Help me sell My friend on Alchemist or Investigator

[Nosta]

My group is taking a Break from table top RP, as it seems everything is getting in the way of us getting together to roll Dice

How ever I Want to sell my friend on his next Character class. (Not trying to force my friend in to something but knowing what he likes in a character and in rp in general I feel the above mention classes would be really fun for him.

My friend, likes plot and story more than combat, that's the first thing you need to understand.

He like classes with a good amount of skill points and skills
He also fancy himself a creative person, and likes craft and i feel achemical items can be fun. and with the bonuses to it its easier than crating a ring or something.

He also likes to a jack of all trades

i need a list of reason each is good so i can try to sell him on one or the other

[Kaouse]

My group is taking a Break from table top RP, as it seems everything is getting in the way of us getting together to roll Dice

How ever I Want to sell my friend on his next Character class. (Not trying to force my friend in to something but knowing what he likes in a character and in rp in general I feel the above mention classes would be really fun for him.

My friend, likes plot and story more than combat, that's the first thing you need to understand.

He like classes with a good amount of skill points and skills
He also fancy himself a creative person, and likes craft and i feel achemical items can be fun. and with the bonuses to it its easier than crating a ring or something.

He also likes to a jack of all trades

i need a list of reason each is good so i can try to sell him on one or the other


Investigators are the god of skills in Pathfinder. 6 + INT skill ranks on a heavily INT based class. Free Inspiration on a host of skills, plus the ability to get some more free inspiration on a number of other skills via Investigator Talents. If you like Plot and Story, Investigators are the number one class for noir-inspired characters.

The Invesitgators are also good at combat, at least as long as they reach Level 4, where they can get Studied Combat. That buff gives you a rather hefty bonus to attack and damage, keeping you pretty much on par with a full BAB class. At later levels, they also get a number of extracts that boost their combat potential, namely the Polymorph line of extracts.

Investigators are definitely good at pretty much everything.

[Ellrin]

With a couple sets of poisoner's gloves, they're fast buffers, too. Using either the investigator talent or item that allow you to brew two extracts as one of a higher level and dependent on what sort of action affecting yourself with poisoner's gloves would be (the text only tells us that affecting others requires a touch attack, so it would have to be a pretty minor action, potentially even free), you can target yourself with four extracts per round (or more depending if you have more than two arms) and probably still have actions left over.

Some of their archeytpes can make them especially good at certain skills. Empiricist keys a lot of important skills to Int instead of the usual stats; Ciphers get a host of abilities that make them more stealthy and difficult to pin down; a Guardian of Immortality gets a couple abilities to boost Sense Motive and let him see through illusions and disguised, Profilers also get some nice Sense Motive and divination boosts, and Relentless Inspectors get some nice Sense Motive and Intimidate boosts, as well as some ranger-like boosts against a tracked target; Infiltrators, on the other hand, get a host of bonuses and reduced penalties on various Disguise checks. Natural Philosophers trade trapfinding for bonuses to Survival and Profession (herbalist), and use Knowledge (nature) in place of Craft (alchemy) and Profession (herbalist) for some skill consolidation; the Questioner gains bonuses to all trained Knowledge checks; Ruthless Agents get some nice interrogation-based abilities, including intimidate boosts and the ability to impose penalties on others' Bluff checks.

For even more skill mastery, the Bonded Investigator archetype will give you a familiar (and eventually an improved familiar), allowing for aid another bonuses on pretty nearly every check you make as well as a potential specialist in certain skills, depending on type of familiar and its archetype.

For those who are more into robotics than chemistry, the Scavenger archetype replaces extracts with "gadgets" (that function mechanically identically), fashioned out of bits and scraps, and gains similarly-themed abilities--Craft Construct being the big one.

Toxin Codexers are probably some of the best, if not the best, poisoners in the game. They have access to many of the alchemist discoveries that can improve poisons; they can customize poisons, even ones they don't make themselves, with additional effects that aren't shrugged off on a successful save; and they can prepare poisons without spending any money using their extract slots, and these special poisons use the same save DC as their extracts of those levels would, making ordinarily low-save poisons potentially more useful.

[Epic Legand]

Personally, I like the Stalker/Vigilante (Archtype of stalker, not the straight class). Makes them be INT based, you get Inspiration, 6 skill points/lv, sneak attack and MANUVERS. You can be skill monkey, front line and a god out of combat. You also gain access to Investigator feats.

[Ellrin]

While Vigilante stalker is a nice archetype and class, it doesn't really have the focus on making things Nosta mentioned his friend might ne interested in. A Polymath templated investigator might be better suited to the base request if we're looking for ways to include initiating.