
HammerJack |
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The 8th level theorum Versatile Injections allows your injections that normally only affect living creatures to instead affect any creature. At first glance, this seems very useful, as the biohacker's offensive injection options against some common types of enemies, especially undead and constructs are limited to the (admittedly quite useful) basic counteragent.
However, looking at the Field of Study specific counteragents, none of them seem to actually derive much benefit from removing the restriction that causes them to only affect living creatures. The special injections gained through Theorum selections also don't seem to gain from this theorum.
FIELD OF STUDY INJECTIONS
Endocrinology:
Counteragent - Fatigue, does not affect construct or undead
Genetics:
Counteragent - Poison effect - Does not affect construct, undead, elemental
Immunology:
Counteragent - lowers fortitude saves. This works on everything, but constructs and undead are immune to most effects that require a fortitude save
Neurochemistry:
Counteragent - Poison effect - Does not affect construct, undead, elemental
Pharmacology:
Counteragent - Mind-affecting - Does not work on undead or constructs
Toxicology:
Counteragent - Poison effect - Does not affect construct, undead, elemental
THEORUM INJECTIONS
Tranq Dart - Causes sleep, which does not affect construct, elemental or undead
Heart Stopper - Fortitude save based effect that does not affect undead or constructs
Stunning Agent - Does not affect undead or constructs, both as a fort-save based effect and as a stun effect
Synaptic Deadening - Does not have a "living creature" requirement to begin with
Is there a major category of nonliving creatures that I am not considering. If not, versatile injections seems to serve little purpose, as the biohacker's injections don't really become applicable to the targets that were able to ignore them before.

HammerJack |

Borais and SROs are both counted as living creatures for determining what effects them. I did look at that.
Injecting drones is a minor gain, I suppose. Hopefully it isn't intended to be the sole function of the theorum.

Perpdepog |
Perhaps there could be a sentence included about removing the undead's/construct's immunity to whatever effect the biohacker is trying to impose on them, replacing it with a +4 on the save. The biohacker is said to use specialized nanytes in their injections so it should make sense, at least as far as constructs are concerned.

HammerJack |
1 person marked this as a favorite. |

I did say in the initial post that the default counteragent provides good options. Those options do not require Versatile Injections.
The question here is not "how can a biohacker fight a zombie?"
The question is "What can a biohacker do with Versatile Injections that they cannot do without Versatile Injections?"

HammerJack |

While, as far as I can tell, mechanic drones are the only unliving allies you would expect to see in a party permanently, it is possible that you may occasionally have friendly undead or construct NPCs around to inject with a restorative. So I suppose there is one other niche benefit to this theorum.