Working on a campaign that will include strong Mystery/Detective aspects. Trying to figure out a way the PCs won't have to roll "Perception" in every location in order to discover or investigate the mystery. I was thinking about a Custom Skill called "Investigation," and perhaps the PCs would earn custom XP when they discover certain bonuses throughout the campaign, even if it's not relevant to the overall mystery. I'm hoping to encourage an exploration narrative that rewards turning over every strange stone.

I've also been considering creating Talents that would compliment a skill like this. For example, a "Forensic Science" Talent where the character would get a Boost die on an "Investigation" check if they are attempting to notice things like: fingerprints, blood spatter, hair follicles, etc.

Thoughts??

15 hours ago, sarj2490 said:

I'm hoping to encourage an exploration narrative that rewards turning over every strange stone.

This sounds more like experiences from other games, where players feel the need to constantly search for traps, secret doors, etc for fear of missing something. This leads to much unnecessary rolling of dice. If a detail *needs* to be discovered in order to move the story forward, find a way to nudge the PCs in the right direction.

Check out the Skip Tracer spec from No Disintegrations , specifically the bottom-of-the-tree talent Reconstruct The Scene .

Forensics can be Knowledge-Education, Xenology, Medicine, etc, depending on the nature of the evidence.

Perception is exactly what should be used for noticing physical evidence at a scene.

You need to focus your efforts at creating your list of clues, and then creating your own list of Advantage and Triumph uses on various checks like Perception or Education. The game isn't lacking the skills and talents you need for your idea, you need to organize your facts and details into a framework where the existing skills can be used.

Sounds like you're trying to rewrite the entire system in order to run the sort of adventure that it is eminently suited to running already. Both No Disintegrations and Endless Vigil go into great detail on how to run investigation-style adventures, and both books feature numerous talents that work with such adventures. Seems like you're inventing an Investigation skill for them to roll constantly so they won't have to constantly roll Perception (which really shouldn't be remotely necessary to begin with). As a general rule, if you want to encourage an exploration narrative the last thing you'll want to do is introduce custom skills and talents that will make your players feel like they have to roll dice all the time instead of using the more narrative mechanics that this system excels at.

An example of a crime scene and thoughts on how to use skills.

Your team arrives at an office and finds it in disarray, obvious signs of a struggle. There is a blood stain on the floor and some on the wall. There is no body.

So you start with the obvious, the blood. The PC with Medicine analyzes it for species and gender. They then measure about how much is there, to make a rough guess as to the wound severity, and whether the amount indicates a potentially lethal wound.

Maybe there is more than one blood type and Doc can't figure out what the other stuff is. Enter the Knowledge-Xenologist, or even Survival PC. They take a look at the data and do some ciphering and determine the reason Doc can't ID the species is because it's not an intelligent race but a space wolf from Planet X.

The blood and it's pattern on the floor and wall. Enter Joe Gun. They take a look using combat skills, and determine from the pattern and spread it's consistent with a hand to hand/melee wound being inflicted, and not a high speed spray pattern you'd get from a projectile or blaster.

Moving onto the office itself. The Gearhead notices the door was breached. They take a look and it appears that whoever improvised the use of a grenade maybe, and tamped it against the latch mechanism, possibly indicating whoever came wasn't expecting such a secure door or they likely would've brought some more appropriate breaching charges.

The Slicer takes a look at the computer and sees it was accessed shortly before the attack, and more interestingly, quite awhile after, suggesting someone was here after the attack and before your PCs arrival, or the attackers stayed quite awhile. Suggesting they weren't concerned with discovery potentially.

Finally your Sherlock with the super Perception and Vigilance notices a single book was removed from a shelf by the extremely subtle telltale sign of disturbed dust. Commit a violent murder and then take a single book and the body, hmmmmmm? The mystery grows......

There is no need for an Investigation skill. Investigation isn't a skill, it's an effort to answer a question(s) and depending on the nature of that it draws on a myriad of disciplines to answer them.

Vigilance is a great skill for noticing details without actively looking, a kind of "something feels out of place" check. Being that it's tied to a different characteristic this often allows another PC a chance to be involved.

5 hours ago, 2P51 said:

An example of a crime scene and thoughts on how to use skills...

2P51's post pretty much closes the thread on how to set up a crime scene investigation. I'd add a general suggestion that I have found helps my games run smoothly:

Don't have the entire party roll for the majority of skill checks. Play is bogged down when a GM has to interpret the advantages, threats, etc. for each character and the magic of the narrative dice is lost in these moments. Instead, have one player lead the roll, allowing one or two others to add a Boost die. Occasionally situations arise where everyone needs to roll, but keeping these to a minimum has dramatically improved the game flow for our group.

In the beta, they originally had a skill for investigation, however it just got folded into perception and vigilance upon the update.

Strongly suggest giving the Gumshoe system a look. Not for its rules so much as for its advice on how to run investigations. The entire system is built around them.

There are now a few talents and even a signature ability that help with investigations, I loved the enforcer for this with a talent like Talk the Talk allowing you to substitute Streetwise or knowledge -Underworld for another Knowledge check the only difference is this isnt something you learned by being taught it.

Example Enforcer rolls a streetwise check instead of knowledge -education to figure out that the guard was knocked out by triosis gas, but its narrated that they know this because they were on a job of their own and know that it leaves a faint trace of light blue crystals on the victims face because they had seen it used before.

A further knowledge-underworld check could throw out that only 2 sources of the gas are innthe nearby area. They then send the Marshall and the skip tracer into interrogate the the supplier using good cop /bad cop with the enforcer providing support via Loom. Only for the marshal with improved unrelenting skeptic figure out via improved unrelenting skeptic that Sarmon the weequay bought some last week, then allowing the bounty hunter to use to track him down with his signature ability.

These sort of ideas draw on the diverse skills of players to pull the information. The info on the crystals may have come up just as easily from a perception check followed by a medicine check. IMO its better to leave the players to lead with the skill suggestions so if one says id like to do a perception roll, then have the answer fit what they were looking for , like you had planned this all along and maybe throw in a fe red herrings so that they arent right everytme.

The player could have led with the request to do a medicine check to see if they could find out what sort of weapon knocked them out, you the do a medicine chexk to figure out it was a blunt object (up till they asked for the check you didnt know this was going to be the clue, or even that the guard had been knocked out, with a weapon) , they then ask for a check to narrow down the weapons so call for a melee (knowledge check) to figure it as a T25 stun baton which in this area is commonly used by security guards from firm X, although you may have to track down a weapons dealer to figure that out. I love investigations, esp when you are in charge of the "clues". Have the players choices for checks inform you of how to pass on the results. Again you could throw in things like - The guard was knocked out using a choke hold and from the bruising , it was from a strong left handed person that was significantly shorter and left handed, the choke hold is signifcant in that its only practised by a particular martial art and a bit of foot work takes you to a training dojo that happens to be run by a left handed lannik.

I would recommend reading the new Thrawn book , it isnt a definitive book on detective work but it has some clever ideas when it comes to investigation, also watch some TV detective shows like Bosch, Sherlock is a bit high brow in how much of a leap in deduction is required (im talking the Benedict Cumberbatch version although the fairly recent films are a good start)

For good reference material of the T.V watching persuasion, might I suggest Murdoch Mysteries? Or The Artful Detective in some places.

My Actual Answer to the OP

You definitely don't need custom-skills. If you're worried about using Perception all the time, bear in mind that solving a crime isn't just looking for clues at a crime scene. For example, research to understand a topic might require a Knowledge check (Underworld, Core Worlds and Outer Rim all very useful), while reaching out to informants might require Streetwise checks. Getting a perp to confess is a straight up social encounter, and what detective story would be complete without a high-speed car/speeder chase through the crowded streets of [insert city here]?

Also, good investigative talents: Researcher, In The Know, Street Smarts, Talk the Talk, Keen-Eyed, Valuable Facts, Bought Info, and Knowledge Specialisation

My Slightly Rant-y and Vaguely Relevant Tangent

I've seen people mention the investigation rules in No Disintigrations and Endless Vigil . I don't have the former, but I did purchase the latter ahead of my own campaign (also an investigation/detective campaign), and while there are some useful ideas in there I felt there was a lot lacking.

The main houserule I've come up with is for investigations is the codification of "Information Encounters"*, which covers everything from "looking for clues at a crime scene" to "analysing data models on a computer" to "reaching out to contacts in the underworld". I felt that we haven't really been given any actual rules in this area, which made key investigative talents all feel quite arbitrary. Also, a lack of a framework meant that each encounter required a lot more work to build and was very difficult to improvise (unlike, for example, combat encounters, where the rules are concrete and comprehensive, and encounters are comparatively easy to improvise on the fly). Since gathering information was going to make up a good 40-50% of most sessions, I wanted to have something more solid that I could build on.

*This ended up being a bigger job than anticipated, as I had to then rewrite the rules for contact networks, and then ended up having to rewrite the rules for social encounters too. And now I'm writing some for stealth encounters...

I may have a problem.

6 hours ago, Kazimir said:

For good reference material of the T.V watching persuasion, might I suggest Murdoch Mysteries? Or The Artful Detective in some places.

Also look at Numbers , Castle , Bones and (of course) Sherlock - all have great examples of how other skills (e.g. Charm, Education, Xenology, Medicine, Deception, Streetwise) can be brought to bear in an investigation.