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If Replicants don't work, you may just have to the time to explain it. They are artificial, but not mechanical, humans.
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The primary inspiration for me for these when I was building them orignally ages ago are the androids from Alien and Aliens, but also from Ridley Scott's more recent android-themed things like Prometheus, Alien: Covenant, and Raised by Wolves.
Replicants form Blade Runner are pretty close as well. Because that's also Ridley Scott.
I've always envisioned them as being very organic in construction, but obviously artificial.
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If the Warforged is the small-scale version of the Iron Giant, Androids are the late-movie Bicentennial Man. It's not a difference of system, but of tech level - one is a machine built in the vague shape of a humanoid working off gears and pistons, the other is a near-perfect replica running on high tech.
ps. sorry JJ, Asimov had me first there :P
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Yeah, androids from the Alien franchise are your best bet.
Also worth noting that warforged are made of steel and wood, neither of which are at all like androids.
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You could also point out that Warforged are more like steampunk mechanical characters, while Androids are more like cyberpunk mechanical characters. One is very "big iron" while the other are obviously intended and capable of passing for living beings.
Eberron isn’t steampunk at all.
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Data from Star Trek or the Androids from Alien. Artificial but built with mostly organic material (at least the skin) to pass as humans.
If your player is too young to know Data or the Alien films I can't help, I'm too old. :D
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Yeah, Android are like 90+% organic material, just synthetically put together.
Very unlike Mr. Data from Star Trek and a lot more like the replicants from Blade Runner.
Honestly, they have synthetic blood and a lot of normal organic functions. They still need to eat. They don't need to breathe, but I imagine it's more a facet of their exact organic structure, as there are other living races that can survive without air for extended periods of time.
I think your analogy OP, that they're replicants but that's too organic is incorrect. They're basically that organic, they just have nanites too.
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Dragon Ball Z Androids would be relatively advanced compared to what we see in the concept art, which is that there is significant differences in the eyes, as well as unusually precise "tattoos" across their body which match their eye colors.
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Data from Star Trek or the Androids from Alien. Artificial but built with mostly organic material (at least the skin) to pass as humans.
If your player is too young to know Data or the Alien films I can't help, I'm too old. :D
As I mentioned upthread, the Alien androids are still pretty recent when you look at them through the lens of Ridley Scott's latest android things: Prometheus, Covenenant, and Raised by Wolves.
In fact, Raised by Wolves is much closer in many ways to the fantasy genre than the Alien movies, so those androids might even be better examples to check out.
(SIDE NOTE: The main reason we gave them visible circuitry is to give them their own look. Androids done as actual androids would look indistinguishable from humans; that's their whole point. You'd only be able to tell the truth if you cut them open or interact with them and manage to see through the uncanny valley which is their personality or manner of speaking. But those things aren't things we can illustrate (well, the cut open ones yes, but you can't have every android be dismembered and eviscerated in art), so that it's obvious we're illustrating an android and not a human. It also has the side effect of putting a Pathfinder spin on things.)
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Are there any androids modelled after elves and dwarves and things, or just humans?
I don’t imagine so, as they were built by Androffan humans.
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Anyone had a good way to describe them to keep people from automatically comparing them to warforged, at least as far as physical construction goes?
I've tried Human Cylons from Battlestar Galactica and the Replicants from Blade Runner but both strike me as being much more organic than Androids (particularly with some of the ancestry feats they got). I'm hesitant to compare them to Fallout 4's Synths because I keep thinking that they'll go straight to Nick Valentine. It's just that every time I explain the ancestry to them they keep thinking of them as being far more mechanical than they actually are and I'm trying to head this sort of miscommunication off ahead of time.
Basically they are a lot more like the west world hosts. They bleed they can take damage and feel stuff like humans but are a bit emotionally flat than humans are.
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Also the west world hosts are basically 3d printed from biosynthetic materials looks feels smells like humans but something you can print to order for what you want them to do.
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Westworld hosts are a good example too, but they're so hard to kill and tough that it might set unreasonable expectations to players who then get disappointed that their android PC doesn't have a few extra hundred hit points... :-P
Would certainly be comparable for a higher level party expectation, however.
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Westworld hosts are a good example too, but they're so hard to kill and tough that it might set unreasonable expectations to players who then get disappointed that their android PC doesn't have a few extra hundred hit points... :-PWould certainly be comparable for a higher level party expectation, however.
Perhaps, but character level and ancestry are separate things, especially when you're trying to explain those things to someone new to the game.
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And Pathfinder isn't cyberpunk. I wasn't arguing that either were, just putting forward a helpful shorthand analogy.You could also point out that Warforged are more like steampunk mechanical characters, while Androids are more like cyberpunk mechanical characters. One is very "big iron" while the other are obviously intended and capable of passing for living beings.Eberron isn’t steampunk at all.
Sure, but if you describe a warforged as “steampunk mechanical” and then they actually have no gears, machinery, or power source, and are instead of magical being of wood encased in armor... do you see what I mean? It’s a shorthand that actually has nothing to do with what you’re trying to communicate.
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The distinctions should be a lot clearer once the automaton ancestry is released with Guns and Gears (related note: the idea of being an automaton inventor has me fully torqued)
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(SIDE NOTE: The main reason we gave them visible circuitry is to give them their own look. Androids done as actual androids would look indistinguishable from humans; that's their whole point. You'd only be able to tell the truth if you cut them open or interact with them and manage to see through the uncanny valley which is their personality or manner of speaking. But those things aren't things we can illustrate (well, the cut open ones yes, but you can't have every android be dismembered and eviscerated in art), so that it's obvious we're illustrating an android and not a human. It also has the side effect of putting a Pathfinder spin on things.)
Fwiw, the visible circuitry, and the nanite powers that make them glow, are my favorite part. I like to make the circuits colors and form hold some significance to what the androids is build to do, like a warriors might have them emphasized on their legs and arms, blazing in powerful, burning light, or a wizard might have circuits that reflect the runes created by their spells, or a witch have their contract with their patron hidden in patterns, as if etched into their soul
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I just figured they would be like Gen 3 Synths from Fallout 4.
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I'm pretty sure the easiest way would just be to show a picture. Like, it's immediately apparent just from looking at androids that they're representing a completely different tech level than warforged. They're not fantasy tech, they're full on sci-fi dropped into a fantasy world by a crashing spaceship.
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Also also... the name android wasn't just accidently chosen. It's a real-world word that has a real world definition. There's certainly been a lot of different incarnations of what an android is in different media and stories, but it's still a word in the dictionary you can look up for a definition.
And then show them pictures of how we've illustrated our androids.
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Also also... the name android wasn't just accidently chosen. It's a real-world word that has a real world definition. There's certainly been a lot of different incarnations of what an android is in different media and stories, but it's still a word in the dictionary you can look up for a definition.
And then show them pictures of how we've illustrated our androids.
This reminds me of the running gag in dragon ball z abridged where everyone is constantly reminded of the fact that android 17 and 18 are actually cyborgs while 16 is the only one of the 3 that is completely artificial and truly an android. It's a zeitgeist thing. Robot, android, and cyborg all have very different meanings and origins but in the end lots of people are gonna use them interchangeably
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It's certainly possible for there to be androids that appear as any other ancestry, but the norm is a human-presenting android.
Androffa didn't have elves or halfings or dwarves out in public at the time the humans of that world invented androids; they existed as part of the planet's mythology, but didn't "come back" until later, after Androffa had its own significant world-changing event and transitioned from the sci-fi genre into the post-apocalypse genre and, several thousand years later, into the fantasy genre.
As such, the "android forges" that created them only created human-analogs. If the technology to create new androids becomes widespread, the prospect of having some that are built to look like elves or dwarves or goblins or tengu or lizardfolk or serpentfolk or whatever is certainly possible, but that's not where Pathifnder's at currently.
Can't speak to Starfinder's take from a position of authority, though.
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The main reason we gave them visible circuitry is to give them their own look. Androids done as actual androids would look indistinguishable from humans; that's their whole point. You'd only be able to tell the truth if you cut them open or interact with them and manage to see through the uncanny valley which is their personality or manner of speaking. But those things aren't things we can illustrate (well, the cut open ones yes, but you can't have every android be dismembered and eviscerated in art), so that it's obvious we're illustrating an android and not a human. It also has the side effect of putting a Pathfinder spin on things.
I imagine that to be actual points in the Ancestry Guide art meeting. "How do we show that they are androids?" - "Just draw them all cut open!" - "Eeeehh, let's hear some other ideas..."
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Also also... the name android wasn't just accidently chosen. It's a real-world word that has a real world definition. There's certainly been a lot of different incarnations of what an android is in different media and stories, but it's still a word in the dictionary you can look up for a definition.
And then show them pictures of how we've illustrated our androids.
The problem with the definition is that both Data (entirely mechanical, with mechanical parts simulating a brain and at least one episode debating whether Data is "alive") and Replicants from Blade Runner which are all organic material but assembled and also includes West World type hosts which are mostly organic, but have like a metal skeleton and can be programmed and reprogramed.
The definition doesn't really capture the level of biological vs machanical/machine that an android is.
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It's certainly possible for there to be androids that appear as any other ancestry, but the norm is a human-presenting android.
Androffa didn't have elves or halfings or dwarves out in public at the time the humans of that world invented androids; they existed as part of the planet's mythology, but didn't "come back" until later, after Androffa had its own significant world-changing event and transitioned from the sci-fi genre into the post-apocalypse genre and, several thousand years later, into the fantasy genre.
As such, the "android forges" that created them only created human-analogs. If the technology to create new androids becomes widespread, the prospect of having some that are built to look like elves or dwarves or goblins or tengu or lizardfolk or serpentfolk or whatever is certainly possible, but that's not where Pathifnder's at currently.
Can't speak to Starfinder's take from a position of authority, though.
the more I hear about Androffa the cooler it sounds. Is all the info about it just in Iron Gods?
I dont think I've seen references in Starfinder anywhere|
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It's certainly possible for there to be androids that appear as any other ancestry, but the norm is a human-presenting android.
Androffa didn't have elves or halfings or dwarves out in public at the time the humans of that world invented androids; they existed as part of the planet's mythology, but didn't "come back" until later, after Androffa had its own significant world-changing event and transitioned from the sci-fi genre into the post-apocalypse genre and, several thousand years later, into the fantasy genre.
As such, the "android forges" that created them only created human-analogs. If the technology to create new androids becomes widespread, the prospect of having some that are built to look like elves or dwarves or goblins or tengu or lizardfolk or serpentfolk or whatever is certainly possible, but that's not where Pathifnder's at currently.
Can't speak to Starfinder's take from a position of authority, though.
the more I hear about Androffa the cooler it sounds. Is all the info about it just in Iron Gods?
I dont think I've seen references in Starfinder anywhere
We haven't done too much about Androffa in print, on purpose. It's my homebrew setting, and the point at which it had future tech was 10,000 or so years in the past. It's gone through it's own cataclysm since then, and modern Androffa (which shortens the name of the planet to Droffa) is pretty much the same exact setting as Golarion. Different map, but a lot of the same names for locations, monsters, and deities, since I transplanted them over from there to Golarion—in the early days of creating adventures for Golarion, where we had very little time wile also finishing up work on the D&D magazines, drawing upon the lore of my decades-old homebrew was the secret bullet I used to get the first three Adventure Paths out.
As a result, details on modern Droffa would look like a parallel world version of Golarion, but much less developed. And detailing an ancient world version of it when it was Androffa would require a new campaign setting entirely.
Since it's my setting, something I've been buiding on since the late 1980s, I'm the only one who has insight into what the place is like beyond the tidbits I've put into Iron Gods. No one on Starfinder has that insight, and even if they did, they're (rightfully) more focused on bringing life to the game based on their own inspirations and preferences and ideas, so it's no surprise that Androffa isn't a part of that setting.
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Ah I see. Didn't realize so much of it was Golarion. Seems you were doing a Numenara/Aethera type thing way back when.
I've been doing standard fantasy since the 80s and avoiding adding technology which is unfortunate as we've seen in Numeria and now androids and Guns and Gears, mixing it with a fantasy world can lead to some really cool story telling.
Great work.
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Quick reminder that the term "Android" does not care what the creature/thing is made of. It could be made of mud, wood, and string for all the word cares.
It only cares about how it looks, aka a human. A man if you also think about gynoid.
Safe to say we probably shouldn’t expect those gendered terms in Pathfinder.
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An android looks, thinks, feels, has feelings, and dreams like a flesh and blood human. But they are machines made by someone using technology.
This is basically the definition given to Reploids from the Mega Man X series. Granted, many are definitely non-humanoid, they are still able to think with sentience, feel emotion, and have functionality as the real life entities they are modeled after, whether it be humanoids, animals, etc.
I initially wanted to use this analogy for referencing Androids in PF2, and one of the regions in Golarion (Arcadia, or rather, Neo Arcadia) is a name of a human sanctuary actually used in the setting, something that I definitely would have liked to make a campaign out of. But I found the nature of Reploids to be too complex and varied for it to be an adequate comparison to PF2 Androids.
An android looks, thinks, feels, has feelings, and dreams like a flesh and blood human. But they are machines made by someone using technology.What do you all think? Is it too simple or abstract? I am quite unsure.
I agree that's what I think of when I think of the term Android, emphasis on the machine part.
However, it would exclude the kind of Android that Pathfinder Androids are, Replicants from Bladerunner, and any of your other mostly organic based ones. Possibly even excluding West World style hosts, but this one is hard since they blend organic and machine a lot.
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Wait did the lore change? Androids in pathfinder are not biological. They are purely synthethic with nanites for blood, but have a soul.
I think the confusion is coming from the fact that they're synthetic, but they look organic.
Again, going back to my original inspiration for these in "Alien," the androids there look very human, and when they're cut open, the stuff inside is obviously NOT human meat and bone and entrails but lights and circuits and plastic and all that, but also it's all sloppy and juicy and wet and grisly in the same way a human is on the inside.
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Wait did the lore change? Androids in pathfinder are not biological. They are purely synthethic with nanites for blood, but have a soul.
From what is described, no.
Technological wonders from another world, androids have synthetic bodies and living souls.