Opinions: Biotic Scarecrow

[LostOne]

Ignore the obvious munchkinism here, this would be for an NPC ace in the hole situation to surprise the players.

How do people feel about the feasibility of a biotic getting the elixir of life and scarecrow bonuses? Would they somehow cancel each other out?

My thought here (spitballing, just came up with it) was a house that glorifies biotics over dreadguards because they're always ready for combat and maybe the librarian is a little crazy and lacking on quality host armor designs and creativity needed to make good dreadguards or he simply sees humans as frail and unworthy except as fuel for the army. Or he is biased against dreadguard because of what he sees as a great betrayal by the ruling cast in the past and his scarecrow biotics eliminated them in a coup. I also am guessing making an army of biotics would be more resource efficient, less bio-e needed to get each warrior in the field.

Anyone not bioticized are effectively breeders and cogs in the machine to keep the army functioning (really like in most houses) but probably with less freedoms since there are less breeders.

How do you police a population of biotic warriors when they're not deployed? Biotic scarecrows. Biotics vs scarecrows isn't as one sided as I think most librarians would like for scarecrows to act as a policing force, especially if your entire army is biotics who never takes off its armor and weapons.

[lordbalto]

I don't think it's possible. I feel like the benefits of the elixir are great, but it might only work with unaugmented humans. If it worked with anything then a Librarian may have a legion of scare hounds ready.

[LostOne]

Yeah. It just isn't worded that way really. I sure wouldn't let a player do it. But for a shock for the players I still might. I'll sit on it, it's a ways down the road.

[Shark_Force]

I would expect there are serious drawbacks as the two procedures have unpleasant interactions. that said, I would also expect that it isn't really that much stronger than a biotic that a librarian has recruited by more conventional means and forced into servitude, if they have certain specific biological enhancements (which would probably exceed the normal amounts by a significant margin, since as far as I can tell the main thing keeping biotics from receiving further enhancements than normal is that nobody thinks they're worth the effort).

I would also point out that a scarecrow can use living armour, and you can put quite a bit of stuff into living armour as well, which to me means that it really isn't all that much more powerful than what a librarian could probably do regardless. scarecrows with significantly enhanced living armour and handheld weapons would be nearly as deadly as the biotic scarecrow, I suspect.

so, with that in mind... I could definitely see this being something that isn't normally done because it's risky and expensive and has side effects and there are better solutions available under normal conditions. it could be common knowledge amongst librarians and engineers and warlords that this is a possibility, and it still probably wouldn't see much use, because it's not a good idea...

in fact, the players encountering the result of such experimentation could easily demonstrate exactly *why* it isn't generally a good idea to mindwipe someone, turn them into an insane killing machine, and then massively increase their strength, speed, toughness, stamina, etc to even higher superhuman levels while completely messing around with their body and brain chemistry.

[lordbalto]

It would be interesting if librarians made wlixars that worked for biotics, would be useful having an anrmy of addicted, unstable soldiers.

[LostOne]

It would definitely help keep them in check when they start going insane.

[TechnoGothic]

I don't use the scarecrows in my games at all.
I don't even use the Skin Jobs either.