Skills for a Mounted Archer Inquisitor?

[Extra Anchovies]

Going to be starting my first-ever game of Pathfinder soon (within the next two weeks), and have assembled an archery-focused Half-Orc Inquisitor build, with the Feather domain and a Roc companion. The goal will be to provide support through flying mounted archery and through having my roc pick up enemies and drop them off cliffs. I'm fine as far as feat and spell selection is concerned, but I'm having trouble choosing where to put skill points. So far I have:

Max ranks in Perception
Max ranks in Ride
Max ranks in Stealth
Max ranks in Diplomacy
One rank in Knowledge (arcana), (dungeoneering), (nature), (planes), and (religion), to make best use of Monster Lore + the Half-Orc favored class bonus

Intelligence will be 12, so at 1st level I have seven skill points left, and at each subsequent level I will have three more to spend. Where should these last points go? A few CC ranks in Handle Animal (I'm surprised that the Animal domain gives an animal companion, but doesn't give HA)? Maybe put half-ranks into Sense Motive so that I effectively have it maxed from Stern Gaze? More ranks in the Knowledge skills? Would Spellcraft be worth it, or should I leave that for the party full-caster(s)? I'm totally stumped, help me out here.

[grarrrg]

Max ranks in Perception
Max ranks in Ride
Max ranks in Stealth
Max ranks in Diplomacy
One rank in Knowledge (arcana), (dungeoneering), (nature), (planes), and (religion), to make best use of Monster Lore + the Half-Orc favored class bonus

Intelligence will be 12, so at 1st level I have seven skill points left, and at each subsequent level I will have three more to spend.

It looks like you're using 3.5 skill set-up.
In PF there is no more "x4 skills at 1st level", and the max cap is a straight "=level" instead of "=level +3".

So the way I see it, you get 7 ranks per level, meaning at 1st level you can put 4 total (1 ea) into each of your "max ranks" skills, with 3 points for your "1 point each"s.
At 2nd, 4 more points to your "max", and another 3 for your "1 of"s.
It isn't until 3rd level that you _actually_ have an extra 3 Skills to spend.

[Extra Anchovies]

It looks like you're using 3.5 skill set-up.
In PF there is no more "x4 skills at 1st level", and the max cap is a straight "=level" instead of "=level +3".

So the way I see it, you get 7 ranks per level, meaning at 1st level you can put 4 total (1 ea) into each of your "max ranks" skills, with 3 points for your "1 point each"s.
At 2nd, 4 more points to your "max", and another 3 for your "1 of"s.
It isn't until 3rd level that you _actually_ have an extra 3 Skills to spend.

That's... interesting. Thanks for pointing that out; I'm so used to 3.5 that I didn't even think to check if skills worked differently. Looking at the SRD, I get a +3 bonus to any class skills that I have ranks in; does this mean that I get +4 to a skill even if I only dip one rank into it? Nice! Makes dipping Knowledge skills that much easier :smallbiggrin: Thanks for helping me figure out another bit of the Pathfinder system.

I'm currently thinking about half-ranking Sense Motive and the five Knowledges that I have as class skills; thus, I'd be advancing my skills like so:

+1 Rank into Perception, Ride, Stealth, and Diplomacy at each level
+1 Rank into Sense Motive, Knowledge (Arcana), and Knowledge (Planes) at every odd-numbered level
+1 Rank into Knowledge (Nature), Knowledge (Religion), and Knowledge (Dungeoneering) at every even-numbered level

This doesn't leave any room for Handle Animal or Spellcraft ranks; do you think that would be an issue?