We're playing our first Starfinder campaign as we normally play Pathfinder. I still prefer the Pathfinder system but Starfinder is still fun to change things up.
I've been playing an android Exo-Cortex Mechanic that's 8th level. I play tested a Bio Hacker tonight. I kept the race, and the stat array the same and our GM allowed me to switch classes for tonight to see how it would play out.
I went with the Studious version because it seemed stronger. There's no good debuffer class in Starfinder and I thought it would be a nice addition to our group.
I focused on fighting with an injection pistol, whereas the mechanic uses a sniper rifle.
We had 4 encounters tonight - one starship and three regular. Our scientist was missing this evening so played the scientist role as well as my regular engineering role. I was rolling abysmally tonight (we counted, I rolled 11 "1s") but after an unusually tough starship battle we pulled off a win. The BioHacker gets no insight bonus to skills and while I did take Skill Synergy I assigned to bonuses to Life and physical science thinking that would be more useful (I was wrong). Anyway, I missed a ton of rolls during starship combat where as normally I think I have to roll a 3 to succeed.
I found the scanner to be pretty useless. The range is short and it takes a move action. We play that normally identifying creatures is a free action - you either know or you don't. It's not like you google it. We've never found anything in the rules that contradicts this. I tried to identify a creature using it once, failed and never bothered again.
The basic counteragents are solid but I never used any. Aside from the +2 skill bonus, the restoratives are weak sauce. The skill bonus could be usefull it it lasted longer but too many tasks take more than 2 rounds.
The spark of Ingenuity is nice for Studious. Unfortunately, I rolled a one
when trying to deliver it. /sadface The instinctive one is decent but we haven't seen that many status effects on this AP.
The fields of study are not very balanced. The counteragents range from barely useful (neurochemistry) to OP (pharmacology). The duration on restoratives is to short to be used anyway but as a reaction and they don't really do enough to be effective in that roll.
Most of the breakthroughs are pretty meh, and the few that I can see my self using a paired with fields that I wouldn't take. You get the breakthrough too late to suffer through a weak field. You don't get enough for that.
Theorums. Over all I thought these were pretty well done. There were quite a few I saw as useful. One beef is that everyone is going to take Quick Load at second level. If everyone is going to take an option, it shouldn't be an option. Just make it part of the class. Field Dressing is decent but doesn't scale at all at high levels - why not make it 4d8+level at 14?
Toxic skin is nice for ranged people that don't like getting swallowed whole. And I took Arms expert to up my damage a bit.
My damage was lower but still comparable to my over charged sniper rifle wielding mechanic. Level 8 seems to be sweet spot for BioHackers since the extra +1 from Weapon Focus and the extra +1 from Injection weapons both come into effect. I barely hit a few times tonight and those made a big difference.
One comment form my GM: The counteragent from Pharmacology is too strong. I locked down a boss tonight with confusion. There's no save and nothing that says it can't be reapplied, so I shot him with the counteragent every second round and in the five rounds it only got to attack us once, and it hit itself pretty hard one round. If I keep playing the Biohacker I have to pick a different power next time.
I also like the genetics power (vulnerability to element) and toxicology (sickness). Most of the other didn't impress me.
The first battle we fought a non-organic being and I have to admit I forgot that my basic counteragents would work. Then we fought some undead (sigh) and a human boss (yay). The last fight was against a god's avatar which I thoroughly dominated.
I looked at poisons and discovered Starfinder has the same problem with poisons that Pathfinder does. Poison is really deadly in Starfinder but the DCs are stupid low. PCs in starfinder tend to have one or more really crappy saves - unlike Pathfinder there's not much you can do to raise them. However, NPCs and monsters tend to have high saves. It's why our Mystic rarely bothers with his offensive spells anymore and why poison isn't worth it's high price. If a Biohacker could make it for cheap, then I wouldn't mind wasting it constantly but at 1400 credits a shot, no way. Missing is bad enough but when the save is trivial, it's pointless. Another reason why I don't like Starfinder's crafting rules.
I enjoyed playing the Biohacker. A good selection of options are available. I don't like the choice of field of study restoratives to be so narrow. Really, how often do you run across a bleed attack? We've yet to encounter it. The restoratives should last longer in my opinion.
I'd add an insight bonus to a couple skills, buff the restoratives and although it pains me to say so, nerf the confusion counteragent.
I'm glad to see you are working on more classes for Starfinder. The Biohacker looks good and with a few tweaks could be great. I like more options and I'm looking forward to getting them. Hopefully there are lots of new (useful) feats as well since the current list is a bit short in that regard.