Information broker build

[Little Brother]

Exactly what it says on the tin: How would one make an effective information broker as a character concept? Someone whose job it is to know everything. Both as an NPC, and as a PC? I'm thinking a Focused Diviner/Divine Oracle with the Spontaneous Divination ACF, a Cloistered Cleric, a theurge of the above(I really, really like theurges, they're fun), or a telepath of some sort. Preferably, doable without the typical T1 monstrosities.

Requirements for the build are:
effective in combat.
Decent skills to be helpful in non-combat situations(More stealthy-stuff if the telepath)
Good intelligence and Charisma are both musts.
Nothing obviously stupid busted, like leadership

Thanks.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

See also: Joker Bard in my desc. It does precisely this. Legend Lore and Scrying are Bard spells. Being able to make truly insane Bluff checks can turn entire organizations into your information source.

[Hirax]

If you want to theurge, I'd go seer over telepath. Hypercognition and metafaculty are the peak of divination pre-epic.

[Little Brother]

See also: Joker Bard in my desc. It does precisely this. Legend Lore and Scrying are Bard spells. Being able to make truly insane Bluff checks can turn entire organizations into your information source.I also need to be able to help the party out is the thing. We have a distinct lack of casters in the party.

If you want to theurge, I'd go seer over telepath. Hypercognition and metafaculty are the peak of divination pre-epic.Never played a Seer. The issue is that Psychic Theurging has much less support than Arcane/Divine Theurging. I'll look into straight Seer, though.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I also need to be able to help the party out is the thing. We have a distinct lack of casters in the party.

Sublime Chord. Now you're a Bard... with full Sorcerer spellcasting. And can pull all the Sense Motive/Gather Information/Diplomancy/bluffomancy that a Bard can.

[Heliomance]

Exactly what it says on the tin: How would one make an effective information broker as a character concept? Someone whose job it is to know everything. Both as an NPC, and as a PC? I'm thinking a Focused Diviner/Divine Oracle with the Spontaneous Divination ACF, a Cloistered Cleric, a theurge of the above(I really, really like theurges, they're fun), or a telepath of some sort. Preferably, doable without the typical T1 monstrosities.

Requirements for the build are:
effective in combat.
Decent skills to be helpful in non-combat situations(More stealthy-stuff if the telepath)
Good intelligence and Charisma are both musts.
Nothing obviously stupid busted, like leadership

Thanks.

Actually, Leadership is by far the best way to do this. Not for the cohort, unusually, which is where most of the brokenness about Leadership comes in. No, you're actually after the followers. You want to set up a proper network of informants reporting to you, and Leadership is the best way to do that (and the only way that's actually rules supported to get anything like enough.) I'd also recommend seeing if your DM will hold some solo sessions with you during downtime where you roleplay acquiring contacts and establishing your network.

[Wings of Peace]

Build a Diplomancer who's very social.

[GodGoblin]

The changling Rogue substitution could work, lets you use Gather Info checks in a matter of minutes rather than hours, also gets 10 skillpoints a level, only need 1 level of it for all that too.

[Jandrem]

I'm actually playing an Information Broker in a World's Largest City campaign right now. There are lots of different ways to go about it, depending on the kind of campaign you are playing in.

My character build is NOT optimized. This is NOT a min/max build. This is just the character I'm playing at the moment.

For my character, 6th level, I went with Rogue3/Swashbuckler3 (Daring Outlaw feat build) and picked up Able Learner for the knowledge skills. I just put the majority of my skills into social skill and knowledges. I'm thinking for this campaign, it's going to be more than just knowledge checks and divining, so I invested heavily into Bluff, Gather Information, and Sense Motive, to sniff out bad info leads and dig up good info. Being an Information Broker is more than just having knowledge, there should be a business aspect to it. Social skills are(should be) a must.

To help round out combat, I picked up the Knowledge Devotion feat(Complete Champion), since I was going to have a heavy amount of ranks invested into knowledeges anyway, and the feat makes one more knowledge skill a class skill. It's nice putting all those knowledge ranks to use in combat, and showing the party that my character knows what's-what when we're in battle.

[Little Brother]

So, after talking with my DM a little, I've decided to go with a Cloistered Cleric. I'm thinking going Divine Magician, giving up the Knowledge domain for it.

So what spells should I run with? I'm really liking Dr325's Spontaneous Search, especially combined with Guidance of the Avatar/Divine Insight, if I really need them. What divination-y domains are there? And what are some of the better spells?

Sorry 'bout all the questions, I have literally never played a cleric before, and am totally lost.

[Little Brother]

Oh, and do clerics have access to any low-level Acid spells? I can't find any, but really want to use Acid Splatter(Sub-optimal, I know, but I just really like the feat)? Is there any way to increase the range, or is it completely inferior to Fiery Burst?

Also, is there any good, low level way to get all-day flight outside of the Broom of Flying? D6 HD=too squishy for my taste, if I'm on the ground.

[Geigan]

You can get a lot of spells from domains. Slime domain(SpC) in particular gets acid arrow at 2nd level as well as a lot of useful spells you normally wouldn't get as a cleric. I don't know of any actual cleric spells you could get off hand, though if you're using divine magician you should be able to get something acid based anyway.

As for flight, this link (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187851) should be helpful if you haven't already seen it. The 3 methods listed above the broom each have their own limitations(evil only/graft usage, reliance on polymorph, having to cast it repeatedly). So it depends on whether cutting corners is worth it in this case to save some gp.

[Little Brother]

You can get a lot of spells from domains. Slime domain(SpC) in particular gets acid arrow at 2nd level as well as a lot of useful spells you normally wouldn't get as a cleric. I don't know of any actual cleric spells you could get off hand, though if you're using divine magician you should be able to get something acid based anyway.

As for flight, this link (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187851) should be helpful if you haven't already seen it. The 3 methods listed above the broom each have their own limitations(evil only/graft usage, reliance on polymorph, having to cast it repeatedly). So it depends on whether cutting corners is worth it in this case to save some gp.Domains are stuck. Oracle, Trickery, and Divine Magician(It never says which I need to drop, so I dropped Knowledge for it). My Divine Magician is stuck on all the tasty divination spells, and some other goodies like Mind Blank.

Thanks for the link, by the way.

[Lonely Tylenol]

I think I would have gone Beguiler 5/Mindbender 3 and just rolled with it from there. 8+INT skills per level, INT-based casting, all the social skills, and Mindbender 3 gives you telepathy out to 100 feet, plus mind-reading. From there, it's all about guile and manipulation to get the types of information you want; you know, "don't think about elephants" and whatnot.

Having a 200-foot diameter circle of telepathy/mind-reading also allows you to cast a pretty wide net, if information brokering is what you're all about.

Bard and the same works too, as it has access to all knowledges.

I don't know what to tell you about the cloistered cleric method, though. I'm sure there is something you can do with the Knowledge skills that's cooler than Knowledge Devotion [for a caster class], but I don't know what it is.