Table of Contents
Investigate
Use this skill to analyze a crime scene and do the followup detective work. Investigate allows you to discern patterns in clues, turn clues into evidence, and otherwise prepare a crime scene and evidence for further analyzes by a crime lab, to do the analyze and to turn it into conclusions on what happened, when and why.
This is also used to analyze and combine military intelligence data to a usable whole.
Check for clues
You generally use Perception(Search) to discover clues and Investigate to analyze them. For example, you might find pieces of garbage and shrapnel from a bomb at a crime scene using Perception(Search). Then you could use Investigate to determine what belonged to the bomb, or to collect fingerprints from such pieces.
If you have access to a crime lab, you use the Investigate skill to collect and prepare samples for the lab. The result of your Investigate check provides bonuses or penalties to the lab workers.
The DC to check if the found thing is evidence depends on the obscurity of the clue and normally takes one round for each found object.
table
| Class | Example | DC |
|---|---|---|
| Self evident | After a bomb explosion check if a found unexploded piece of explosive might be relevant | 5 |
| Easy | After a bomb explosion check if a found piece of shrapnel might be a piece of bomb | 10 |
| Normal | After a bomb explosion check if found electronics might be a piece of bomb | 15 |
Analyze clue
You can make an Investigate check to apply forensic knowledge to a clue. By examining a bullet hole, you might approximate the location of the shooter or at least the direction of the shot. By examining a body you might be able to tell if the dead person was restrained or not, etc. This function of the skill does not provide new clues where none existed before. It simply allows you to extract information from a clue you have gathered.
The base DC is 15, to which the modifiers of the following table apply, depending on the circumstance of the crime scene. Also remember that certain evidences may decay with time (especially those in a dead body) or may be swept away by climate, if the scene is outdoors.
Analyzing a clue usually takes 1d6 rounds.
| Every day since event (max modifier +10) | +2 |
| Scene is outdoors | +5 |
| Scene slightly disturbed | +2 |
| Scene moderately disturbed | +4 |
| Scene heavily disturbed | +6 |
Collect Evidence
You can collect and prepare evidences to send to the lab, such as gathering fingerprints from a weapon, collecting tissue and biological samples, filming and photographing scratch marks for 3D modeling, etc.
To collect a piece of evidence, make an Investigate check DC 15. If you succeed the sample is usable and can be used by the members of the crime lab. If you succeed by 10 or more, the members of the crime lab gain a +2 circumstance bonus on their checks to analyze the evidence. If you fail by 4 or less, the sample is usable but in bad condition, giving the characters in the lab a -5 penalty when analyzing it. If you fail by 5 or more, the sample isn’t usable.
This function of this skill does not provide additional evidentiary material. It simply allows you to collect items you’ve found in a manner that best aids the characters in the lab when analyzing that material.
Collecting evidences usually takes 1d4 minutes per evidence collected.
Crime lab
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Reconstruct scene
There are many ways to reconstruct the scene in an attempt to understand what exactly happened.
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Interview
This is a not a subskill and does not contain Investigate uses, just description of how to use other skills for interviewing/interrogating witnesses and suspects.
The actual interview is done by Diplomacy(usually), Intimidation or very seldom by bluff.
The reliability of a witness or other testimony can be determined often by sense motive.
Combine clues
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You can use Investigate to combine all clues to try to reach conclusions.
Base DC depends on how well things are obscured by the criminal(S)
