Trained Only

Use this skill to analyze a crime scene and use an evidence kit. Investigate allows you to discern patterns in clues, turn clues into evidence, and otherwise prepare a crime scene and evidence for further analysis by a crime lab.

Check: You generally use Search to discover clues and Investigate to analyze them. For example, you might find a blood spatter or a potential murder weapon with a Search check. You would use Investigate to determine from which direction the blood was spattered, or to collect fingerprints from the weapon.

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.

Analyze Clue: You can make an Investigate check to apply forensics knowledge to a clue. By examining a body, you might tell whether the victim fought back against the assailant or not. By looking at a bullet hole in a wall, you might approximate the location, or at least direction, of the shooter. By looking at a bloodstain, you might tell where the attacker was relative to the victim.

This function of the Investigate skill does not give you clues where none existed before. It simply allows you to extract extra information from a clue you've found.

The base DC to analyze a clue is 15. It is modified by the time that has elapsed since the clue was left, and whether or not the scene was disturbed.

Collect Evidence: You can collect and prepare evidentiary material for a lab, such as gathering fingerprints from objects touched, making casts of footprints or tire tracks, collecting samples of fluids, fibers, and other materials, gathering castings of scratch marks where tools have been used to break into a location, or collecting bullets from walls. This use of the Investigate skill requires an evidence kit.

To collect a piece of evidence, make an Investigate check (DC 15). If you succeed, the evidence is usable by a crime lab. If you fail, a crime lab analysis can be done, but the lab takes a -5 penalty on any necessary check. If you fail by 5 or more, the lab analysis simply cannot be done. On the other hand, if you succeed by 10 or more, the lab gains a +2 circumstance bonus on its checks to analyze the material.

This function of the Investigate skill does not provide you with evidentiary items. It simply allows you to collect items you've found in a manner that best aids in their analysis later, at a crime lab.

Try Again?: Generally, analyzing a clue again doesn't add new insight unless another clue is introduced. Evidence collected cannot be recollected, unless there is more of it to take (for instance, a large pool of blood may allow for a retry, since there's enough for more than one sample).

Special: You can take 10 when making an Investigate check, but you cannot take 20.

Collecting evidence requires an evidence kit. If you do not have the appropriate kit, you take a -4 penalty on your check.

A character with the Attentive feat and at least 1 rank in this skill gets a +2 bonus on all Investigate checks.

Time: Analyzing a clue is a full-round action. Collecting evidence generally takes 1d4 minutes per object.

• Circumstances DC Modifier
• Every day since event (max +10) +2
• Scene is outdoors +5
• Scene is slightly disturbed +2
• Scene is moderately disturbed +4
• Scene is extremely disturbed +6