INVESTIGATOR FEATS
At every level that you gain an investigator feat, you can select one of the following feats. You must satisfy any prerequisites before selecting the feat.
1ST LEVEL
FLEXIBLE STUDIES FEAT 1
INVESTIGATOR
You’ve collected a cross-section of information on various disciplines you can refer to when preparing for various tasks. During your daily preparations, you can cram on a certain subject to become temporarily trained in one skill of your choice. This proficiency lasts until you prepare again. As this proficiency is temporary, you can’t use it as a prerequisite for a skill increase or a permanent character option like a feat.
KNOWN WEAKNESSES FEAT 1
INVESTIGATOR
Whenever you Study a Suspect, you can also attempt a check to Recall Knowledge as part of that action. If you critically succeed at the Recall Knowledge check, you notice a weakness. If you immediately convey this information to your allies as part of the check, they gain a +1 circumstance bonus on their next attack rolls against the suspect, as long as their attacks are made before the beginning of your next turn.
ON THE SCENE FEAT 1
INVESTIGATOR
When you enter a new location, such as a room or corridor, you immediately notice one thing out of the ordinary. The GM determines what it is, or whether there’s nothing reasonable to pick up. They skip obvious clues (ones that can be easily noticed without a check), and you find out only that an area or object is suspicious, not why it’s suspicious. For example, if you entered a study with a large bloodstain on the ground, the bloodstain is so obviously suspicious it’s evident to you already, so the GM might note that there’s something suspicious about the desk drawer instead. You would then need to investigate the drawer further to find out what specifically is out of the ordinary. You don’t determine whether creatures are suspicious with On the Scene.
You don’t typically get any benefit when you leave and come back to a place, though if a major change has happened there and time has passed, the GM might determine that you do.
UNDERWORLD INVESTIGATOR FEAT 1
INVESTIGATOR
Your work as an investigator makes you familiar with the criminal element. You might be a criminal yourself, or you might have just gained an understanding of how they operate. You become trained in Underworld Lore, and you gain your Take the Case circumstance bonus on Thievery checks to investigate the subject (such as checks to Steal a clue from a suspect or Pick a Lock to open a safe with damning documents).
2ND LEVEL
COMBAT CLUE FEAT 2
INVESTIGATOR
You can clue your allies in not only to investigations of the scene but also to your analysis of your suspect. In addition to its normal trigger, you can use Clue In when an ally attacks the target of your successful Study Suspect, as long as they attempt their attack before the beginning of your next turn. If you do, the ally gains the +1 circumstance bonus from your Study Suspect, rather than the circumstance bonus from Take the Case.
FRAMING CASE [one-action] FEAT 2
CONCENTRATE INVESTIGATOR
Frequency once per day
Sometimes your case splinters into smaller mysteries, but you know how to never lose sight of the big picture. You designate your current case as your framing case for the day. Whenever you Take the Case again, you still change cases as normal, but you can change back to your framing case any number of times by using a single action, which has the concentrate trait. On your next daily preparations, you can choose to keep the same case as your framing case or choose a new one.
TRAP FINDER FEAT 2
INVESTIGATOR
You have an intuitive sense that alerts you to the dangers and presence of traps. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to Perception checks to find traps, to AC against attacks made by traps, and to saves against traps. Even if you aren’t Searching, you get a check to find traps that normally require you to be Searching. You still need to meet any other requirements to find the trap.
You can disable traps that require a proficiency rank of master in Thievery. If you have master proficiency in Thievery, you can disable traps that require a proficiency rank of legendary instead, and your circumstance bonuses against traps increase to +2.
4TH LEVEL
ALCHEMICAL DISCOVERIES FEAT 4
INVESTIGATOR
Prerequisites alchemical sciences methodologyYou’ve devoted extra time in the lab to improve your knowledge of alchemy. You can learn the formulas for up to two alchemical elixirs each time you level up instead of one (which must still be elixirs or tools). The number of versatile vials you can create each day increases by 1 if you’re an expert in Crafting, 2 if you’re a master, or 4 if you’re legendary.
DETECTIVE’S WILL FEAT 4
INVESTIGATOR
When you’re on a case, you’re watchful and resolute—protected against mind games your suspect might pull. You gain your circumstance bonus from Take the Case on Will saves against the subject of your case (as usual, this adds to your Will DC against Demoralize, Feint, and Make an Impression), and you can use Clue In to assist an ally’s Will save against the subject of your case.
GUIDED OBSERVATION FEAT 4
INVESTIGATOR
Prerequisites empiricism methodology
Dissatisfied with only your own keen observations, you find a way to help your fellows see as you do. When you Observe Expeditiously, you can choose one ally. That ally can Seek or Sense Motive as a free action once on their next turn. Alternatively, when you use Observe Expeditiously to Seek and detect a creature, you can instead Point Out that creature as part of the action you use to Observe Expeditiously instead of granting your ally the Seek or Sense Motive free action.
PREDICTIVE PURCHASE [two-actions] FEAT 4
INVESTIGATOR
Cost The price of the chosen item.
Requirements You have not used this ability since the last time you were able to purchase goods.
You have just the thing for the current situation. You take two Interact actions to remove your backpack, then draw from it an item you hadn’t previously declared that you purchased. Your character intuited that you would come to need the item and purchased it the last time they had the opportunity. The item must be a piece of adventuring gear or a consumable item, it must be common with a level no higher than half your level, and the Bulk of the item must be low enough that carrying it would not have made you encumbered.
SCALPEL’S POINT FEAT 4
INVESTIGATOR
Prerequisites forensic medicine methodology
When you Study a Suspect, you can attempt a Medicine check against the target’s Fortitude DC instead of the normal check. The results are the same, with the addition that any Strike gaining the bonus from that use of Study Suspect also deals 1d6 bleed damage on a critical success.
STUDIED ASSESSMENT FEAT 4
INVESTIGATOR
You learn your foes’ strengths and weaknesses by watching them move. The first time you critically succeed on a check to Study a given Suspect, the GM chooses one of the following pieces of information about the enemy to tell you: which of the enemy’s weaknesses is highest, which of the enemy’s saving throws has the lowest modifier, one immunity the enemy has, or which of the enemy’s resistances is highest. The GM can pick one at random or choose which to tell you, but they can’t choose one that doesn’t apply (such as choosing an immunity for an enemy that has no immunities).
6TH LEVEL
ACCURATE STUDY FEAT 6
INVESTIGATOR
You can focus your most successful analyses of your suspects for one accurate attack. When you critically succeed at a check to Study a Suspect, instead of the usual benefit, you can choose to gain the following benefit.Critical Success On your next attack against the target this turn, you gain a +2 circumstance bonus to your attack roll.
ONGOING INVESTIGATION FEAT 6
INVESTIGATOR
You’re always investigating what’s around you, even as you perform other activities. You can move at full Speed while taking the Investigate exploration activity and can use another exploration activity while Investigating.
THOROUGH RESEARCH FEAT 6
INVESTIGATOR
When you succeed at a Recall Knowledge check, you learn an additional fact about the subject. When you critically succeed at a Recall Knowledge check, you might gain even more additional information or context than normal, at the GM’s discretion.
8TH LEVEL
BLIND-FIGHT FEAT 8
INVESTIGATOR
Prerequisites master in Perception
Your battle insights make you more aware of concealed and invisible opponents. You don’t need to succeed at a flat check to target concealed creatures. You’re not flat-footed to creatures that are hidden from you (unless you’re flat-footed to them for reasons other than the hidden condition), and you need only a successful DC 5 flat check to target a hidden creature.
While you’re adjacent to an undetected creature of your level or lower, it is instead only hidden from you.
CLUE THEM ALL IN FEAT 8
INVESTIGATOR
You can clue in all your allies at once. When you use the Clue In reaction, if any of your other allies are also attempting the same check, they all receive the circumstance bonus from Clue In.
10TH LEVEL
JUST ONE MORE THING [one-action] FEAT 10
FORTUNE INVESTIGATOR
Requirements Your most recent action was to Feint, Request, or Demoralize, and you failed, but didn’t critically fail.
After your attempt to influence someone goes poorly, you add another bit of information or ask a pointed question, possibly salvaging your previous attempt. Re-roll the failed check and use the new result. You can’t use Just One More Thing against the creature again for 24 hours.
You can also use Just One More Thing if you failed, but didn’t critically fail, at a check to Lie, Gather Information, Make an Impression, or Coerce. In this case, rather than taking one action, adding Just One More Thing takes you half the amount of time you initially spent on the check, with a minimum of 1 more round.
SUSPECT OF OPPORTUNITY [reaction] FEAT 10
INVESTIGATOR
Frequency once per hour
Trigger A foe take a hostile action against you in combat.
Sometimes something intrudes upon your case unexpectedly, such as an ambush sent to bring your investigation to a close. You’ve learned how to compartmentalize your main case and open a new one for your current predicament. You Take the Case against the triggering foe, setting aside but not ending your currently active case, if you have one. At the end of the combat encounter, you close the new case against the triggering foe and return to your original case, if you have one.
SWEEPING STUDY FEAT 10
INVESTIGATOR
Prerequisites studied strike
You’re constantly studying small aspects of everyone’s movements, even without using Study Suspect. When you succeed at a Strike with an agile or finesse melee weapon, an agile or finesse unarmed attack, a ranged weapon, or a sap, if you wouldn’t deal your additional studied strike damage, you still deal 1 precision damage for every die of studied strike you have. Just as with studied strike, for a ranged attack with a thrown weapon, the weapon must also be agile or finesse.
12TH LEVEL
FORESEE DANGER [reaction] FEAT 12
CONCENTRATE INVESTIGATOR
Trigger A creature targets you with an attack and you can see the attacker.
You perceive every possible way your foe’s attack could land and attempt to avoid them all. The triggering attack roll is against your Perception DC instead of your AC. Though this allows you to avoid taking penalties to your AC, it doesn’t remove any conditions or other effects lowering your AC. So, for example, an enemy with sneak attack would still deal extra damage to you for being flat-footed, though you wouldn’t take the –2 circumstance penalty when defending against the attack.
REASON RAPIDLY [one-action] FEAT 12
INVESTIGATOR
Your mind works through clues at an unbelievable speed. You instantly use up to five Recall Knowledge actions. If you have any special abilities or free actions that would normally be triggered when you Recall Knowledge, you can’t use them for these actions.
14TH LEVEL
PLOT THE FUTURE FEAT 14
CONCENTRATE INVESTIGATOR
You spend 10 minutes in contemplation to uncannily predict how events will play out. Choose a particular goal or activity you plan to engage in within 1 week, or an event you expect might happen within 1 week. You analyze whether it is likely to come to pass, determining whether it is highly likely, somewhat likely, somewhat unlikely, or highly unlikely. You learn a piece of advice suggesting a course of action you or your allies could take that might make the chosen event more or less likely, whichever you prefer. The GM determines the likeliness of the event and the piece of advice you learn.
SENSE THE UNSEEN [reaction] FEAT 14
INVESTIGATOR
Trigger You fail a check to Seek.
When you look for foes, you catch the slightest of cues. Even though you failed at the triggering check, you automatically sense any undetected creatures in the area where you’re Seeking, making them merely hidden to you.
STUDIED BYPASS FEAT 14
INVESTIGATOR
When you study a target with resistances, you find momentary weaknesses in its defenses, allowing you to strike a telling blow. When you succeed at an attack roll that benefits from your circumstance bonus from Study Suspect, you ignore an amount of resistance equal to your Intelligence modifier for each resistance that applies against your attack.
16TH LEVEL
IMPLAUSIBLE PURCHASE FEAT 16
INVESTIGATOR
Prerequisites Predictive Purchase
It seems impossible, but you’ve analyzed every angle and are able to just keep pulling out exactly the item you need, even in the middle of a far-flung crime scene. You can use Predictive Purchase without satisfying its requirement entry, and you can use Predictive Purchase as a single actioninstead of a two-action activity, during which you Interact and draw the item. In addition, five times per day, you can use Predictive Purchase to pull out a common consumable item up to 6 levels lower than your level.
DIDACTIC STRIKE FEAT 16
INVESTIGATOR
When you find a glaring weakness, you can set your allies up to annihilate your suspect. When you critically succeed at a check to Study a Suspect, instead of the usual benefit, you can choose to gain the following benefit.
Critical Success On your next attack this turn against the target, you gain a +1 circumstance bonus to your attack roll. On each of your allies’ next attacks against the target before your next turn, they also gain a +1 circumstance bonus to their attack roll, and if they hit with that attack, they deal an additional 2d6 precision damage.
18TH LEVEL
RECONSTRUCT THE SCENE FEAT 18
CONCENTRATE INVESTIGATOR
You spend 1 minute surveying a small location (such as a single room) to get an impression of events that occurred there in the last day. This involves moving about the area and studying footprints, the placement of objects, spilled drinks or blood, and so forth. You get an indistinct mental impression of significant events that happened there. This isn’t enough to identify who was involved in these events if you weren’t already aware the person was there. This can give you clues and details of the past, but not a perfect record. As determined by the GM, you might pick up minor details, like a memorable weapon someone used for a murder or the type of cloak someone wore when passing through.
TRICKSTER’S ACE [reaction] FEAT 18
CONCENTRATE INVESTIGATOR
Trigger You specify the trigger when you make your daily preparations (see Requirements below).
Requirements When you make your daily preparations, you must specify a trigger for this reaction using the same restrictions as the triggers for the Ready action. You also choose a single spell from the arcane, divine, occult, or primal list of 4th level or lower. The spell can’t have a cost, nor can its casting time be more than 10 minutes. The spell must be able to target a single creature, and you must be a valid target for it.
Whether from jury-rigged magic items, logically deduced interactions in magical essences, or other means, you have a contingency in your back pocket for desperate situations. When the trigger occurs, you cause the spell to come into effect. The spell targets only you, no matter how many creatures it would affect normally. If you define particularly complicated conditions, as determined by the GM, the trigger might fail. Once the contingency is triggered, the spell is expended until your next daily preparations.
20TH LEVEL
EVERYONE’S A SUSPECT FEAT 20
INVESTIGATOR
Prerequisites Suspect of Opportunity
You are so suspicious of everyone you meet that you keep mental notes on how to defeat them all, even your own allies. After interacting with a creature for at least 1 minute, you Take the Case against the creature automatically. You can have any number of such cases open at any given time, and when you Take the Case again, none of these automatic cases end.
INFALLIBLE RESEARCH FEAT 20
INVESTIGATOR
Prerequisites Thorough Research
You fundamentally understand everything to the point where your research can’t possibly be wrong. You are permanently quickened and can use the extra action to Recall Knowledge. Your Recall Knowledge checks are no longer secret. When you Recall Knowledge, you use the outcome for one degree of success better than the result of your check, and if an effect (such as Dubious Knowledge) would give you inaccurate information from your Recall Knowledge check, you know what information is inaccurate. When one of your allies Recalls Knowledge and gains false information, you also know that information is inaccurate if they share it with you.
SKILL FEATS
For the playtest, we’re including a number of additional skill feats that are particularly relevant for investigators. We’ll be collecting playtest feedback about these as well as the class, which will be part of the investigator survey.
BIOGRAPHICAL EYE FEAT 7
EXPLORATION GENERAL SECRET SKILL
Prerequisites master in Society
In even a brief conversation or social interaction, you pick up on subtle social and visual cues to learn a great deal about a person’s origin and history. You might see green under the person’s fingernails and determine they’re an herbalist, a pin indicating their membership in a secret society, or the like. You can pick up only details that have to do with their societal role, so you might learn the district where a vampire in a city lives, but wouldn’t learn any of the weaknesses of a vampire, nor necessarily even that they are a vampire.
Spend 1 minute in the presence of someone you haven’t met before, then attempt a DC 30 Society check. You gain a +1 circumstance bonus to the check if you engaged the creature in conversation during this time. If the creature is deliberately trying to conceal their nature or present a false identity, you learn about their false biography rather than their true one, unless the result of your Society check exceeds their Will DC.
Critical Success You learn the creature’s profession, specialty within that profession, and a major accomplishment or controversy from their career. You also learn the nation and settlement where they live, and possibly even the district or street. In addition, you learn the nation or settlement where they spent their formative years.
Success You learn the creature’s profession and specialty within that profession. You learn the nation or settlement where they normally live.
Failure You learn the creature’s profession and the region of the world they hail from, but no more.
Critical Failure You learn a piece of erroneous information about the creature.
FORENSIC ACUMEN FEAT 1
GENERAL SKILL
Prerequisites trained in Medicine
You understand the principles of forensic medicine, making you better at examining a body to determine the cause of death or injury. You can perform a forensic examination on a body, as described under Recall Knowledge in the Medicine skill, in half the normal amount of time it would take (to a minimum of 5 minutes). If you succeed at your check, you can attempt an immediate check to Recall Knowledge to follow up on something you found, with a +2 circumstance bonus on your roll. This check is usually related to the cause of injury or death, such as a Crafting check to identify a poison or weapon that was used, or an additional Medicine check to identify a specific disease. If you prefer, you can instead make the check to Recall Knowledge about the type of creature whose body you were examining, using the appropriate skill and gaining the same circumstance bonus.
The circumstance bonus increases to +3 if you have master proficiency in Medicine and +4 if you have legendary proficiency.
URBAN PURSUIT FEAT 2
GENERAL SKILL
Prerequisites expert in Society
Following someone through city streets comes naturally to you. You can use Society to Track someone through an urban environment. Rather than following tracks, you pay attention to the movement of crowds, ask passersby if they’ve seen the person, and follow other clues the city gives you.
UNDERGROUND NETWORK FEAT 2
GENERAL SKILL
Prerequisites expert in Society, Streetwise (Core Rulebook 267)
You’re tapped into groups that know what’s going on in the streets, and you can get information out of them quickly. When you use Society to Gather Information, you can contact a member of these groups to get information directly from them. This usually takes about an hour, and doesn’t draw as much attention as Gathering Information in public might. The check and information gained follow the normal rules for Gather Information.
In addition, if you’ve consulted the underground network, you get a +1 circumstance bonus to the next Recall Knowledge check you make about the subject you were asking about, or a +2 circumstance bonus if you’re using Underworld Lore for the check. The GM might change the Lore skill related to the network depending on your location or specifics of the network you’re tapping into.