Robot, Thought Harvester RobotRows of crystal spheres line the back of this four-legged robot. A single glowing eye sits in the middle of its head.Thought Harvester Robot CR 10Source Pathfinder #87: The Choking Tower pg. 86
XP 9,600
N Medium construct (robot)
Init +6; Senses darkvision 60 ft., low-light vision; Perception +19DefenseAC 23, touch 13, flat-footed 20 (+2 Dex, +1 dodge, +10 natural)
hp 131 (13d10+20 plus 40 hp force field)
Fort +4, Ref +6, Will +8
Defensive Abilities hardness 10; Immune construct traits; Resist acid 10, cold 10, fire 10
Weaknesses vulnerable to critical hits and electricityOffenseSpeed 30 ft.
Melee claw +19 (1d6+6 plus grab), 2 integrated nanite injectors +19 (1d4+6 plus harvest thoughts)
Ranged integrated sonic rifle +15 ranged touch (3d6 sonic)
Special Attacks constrict (1d6+9), harvest thoughts, integrated nanite injectors, integrated sonic rifleStatisticsStr 22, Dex 15, Con —, Int 12, Wis 15, Cha 1
Base Atk +13; CMB +19; CMD 32 (36 vs. trip)
Feats Alertness, Dodge, Improved Initiative, Iron Will, Mobility, Point-Blank Shot, Power Attack
Skills Knowledge (local) +10, Perception +19, Sense Motive +19, Stealth +6
Languages Androffan, CommonEcologyEnvironment any (Numeria)
Organization solitary or squad (2–6)
Treasure noneSpecial AbilitiesForce Field (Ex) A thought harvester is sheathed in a thin layer of shimmering energy that grants it 40 bonus hit points. All damage dealt to a thought harvester with an active force field is reduced from these hit points first. As long as the force field is active, the thought harvester is immune to critical hits. A thought harvester’s force field has fast healing 10, but once its hit points are reduced to 0, the force field shuts down and does not reactivate for 24 hours.
Integrated Nanite Injectors (Ex) A thought harvester is outfitted with two nanite injectors. These modified syringes are mounted on the end of animated, flexible tubes that feed into the robot’s crystal spheres and allow it to use its harvest thoughts ability. These injectors are treated as a piercing weapons that deal 1d4 points of damage, but can’t be salvaged to be used on their own.
Integrated Sonic Rifle (Ex) A thought harvester has an builtin sonic rifle slung beneath its head. This weapon has a range of 150 feet and deals 3d6 points of sonic damage. The weapon can fire once per round and does so in a burst of shots that attacks all creatures in a line. This line starts from any corner of the robot’s space and extends to the limit of the weapon’s range or until it strikes a barrier it can’t penetrate. The robot must make a separate attack roll against each creature in the line, and each creature in the line can be attacked with only one shot from each burst. Each attack roll takes a –2 penalty, and its damage can’t be modified by precision damage or damage-increasing feats such as Vital Strike. Effects that grant concealment (such as fog or smoke) or the spells blur, invisibility, or mirror image don’t affect this weapon’s attack. Roll to confirm each attack roll that threatens a critical hit separately.
Harvest Thoughts (Ex) A thought harvester that hits a living creature with one of its integrated nanite injectors can selectively duplicate certain memories the target possesses. Each time the harvester uses this ability, it can copy one significant event (such as the events of a combat or a birthday party), or it can sift through the victim’s memories as part of an interrogation that allows it to effectively ask and receive truthful answers to six questions. A successful DC 17 Will save negates the effects of this ability; mindless creatures or creatures with an Intelligence score of 1 are immune to it. Each time a creature’s memories are copied through the use of this ability, it must succeed at a DC 17 Fortitude save or take 1d4 points of Intelligence drain. A creature’s Intelligence score can’t be drained below 1 in this way.
If successful, the target’s copied memories appear as swirling mist within one of the crystal spheres socketed into the thought harvester’s back. If the thought harvester is willing, helpless, or destroyed, a sphere can be removed from its socket with a successful DC 30 Disable Device check and be read by certain devices without damaging the memories within. This ability can be used on creatures that have been dead for less than 24 hours, but their brain must be mostly intact and only 1d4 memories can be harvested postmortem. The duration can be extended if the creature’s brain has been preserved (such as by gentle repose) or if the creature possesses a brain that doesn’t rot. The save DCs are Intelligence-based.DescriptionThought harvesters are specialized robots designed to forcibly extract memories from a living creature or corpse. Built to survive battlefields and other hazardous environments, thought harvesters are outf itted with thick armor plating and a durable force field. Giving the thought harvester robot its name, two prehensile tendrils extend from the creature’s sides, each tipped with a wickedly barbed syringe through which the creature injects sophisticated nanites into its target. These nanites immediately duplicate portions of the target’s brain and return through the syringe into the thought harvester’s central core. There, the target’s memories are swiftly categorized and stored in one of an array of crystalline spheres located along the robot’s spine. When performed on a living target, the process is painful and can cause severe damage to the subject’s cognitive reasoning capabilities. A thought harvester’s head has a single glowing eye in the center, and two weapons hang beneath it. These weapons allow the thought harvester to fire bursts of sonic energy at any targets that react in an aggressive manner. A thought harvester rarely speaks, but when it does it speaks in short, monosyllabic words, and is always direct and to the point. Thought harvesters are 6 feet long and 4 feet tall. They are densely built, and weigh 1,600 lbs. A thought harvester draws energy from an eff icient internal power source and continually recycles and repairs its internal store of specialized nanites.EcologyA thought harvester is a militarized application of specialized thought-recovery technology. Nanites able to affect a target’s thoughts or memories are used in weapons such as the id rifle or mindrender, but the nanites used in those devices become inert after performing their function. When they’re instead directly injected and immediately recovered, the nanites duplicate a creature’s thoughts and store them for review. The thought harvester’s nimble frame and armored shell ensure effective frontline deployment of this technology.
Dozens of egg-sized crystalline spheres line the creature’s spine, each solidly nestled within a socket in the creature’s armored back. These spheres are normally clear, but when the robot recovers a creature’s thoughts, a sphere fills with a cloudy, gray haze. A thought harvester might fill all of its crystal spheres after a dozen missions. Regular maintenance includes transferring harvested thoughts into specialized computers, but the technology to do so is lost on Golarion. Instead, the stolen thoughts within the spheres simply dissipate when a sphere is destroyed or incorrectly removed.Habitat & SocietyThought harvesters are deployed in a variety of military situations in which specific intelligence must be recovered or eliminated, but bodily recovery of the target is unnecessary or unwise. A thought harvester can grab and carry a human in its claw, but these robots are rarely used to capture living humanoids. A thought harvester might be assigned to invade an enemy stronghold to remove key orders from an opposing commander, or invade a prison to copy sensitive information from the mind of a spy captured by the enemy. Thought harvester robots are often used to recover critical intelligence from soldiers killed in the middle of a raging battle or that fell in irradiated environments. Thought harvesters are deployed only when overt force is acceptable, as they’re neither stealthy nor subtle.
These robots show little individual personality as they go about their work of harvesting memories. Unlike other robots, which are generally content to stand perfectly motionless when not in use, thought harvesters tend to fidget, scanning for danger and waving their syringetipped tendrils in the air. A thought harvester cannot itself access any of the thoughts stored within the crystalline spheres, though it does retain some general idea of the memories it has previously collected. To the thought harvester, these memories are simply cargo to be recovered and brought back to its superiors.Creatures in "Robot" CategorySource Inner Sea Bestiary pg. 42
Products of technology advanced far beyond even those of the gunsmiths of Alkenstar, robots represent constructs animated by engineering and advanced science rather than magic. The people of Golarion think of robots as “automatons” or “metal men”—their proper nomenclature is known to only a few.
The first robots arrived untold years ago, when a ship from beyond the stars smashed into Golarion. The metal vessel entered the atmosphere in a blaze of fire and broke apart, scattering fragments across the plains of Numeria. Over the following centuries, several varieties of robots emerged or were recovered from some of these ruins. A few still follow the alien dictates of their original programming, while others run amok, their directives corrupted or forgotten. Perhaps the best-known robots are the fabled gearsmen, a veritable army of humanoid robots found stored and awaiting orders in a massive hold in Silver Mount.
The means of commanding robots vary from model to model, a source of endless frustration for Numerian artificers. Some obey orders from any humanoid, some bond to a specific master until her death, and others yield only to the command of brooches or rods recovered from Silver Mount. Still others submit after mechanical surgery, or not all. A surprisingly large fraction of uncontrolled robots already speak Common or Hallit. Most models exhibit considerable linguistic talents, and the robots train each other in their new home’s languages. Despite comprehending Numerian languages, most robots rarely speak save for terse acknowledgments and orders. The Robot Subtype “Robot” is a special subtype that can be applied to any construct without changing its CR. Robots share some features with clockwork constructs (The Inner Sea World Guide 256), and as with clockworks, you can simply remove the robot subtype and its traits to transform it into a typical construct animated by magic. A construct cannot possess both the robot and the clockwork subtypes. All robots gain the following traits, unless noted otherwise. - Intelligent: Robots are intelligent, and thus have skills and feats as appropriate for their Hit Dice. Unless otherwise indicated for a specific robot, all robots have Intelligence scores of 10. The following are class skills for robots: Climb, Disable Device, Fly, Knowledge (all), Linguistics, Perception, and Sense Motive.
- Vulnerable to Critical Hits: Whenever a robot takes extra damage from a critical hit, it must make a DC 15 Fortitude save to avoid being stunned for 1 round. If it makes a successful saving throw, it is staggered for 1 round. The robot remains immune to other sources of the stunned condition.
- Vulnerable to Electricity: Robots take 150% as much damage as normal from electricity attacks, unless they are immune to electricity via other special defenses.
- Difficult to Create: Robots are crafted via complex methods hidden and well guarded in Numerian ruins or other technological bastions. While the Technic League has developed magical solutions to some of these requirements, actual details on creating robots are beyond the scope of this book.
Numerian Technology Miraculous and deadly treasures lie in wait in Numerian dungeons, and the robots that dwell there often utilize these technological arms and tools themselves. A robot’s weapons and defenses are fueled by its central energy core, and unless otherwise indicated, a robot’s weapons and defenses have infinite ammunition and power.
Force Fields: A force field sheathes a robot in a thin layer of shimmering energy that grants a number of bonus hit points that varies according to the robot (typically 5 × the robot’s CR). All damage dealt to a robot with an active force field is reduced from these hit points first. As long as the force field is active, the robot is immune to critical hits. A force field has fast healing equal to the robot’s CR, but once its hit points are reduced to 0, the force field shuts down and does not reactivate for 24 hours.
Integrated Weaponry: A robot that has a technological weapon (such as a laser rifle or chain gun) built into its body treats such weapons as natural attacks and not manufactured weapons attacks, and cannot make iterative attacks with these weapons. Integrated weaponry can still be targeted by effects that target manufactured weapons (such as magic weapon spells or sunder attempts), but as a general rule cannot be harvested for use outside of the robot’s body once the robot is destroyed. A robot is always proficient with its integrated weapons. Integrated ranged weapons do not provoke attacks of opportunity when fired in melee combat.
Laser Weapons: These weapons emit beams of intensely focused light waves that resolve as touch attacks and deal fire damage. A laser can pass through force fields and force effects like a wall of force without damaging that field to strike a foe beyond. Objects like glass or other transparent barriers do not provide cover from lasers (but unlike force barriers, glass still takes damage from a laser strike passing through it). Invisible creatures are immune to damage caused by a laser weapon. Fog, smoke, and other clouds provide cover in addition to concealment from laser attacks.
Plasma Weapons: These weapons emit bursts of superheated, electrically charged gas known as plasma. A plasma weapon’s attacks resolve as touch attacks. Half the damage dealt by plasma is fire damage, and half is electricity damage.Source Bestiary 5 pg. 205
Products of advanced scientific technology, the constructs called robots are animated by engineering and advanced science rather than magic. Most people refer to robots as “automatons” or “metal men”; their proper nomenclature is known to only a few. Unlike most constructs, robots are capable of independent thought. However, they still must obey the programming instilled in them at their creation. Any robot whose creator hard-coded limitations into its programming can never be truly autonomous.
Robots almost always arise from cultures that possess technology that is leaps and bounds ahead of other civilizations, though sometimes they appear due to cultural diffusion from such a society. A wrecked spacecraft, a portal through time, or a group of robots mass-producing others of their kind could all bring robots into a world. Robots that appear from another place or time might still follow the alien dictates of their original programming, or could run amok, their directives corrupted or forgotten. Whatever the case, these robots possess technology that is beyond the means of almost anyone to reproduce, and they represent a stark contrast to other constructs, as they have nothing to do with magic.
Some spellcasters, despite lacking any real grasp on the technological principles required to create robots, have managed to create their own robots by cobbling together spare parts and broken machines, filling in the gaps and completing the design with a mixture of magic and barely understood fragments of science. These inferior designs usually lack the inexhaustible power supplies, advanced intellects, and self-repair systems found in the original robots, and the magic used in their creation can potentially render them more susceptible to techniques that work against other sorts of constructs.
Robots serve a wide range of purposes, from warfare and defense to peaceful tasks like excavation, farming, and maintenance. Small villages that find robots and somehow manage to command them will often put them to work quietly tending fields or constructing buildings all day long. Armies and warlords collect the more dangerous varieties of robots, but even the more ordinary varieties can be deadly. Most robots sport alloyed skin as hard as steel, meaning that even the lowliest worker robot presents a potent threat when altered for battle. Furthermore, since most cultures lack a means to reliably repair or understand how to command robots, even the most benign one might malfunction, or even reach a point in its programming where it changes its activity and refuses to follow orders, leading to untold death and destruction among the its former temporary masters.
The means of commanding robots vary from model to model, which can be a source of endless frustration for any who seek to control them. Some obey orders from any humanoid, some bond to a specific master until her death, and others only yield to the command of technological brooches or control rods. Still others submit after mechanical surgery or rebuilding, or not at all. Many must be given extremely precise instructions, for they are unable to process metaphors or other figures of speech, and may interpret them in unanticipated ways, much to the chagrin of those who would command them. A surprisingly large proportion of uncontrolled robots already speak Common, as most models exhibit considerable linguistics talent, and the robots train each other in their new home’s languages. Though they comprehend language, most robots rarely speak save for terse acknowledgements of orders. Their speech typically excludes words they deem unnecessary with their mechanical efficiency, leading to strange disjointed statements that convey the requisite information without emotion, although some robots programmed to interact well with humans are able to speak in a more fluid and less disconcerting manner.
Constructing a robot requires no magic, but does involve advanced and extraordinarily rare materials and technological expertise. Because almost no one possesses the skills and materials to complete the process of constructing a robot, these entries omit the construction sections provided for most constructs. A GM can add the robot subtype to a different type of construct, such as an animated object or homunculus, to create new types of robots. Typically, this doesn’t alter the construct’s CR. A character can’t create a robot from or add the robot subtype to a construct that has already been created; adding the robot subtype to an existing creature is purely a means for the GM to simulate additional robots beyond those provided here.
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