Biohacker

You’re fascinated by science in all its many facets. You understand that the fundamentals of biology, chemistry, physics, and other disciplines can help you exploit your enemies’ weaknesses and bolster your allies. You might be studious and methodical about your research, pushing your mind to the limit in search of discovery, or you might be a daring experimenter, improvising concoctions and stumbling upon grand revelations. Either way, you use your knowledge of several fields of scientific study to aid your allies, whether in the thick of battle or in crafting a perfect plan.

Key Ability Score
Your Intelligence helps you learn about the sciences, while your Wisdom helps you interpret facts and apply them to real-world situations. You should choose either Intelligence or Wisdom as your key ability score. Once made, this choice cannot be changed. A high Dexterity can help you better aid your allies and hinder your foes with your ranged biohacks.

Custom Microlab (1st)
You have created a small, customized kit consisting of medical supplies, testing materials, and pharmaceutical compounds, which you can use to evaluate medical conditions and perform several additional tasks described below. You can configure your custom microlab to take the shape of anything that can fit in your hand or similar appendage. Alternatively, you can add it to an armor upgrade slot or to an augmentation system in your brain or an arm; it never takes up an armor upgrade slot or occupies a system in your body, so you can still use that slot or system for an armor upgrade or augmentation as normal. You must have your custom microlab on your person to use it, but you can configure it so it doesn’t need to be in your hand to function.

Your custom microlab counts as a basic medkit and a chemalyzer and can be used for any purposes applicable to those items. As long as you are in possession of your custom microlab, you can use Physical Science or Life Science to make serums. (For more about crafting serums, see page 235 of the Starfinder Core Rulebook.)

As long as you have your custom microlab, as a move action you can target a creature within your line of sight and within the microlab’s range (60 feet at 1st level) and attempt a special skill check to identify it. If the creature is living, this is a Life Science check. If it is unliving, it’s a Physical Science check. The DC of this check is determined by the creature’s rarity, as presented on the Creature Rarity table on page 133 of the Core Rulebook. You can attempt this check untrained regardless of the DC, and you always treat your die roll result as a 20.

You can also attune your custom microlab to a number of individual creatures equal to 3 + your key ability modifier. This takes 10 minutes, which you can combine with the time needed to prepare your biohacks for the day, and the creatures must be present, willing, and able to cooperate with the scan. If you attune your microlab to creatures in excess of this number, the oldest attunements beyond your maximum number end. Otherwise, attunement lasts 24 hours, after which changes in environment and the target’s condition require the microlab be re-attuned. Under some circumstances, you can deliver biohacks to attuned creatures using ranged injection weapons without making an attack roll.

At 5th level, your custom microlab can function as an advanced medkit. At 9th level, it functions as a medical lab (with no increase to its bulk), and its range increases to 90 feet. At 17th level, its range increases to 120 feet.

If your custom microlab is damaged, destroyed, lost, or stolen, you can kitbash a new one from any medkit or chemalyzer with 1 hour of work. You can have only one custom microlab at a time. If you create a new custom microlab, your old one functions as a normal item of whatever type you made it from.

Biohacks (1st)
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 (see page 43). As you increase in level, you can also devise theorems to learn special biohacks (see Theorem on page 43), in addition to gaining biohacks from a secondary and a tertiary field of study (see page 44). Additionally, most fields of study eventually provide you with breakthroughs: special biohacks described in their entries.

Basic Booster
A basic booster biohack aids a creature in one manner or another. The effect lasts for a number of rounds equal to your key ability score modifier (minimum 1 round) unless it states otherwise. You begin play knowing this basic booster biohack; when you use it, select an effect:
 * The target gains a +1 enhancement bonus to AC.
 * The target gains a +2 enhancement bonus to skill checks.
 * The target gains a +10-foot enhancement bonus to their speed. If the creature has more than one movement type, choose one to receive this bonus.

Basic Inhibitor
A basic inhibitor biohack hinders a creature’s physiology or material function. The effect of an inhibitor lasts for a number of rounds equal to 3 + your key ability score modifier (minimum 1 round) unless it states otherwise. You begin play knowing this basic inhibitor biohack; when you use it, select an effect:
 * The target takes a –2 penalty to AC.
 * You reduce the target’s DR by 5. At 9th level, you instead reduce it by 10. At 17th level, you instead reduce it by 15.
 * You reduce the target’s resistance to one type of energy (your choice) by 5. At 9th level, you instead reduce it by 10. At 17th level, you instead reduce it by 15.

A creature can be affected by only one of your basic inhibitors at a time, though it could be under the effects of multiple basic inhibitors originating from multiple biohackers. If you affect a creature with a different basic inhibitor while a previous inhibitor is still in effect, the effects of the previous inhibitor end.

Weapon Specialization (3rd)
You gain Weapon Specialization as a bonus feat for each weapon type this class grants you proficiency with.

Archetypes
If the Biohacker takes on an archetype, some of its class features will be altered. At 2nd, 4th, 6th, 12th, and 18th levels, they do not gain a theorem. At 9th level, they do not gain a second spark of ingenuity per day, and only gain two sparks of ingenuity per day at 15th level.