In advance, note that this is from theorycrafting and not actual playing, and that many of these things have been noted by other users. These are mostly for how I would fix them.
1. Limited daily injections
As other users have noted, the biohacker is the only non-caster with a daily limit on their primary ability. I'm going to skip the speil about how this promotes the 2-hour adventuring day and just propose a solution: Reduce the total number of injections you can prepare to 1/2 your class level plus your key ability (minimum 1), and have them refresh when you spend resolve to regain stamina points. The later theorems have daily uses, which is alright as they're more powerful, but you could also spend resolve to use them - this gives the class another use for RP and lets you use them more than a few times.
2. Missing with ranged restoratives
The biohacker is, currently, the only class that can miss when applying a buff to an ally. I believe this is intentional, as you're doing it without the aid of magic and the buffs (and injections in general) are usable in melee (with no miss chance), but it still counteracts the class intention. My proposed solution: the AC of a friendly target, with regards to your buffs, is 10 (modified by size, concealment, cover, and your off-target condition). This is higher than the DC to target a grid intersection or (presumably) a square with a grenade (which is 5), but this makes sense as your target is smaller and moving, and still doable as you have a 50% chance to hit at level 1 with 10 dexterity, so even a completely inept biohacker can do it occasionally. Confused or dominated allies retain their normal ACs, naturally.
As a bonus, you can also axe the 'allies count as flat-footed' line and the theorem that gives you a +3 to hit allies.
3. Scientific Method
The choice of key ability is neat, but intelligence is pretty superior to wisdom. Wisdom changes the ability you need for three skills, which is nice, but intelligence changes the ability added to two skills (one of which is Perception, probably the most important skill in the game) as well as your Will save. Add to this that intelligence gives you more skill points to play with in general and it's pretty clear which is superior. Proposed solution: If you use wisdom, then it also determines the number of bonus skill points you get when you gain a biohacker level.
This also affects your spark of ingenuity; wisdom lets you apply new conditions or remove those conditions from allies, while intelligence allows you to apply two-for-one injections. I think that the int version is much better, but applying flat-footed whenever you please is kinda nice I guess. I think the int version is actually too powerful; my proposed change is to allow int biohackers to apply new conditions rather than double the buff/debuff, though I'm not sure what conditions should be included here. I also think you can lose the daily limit - rather than having the new conditions be concurrent with your counteragents, just have them be additional options.
Aside from these, and a few clarifications (can you apply serums with your injection weapons?), I really like the class. The idea of a scientist/alchemist class that can focus on damage, debuffing, buffing, or slight healing, and delivering those debuffs and buffs with a dart rifle is neat (insert picture of Overwatch Ana here).
Another observation:
Field Dressing: Why is this not an injection? The only reasons I can think are 1. They want to heavily limit your uses per day, closer to mystic spells, and 2. They don't want you to be able to heal at range (despite that heal being far less than a mystic's cure spell).
I disagree with both of these; making field dressing an injection would cause it to share resources with your other injections (so focusing on healing will limit your ability to buff and debuff), and having a less powerful but longer ranged healing option is a nice balance to a more powerful melee option.
This also allows people to play the biohacker as a healer without investing in serums, and considering the jury is still out on if those can be used as injections this is a good change in my opinion.
Considering it is a theorom entry cost. Field Dressing should not use the same pile as injections. and honestly that wouldn't make much sense for me.
They should be treated as injections yes. but they should have their own pile as they do currently.
Currently the wording "adjacent" and a few other details of field dressing causes strange moments. These would all be solved by turning them into their own "injections per day"
This would also solidly place them in between mystic and envoy for healing. Not as good as either. but with more variability-at the cost of risks
1) I think injections are fine as is. Limited per day is fine. I have played them in testing and still have yet to run out.
2) Get conserving fusion. Problem solved. There has been no ruling that it doesn't work.
3) Agreed, they need to be balanced. Though I'd be more in favor of nerfing studious so that a 1 level dip in biohacker is not so...blitz soldiery.
I think field dressings are fine as is. I have used it to great avail. It is not better healing than other classes, but its flexibility makes it fairly useful nonetheless.
Personally, I just feel that Field Dressing is just too outside the flavor. Why would it be literal field dressings, instead of some scifi healing foam sorta stuff you could use in an injection. I mean it doesn't say how it works so it could just be biofoam from your custom scanner (medkit) thingy. Hell it could just be a biohealing laser thingy like from recent Scifi movies
I feel like making it work with a class concept would make it fit better instead of feeling like it is tacked on to the base chasis and is chosen by folks mostly to top things off before resting for stamina heal.
That is my personal problem with it, is it just feels too disjointed. Which actually relates to most of my personal 'irks' with the class. Several things feel slightly tacked on.
allowing it to be shot as an injection. Or working within the Scanner's 30ft range would help with either one.
but I do realize that the "disjointed feeling" does rely on the personal peceptions of the class. but being able to inject a solution that stimulates the body's healing factor or injects nanites that restore teh body, both feel very Biohacker. While the idea that "field dressing" brings up sounds very mundane?
Zwordsman wrote: Personally, I just feel that Field Dressing is just too outside the flavor. Why would it be literal field dressings, instead of some scifi healing foam sorta stuff you could use in an injection. I mean it doesn't say how it works so it could just be biofoam from your custom scanner (medkit) thingy. Hell it could just be a biohealing laser thingy like from recent Scifi movies
I feel like making it work with a class concept would make it fit better instead of feeling like it is tacked on to the base chasis and is chosen by folks mostly to top things off before resting for stamina heal.
That is my personal problem with it, is it just feels too disjointed. Which actually relates to most of my personal 'irks' with the class. Several things feel slightly tacked on.
allowing it to be shot as an injection. Or working within the Scanner's 30ft range would help with either one.
but I do realize that the "disjointed feeling" does rely on the personal peceptions of the class. but being able to inject a solution that stimulates the body's healing factor or injects nanites that restore teh body, both feel very Biohacker. While the idea that "field dressing" brings up sounds very mundane?
Then reflavor it to be however you want. No one is stopping you. As long as there is no mechanical change. I reflavor things constantly. Mechanically, you are healing someone you are adjacent to, that's it. Maybe it is an injection. But, because of the contents it can't just be fired from a normal injection weapon. They exert too much force and the solution (or whatever it is) just isn't stable enough. Honestly, does the name of something get in the way that much?
"Dr." Cupi wrote: 1) I think injections are fine as is. Limited per day is fine. I have played them in testing and still have yet to run out.
2) Get conserving fusion. Problem solved. There has been no ruling that it doesn't work.
3) Agreed, they need to be balanced. Though I'd be more in favor of nerfing studious so that a 1 level dip in biohacker is not so...blitz soldiery.
I think field dressings are fine as is. I have used it to great avail. It is not better healing than other classes, but its flexibility makes it fairly useful nonetheless.
1. I suppose that's fair, you do get quite the large pile, but I'd still prefer a smaller pile that refreshes more often. We can chalk that up to me being one of maybe seven people who actually enjoyed 4e's idea of encounter powers.
2. Requiring a magic item to fix a broken class feature is bad design, full stop. And I'm fully expecting a ruling against conserving injections in the future. It works for the playtest, but I sincerely hope that Paizo takes note of just how required it is and fixes the underlying issue. Honestly, it reminds me of the Gunslinger playtest for pathfinder way back when - the Lightning Reload deed was effectively required, and every single gunslinger I played, as well as every one I've seen, took it - so they eventually made it a base class feature. I don't think the same solution would work here, but something needs to be done.
3. That's fair, studious is REALLY strong right now.
Field Dressing: It's still outside the flavor of the class as you can't use it with injection weapons. Which is puzzling, as I'm certain I've seen a bit of fluff about combat medics using dart weapons for healing (which I can't locate at the moment), but RAW serums cannot be used that way (they must be ingested). Having a separate limit is fine, I suppose, but being melee only and strictly worse than Mystic Cure makes taking it in it's current form questionable.
I wasn't really referring to the name. I was speaking about it being disjointed mechanically. I just provided "fluffy reasons" why it could easily work as an Injection, which would make it fit the class. --Because it felt cleanly observable that it was a disjointed class choice.
The unstable idea is kind of off as well, considering the other buff/debuffs-including up to raising the dead, are fireable. As well,
healing serums are already considered fireable. Of course Serums are magical-so there is that detail of stability.
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Maybe I wasn't clear enough. but the problem is it works with basically nothing in the class and has no interactions in class, and in fact goes against some build concepts-(it basically conflicts with the range combat theoroms--since you're actively increasing the range of needle weapons-meaning they won't be close to the team but in exchange they need to roll to hit.)
It isn't very strong and likely would be relegated to post battle top off status as it stands. Which is a shame as it is one of the rare "fast non magical hp healing" effects in the game. Much less one that heals HP or Stamina (but sadly won't "overheal" into stamina from HP)
It basically is just a "tacked on sorta heal" effect because a biohacker, should have some way to heal, given the design space of the class. It should be an injection because of how the class itself works mechanically. Just having them count as Injections would let it work for ranged builds and close range builds. They could be shoot at a distance. Or they could (at lv 8) be handed out in the morning as personal healing hypostim so the biohacker lets others manage themselves. In this way, it would work with the class mechanically, have interactions and support every build type I can think of for the class.
-- Kyle Linger---
Yeah, I am hoping that they give a formal mention of some sort to help that Serum situation. There is a important note though. Serums use the term Imbibe-not ingested. Imbibe has does mean drink, but it also means absorbtion. Particularly when talking about biology and plant biology. So injecting the serum should work just fine. The body would still be imbibing it.
"Serums are vials of magic liquid that you can imbibe as a standard action or carefully trickle down the throat of a helpless or unconscious creature as a full action. Strictest of folks might use that as a RAW restriction on how helpess/unconscious folks have to be fed it. but that would be kind of odd to me.
For the record, the quote you want is this one? Pg 190 under Darts?
"overworked field medics sometimes employ darts to conveniently deliver antitoxins, healing serums, and other beneficial drugs across a crowded battlefield"
The healing is rather weak, but it can also be used stamina or HP, which I think is the only effect in game that can do such.
I do think it should be allowed to overlap from HP to Stamina, just so you don't feel like you're wasting it.. but I don't feel that way about serums. So its only because it can do both I guess.
I disagree. I cannot straight up refute most of your points as they are subjective.
"disjointed" - subjective
"should be an injection" - subjective
"goes against ranged builds" - mostly subjective
I say mostly subjective in that pistols (likely the main weapon of a standard ranged biohacker) have a fairly short range, enough that a move action followed by a standard field dressing is very much within reason. If you are building a 60+ft range biohacker, then you are already making choices about how your character will interact with your team and not being able to field dressing them is merely one of many sacrifices.
It is true that it doesn't interact with the rest of the biohacker stuff. I say, so what? It can't be made better than a healer mystic, or even a regular mystic because the mystic has been mostly shafted on just about everything (spell list being a big one). We can't very well take away the healer niche from them as well. So, no I do not believe that the biohacker should be able to heal at long range, out of respect for the mystic.
It seems to me that you are tunnel visioning with more of a "I want the biohacker to be able to do x...". When a new class comes out, it sends a ripple of effects to all of the mechanics of the game. A wrong turn with field dressing could, as I mentioned earlier, make the mystic next to pointless to play. The vanguard is dangerously close, in my view, to null and voiding the solarian. The witchwarper is close to taking the technomancer's magic damage title. I'm not saying that the playlets classes are bad and shouldn't be used. I am merely saying that, when you put a new thing into an already existing system, it is important not to crush things in the process. For example: I don't give two poops that studious is more powerful than instinctive (sure it is bad class design, but as long as one of them works). I care that the effect a 1 level dip will have on the rest of the classes is huge. The sheer number of wisdom dumps will be vast.
Zwordsman: Thank you for quoting the fluff about darts being used to deliver healing serums, I forgot where that was located.
Dr Cupi: Allowing Biohackers to use field dressing as a ranged injection will in no way invalidate Mystic healing. Field Dressing as it currently is doesn't hold a candle to mystic cure, and if you have a mystic in your party you effectively have zero reason to take it. Compare the healing values:
Field Dressing:
Level 2: KAS HP or 1d4 SP
Level 4: 1d6+KAS HP or 1d6 SP
Level 8: 2d8+KAS HP or 2d8 SP
Level 14 (requires a second theorem): 5d8+KAS HP or 6d6 SP
Mystic Cure:
Level 1 (Spell Level 1): 1d8+Wis HP
Level 4 (SL2): 3d8+Wis HP
Level 7 (SL3): 5d8+Wis HP
Level 10 (SL4): 12d8+Wis HP, or revive creature and heal 7d8+Wis HP
Level 13 (SL5): 16d8+Wis HP, or revive creature and heal 9d8+Wis HP
Level 16 (SL6): 20d8+Wis HP, or revive creature and heal 11d8+Wis HP
So field dressing has less healing, cannot revive a creature, has less overall uses, requires a second theorem choice to provide any substantial healing at later levels, and MAY provoke an attack of opportunity (Field Dressing does not say anything about this so I'm guessing not, but Mystic Cure specifically doesn't.) Mystic Cure also lets you sacrifice some of your own HP if your target needs additional healing. All field dressing has going for it currently is the stamina restoration, and I doubt that makes it appealing. Allowing it to be used at range provides it a niche (long range emergency healing), as even a needle pistol provides enough range to keep the biohacker out of danger, and packing a level 1 needle rifle or wraithsting rifle will allow them to do it at even more extreme ranges.
Compare it to two spells from DnD 5e; Cure Wounds and Healing Word. Cure Wounds is touch range and costs an action (standard action in pathfinder/starfinder) compared to Healing Word's 60' range and bonus action (swift action in PF/SF). However Healing Word restores HP by 1d4 per level rather than Cure Wounds' 1d8, providing both of them a niche. I realize you can't directly compare the two systems due to differing design philosophy, but surely you can see how the ranged option makes quite a large difference.
And that is my point. It is as it should be. If anyone should get the ability to heal from a distance it should be the mystic.
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