This product from Legendary games was an odd treat for me. I've seen a lot of tech classes but not all that many variations come at once. Usually a tech class tries to be a catch all for the subject, much like an alchemist so there aren't many base classes that explore the subject. The opposite of this is definitely Psionics with a whopping 10 classes that deal with the subject of psionics. This product also tickles my fancy in another way. I am a big fan of Thunderscape: World of Aden and particularly the Golemoid class which the Cyborg reminds me of. It takes the technology of it's genre and becomes it making an exciting parallel.
The class is a medium BAB class with a d8 hit dice. It gets 6+Int ranks per level and starts off with the Technologist feat at first level. (There needs to be a line here to tell what happens when you get the feat when you already have the feat.) It gets an internal nanite matrix which is basically fancy talk for having a giant pool of points to support it's class features.
At first level, 4th level and every four levels after they get a modification. These modifications eat up magic items slots which is tragic but workable, but one bit that gets ugly is that I'm having a hard time figuring if they eat each other's slots, particularly when they only go for one limb in the description. This is very important information so it's a big minus unless my reading comprehension isn't too good today. Since I intend to use this for a scifi campaign where there are three races with more than two arms this gets extra weird. Some of the modifications impose a -2 Charisma penalty (Yikes!) instead of eating an item slot. Given that a good amount of the modification abilities cost one nanite charge and you get five more points per level you do quite a bit with your modifications and they are pretty powerful. One or two have some fugly wording though. One of the dermal implants requires energy to use despite needing nanite charges anyways and I'm not sure if the energy needs to be damage. Given that some damage types are small and only a cantrip away I'm not sure why bother with this energy mumbo jumbo and just have healing nanites for the price of charges. Some modifications need some clarification as to what kind of action is needed for them to be used. Some like the ones that affect ability scores, I can assume just kind of happen as a free action but some of them like Force Pulse Hand really need an activation time yet I can't find any mention of what kind of action activates these things. Unless someone can point out something I'm missing then this is a huge oversight. Past that the save DCs are frustratingly inconsistent. They all have a +10 but some add half the cyborg's level while some add the entire cyborg's level. Some add to the DC ability score modifiers, and some add tot he DC based on nanite charges spent.
Another thing I find problematic is the Humanity Loss class feature, which imposes a scaling Charisma penalty to get a bonus to up to four other ability scores. Given that you can't have -4 Cha and +4 Str this is a huge downside. Especially since you already have other sources in the class that lower your Charisma. This may be because I have a pet peeve against class features that start hitting your ability scores but I think this product relies on it too much as a limiter when the class isn't all that powerful to begin with. Besides that, the class doesn't even have a reason to use Charisma so it'll be a dump stat anyway. To me it's just arbitrary.
Tweaks are introduced after the class which is something I don't like. Tweaks are basically spells that are limited by what slots you have modifications in. These are handled a bit awkwardly. There are no spell slots, instead you use your nanite charges and you have a tweaks known list. But you have to prepare tweaks. There's a line that says that they only effect the cyborg even if it would affect others, I guess like alchemists, but with most of the spells that doesn't work right. Add to this my rant about new spell lists and you'll find that I don't like tweaks very much.
The rest of the book is pretty neat but overall the class has way too much wrong with it. Despite all this I love this class and it's just a few house rules and clarifications away from being a 5 star product but there's so much wrong with it as it's written that I'm pushing it by giving it 2 stars. And that hurts me just as much because at first glance I was in love but when I started looking at it deeper I felt like it was too awkward to use as is. Its easy to get what is supposed to happen or what should happen and it's a great addition to a scifi game but requires too much GM oversight just to function and balance.
You can find this over on Paizo.com here.
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