Biohacks

Extraordinary

Level1

As part of your custom microlab, you keep a specialized micropharmacy of catalysts, nanites, and specialized chemicals, plus a small mixing apparatus and syringes. You can use these components to quickly fashion biohacks: specialized solutions that produce different effects. In living targets, your biohacks alter normal biological processes; in nonliving creatures, they emulate biochemistry via complex chemical compounds. You can use biohacks to boost your allies or inhibit your foes. Your biohacks produce their effects only when you inject a creature with them (see below), and only you know how to make and administer them properly—a biohack that leaves your possession becomes inert until you pick it up again.

You can deliver any biohack you create with any attack from an injection weapon. You must declare prior to the attack roll that you are using a biohack and specify which effect you are using, but you select and apply the biohack as part of the action used to make the attack. You do not need to preload your weapon with biohacks. If you are making a ranged attack and miss your target, the biohack is expended along with the attack’s ammunition. A biohack delivered via a melee injection weapon is not normally expended on a missed attack. If you must attempt an attack roll with a biohack and your attack hits but deals no damage (normally as a result of damage reduction or an ability such as the vanguard’s mitigate), the biohack is expended but the target is not affected by it. After a missed attack that does not expend the biohack, you can remove it or change which biohack you are using as part of your next attack without taking any additional action.

You can also deliver a biohack using a physical syringe (from your custom microlab) that you can wield in one hand. This is considered a consumable basic melee weapon with negligible bulk, 1 Hit Point, and an item level and hardness equal to your biohacker level. To inject an unwilling creature with a biohack in this manner, you must hit them with a melee attack. This attack deals no damage, but if the creature would be damaged by 1 point of piercing damage, that creature is instead affected by the biohack within the syringe.

A biohack can be injected into a willing or unconscious creature (or yourself) as a standard action without requiring an attack roll, as long as the target is within your reach. You can also use a ranged injection weapon to deliver a biohack to a willing ally you have attuned your custom microlab to as a standard action without making an attack roll, as long as they’re within your custom microlab’s range. Under any other circumstance, injecting a biohack into an ally at range requires a successful ranged attack roll.

The materials you use to create biohacks are inert until you activate them. Once activated, they can be used to create any biohacks you know. Each day after you have rested for 8 hours, you can spend 10 minutes to activate the ingredients to create a number of biohacks equal to 1 + your key ability score modifier. This is the maximum number of biohacks you can have ready at one time. This preparation activates only the ingredients; you don’t need to decide which specific biohacks you’re creating until the actual actions or attacks used to deliver them. Activated biohack materials that aren’t used that day become inert, even if they’re still in your possession. You can readily replenish these inert reagents on a regular basis at no cost, unless the GM states otherwise. Whenever you take a 10-minute rest to recover Stamina Points, you can also prepare additional activated biohack ingredients to replace those you have used, up to your maximum.

Biohacks come in two varieties: boosters and inhibitors. At 1st level, you know the basic boosters and inhibitors listed below, the minor boosters and inhibitors that follow, and the unique booster and inhibitor granted by your primary field of study. As you increase in level, you can also devise theorems to learn special biohacks, in addition to gaining biohacks from a secondary and a tertiary field of study. Additionally, most fields of study eventually provide you with breakthroughs: special biohacks described in their entries.