[D20/D&D] Investigator Prestige Class

[breesejo]

In the game my Dwarven city guard has steadily moved into an investigator position. So I need a prestige class that allows me to basically be a police detective. Are there any prestige classes out there that fill this role. All of them ones that are close (i.e. Justicar, Bloodhound, etc.) are far to focused on the "Bounty Hunter, kick ass and take names model" rather than the "Sam Spade" model.

Anything helpful would be nice.

[Kintara]

The Master Inquisitive from the Eberron book would make a good choice, I think.

[Keefe the Thief]

I agree, the best fit would be the Master Inquisitive. If you want a "prestige-class-less" solution, i would take rogue levels and use the Unearthed Arcane Variant that allows you to swap out Sneak Attack for fighter bonus feats.

[Unferth]

There's a detective-themed prestige class in the 3.0 Masters of the Wild book, too. I don't think they've updated it to 3.5 yet.

If memory serves the Eberron prestige class uses some Eberron-specific mechanics (the Investigate feat, if nothing else) so it might not be a seamless drop into an existing campaign.

It's a little more Sherlock Holmes than Sam Spade anyway.

[Cam Banks]

The Dragonlance Campaign Setting (Wizards of the Coast) has an inquisitor prestige class which might fit the bill. It's not Eberron-themed like the master inquisitive, although I have a feeling that class borrowed at least a couple of ideas from the DLCS version.

Cheers,
Cam

[escherwolf]

Way back in the early days of D & D (not D20), White dwarf magazine had a detective character class that I once played, and would probably make for a good prestige class with a little adaptation. It was essentially a variation on the thief class, but substituting urban tracking (same as ranger but envisaged as city rather than wilderness), and some fairly basic spells of the perception variety only. A detective would get spells to detect truth, sense evil, and the such. Going off memory there were spells to invoke an image from the recent past, or see the last image in a dead man's eyes ( though my memory is hazy - the spell list was small and I know that we created a few extra forensic style spells). There may have been a spell that allowed a dead man to whisper the last sentence to pass tfrom his lips before death, and another to allow a mirror to show things recently reflected. I think the Class also got a bonus for subdual attempts. It was pretty cool and I played one for a while.
Does anyone else remember this?

[HyrumOWC]

Solid! has both a Police Detective and Private Dick advanced class, which shouldn't be hard to turn into a Prestige Class.

Hyrum.

[DLoFunk]

Hello all. Just signed up for this forum. Hope I can be helpful to you guys.

Of course I'll be starting out with a question of my own tho.

Going off memory there were spells to invoke an image from the recent past, or see the last image in a dead man's eyes

Escher, I have looked all over but can't seem to find the spell dealing with the dead man's eyes. Searching for it is actually how I found this forum in the first place. If you can remember the name of that spell it would help the prep for my upcoming campaign immensly.