Hi guys, been looking through the character sheets and i cant see anything that would resemble a skill like investigate, am i missing it? what do you guys use instead?

Thanks for any help

Depends on what you're considering "investigate." Are you looking for clues at a specific location? Perception. Are you interrogating someone? Coercion. Are you interviewing someone? Charm or Coercion (depending on your approach). Are you tracking someone? Stealth in the woods, Perception in more urban environments. Are you researching something at the space library? Probably an appropriate Knowledge skill. Are you trying to sniff out leads from the underworld? Streetwise. Are you doing the same thing with high-brow types? Charm. With bureaucrats? Knowledge: Education. Other skills might come into play, as well, depending on what you want to do.

Or, taking a page out of the book of a game like Gumshoe; you do not make your players roll to find clues (or secret doors, or to "activate" other interesting content you've created for your game).

What happens if they fail that check? You've created a road block to your own game. Congratulations.

Alternatives to rolling for clues:

Make them expend an in-game resource. Time (in a quest that's time-sensitive, and there is another way they could have spent their time for some other sort of pay off). Money (to pay off someone who knows/saw something). Encumbrance (to haul off the stuff to search through). Strain (if you can structure it as part of an ongoing encounter that they can't just instantly recovery it during). An item ("It takes up your whole data pad capacity to download all the records, so you can take them back and analyze them.", "You burn out your fusion lantern powering up the holo-bank they sabotaged.", "Your droid will have to stay here for a week sifting through all this stuff."). So on...

Or make them flup one or more Destiny Points, to get one or more clues.

This isn't D&D, you don't have to run it like D&D.

Endless Vigil has a whole section devoted to running Investigation scenarios starting on page 80.

4 hours ago, emsquared said:

Or, taking a page out of the book of a game like Gumshoe; you do not make your players roll to find clues (or secret doors, or to "activate" other interesting content you've created for your game).

What happens if they fail that check? You've created a road block to your own game. Congratulations.

Alternatives to rolling for clues:

Make them expend an in-game resource. Time (in a quest that's time-sensitive, and there is another way they could have spent their time for some other sort of pay off). Money (to pay off someone who knows/saw something). Encumbrance (to haul off the stuff to search through). Strain (if you can structure it as part of an ongoing encounter that they can't just instantly recovery it during). An item ("It takes up your whole data pad capacity to download all the records, so you can take them back and analyze them.", "You burn out your fusion lantern powering up the holo-bank they sabotaged.", "Your droid will have to stay here for a week sifting through all this stuff."). So on...

Or make them flup one or more Destiny Points, to get one or more clues.

This isn't D&D, you don't have to run it like D&D.

Those are sound ideas. Another is to use floating clues. They fail the Perception check to spot the perpetrator's footprints? They can try to Charm the janitor who was there at the time or use Computers to comb through the surveillance holocam footage. This is my preferred approach, since it adds in redundancy for players to get the clues, but it still makes their XP expenditures valuable when they get a Triumph on that Perception check or what have you.

5 hours ago, SavageBob said:

Those are sound ideas. Another is to use floating clues. They fail the Perception check to spot the perpetrator's footprints? They can try to Charm the janitor who was there at the time or use Computers to comb through the surveillance holocam footage. This is my preferred approach, since it adds in redundancy for players to get the clues, but it still makes their XP expenditures valuable when they get a Triumph on that Perception check or what have you.

This more or less. I make it a matter of course to plan multiple routes to a solution. It gives your players more sense of control, it keeps you from winding up with road blocks as mentioned, and keeps you from having to scramble when things don’t go the way you first expected. Somone might still come up with a novel solution you didn’t consider, but the odds are less if you plan multiple routes in the first place.

To borrow a concept from FFG's Legend of the Five Rings, there's no specific "Investigate" skill because there's multiple methods of conducting an investigation.

Yes, Perception is useful for looking for actual physical clues at the scene, but skills such as Computers (online investigating) and Streetwise (asking around for what details you can glean from the general populace in the area) can also be applied. Skulduggery and Knowledge (Education) could be used to analyze/reconstruct how a particular crime was committed. And then you've got the various social skills for obtaining relevant information from whatever witnesses you're speaking with.

So really, an investigation is more of a scene with a the players doing more than just a single "welp, roll this specific skill and we're done!" sort of thing. If anything, it should be a skill challenge (a concept that's discussed in pretty good detail on the Dice Pool podcast) with each of the players finding ways to contribute to the success of the investigation.

13 hours ago, emsquared said:

What happens if they fail that check? You've created a road block to your own game. Congratulations.

Well, in those sorts of cases, it could be that the failed check is instead "you succeed but with a heavy cost."

I've found that sort of approach for skill checks where under most RPGs success means moving the plot forward, that having a failed check simply mean that while you were able to complete the task and thus move the story forward, things didn't go smooth and there's some measure of consequence.

I guess in effect, it's switching the outcome of the roll form "did you do the thing?" to "you can do the thing, but can you avoid the drawbacks of doing the thing?"

Plus let players be creative in their use of skills.

What sort of weapon made that burn (ranged light), what could have caused the crash (mechanics), who is that watching us investigate (Vigilance), what tracks were left (Survival), etc.

5 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

Well, in those sorts of cases, it could be that the failed check is instead "you succeed but with a heavy cost."

I've found that sort of approach for skill checks where under most RPGs success means moving the plot forward, that having a failed check simply mean that while you were able to complete the task and thus move the story forward, things didn't go smooth and there's some measure of consequence.

I guess in effect, it's switching the outcome of the roll form "did you do the thing?" to "you can do the thing, but can you avoid the drawbacks of doing the thing?"

You can look at this as a variation on "it costs a resource". Everything that delays the investigation gives a suspect more time to get away, to destroy evidence, etc. Resources don't have to be restricted to stuff on the character sheet.

Maybe the PCs have to be careful not to offend the wrong people because they're moving in high society and a few words from some VIP can shut down the investigation.

Or it's like a locked-room mystery with a timer - everyone trapped in Jabba's Palace by an impenetrable sandstorm, but once it stops the suspects and witnesses will be able to flee the scene.

thanks for the advice guys, helps alot

10 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

"you   succeed  but with a heavy cost  .   "   

Isn't this exactly what I described, but cutting out the roll beforehand?

I mean, I get that people like to roll and use their abilities, and it gives them the chance to discover the clue(s) without the "heavy cost", but if you learn how to employ this gameplay style (resisting the urge to roll for everything), you can see where sometimes the cost is actually a useful tool to drive other drama and create other more impactful and interesting choices, which can be more fun than a roll which pre-empts those things.