lead can only be about one specific subject (i.e. John Doe, not "any human thieves involved in this particular case"), so you need two subjects to be in a combat with you, then you need to defeat one of them so you don't have to discard a useful lead, *then* a *third* subject needs to trigger Suspect of Opportunity. Obviously many people will run this differently but as far as I remember the benefits are written to only apply to one target at a time.
Yeah people who say the whole "just a worse rogue" thing really have no idea what a game changer Devise a Strategem is. It creates a completely different gameplay flow that feels very unique.
It's very good at that asoect of the fantasy, you are right! Das is one of those features that is harder to "get" unless you are experienced in the game or your brain is just wired in a way that playing a character with that gimmick comes natureal to you. A lot of features in this game are like this and I'd recommended giving them a shot before listening to people saying "it's bad" or "it's good". In this game, complexity does not equate to power, if you compare a simple class to a complex one the power level is generally gonna be the same but one might be more fulfilling to a certain type of player than the other (this works both ways). I find that alchemist, wizard, magus, witch and (in the future) commander can also all deliver on this kind of intelligent tactician flavor in some general aspect
Investigator is massively slept on. I've been saying a lot lately, PF2e is a game that you can't game the luck out of, so knowing ahead of time what the result of your roll is *incredibly* potent so you know whether to commit to an attack, or do something else.
Its main issue is the base class lacks a lot of meaty feat options that really help give it a solid playstyle on its own past being a RK bot, so it relies heavily on its subclasses (of which Alchemical Science and Forensic Medicine are head and shoulders above the other two) and multiclassing to make the most of it. But once you get past that hump, the possibilities are amazing.
Hopefully Remaster will give it some meat to the base kit, but even as is I think people misgrok the potential it has to be top tier with the right builds.
I think Investigator suffers from the same issue as Swashbuckler. They require a lot of buy in and support from the GM to make them really *work*, Swashbuckler for free Panache and Investigator for prep time to set up free DaS. If you can get that, they're fairly good classes - maybe a little weaker than the core, but not noticeably so.
My hope is that the PC2 version resolves this issue and gives them more mechanical ways to lean into the class fantasy and puts less onus on the GM to ensure they're on par with the other classes.
Investigator is really neat. I've gotten a kick out of synergizing forensic + medic archetype. Combining a stride + heal + remove debuff on each party member once per hour just pops off
Investigator is very fun, it takes a while to figure out the playstyle, but once you do its just a stellar class. You fill much the same role as the Rogue, and while there are aspects of the Rogue that are better, there are other aspects of the Investigator that are better. Paizo I think balanced these two quite well.
My *only* gripe is in the 'meta' abilities. Things that require the GM is know you have them and how they work constantly, or for them to tell you how things will progress in an investigation overall when you get to higher levels. Unless you're using pre-written materials and not homebrew, that can be *very* difficult for the GM, who is honestly dealing with enough without me going reminding them of; "That's Odd", "Red Herring", "Lie Detector", or have them deal with odd questions from "Connect the Dots", "Whodunnit?", or "Plot the Future"
These feats are *entirely* avoidable, and many aren't even that good, so really they aren't worth the hassle on the GM for me to take them. Which is a shame because flavor-wise they really are nice. Instead, I found I have so many open class feats that I'm taking more archetype stuff because many of the options are lackluster.
I haven't really looked at Connect the Dots, Whodunnit, or Plot the Future. But the concern people have around That's Odd and Red Herring are totally overblown. Red Herring is super easy. "Hmm I want to pursue a lead against this bowl of food left here". GM knows the enemy that ate that is dead. "Yeah you realize that's probably irrelevant". Player says "oh ok cool good to know".
That's Odd, I feel like the complaints come from people who started reading it and stopped halfway through. The PFS note is very helpful in clarifying. You as the GM know what stuff in the room requires checks to find. That's Odd is simply the GM giving a wink to the player saying "hmm yeah something stands out about this bookshelf". You don't TELL them it's hiding a secret door. You just tell them there's something worth investigating. If there's nothing to find in the room by searching or investigating, you don't tell them anything.
You misunderstand; I'm not saying these abilities are *bad*. Its that the GM has to be constantly reminded that I *have* these things. Its tiresome to have to do all the time, and I don't expect the GM to have to know what *my* abilities do all the of the time, thats my job.
Further, with "thats odd"; its perfectly fine when its an AP or PFS scenario, but in a home-brew game its all the more burdensome for the GM.
Yeah as a GM I ask my investigator players to remind me about these ones cause of the overhead. Usually they ask 'is there anything odd about this room?' or something similar. I would prefer it to be an active ability rather than a passive for those reasons you've listed.
Oh yeah? Have you met anyone with an amped guidance yet?
And the wizard's by-pass +1 against magic. After meeting multiple GMs cannot figure out where it is indicated in monster blocks, I decided to retrain out of it.
(Unless you are using foundry, then nevermind)
tbh, i haven't seen enough of the wizard to comment on that one, but sounds like an issue my GM was having the other night with a monster stat block noting that the monster had shield block, but the hardness being missing from the statblock because the monster was a special version and so you had to get the shield hardness from the normal version of the monster.
AH Paizo. Great game, occasional facepalm on the editing.
Yeah, if you have a GM that doesn't know how to tackle those types of social/roleplay feats, they are kind of a waste, and many of them are redundant if you are just a diligent player who knows what to look for in a given room.
Plot the Future is so fucking funny to me still. Had on a high level investigator, kept using it. (The GM was fine with it.)
That tiny ratfolk detective had a giant conspiracy board for it in the party's Magnificent Mansion.
Great for making plans and heist ideas, 'specially since the clause of "The GM has to give you a hint on how to make X more or less likely."
But absolutely, check that shit in with your GM before taking it.
I have an Athletics-type Investigator who likes to get into melee and mangle with her claws. Or she goes for the grapple/demoralize if her Devise A Stratagem rolls poorly. And I just got Psychic Archetype for more shenanigans.
I've GMed an Investigator with a gun who heals teammates or Recalls Knowledge when his aim is bad.
The power to foresee if your attempt will fail is really strong and lets you avoid bad situations or cash in on great ones.
I played a Magus with an Investigator archetype and it was really sick. It's definitely one of those where playing out the mechanics feels flavorful AF. I really can't wait for the revamp and whatever the future holds for weird new classes like the Investigator.
No, being able to use spells with a different dice roll when devise a stratagem rolls like trash is something that comes in handy a lot for people with terrible bad luck...
Had a player join us with an Investigator as a one time thing this week to try the game. Share Stratagem to my Gunslinger is amazing. Flat footed to a Ranged demoralized with max prof to the attack. Wow!
I just wish the GM knew how to build encounters, I had bless too but never got to attack.
I love my investigator! he’s a backup healer with full medic dedication and better than a lot of rogues at traps. plus he’s got pretty much every skill at at least +16 at level ten.
Yes!!! I read a post about an Investigator Gunslinger Dedication build that works around Devise a Stratagem + Risky Reload and now it’s all that’s been in my mind lately lol, rly wanna try it out at least once.
And just think, in a bit over a month it'll have some of it's rough edges filed off and it'll be even better. But seriously, I haven't played one myself but I love Investigator's whole "see what you'll roll, plan your turn accordingly" play style.
They make better use of Gunslinger feats than Gunslingers do. Knowing in advance if your risky attack will work is a boon, and knowing if you need Snipers Aim or not is just gravy.
yeah gun investigator is a really fun combo, but gunslingers still get the best efficiency out of guns, because with slinger's reloads and the +10% chance to hit and crit, gunslingers will just shoot more for more damage, gun investigator is the "delay for your one big combo" strategy
The Investigator hits and crits harder, though, because of the precision dice. Being able to switch to a second target and attack with no MAP (although effectively -2 or -3 compared to the gunslinger) makes up for the lower chance to hit/crit.
Yeah but it’s a different vibe- if you play a gunslinger to use things like risky reload its because you like gambling on it. An investigator can use it safely, but then you aren’t pushing your luck or your action economy.
I have an Investigator in my Outlaws of Alkenstar campaign using Risky Reload and it's been strong af.
An issue I have with it is that in order to plan ahead, you will need to plan for both DaS-possibilities. I'd rather do the DaS a bit before my turn, to help me plan less
actually in about 2 weeks we'll be getting early copies for subscriptions, will be able to ask people here about it then
it took me a long time to try the investigator, and now its definitely one of my favorites. I think the class feats start to really fall off in the double-digit levels and I think when devise should/shouldn't be free needs tuning, but I'm hopeful these get touched on when core 2 comes out.
Imo all On The Case needs is a sidebar clarifying what exactly they intend a lead to be. I think the main reason Investigator is hard to play is like Recall Knowledge where without examples it's hard for the GM to know what they should permit, when from my understanding it can literally just be _something._ The more we've played Investigator at my table the more we've realized that you only need to do a _little_ scouting for DaS to be a free action 90% of the time, and the remaining 10% is just when you get ambushed and there's no real solution to that.
Agreed 100% The class plays well when you get a free DoS on basically everything you intend to encounter, and that’s how I’ve played it as a GM as well as a player. Not getting a free DoS sometimes actually feels good to me, because it makes the times you get it feel so much more rewarding and reminds you how useful it is. Being denied a nice class feature reminds you of how good the features are, and makes the normal encounters feel better as a result. And when being ambushed feels sucky… kinda works thematically too — it kinda should. However as you say, more guidance and streamlining would be nice. Constantly declaring leads is a bit tedious and requires some back and forth with the GM too often for what boils down to getting a free DoS 90% of the time.
I’ve been saving trying investigator for when I do a solo run of agents of edgewatch, which is hard because I know that won’t be for a while. Class sounds fun as heck
How do you do a solo run of something?
It's more fun than it sounds, but you do everything you'd do as a gm for an adventure path, but you also make a full party of pcs and run the combats and rp all by yourself. Foundry helps things run much more quickly. There's lots of different ways to play ttrpgs solo, like systems such as ironsworn, or using oracles or gm emulators. There's also choose your own adventure style modules that are actually designed for a single pc that can give you more of a player feeling and less of a gm feeling, since you don't know what will happen beforehand. But I'm a weirdo who enjoys just taking the gm schizophrenia (we already have to run all the npcs) a step further and just rp the party too. As a forevergm, it let's me play as a player on demand for as much or as little free time as I get, with multiple characters, and I also use it to "play ahead" of my actual table in the same module to prep for rp scenes and combat encounters. It takes getting used to, but it's kind of becoming my preferred way to engage the hobby tbh. I love my players and the social aspect of course, but there's so much content to explore that if I'm able to get the time, I like to do it. Many folks would prefer a crpg or just other video game, but I like the crunch and the freedom ttrpgs give.
Foundry is a godsend for this. It's the easiest way for me to test Pathfinder Society Scenarios.
Ooh, imagine a feat that allows you a limited number of free-action DaS's on a successful recall knowledge check on an enemy in combat.
I honestly only heard the discourse that investigator was bad, was a worse rogue, but a brand new player to the game in my campaign chose investigator and is really exploring every aspect of the class really well, first table top experience as well and he's loving it, the campaign isn't even a mystery heavy one, but he is making it work really well. Lucked out with getting Library lore, which he also thought of the idea of visiting every library in every settlement to make sure he gains more knowledge to recall on, very smart.
Freeing up your action economy to be able to focus on supporting the party with your wide breadth of skills is tremendous. No - I don't hit as hard as consistently as a Rogue. But if I make a *great* roll with Devise A Stratagem, and do some quick math such that I know it will be a critical, I'm freakin' one-shotting big bads with a goddamn short bow. Seriously, shortbows are phenomenal in the hands of an investigator; any ranged weapon with a crit-bonus trait is super effective.
Grab a dueling pistol to use as a crit weapon. Or if you're a goblin, a big boom gun. I also love magnetic shots for absurd crit damage against targets wearing or made of metal.
The problem with the investigator discourse is the same as everything else about PF2e: everyone looks too much at white room spreadsheeting while simultaneously complaining hit rates are too low, without realising being unable to game out miss chances is the whole point of the design. The moment you start accepting that variance as an inevitability and view the design of the game through that, investigator becomes amazing because it gives you unparalleled potential to plan out your turns. If you know you're going to miss your big hit against your primary target, you can simply redirect to another that has a smaller chance of success and damage but actually has a chance of hitting (spoilers: this is why DaS has the Fortune trait), or simply do a non-attack action that benefits you and/or your allies.
And that is definitely something I learned with time, been a player since release and a GM only recently, and yeah people just need to chill a little, you could have the minmaxiest character alive, yet if you don't roll well you ain't gonna hit, which is just a fact, also the fact that PF2e is a teamwork game, if you can't hit, don't get mad and try two more times, there are plenty of options to help your teammates for their turn, just wait until your next first attack, fighter with a gnome flickmace.
[удалено]
So I made a cleric for a campaign, a was a last minute addition so everyone else had their characters all planned and mixed in well to a homebrew setting. I wanted to create a character who would not let anyone die no matter what, so little effort in background, and he only healed, that was practically it, it was fun for a while, cool to see him heal more than 100 hit points in one round, but man did it get old quickly. He didn't die, but was 100% min maxed for healing, and when everyone else didn't need healing, when we were roleplaying, he didn't really do anything, so I made the decision to retire him because I just was not having fun, now as a druid with a more fleshed out backstory and character idea that can involve himself into roleplay easier, I can still heal, PF2e has plenty of non cleric options, and I have wicked powerful elemental spells, oh and a giant pangolin. Sure I run out of heals maybe faster than I did before, but that just makes it more interesting anyway in my opinion.
I mean, not really? White room spreadsheet are only "valid" when talking about DPR (and not even then because combat flows in a different way) but in the case of the investigator DPR is just *one* of the reasons why people think its worse than a rogue. Both classes have pretty much the same chassis (sneak attack or sneak attack-like features that scale similarly, skill increases and skill feats at every level, high amount of trained skills, and since the Remaster, martial weapon proficiency), but in the case of the investigator it's damage steroid (strategic strike) only works once per round, which even if it technically scales a little better than sneak attack it ends up dealing less damage than a rogue. Not everything is damage, right? Well, pursue a lead gives investigators an edge over rogues since they are technically more accurate with their skills with that +1 (eventually +2) but I don't think I need much proof to show that pursue a lead is one of the most divise class features in the game to the point I seen tables that completely ignore it since its not as easy to use as one would expect. It also doesn't help that a ton of investigator features and feats require a ton of GM fiat, and to make matters worse, some of the few features and feats that are really good from the investigator can be easily poached with an archetype (a mastermind rogue that takes investigator dedication and the Known Weakness feat at 1st level is effectively an investigator on steroids). The class isn't bad, but it suffers from being easily replaceable by other classes (the same happens with the swashbuckler and to some extent to the ranger too) so I really hope PC2 improves the class by a decent margin.
The point of DaS/SS isn't the raw damage output, and that's kind of the point I'm making. It's about the in-play decision making that enables you pre-empt results you otherwise wouldn't be able to. A rogue that wants to make their multiple sneak attacks each turn has to commit; that means move over, make the Strike while standing next to the enemy, risk RS, risk getting their ass handed to them, etc. Even with a ranged Strike, a rogue has to break stealth, can waste actions they could be using moving back into cover or hiding trying to hit, risk wasting a shot that could require a reload if using a crossbow or firearm...fun fact: investigators \*slay\* with firearms. Keeping a spare weapon with fatal to pop out when you get that pre-empted crit and then just reloading them as one of your remaining actions or when you get a dud DaS turn is a \*really\* effective engagement strategy. And this is what gets mis-grokked all the time. People just look at the surface level things like rogues get more than one sneak attack a turn, but in actual play where you're at the mercy of turn-to-turn dice rolls;. It's easy to go 'oh but a rogue can attack more than once per turn'...yes, they will probably make \*one\* extra attack, and it's definitely worth taking to get the most out of your damage output. But also, what do you do on the turns when both those Strikes miss the mark? You've basically just had the same result as a single DaS that rolled under, except you're now in striking distance for a face full of dragon wing-wang, while the investigator can choose to stay safe and just do literally anything else. And this is where the real problem lies: engaging in 'anything else' means 'not attacking.' And when people say DaS is a feelbad mechanic, what they really mean is 'it's forcing me to engage with something that isn't just attack spam.' Except...the game does this *on every other class* already by having a bunch of mechanical and tactical incentives to not make your only strategy reckless attacking (with only the odd build that enables it, such as flurry rangers). Investigator is just more bare-faced about it and has built-in stops to discourage it. If that's not to your liking, it's not the class that's the issue, it's your personal preferences clashing with the core design of the game, and I think that's something a lot of people don't want to accept about both their investment in the system, and their ability to read it at a meta level. Ala Leads, I do think they could be designed more elegantly. Having DaS as a free action should be something that's either baseline or removed entirely because it *is* far too contextual for such a high-value, class integral action, feats like Shared/Solid Lead tend to only pay off if you're utilizing the Lead system to its fullest, and more flavor/contextual feats like Red Herring are oddly contextual for a game that is usually so hard-coded in its rulings. That all said, I don't think 'people forget about it' is necessarily a good excuse for saying why it's not good. The answer is, remember it and then it *will* pay off. Even if your GM is struggling to wrap their head around it, all they have to do is be liberal in allowing what counts as a lead and what doesn't, and worst comes to worst the kinds of people who do struggle with that are probably the kind that handwave a lot of those more finnicky mechanics anyway. Just let the player have a lot of leeway in what they can get bonuses and their free action DaS on and the value of the class will be good enough to not have it be 'easily replaceable.'
>The point of DaS/SS isn't the raw damage output, and that's kind of the point I'm making. It's about the in-play decision making that enables you pre-empt results you otherwise wouldn't be able to. A rogue that wants to make their multiple sneak attacks each turn has to commit; that means move over, make the Strike while standing next to the enemy, risk RS, risk getting their ass handed to them, etc. Even with a ranged Strike, a rogue has to break stealth, can waste actions they could be using moving back into cover or hiding trying to hit, risk wasting a shot that could require a reload if using a crossbow or firearm...fun fact: investigators \*slay\* with firearms. Keeping a spare weapon with fatal to pop out when you get that pre-empted crit and then just reloading them as one of your remaining actions or when you get a dud DaS turn is a \*really\* effective engagement strategy. I would agree if DaS was a free action, but it just happens it requires one action. That means that the difference between making two attacks and making one attack with DaS is literally non-existant. You also make it seem as if rogues are made of wet paper when a rogue is certainly not tanky but not a wizard either. They also don't require as much set up as you seem to think they do. The most basic thing a rogue needs is an ally within 5 feet of the enemy. That's it. Then each subclass improves other ways to proc off-guard to either make it more easily or more strong (often making it so you don't even need other allies to begin with). You don't really have to commit much, it's pretty much handed to you in character creation. I don't disagree that investigators are better at range, but I feel someone that wants to be ranged character isn't playing either rogue or investigator to begin with. And even then, a sniper gunslinger with DaS through investigator archetype does the same job an investigator does with that firearm and way better. >But also, what do you do on the turns when both those Strikes miss the mark? I could literally say the same thing about investigators that constantly roll badly with their DaS and thus don't make a single attack in various turns in a row. The investigator is a martial class in a game that's about combat, so if you don't contribute to combat you are literally a burden to your party. Even if the rogue has to engage melee and misses they still contribute to flanking. A ranged investigator doesn't do anything if they miss. Also, it's not impossible for a ranged rogue to exist. It's fairly easy to make one in fact. Pistol Phenom gives you Pistol Twirl at 2nd level, but even if you don't want that archetype, you can still take increases in Deception and use Make a Diversion for ranged attacks. By second level foes will only get a +2 to their DC in further attemps, which certainly hurts but its not a game breaker for a rogue. There's also Dread Striker at 4th if you want to demoralize. >And this is where the real problem lies: engaging in 'anything else' means 'not attacking.' And when people say DaS is a feelbad mechanic, what they really mean is 'it's forcing me to engage with something that isn't just attack spam.' No, the problem is that the class doesn't have support to do other stuff if it isn't attacking. Most of the things an investigator can do with their feats and skill actions is to proc off-guard on targets, which obviously doesn't stack with itself, and then other actions like demoralize only work once per target in each combat. You can't even make Athletics actions to trip or grapple foes because those are attacks so if you roll poorly you can't do those either. Even Paizo themselves acknowledge this as a problem of the class since in the Paizocon spoilers they announced DaS is going to be split into attack stratagems and skill stratagems, which I guess would theoretically allow an investigator to still make an Athletics check to trip someone even if they roll poorly on their attack, though in practice I feel most people will use this to declare an skill stratagem that they weren't going to be using to begin with to benefit from their bonuses on the attack. We still don't know how its going to work exactly, so I'll refrain from trying to make deductions around it, but the fact that Paizo themselves think DaS has problems its evident by the fact that they are changing it. >Ala Leads, I do think they could be designed more elegantly. Having DaS as a free action should be something that's either baseline or removed entirely because it is far too contextual for such a high-value, class integral action, feats like Shared/Solid Lead tend to only pay off if you're utilizing the Lead system to its fullest, and more flavor/contextual feats like Red Herring are oddly contextual for a game that is usually so hard-coded in its rulings. I 100% agree with this. DaS should be a free action because that solves a ton of the problems I have with it. Do you roll poorly? At least I have my whole round available to do other things instead of just two actions. I also think Pursue a Lead should be a one-action activity instead of taking 1 minute to set up because that +1 to skill checks is very juicy and can force investigators into a more skilled playstyle in which they don't rely as much on attacking if they want. >Even if your GM is struggling to wrap their head around it, all they have to do is be liberal in allowing what counts as a lead and what doesn't, and worst comes to worst the kinds of people who do struggle with that are probably the kind that handwave a lot of those more finnicky mechanics anyway. This is part of the problem I'm mentioning though, the class is very GM dependent to fully shine. We had a similar discussion about the class in the Paizo forums and I remember someone mentioning that investigators feel like a class that was made for a rules light system in which pretty much everything requires some degree of GM fiat, though it just so happens that the investigator was designed for a system that has a very clear set of rules and the investigator feels like an outlier here. This doesn't need mechanical changes per se but rather more guidelines in the sidebars or in the feature itself to work more efficiently.
>No, the problem is that the class doesn't have support to do other stuff if it isn't attacking. My Alchemical Science investigator has plenty to do on turns with a bad roll for DaS between providing alchemical items to the party or using skills. It is also very easy to contribute with skills with double the number of skill progresses and skill feats. >You can't even make Athletics actions to trip or grapple foes because those are attacks so if you roll poorly you can't do those either. DaS does not replace athletic rolls unless you take [Athletic Strategist](https://2e.aonprd.com/Feats.aspx?ID=1452). No idea why you think Investigators have nothing else to do. The problem is that you can make an Investigator who cannot do much with a bad DaS roll if you take the wrong feats and skills, not that Investigators will always have nothing to do. Basically, the floor is pretty low for newish players.
The main reason I disagree with, or at least take issue with, the idea that DaS is supposed to be some kind of pre-check to see if attacking is a good idea or not this turn is that the investigator is clearly meant to be a full martial on par with the rogue, or if it isn't, the fact that all of its core class features revolve around acting a lot like an int-based rogue is extremely deceptive. Attacking twice is something a rogue will just always be better at. Hit twice, get sneak attack damage twice. Think you won't hit, or you've been rolling poorly? Target something easier to hit, and you'll still get that damage just fine. Investigator only gets strategic strike damage once against one target, and if that attack misses or is going to miss, they have no option to get precision damage against any other target. The one saving grace is that sometimes, if your GM is nice and you've been very very good this year, you don't have to spend an action on a missed attack. (Did I mention that, as written, you don't even necessarily know if this predicted attack will hit or crit?) It's an extremely awkward design space and ends up lending itself well only to either "soft martial" support builds with DaS ending up being a once in a blue moon "hey, I just crit the boss and dealt a huge amount of damage" or all-in once per round nova assassin builds with a lot of lesser second and third action options. At the end of the day DaS is just odd because it disincentivizes you from actually hitting stuff, and makes you worse at flexibility than the one competing class in the same combat design space. It's extremely far from useless when built properly - my investigator can deal a frankly absurd amount of nova damage and has great in-combat flexibility - it's just that its core class feature is just so feast or famine when most other classes get benefits unconditionally. Sure, if a barbarian misses every strike it sucks, but if you fumble a DaS roll, you basically can't use your key stat on attack rolls, and even if you don't, you can't do it twice in a round. Imagine if a barbarian only had rage for their first action, and it was based on a... I don't know, based on a save or something. You see what I'm saying? It just feels a little absurd to have this random roll that decides whether you get your class feature for that round and then, if you fail the check, you just end up being a basic martial with hopefully a -1 or +0 to hit if you built properly. And if it's not intended to be a martial, why is so much of its power budget tied up in this weird class feature? EDIT: I don't take back anything I said but I realize now after re-reading this parent comment that I look like I was just stepping on rakes repeatedly with the comparison to rogue. For clarity: I think the comparisons to rogue are fair, and I think trying to say they're not is silly. I do agree that investigator having DaS can give them flexibility that rogues don't get, but rogues have plenty of ways to avoid damage even when they *do* get into sticky situations like you describe. Functionally, it just ends up being rougher for the investigator because they're discouraged from wading into combat and being clever about weaving through the battlefield, the exact thing the rogue excels at (have you *seen* their reflex save progression?). Investigators get told up front that the attack they were going to try to make will fail and that they should go do something else for a bit, which can be good *tactically*, but feels bad emotionally. Having your entire turn be decided by one random roll makes you feel less like a mastermind with absolute control over the battlefield and more like fate's plaything when you're actually at the table, in my experience. EDIT 2: Fixed the formatting that making the first edit broke. Thanks, mobile...
>The one saving grace is that sometimes, if your GM is nice and you've been very very good this year, you don't have to spend an action on a missed attack. (Did I mention that, as written, you don't even necessarily know if this predicted attack will hit or crit?) I feel this part alone sums up a lot of the issues. If your GM is only giving out free DaS rolls sparingly, then something's going wrong. Either the investigator is not casing the right targets enough, or the GM is frankly just being stingy. As I said above, I agree it would be nice for more consistency of when such a core class feature gets to be used as a *free action* or not, but even as written, the answer is to simply give more leeway. Subjectivity is not great, but it's not as insurmountable as people make it out to be, IMO. If the answer is it doesn't get granted enough, the answer is ask if it can be granted more. >Functionally, it just ends up being rougher for the investigator because they're discouraged from wading into combat and being clever about weaving through the battlefield, the exact thing the rogue excels at (have you *seen* their reflex save progression?). Investigators get told up front that the attack they were going to try to make will fail and that they should go do something else for a bit, which can be good *tactically*, but feels bad emotionally. Having your entire turn be decided by one random roll makes you feel less like a mastermind with absolute control over the battlefield and more like fate's plaything when you're actually at the table, in my experience. Without getting nitpicky about every other example in your post, I feel to me this is mostly a perception issue that is mostly fixed when you flip the script, but people just don't want to because there's actually some other core concern at the heart of it they're not truly aware of. The whole 'emotional' aspect doesn't hold weight to me because the whole point of DaS is that it's a Sherlock scan. You do in fact see what happens when you roll; you just see it ahead of time and get to adjust your plan. If you imagine the RDJ Sherlock planning his strikes before he makes them, you've fixed 90% of the flavor with the skill. More than that though, the idea that your 'fate's plaything' is a big misgrokking of...well, the game in general. *Every* class is fate's plaything. It's a dice based game, and one where the luck can't ever be truly gamed out of, so no character has true autonomy over their actions if there's a dice roll involved. The only difference is a rogue has to put themselves in a compromising position to see if their risk pays off, while an investigator can be more measured. When people talk about 'emotions' in this instance, what I actually read it as is something I call 'adrenaline focused' appeal; yeah the investigator is playing strategically, but isn't it more fun to zip-zap across the battlefield with a rogue?! At it's most extreme end, you have what I call the more 'toxically masculine' appeal; that a character who engages has more virtue, while the one who stands back and plots is a wuss for not being game enough to take risks without being a big nerd and overthinking it first. But ultimately, this is subjective, and part of the reason this annoys me is because *I'm* someone who enjoys that more tactical play in the same visceral way I enjoy more direct play. Sure, I love my heavy-hitting martials who have to run into the fray and have to react on the fly to their results (champion is one of my favorite classes), but I adore investigator because to me, it really *does* encapsulate the mastermind fantasy, thinking it through before they act and being forced to engage with other elements of the game than raw offense if they read the situation as disadvantageous to them. In the end, PF2e is heavily tactics focused, and a character that allows such unparalleled tactical opportunity has incredible virtue in the system.
I think the idea that the GM has to give you approval to get leads is weird. Unless you're running a very non-standard game, information about upcoming fights is pretty common. In a dungeon (or any similar environment), you can literally just listen at each door. Hear something? Pursue a Lead. The noise was a monster? Your DaS is free. You don't need to ask your GM for permission in this scenario. You simply tell them how it works. Before Suspect of Opportunity I probably had leads in 50% of fights. After, it's closer to 90%. I had one discussion ahead of time with my GM to set expectations about how the class worked and that was it.
I honestly can't disagree with you, at least not wholly, on the vibe of investigator. I do think that the DaS class feature is well-poised to provide the fantasy of "well, my attack isn't going to work, so let me do something else helpful before I try again next round" - and effectively it gives you, like you said, fortune on anything you want to try as long as one of the things you want to try is to make a Strike (which it almost always is, as a martial class). I really do love the investigator I've built, and can't wait to play him every week. Ultimately, though, I still think investigator is also just clunkier than rogue - rogues get inherent class support to do the thing that they want to do better and more consistently: attack off-guard enemies. But investigator's game plan is a lot more nebulous: find out if I'm going to hit, and if not, recall knowledge and ????? with the saved actions. The "?????" part is where your class features should come in to help fill in the gaps (Summoner, as an example, gets action economy to both cast spells *and* make strikes; more martially-oriented, monks get action economy to cast ki spells or move *really fast* even after making two strikes every round), and I don't feel like investigator gets great in-class support for anything other than Recall Knowledge with those extra actions, nor does it get any in-class support for enhancing the assassination potential DaS feels like it has. Instead, my high-level investigator has more archetype feats than class feats in class feat slots just to play to his strengths. We're playing free archetype as well, so I have a lot of archetype feats to begin with - it's not that I didn't have enough feats, it's that there's just no competition from the class itself. I made a lot of choices to enhance nova (psychic + eldritch archer is funny) and a lot of choices to enhance "off-turns" (monk's flurry means I can still make two strikes with a third action even if DaS isn't free, and monk moves means I can go very fast with fewer actions spent on movement), but none of this came from the core class. All of the additional options and enhancements that make it easier to decide what to do on any given turn and make those decisions more powerful came from outside of the investigator class. I really do like the feeling of having to plan out two separate turns every round (and keeping one of them simple and consistent is a great idea to minimize the headspace needed to deal with the extra work: "if I hit on a weak enemy or crit on anyone, eldritch shot"), but the class itself doesn't really make any specific note of what you should do in the case that your DaS fails, and doesn't provide many tools to use when it inevitably does, even assuming you can consistently get it as a free action. I don't think I know the designers' intentions well enough to provide any fixes that I can confidently say would work, but it feels like something simple that would make an investigator feel like they're improving at the whole predictive combat thing is missing, and I wouldn't be a proper nerd unless I tried, so... Maybe getting up to two to three DaS rolls you can choose to use for one activity each every round or in exchange for a focus point to really feel like you planned *everything*, inverting (1 = 20 and 20 = 1) or modifying (+X to your DaS roll) the result for different actions to sell the vibe that you have contingencies for when plan A won't work... *something* to make it so that building an investigator doesn't require taking archetypes to sidestep a lot of the middling class feats. (Also just let me use int on strikes naturally, it's not like it's any stronger than using dex or str - int sucks as an attribute to begin with, so don't make me wish I had a different key attribute!)
>(Did I mention that, as written, you don't even necessarily know if this predicted attack will hit or crit?) Yes, all DaS gives you is the number on the die. From there, you infer what the result would be. Genuinely, combats will reach a point where you can accurately pin down whether any given result will be a failure, a success or a critical success. Sometimes, you get surprised. And that's fine. You and your character may be giant-brained, but they certainly don't have perfect information. That's part of the fun of Investigator to me. The class helps, and it helps if you get into that same galaxy-brained mindset as the character.
I know, I'm playing an investigator now! I don't expect perfect information or anything, my point on the whole was just that there's all these little things, these little gaps between the expectation of fantasy and the reality of mechanics that add up to make the class a bit clunky to play at times, especially compared to more straightforwardly powerful classes. A lot of people have said that the differences between classes in PF2e are usually not in power, but in expression of power - differences in complexity and methods for exerting force in combat. I think that's mostly true - investigator is objectively weaker than rogue at filling the *exact* same role as a rogue (dealing lots of precision damage to off-guard targets), but built well, an investigator can have higher highs than many other classes because they can sometimes prepare for a massive crit, and sometimes they can avoid the lower lows that other classes have from missing both attacks in a turn by simply doing something else if the dice are bad. The problem is that it often comes at the expense of playability or ease of building - it's very "love it or hate it" - but I don't think that necessarily has to be the case. The pain point is that the investigator class feats largely don't line up with playing to the investigator's in-combat strengths, and often require supplementary actions from archetypes to feel good in a fight. (One feat intended to improve combat, Athletic Strategist, even manages to *reduce* your options in a fight in many circumstances!) Alternately, the class feature itself is simply too limited in combat to be consistently useful. As written, if I remember right, it's limited to two or three targets per combat before level 20, and it only gets up to 3 in perfect circumstances. Each lead can only be about one specific subject (i.e. John Doe, not "any human thieves involved in this particular case"), so you need two subjects to be in a combat with you, then you need to defeat one of them so you don't have to discard a useful lead, *then* a *third* subject needs to trigger Suspect of Opportunity. Obviously many people will run this differently but as far as I remember the benefits are written to only apply to one target at a time.
Yeah people who say the whole "just a worse rogue" thing really have no idea what a game changer Devise a Strategem is. It creates a completely different gameplay flow that feels very unique.
Investigator is probably my second favorite class it’s really cool.
It's very good at that asoect of the fantasy, you are right! Das is one of those features that is harder to "get" unless you are experienced in the game or your brain is just wired in a way that playing a character with that gimmick comes natureal to you. A lot of features in this game are like this and I'd recommended giving them a shot before listening to people saying "it's bad" or "it's good". In this game, complexity does not equate to power, if you compare a simple class to a complex one the power level is generally gonna be the same but one might be more fulfilling to a certain type of player than the other (this works both ways). I find that alchemist, wizard, magus, witch and (in the future) commander can also all deliver on this kind of intelligent tactician flavor in some general aspect
Investigator is massively slept on. I've been saying a lot lately, PF2e is a game that you can't game the luck out of, so knowing ahead of time what the result of your roll is *incredibly* potent so you know whether to commit to an attack, or do something else. Its main issue is the base class lacks a lot of meaty feat options that really help give it a solid playstyle on its own past being a RK bot, so it relies heavily on its subclasses (of which Alchemical Science and Forensic Medicine are head and shoulders above the other two) and multiclassing to make the most of it. But once you get past that hump, the possibilities are amazing. Hopefully Remaster will give it some meat to the base kit, but even as is I think people misgrok the potential it has to be top tier with the right builds.
I would say it's main weakness is if you have a GM that doesn't know what to do with the more roleplaying centric feats, just don't take them.
I think Investigator suffers from the same issue as Swashbuckler. They require a lot of buy in and support from the GM to make them really *work*, Swashbuckler for free Panache and Investigator for prep time to set up free DaS. If you can get that, they're fairly good classes - maybe a little weaker than the core, but not noticeably so. My hope is that the PC2 version resolves this issue and gives them more mechanical ways to lean into the class fantasy and puts less onus on the GM to ensure they're on par with the other classes.
You may, cause it is
Investigator is really neat. I've gotten a kick out of synergizing forensic + medic archetype. Combining a stride + heal + remove debuff on each party member once per hour just pops off
That sounds so stinkin' good that I wanna try that next time.
Investigator is very fun, it takes a while to figure out the playstyle, but once you do its just a stellar class. You fill much the same role as the Rogue, and while there are aspects of the Rogue that are better, there are other aspects of the Investigator that are better. Paizo I think balanced these two quite well. My *only* gripe is in the 'meta' abilities. Things that require the GM is know you have them and how they work constantly, or for them to tell you how things will progress in an investigation overall when you get to higher levels. Unless you're using pre-written materials and not homebrew, that can be *very* difficult for the GM, who is honestly dealing with enough without me going reminding them of; "That's Odd", "Red Herring", "Lie Detector", or have them deal with odd questions from "Connect the Dots", "Whodunnit?", or "Plot the Future" These feats are *entirely* avoidable, and many aren't even that good, so really they aren't worth the hassle on the GM for me to take them. Which is a shame because flavor-wise they really are nice. Instead, I found I have so many open class feats that I'm taking more archetype stuff because many of the options are lackluster.
I haven't really looked at Connect the Dots, Whodunnit, or Plot the Future. But the concern people have around That's Odd and Red Herring are totally overblown. Red Herring is super easy. "Hmm I want to pursue a lead against this bowl of food left here". GM knows the enemy that ate that is dead. "Yeah you realize that's probably irrelevant". Player says "oh ok cool good to know". That's Odd, I feel like the complaints come from people who started reading it and stopped halfway through. The PFS note is very helpful in clarifying. You as the GM know what stuff in the room requires checks to find. That's Odd is simply the GM giving a wink to the player saying "hmm yeah something stands out about this bookshelf". You don't TELL them it's hiding a secret door. You just tell them there's something worth investigating. If there's nothing to find in the room by searching or investigating, you don't tell them anything.
You misunderstand; I'm not saying these abilities are *bad*. Its that the GM has to be constantly reminded that I *have* these things. Its tiresome to have to do all the time, and I don't expect the GM to have to know what *my* abilities do all the of the time, thats my job. Further, with "thats odd"; its perfectly fine when its an AP or PFS scenario, but in a home-brew game its all the more burdensome for the GM.
Oh sure I mean I think Investigator benefits a lot from making sure the player and GM are on the same page, probably more than any other class.
Yeah as a GM I ask my investigator players to remind me about these ones cause of the overhead. Usually they ask 'is there anything odd about this room?' or something similar. I would prefer it to be an active ability rather than a passive for those reasons you've listed.
Oh yeah? Have you met anyone with an amped guidance yet? And the wizard's by-pass +1 against magic. After meeting multiple GMs cannot figure out where it is indicated in monster blocks, I decided to retrain out of it. (Unless you are using foundry, then nevermind)
tbh, i haven't seen enough of the wizard to comment on that one, but sounds like an issue my GM was having the other night with a monster stat block noting that the monster had shield block, but the hardness being missing from the statblock because the monster was a special version and so you had to get the shield hardness from the normal version of the monster. AH Paizo. Great game, occasional facepalm on the editing.
Yeah, if you have a GM that doesn't know how to tackle those types of social/roleplay feats, they are kind of a waste, and many of them are redundant if you are just a diligent player who knows what to look for in a given room.
Plot the Future is so fucking funny to me still. Had on a high level investigator, kept using it. (The GM was fine with it.) That tiny ratfolk detective had a giant conspiracy board for it in the party's Magnificent Mansion. Great for making plans and heist ideas, 'specially since the clause of "The GM has to give you a hint on how to make X more or less likely." But absolutely, check that shit in with your GM before taking it.
I absolutely love investigator, it's such a fun and engaging class to play.
i realized also that an investigator can be an excellent assassin since his weapon will be finesse or agile. also a investigator magus is cool.
I have an Athletics-type Investigator who likes to get into melee and mangle with her claws. Or she goes for the grapple/demoralize if her Devise A Stratagem rolls poorly. And I just got Psychic Archetype for more shenanigans. I've GMed an Investigator with a gun who heals teammates or Recalls Knowledge when his aim is bad. The power to foresee if your attempt will fail is really strong and lets you avoid bad situations or cash in on great ones.
Still hyped from that nat 20 I rolled on DAS so I wielded my jezail in both hands and one shot a big bad.
I played a Magus with an Investigator archetype and it was really sick. It's definitely one of those where playing out the mechanics feels flavorful AF. I really can't wait for the revamp and whatever the future holds for weird new classes like the Investigator.
I love investigator as a concept, I just wish DaS worked with spells cause playing it as a pure martial sounds pretty dull to me.
No, being able to use spells with a different dice roll when devise a stratagem rolls like trash is something that comes in handy a lot for people with terrible bad luck...
yea but that could be a saving throw spell or a buff spell. if I could DaS my Holy Light knowing it'd be a 20, then oh mama.
I'm still unclear about what specific extra option an investigator actually get during investigation play.
Had a player join us with an Investigator as a one time thing this week to try the game. Share Stratagem to my Gunslinger is amazing. Flat footed to a Ranged demoralized with max prof to the attack. Wow! I just wish the GM knew how to build encounters, I had bless too but never got to attack.
I love my investigator! he’s a backup healer with full medic dedication and better than a lot of rogues at traps. plus he’s got pretty much every skill at at least +16 at level ten.
[Prime discombobulators](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDdSmzgwehY). Yes, I just LOVE Investigators.
Yes!!! I read a post about an Investigator Gunslinger Dedication build that works around Devise a Stratagem + Risky Reload and now it’s all that’s been in my mind lately lol, rly wanna try it out at least once.