The Hidden Truth

Support United Paizo Workers! Click here for more details!

Player > Class > Nanocyte (Playtest) > Faculty

Nanocyte Faculties

The following represent specialty paths that nanocytes commonly follow in developing their nanite abilities. Each faculty lists the techniques you learn as you gain levels. For effects that require a saving throw, the DC is 10 + half your nanocyte level + your Constitution modifier.


Discorporation [LINK]

Starfinder Tech Revolution Playtest p.5

Your nanites rapidly break down and reshape your body, granting you extraordinary flexibility and the ability to melt into an amorphous form.

Reactive Spray (Ex) 1st Level

When you take significant damage from a enemy, you can take a reaction to form a temporary cloud array, using your nanocyte level to determine the cloud’s size and effects. This cloud lasts until the end of your next turn and doesn’t count against the maximum number of arrays that you can maintain simultaneously. If the triggering attack was a critical hit, you can also take a guarded step immediately after creating the cloud as part of this reaction.

Slithering Shape (Ex) 5th Level

By using a nanite surge as a move action, you can melt your body and equipment into a shapeless pool of your size consisting of nanites. You can remain in this form for 1 minute per nanocyte level or until you revert to your natural form as a move action, though you can extend the duration by an additional 1 minute per nanocyte level by spending an additional nanite surge. While transformed, your speed is 20 feet, you gain darkvision with a range of 30 feet, you can move through an area as small as one-quarter of your own space without squeezing, and you can squeeze through openings as small as 1 inch wide. You gain a circumstance bonus equal to your Constitution modifier to Acrobatics checks to escape and to your KAC to resist being grappled or pinned. You also gain damage reduction 5/magic; this doesn’t stack with other forms of damage reduction. You are unable to speak, attack, cast spells, use items, or perform tasks that require fine manual dexterity while transformed. This is a polymorph effect.

Fluid Form (Ex) 9th Level

Your body easily liquefies and bends around otherwise-devastating attacks. You are immune to the wound and severe wound critical hit effects. When you use defensive dispersal, you can also activate your reactive spray ability as part of the same reaction.

Nanosmoke (Ex) 13th Level

When you activate your slithering shape ability, you can instead transform into a thick nanite vapor. In addition to the effects of slithering shape, you gain a fly speed of 20 feet with perfect maneuverability, and you can move through openings as small as 1 inch wide without squeezing. While in this form, you can’t be entangled, flanked, flat-footed, grappled, off-kilter, off-target, pinned, prone, or staggered, and you are immune to critical hits, though you retain any such conditions you have when you use this ability. You take only half damage from any effect that targets only one creature.

Swarm Shadow (Ex) 17th Level

Once per day as a standard action, you can disperse your body and equipment into nanites that form a barely perceptible shell around an adjacent ally. You provide your ally the benefits of your sheath array, including those gained from spending nanite surges or from knacks that affect your sheath array. While in this form, you share your ally’s space, automatically move where they move, and have concealment, allowing you to hide in plain sight. You can maintain this passive form for up to 1 hour per level, and you can end the effect as a move action to appear in any empty space adjacent to your ally.
While you are in this form, you can’t use equipment, but you can create two semisolid limbs that extend from your ally and share their reach, giving you two hands with which to wield equipment you create using one or more gear arrays. If you take a move action, standard action, full action, or attack of opportunity while in this form, it begins to destabilize, reducing the effect’s remaining duration to 1 round per level.


Infestation [LINK]

Starfinder Tech Revolution Playtest p.5

Your nanites burrow into your foes, inflicting grievous injuries as they consume their victims from the inside.

Malignant Mist (Ex) 1st Level

When you form a cloud array or sheath array, you can use a nanite surge to damage anyone who contacts those nanites. Your cloud array deals 1d6 piercing damage (Fortitude negates) to each creature that starts its turn in or enters the cloud’s area. Your sheath array deals 1d6 piercing damage (Fortitude negates) to any creature that hits you with a melee natural weapon, melee weapon without the reach special property, or unarmed strike. After a creature attempts a saving throw against either effect, it is immune to damage from this ability for 1 minute. You are immune to the effects of your malignant mist. As a reaction, you can grant one creature you can see within 30 feet immunity to your malignant mist until the beginning of your next turn. The damage dealt by this ability increases to 1d8 at 3rd level, to 2d6 at 5th level, and by 1d6 every 2 nanocyte levels thereafter.

Tenacious Swarm (Ex) 5th Level

When a creature fails a Fortitude save against your malignant mist ability, they become infested with short-lived nanites that continue burrowing into their body. At the end of the infested creature’s turn, it takes piercing damage equal to your malignant mist ability’s minimum damage plus your Constitution modifier, after which it attempts a new Fortitude save to end the effect. This effect ends automatically after a number of rounds equal to your Constitution modifier. A creature can be affected by only a single tenacious swarm at a time.

Toxic Host (Ex) 9th Level

When you use your malignant mist ability, you can make the nanites toxic in nature. Toxic nanites deal half damage to creatures that successfully save against your malignant mist ability.

Noxious Nanites (Ex) 13th Level

A creature affected by your tenacious swarm ability is also sickened for the duration of the effect. Weapons you form with your gear array gain the nauseate critical hit effect (Starfinder Armory 31). If the weapon already has a critical hit effect, when you score a critical hit, you can apply either the weapon’s normal critical hit effect or the nauseate effect.

Engineered Contagion (Ex) 17th Level

You can activate your malicious mist ability once per minute without using a nanite surge. You can use a nanite surge as a swift action to infect up to two other creatures you can see adjacent to any one creature within 60 feet that you can see that is affected by your tenacious swarm. The new targets are immediately affected by your malignant mist, receiving a saving throw to reduce the effects as normal.


Obliteration [LINK]

Starfinder Tech Revolution Playtest p.6

Your nanites mercilessly tear apart your enemies, whether by guiding your strikes to inflict more severe damage or exploding from your attacks to hurt multiple foes simultaneously

Unstoppable Nanites (Ex) 1st Level

Weapons you form with your gear array gain the penetrating and boost 1d4 special properties. To use the boost property with a weapon that doesn’t have charges, you must use one nanite surge instead of expending additional charges. At 5th level, the boost special property increases to 1d6, and it increases by an additional 1d6 at 9th, 13th, and 17th levels.

Energized Swarm (Ex) 5th Level

While wielding a weapon you formed with your gear array, you can take a swift action to change half or all the weapon’s damage type to cold, electricity, or fire until the beginning of your next turn. If the weapon already has two damage types, choose one to replace. This ability doesn’t cause a weapon that normally targets KAC to target EAC.

Spreading Swarm (Ex) 9th Level

The first time on your turn that you hit with a weapon formed with your gear array, you can deal that weapon’s minimum damage to a different target creature within 10 feet of the original target. The second creature can attempt a Reflex save to take half damage. For example, a weapon that deals 6d8 damage would deal 6 damage to the secondary target with this effect.

Flashing Nanites (Ex) 13th Level

When making a full attack entirely with weapons formed from your gear array, you take a –3 penalty to each attack roll instead of the normal –4 penalty.

Microscopic Bombardment (Ex) 17th Level

Your spreading swarm ability’s secondary target can be up to 20 feet away from your initial target. In addition, you can use a nanite surge before performing a full attack to apply your spreading swarm ability to both attacks.


Redirection [LINK]

Starfinder Tech Revolution Playtest p.6

Your nanites are forceful and energetic, able to redirect attacks, move objects, and lend weapons devastating mass.

Seeking Strike (Ex) 1st Level

As a move action, you can designate a target within 60 feet that’s inside or adjacent to your nanite cloud as your nanites’ focus, momentarily enhancing your accuracy against that target. The next attack you make against the target before the end of your next turn gains a +1 bonus to the attack roll and ignores the target’s concealment, if any.

Particle Push (Ex) 5th Level

You can condense your nanites into powerful waves that collide with creatures and objects. While your nanite cloud is within your reach, you can attempt bull rush, reposition, and trip combat maneuvers against targets in your nanite cloud as though they were within your melee reach; when doing so, you can use your Constitution modifier for your attack roll instead of your Strength modifier.

Bend Bullet (Ex) 9th Level

Attacks you make with your seeking strike ability also reduce the AC bonus from cover by 2. This doesn’t allow you to attack a creature with total cover.
When you use your seeking strike and a weapon you formed with your gear array to make a ranged attack that targets a creature or creates a line, you can use one or more nanite surges to alter the attack’s path to avoid obstacles and allies. Up to a distance equal to the weapon’s first range increment, you can trace out any path for the attack that doesn’t turn more than 90 degrees per 5 feet traveled, potentially allowing the attack to avoid cover or total cover. Using this ability requires you to use one nanite surge for every two times your attack changes direction, rounded up.

Rebounding Strike (Ex) 13th Level

After using your defensive dispersal ability to reduce the damage you take from a ranged or melee weapon attack from an attacker within 30 feet of you, you can use an additional nanite surge to redirect some of that energy back at the attacker; the target takes an amount of piercing damage equal to the amount by which your defensive dispersal reduced the triggering attack (Fortitude negates).

Particle Tsunami (Ex) 17th Level

As a full action, you can target up to three different creatures with your particle push ability. For each target, you choose whether to attempt a bull rush, reposition, or trip combat maneuver. You perform each attack with a –4 penalty, though before attempting an attack, you can use a nanite surge to reduce the penalty to –2 for that attack.


Regeneration [LINK]

Starfinder Tech Revolution Playtest p.6

Your nanites swiftly knit flesh, stabilize life signs, and heal superficial wounds—both your own and those of nearby allies.

Reactive Repair (Ex) 1st Level

As a swift action, you can use a nanite surge to direct your nanites to repair and reinforce an ally. The target must either be adjacent to you or be adjacent to or within your nanite cloud. Alternatively, you can target yourself with this ability. For 1 minute or until the target begins their turn no longer adjacent to you or adjacent to or within your cloud array, the target gains fast healing 1 (as per the universal creature rule), except that the ability restores Stamina Points instead of Hit Points. Whenever the target regains a Stamina Point from this ability, they also gain 1 temporary Hit Point that doesn’t stack with other temporary Hit Points. When the effect ends, the target loses any temporary Hit Points gained from this ability. At 5th level and every 4 levels thereafter, the fast healing increases by 1 and the temporary Hit Points increase by 2.

Nanosurgeon (Ex) 5th Level

You can add your Constitution modifier in place of your Intelligence modifier to Medicine checks. You can use the Medicine skill to treat creatures within or adjacent to your cloud array as through you were adjacent to them. You can use a nanite surge to apply first aid as a swift action or treat deadly wounds as a full action for a creature in your cloud.

Flesh Donor (Ex) 9th Level

When you regain Stamina Points from your reactive repair ability, you can use a nanite surge as a reaction to multiply the number of Stamina Points you gain that round by 4. When an ally within 30 feet regains Stamina Points from your reactive repair ability, you can take a reaction to transfer a number of your own Stamina Points to that creature up to an amount equal to three times your level.

From the Brink (Ex) 13th Level

As a standard action, you can restore a dead creature to life so long as that creature died no more than 3 rounds ago from having 0 Hit Points and insufficient Resolve Points to stay alive or from massive damage. To use this ability, you must be adjacent to the body, or both you and the body must be adjacent to or within your cloud array. You end one of your current nanite arrays, channeling those nanites into the corpse, and use one nanite surge for each round (or fraction thereof) that the creature has been dead. This restores 5d8 Hit Points to the target and returns them to life, though in the process the target gains a negative level for 24 hours. This ability can’t resuscitate creatures slain by death effects, creatures turned into undead, or creatures whose bodies were destroyed, significantly mutilated, disintegrated, and so on.

Healing Swarm (Ex) 17th Level

You effortlessly heal any damage dealt to you as your nanites endlessly repair your body. The first time each round you use a nanite surge, you can recover up to 2d10 Hit Points.

Found a bug? Click here!