If so, is it something biological or something else?
I don't see anything written in the Android part about their type, which is usually what determines things like 'eats, sleeps, and breathes' other than its Constructed quality, which makes it count as Humanoid and Construct.
Just reading that part, mostly their immunities, would make me lean towards them not eating (or breathing or sleeping), since they're immune to sleep. Also, there's the part about them just having souls as what makes them differ from Constructs, and that they never really die except to violence and their bodies don't really deteriorate. So that would also lean in that direction.
It really makes it seem more like they should be Half-Construct, but that specifically doesn't allow them to be raised or resurrected, which we are pretty sure is not the case and has been stated.
On the other hand:
That being said, the only real specific statement was in the PathfinderWiki entry. I can't say whether that's really official or not, but it reads:
Biology wrote: Android bodies are purely synthetic, yet respond to healing magic and have souls as organic creatures do. They breathe, eat, and sleep as humans do but with artificial organs, and they circulate their healing nanites like blood through their bodies via pale fluids. They are thus inexhaustible, immune to diseases and resistant to other biological effects, and fortified against mental effects, but also suffer the same maladies and vulnerabilities of constructs6 and are susceptible to supernatural curses, including the curse of the werecreature. Despite their nanite system, they are also as susceptible to malicious nanite infestations just as other creatures are. So, depending on your reception of that, I would probably say they do eat, sleep (but are immune to sleep effects), breathe, and are subject to bleed effects, but I could easily be swayed the other way.
From Bestiary entry, Androids have type humanoid (android), so they do breathe, eat, and sleep.
Constructed (Ex): For the purposes of effects targeting creatures by type (such as a ranger’s favored enemy and bane weapons), androids count both as humanoids and as constructs. Androids gain a +4 racial bonus on all saving throws against mind-affecting effects, paralysis, poison, and stun effects. They are not subject to fatigue or exhaustion, and are immune to disease and sleep effects.
Bolded part is the only aspect for which they count as constructs. Other bonuses and immunities are just unique to their subtype.
Roleplay wise, eating and drinking would still be organic, and their specialized organs convert the nutrients to nanites. GM could certainly allow the player to eat and drink some substances that might not be typical (eg. drinking lantern oil). Gameplay-wise, they shouldn't find it any more difficult to find food as other races. Classes that require rest like spellcasters would still require that for androids, however not being subject to fatigue or exhaustion would allow other classes to basically go without sleep.
I grok do u wrote: From Bestiary entry, Androids have type humanoid (android), so they do breathe, eat, and sleep.
Constructed (Ex): For the purposes of effects targeting creatures by type (such as a ranger’s favored enemy and bane weapons), androids count both as humanoids and as constructs. Androids gain a +4 racial bonus on all saving throws against mind-affecting effects, paralysis, poison, and stun effects. They are not subject to fatigue or exhaustion, and are immune to disease and sleep effects.
Bolded part is the only aspect for which they count as constructs. Other bonuses and immunities are just unique to their subtype.
Roleplay wise, eating and drinking would still be organic, and their specialized organs convert the nutrients to nanites. GM could certainly allow the player to eat and drink some substances that might not be typical (eg. drinking lantern oil). Gameplay-wise, they shouldn't find it any more difficult to find food as other races. Classes that require rest like spellcasters would still require that for androids, however not being subject to fatigue or exhaustion would allow other classes to basically go without sleep.
Classic question is when they do sleep, do they dream of electric sheep?
That's what I was looking for, Grok. Eating something not organic that would fortify their synthetic bodies. What would you suggest?
Ahh, you were asking if they consumed organic proteins or if they could just chug motor oil or battery fluid. Or if they ran on petrol or on diesel.
I would say, probably not. The implication seems to be that there's an expected 'humanoid' type of eating or protein conversation. We know a rust monster has to eat, but we know it can eat oxidized metal because it's described. Just like if we see that a creature needs to breathe, we assume it's going to be 'air' or a composition similar to it unless their description says otherwise. We don't just assume they can breathe straight chlorine gas or can just breathe water without there being some indication it's aquatic (and vice versa).
well, you are rationalizing the description. RAW it is just undefined and left as assumed, normal potable food.
There is a lot of handwaiving and buzzwords used to creatively rationalize androids as a PC race.
Remember that in RL digestion is more than a simple chemical process. You have chewing & saliva, then an acid bath, then gut bacteria, organ produced enzymes & hormones, fiber (to move things along), and you digest the bacteria that live on your food (given feces are mostly dead eschera coli & fiber).
Androids can be poisoned (+4 on their save), etc. Really just more durable in a construct way.
In sci-fi it's been theorised that they could use fuel cells(on fats/oils and fatty acids) and fermentation(to ethyl alcohol). Plugging into electricity is the simple clean method. Batteries are the age old technical issue.
An 'electric cow' would be a nice solution as the android outsources its digestion.
PF1 official →android race on aonprd
these were playable in PFS via a boon. Weren't popular IMExp & given the other options, more an SFS thing.
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A lot of people default to thinking of “androids” in fiction as being mechanical humanoids, but these are synthetic type of androids. They have synthetic digestive systems that process food for their synthetic bodies. They have synthetic lungs that breathe oxygen into their synthetic circulatory systems. They basically have the anatomy of a human but with every system and organ being synthetic.
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Androids are superficially identical to humans in many ways, and to the uninformed it can be difficult to differentiate the two. In the right light, though, androids’ alien nature is revealed by the metallic sheen in their eyes and the biological, tattoo-like circuitry that riddles their skin. Their bodies are completely artificial, though made of materials that mimic the flexibility, shape, and density of human flesh and bone. Their organs mirror those of humans so well that only by examining the materials and makeup of these systems—which use sheeny oils and polymer alloys rather than blood and marrow—could one guess that their physiology is alien. Androids are roughly the same size as humans; on average, they are 6 feet tall and weigh 200 pounds.
The description states they have organs that are nearly identical to human and function in the same manner. That would mean they have such things as stomachs and a digestive system. That would indicate they do in fact need to eat and eat what humans eat. If they had a different diet the waste products produced by their digestive system would be completely different. The fact they are not immune to poison and only get a +2 save further reinforces this. Many poisons attack specific organs in the body if those organs functioned substantially differently, they would be immune to poison.
On the other hand, the popular vision of androids is often more mechanical. So don’t be surprised if you run into DMs who want to treat them that way. Maybe the androids in their world are just built different. It’s rarely worth arguing about this kind of thing if your GM thinks your android shouldn’t need to eat, drink and breath.
Mysterious Stranger wrote: ...The fact they are not immune to poison and only get a +2 save further reinforces this. ... ya know I posted a link to the description...In general you're in the ballpark, Androids gain a +4 racial bonus on all saving throws against mind-affecting effects, paralysis, poison, and stun effects. so +4, let's get the details correct.
You can creatively stylize them how you want in your Game. It's all about creativity. Just remember that creatively interpreting RAW into Home Rules then back into RAW is where people go awry. Trying to derive Rules from descriptive text is an armchair hobby.
Clockwork androids or steampunk androids are cool. You'd need to tweak the rules for that kind of style within PF1. See clockwork, and soulbound dolls. Jadwigabots!
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Could add items similar to existing items that provide benefits, like
Android Trail Rations (1 lb, 2gp): small green cubes with the consistency of dense bread, but with a jelly-like center of a blue substance. An android that consumes only these rations for at least one week receives a +2 bonus when using their nanite surge ability (or +4 hit points if they have the repairing nanite ability).
But I'd be hesitant about shuffling too much around where there is potentially major gameplay rules issues as per the other replies.
Easier to just have an android be a little weird about eating. Always combines all food together (dumps bread and ale into the stew), ingests the rinds of gourds or stems of grapes, drinks any potable liquid without reaction to taste - water, wine, vinegar, or soured milk, etc.
As for trying to come up with an entire android-specific cuisine that differs significantly from other humanoids, along with appropriate rules to align with getting drunk or possible food poisoning could be interesting, but may cause some issues.
Ideas for a more "artificial person diet"- adjust prices to be equivalent
Lantern oil - replace ale
Acid - replace wine
Candle - replace bread
Magnet - replace meat
Marbles - replace cheese
Nope, gold. Must consume one pound of gold or gold coins per day. There we go.
Pizza Lord wrote: Nope, gold. Must consume one pound of gold or gold coins per day. There we go. Should probably have some copper and silver in there for a more balanced diet. Platinum is obviously too rich a meal though, and requires a Fort save or be sickened.
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naahhhhhh
androids need to eat paper or cellulose linguini about 1" wide by 6-15ft long. Then there's the newfangled punched card sandwich. It's all in the Barefoot Para-Countess's cookbook, "Bark to Basic" published by Silver Mount Press.
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Do Androids dream of electric sheep?
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No. But they shear the electric wool and occasionally eat the electric mutton.
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Pizza Lord wrote: Nope, gold. Must consume one pound of gold or gold coins per day. There we go. Electrum. they must consume electrum.
Name Violation wrote: Pizza Lord wrote: Nope, gold. Must consume one pound of gold or gold coins per day. There we go. Electrum. they must consume electrum. *incoming wet blanket*
while this is all in a magical trope, it makes no sense from biology, chemistry, electrical contact, or physics point of view.
Add in that androids are not magical and it becomes silly. Think silly mimetic technology method instead.
Nanites are sci-fi and could handwave a lot of things. Nanites “eating” metal objects is a common enough trope.
(talking practical...)
nanites could slowly abrade a soft metal like gold but not anything with a decent structure/E(young's modulus), in the Game that would relate to Hardness, say 3. Elasticity would also be a problem for something like abrading tanned leather. With Work you are looking at squaring the time increments based on hardness differences to affect harder/tougher substances.
The problem with gold is it is the least reactive element so it does not participate in any chemical reactions. It just sits there. Now if you want to use cyanide acids or something as deadly, it will react. LoL. People just like it because it's shiny and others like it. The Game uses it as a base value.
Nanites while tiny machines, do not have any strength due to their size and don't have hardened tools to work with and if they did at that size the materials become more flexible. While many materials are rough on the microscopic scale, digging into a material like steel is going to take some decent energy to gouge out tiny pieces.
Using an arc setup in water produces collodial gold or silver (very tiny pieces of the material that will stay in suspension in water). The arc would destroy any nanites. Years ago I suggested this method to create Holy Water as it actually puts the silver in the water.
I mention that as nanites are good at moving about tiny suspended particles or delivering a tiny payload. So moving a hemocyte, sure, drilling a hole in steel...get your shark with a head mounted laser.
(Writing Fantasy)
It ranges from the fantastical comic book stuff to more hard core SciFi. PF1 IMO is somewhat in the middle as it's mimetic and using it as a buzzword to make it fantastical.
You can’t travel faster than light speed either, but sci-fi lets you. I’m sure we could find dozens of Pathfinder things breaking the rules of real life physics if we somewhat tried. Off the top of my head, it’d take magic for land arthropods to be much more than a meter in size, much less the large and huge examples you can find while adventuring.
As for eating metal, the nanites simply generate a “field” that lowers the molecular cohesion of whatever metal they surround. Insert whatever technobabble you want really.
you're essentially arguing for soap opera style wish magic.
Plausibility is an issue in writing. If the reader can't swallow your "I said it so it must be True" statements you've lost him permanently.
I'm just pointing out the practical realities for some of the ideas posted here. As usual, some are better than others. You can expand that as you like.
Again, it is an implementation of Technology in a magical setting. Tech has a bit different constraints than magic, stylistically and thematically. In PF1 the two coexist but don't interact a lot. The null sword is an example of that mixing and it causes confusion and consternation. Tech requires the Technologist Feat to understand the item and repair/modify/craft. I believe androids have to take the Logical Spell Feat for occult/psychic casting. There are baked in RAW differences between the two.
Azothath wrote: Plausibility is an issue in writing. If the reader can't swallow your "I said it so it must be True" statements you've lost him permanently. An entire genre of fiction would seem to argue that’s not a major concern
Melkiador wrote: Azothath wrote: Plausibility is an issue in writing. If the reader can't swallow your "I said it so it must be True" statements you've lost him permanently. An entire genre of fiction would seem to argue that’s not a major concern Several genres, honestly. One might even note a fair bit of "non-fiction" has this.
Shouldn't we also be asking if androids prefer the term "artificial person"?
I'm going to call them Synths. I started this thread to "flesh out" some ideas for a futuristic city appearing on a fantasy world. Androids will be the teachers,advisors, and operators of vehicles and equipment. As the books say Androids have souls and will be citizens of this new technological city capable of making their own decisions. Androids existed before and are known throughout the world. Some fear them. Some hate them as mockeries of life.
I guess I'll let the nanites handle the physiology of the synths.
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given the Paizo description I linked to above, it leaves open the idea of gaining immortality of a kind by catching a soulless android body during 'rebirth' and stuffing your (or another's) soul into it. It would be similar to the magical Clone process or creating a soulbound doll.
It should affect the racial base as you have an emotive creature stuffed into a body that has problems in that area but possession doesn't restrict or affect sentient creatures in a non-sentient body... Meca-shoon... lol
Yeah,but after a certain time limit you'd have to go to those rejuvenating chambers and have your soul swapped out for a brand new one. You don’t age, but the soul grows weary.
On a side note I'll be incorporating the Starfinder class the Nanocyte
That was converted by Far Distant Futures to Pathfinder. Adding this to an Android just seems awesome.
Starfinder androids are closer to replicants from Blade Runner meshed up with the Hosts from Westworld than they are to anything else.
While they do differ from Humans, such as need "to breath" (while still being affected by inhaled poison or smoke) they still need to eat and sleep. I would expect they need to eat similar sources of nutrition that humans do.
Claxon wrote: Starfinder androids are closer to replicants from Blade Runner meshed up with the Hosts from Westworld than they are to anything else.
While they do differ from Humans, such as need "to breath" (while still being affected by inhaled poison or smoke) they still need to eat and sleep. I would expect they need to eat similar sources of nutrition that humans do.
Pathfinder and Starfind androids are intended to be the same thing, though there was some crunch change from version to version. In Pathfinder androids don't need to sleep, but still need to breath. In Starfinder androids don't need to breath, but still need to sleep.
I'm not really sure why they have that difference.
To be honest I wasn't even really paying attention the differences between Pathfinder and Starfind androids or why things changed.
But they're definitely the same ancestry.
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