Changes to the Automaton's ancestry features

[A Butter Idea]

I'm planning on creating a setting where Automatons are Uncommon rather than Rare. I want them to be distinctly non-organic, without unbalancing them too much from other organic ancestries. Take a look at the ancestry features and let me know if this looks too strong, too weak, or just right.

Low-Light Vision
You can see in dim light as though it were bright light, so you ignore the concealed condition due to dim light.

Glitch-Prone
You can be affected by the glitching condition, despite not having the tech trait. For you, the penalty on a failure or critical failure is a status penalty.
An adjacent creature with a thieves' toolkit can spend a single action (which has the attack and manipulate traits) to make a Thievery check against your Fortitude DC. On a success, you become glitching 1 or your glitching value increases by 1 (to a maximum of 2). On a critical success, you become glitching 2 or your glitching value increases by 2 (to a maximum of 4).
Effects that counteract magic can target you even if they normally can't target creatures. If you are targeted by such an effect, the counteract check is made against your Fortitude DC. If the counteract check succeeds, you become glitching 2 or your glitching value increases by 2 (to a maximum of 4). If the counteract check critically succeeds, you become glitching 4.

Constructed Body
Your physiological needs are different than those of living creatures. Except as noted below, you are treated as a living creature.
* You must rest for a period of 2 hours each day. While resting, you are not unconscious. If you go 22 hours without this resting period, you become glitching 1, and your glitching value can't be reduced below 1 until you rest for a 2-hour period.
* You do not need to eat, and are immune to starvation.
* Your body contains no significant moisture. You do not need to drink, and are immune to thirst.
* You do not breathe, and are immune to suffocation and inhaled hazards.
* You do not have blood, and are immune to bleed damage.
* You are immune to afflictions unless they are magical or have any of the mental, spirit, vitality, or void traits.

Construct Maintenance
You cannot be targeted by the Repair activity. If you or another creature attempts to use Administer First Aid, Treat Disease, Treat Poison, or Treat Wounds on you, they must use Crafting in place of Medicine for the check, they must be trained in Crafting instead of Medicine if it is a trained action, and they must wear or hold a repair toolkit instead of a healer's toolkit.
When a creature Administers First Aid on you, instead of the option to Stop Bleeding, they have the option to Stop Glitching, and the success and critical failure effects are modified as follows.
* Stop Glitching: Attempt a Crafting check on a creature with the glitching condition. The DC is usually the DC of the effect that caused the glitching.
* Success: If you're trying to stabilize, the target loses the dying condition (but remains unconscious). If you're trying to stop glitching, the target benefits from an assisted recovery with the lowered DC for particularly appropriate help.
* Critical Failure: If you were trying to stabilize, the target's dying value increases by 1. If you were trying to stop glitching, the target automatically critically fails their next flat check triggered by the glitching condition.

[Ascalaphus]

Well, I get where you're coming from. I was a bit disappointed with automatons because they felt like they're just not inorganic enough.

I do see why though - I've heard stories of Eberron campaigns where you'd have all-Warforged parties that cheerfully used Stinking Cloud all the time because it'd cripple many enemies but the whole party was immune.

I think the general thrust of the PF2 design is good - try to keep close to normal "organic" rules and avoid giving immunities if possible. For example, "bleed damage" could also be leaking oil or nanite fluid or whatever. Oozes don't really have blood, but they can take bleed damage too.

But it can get silly. An automaton or skeleton shouldn't be able to catch a cold. Now, that does mean that sometimes, when fighting a disease-themed enemy, that's going to make life a lot easier for the PC. Since diseases tend to be slow-acting they're usually not going to really decide the outcome of the battle, but be a nuisance afterwards. So there it doesn't matter too much that the PC would be immune. But poison is a different story. Being immune to a lot of poisons is a really big power boost. So is not needing to breathe and being immune to inhaled dangers. So there has to be something to balance that out.

Your idea of giving automatons a risk of glitching is interesting. I don't know if I really want to import the whole starfinder ruleset for that, I might just use the sickened condition instead - mechanically, it could mimic a systems malfunction just as well as having an upset tummy.

But what I don't think is quite right is the use of the thieves' toolkit. That's just not something most monsters are gonna be able to do. Monster statblocks tend to be pretty minimalist, so they're not gonna have thieves' tools often.

Weaknesses that you add to compensate for powerful immunities should be something that many (perhaps not all) monsters should be able to trigger, without relying on special preparation or equipment.

For example, you could just automatically become Sickened 1 ("glitching") whenever you take a critical hit with piercing damage.