Sacrificial Master

[SpicyBoi_Nezu]

I am currently playing a campaign where we are all "Evil" characters. We currently have a typical mercenary, a mentally insane skeleton, a seriously corrupt politician, and a simple pawn of a high lich. I wanted to play a standard Mass Murderer/Cultist/Mercenary, where he kills for fun, is known for taking literally killing anyone regardless of risk if hes given money to do so, and when he kills his "Victims" he tortures them for a short period of time, and then brutally sacrafices them to his god Bhaal, the lord of murder.

The goal would be to optimize his Knowledge religion, because that is what he uses when sacrificing someone in order to gain the favor of his god. I plan on having the first level be monk, because I plan on having most of his levels be in fighter, and he needs to get the knowledge religion Skill.

Currently I have planned (Assuming Level 5)
Intelligence 14: +2
Ranks (Knowledge Religion): +8
Feat (Sacrificial Mastery): +4
Tome of Worldly Memory:+5
Sacrificial Knife: +3
Skill Focus (Knowledge Religion): +3

total: +25

That's good enough to get him to the top of the provided table with a score of 40 on a rolled 15.

Anything else?

[MisterKaws]

Even if it's a class skill for you because you took monk, you'll still have to pay cross-class as a Fighter, and that's tough on your skills with the useless skill points of a fighter. Why don't you use a Crusader instead?

[Menzath]

I would suggest maybe starting with warblade, and the able learner feat, picking up knowledge devotion at level 3, because having a skill be a class skill for one level of a single class normally doesn't make it a class skill for all your classes, and you lose a point of BaB with a level of monk. And even if it's only a few levels warblade has better synergy with fighter overall, and actually makes use of a higher int score, and has a slightly more useful skill list.

Your next best bet would be human paragon, or cloistered cleric. They both make you lose BaB, but both give you skills as class skills for all you classes. Human paragon at least has another bonus feat, and clerics are clerics.

[Thurbane]

If you want a dip for Knowledge (religion), (Cloistered) Cleric might be a better option, if you're not adverse to casters.

You can trade away up to two domains for feats; and you can also use wands of Guidance of the Avatar (http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20010504a) or Divine Inisght for solid boosts to your skill checks.

[Zaq]

3 levels of truenamer can get you +18 on top of ranks, INT, and other bonuses. +10 from hidden truth, +5 from universal aptitude, and +3 from their Knowledge Focus class feature (assuming you pick Religion).

Consider an extremely reasonable illumian truenamer with the Naen sigil, 16 INT, and the above package. 6 from ranks, 2 from Naen, 3 from INT, 18 from the above, and you’re at d20 + 29, minimum roll 30. And that’s at level 3, not spending any feats or gold. You haven’t even had to make any unusual decisions yet—those two utterances should be taken almost 100% of the time anyway!

[Falontani]

Dragon fire adept gives you all knowledge as class skills, Dragonblood subtype, and an invocation which can grant +6 to all knowledge skills and the ability to use them untrained. So with a human 12 intelligence you get d20+7 with any knowledge skill before ranks.