I am playing my first pf2 game and I am starting as an investigator. I need some help thinking of some fun builds, share your ideas here.

I am torn between a pure support investigator and trying to get some abilities that i can pump out when I know I am going to crit via stratagem. It looks like arcane archer is popular archetype.

I also have a few questions in general.

1. how is the beastmaster archetype, i like the flavor of a detective and his hound, but other than battle what can a pet/companion do?

2. What are some things I can do in combat with my action other than attack. Last night I devised my stratagem and knew I was going to miss so I tried to demoralize and aid. Demoralize was straight forward, but aid is confusing and me and gm were not sure how to exactly use it.

3. I love the idea of a melee investigator using a sap/club to knock out everyone to try and interrogate after combat, but I can't think of a way to make a decent melee investigator with their bad hp and ac.