Goonhub
Inspired by this post: https://forum.ss13.co/showthread.php?tid=18652
Wraith is in a strange place right now. It is a very unique antagonist, with it's own gameplay loop, it's unique way of being fought and generally warps the rules to force you to adapt to them. I love the general idea, but i would like to use this post as a way to lay down the thoughts i have been mulling over for a good while on what i think would help improve the wraith further.
The aspects that this project would be aiming to change would be the following:
- Giving the wraith players some form of customizability allowing them to better tailor their specter to their playstyle.
- Improving counterplay and making it generally less cumbersome for the crew to fight the wraith
- Expanding on already implemented concepts and reworking some already existing ones.
Modification to the existing wraith:
In order to achieve this, there would be a significant amount of changes to the already existing wraith, which would generally result in a much weaker antag early on.
The following three abilities would be removed from the wraith: Make skeleton, Create revenant and summon poltergeist. This would make the wraith less of a threat early on and gives the crew some time to figure out what exactly they are facing. Point generation scaling would also be generally adjusted so that it isnt essentally infinite after a few consumes.
An additional rework would be the creation of rotating "zones" where the wraith gets increased point generation while nearby, and slightly less point generation when far from it. This is meant to help solve the issue of wraiths always camping medbay. Instead, this strategy is still doable, but with a slightly lower point generation. Or they can choose to follow the zones with the highest spirit affinity at the moment, and enjoy spreading the scare around with increased point generation!
Additions:
The wraith would now have a single new ability called "transcendence" which costs a fair lot of points and a minimum amount of consumed bodies. This ability allows the wraith to transform into one of three different wraith subclasses, each with their own unique sprites, abilities and counterplay. This would allow players to choose the form they find the most fun, but would also grant each wraith form a new unique weakness on top of the already existing salt-lines. However, the new forms do keep all of the previous abilities of the wraith. Each form also has a uniquely different way of getting points.
The three possible paths are intended to provide different approaches to wraithing and would be as follows;
The harbinger
This form is intended to be the most involved of the three, regularly breaching the ghostly veil to assault the crew with physical threats. It would mostly revolve around creating minions, creatures and summons to directly assault the crew.
Abilities;
Open summoning portal; After a brief activation period, a portal begins to open at the wraith's location. The portal is inactive for a short while and can be destroyed by the crew relatively quickly. If the portal is ignored, it will begin to activate and summon in a certain amount of dangerous critters up to a maximum, then despawn. In order to avoid floods, the creatures despawn after a while.
Summon warrior: Similarly to "create poltergeist", this sends a message to online ghosts and allows them to spawn in as a unique robust minion initially presented as a meatcube. The spawned player has some time to choose which specific minion they want to appear as, then once fully spawned is free to wreak havoc on the station.
The harbinger also get the "create revenant" and "summon skeleton" ability the wraith we already know has.
Point generation;
The harbinger has somewhat low point generation by default and must use "haunt" in order to increase it. This point increase is higher than the one wraith currently has to offset the higher risk. In exchange, while the wraith is manifested, all of it's creatures are granted a small buff to their health and damage.
Counterplay:
Since the harbinger is forced to manifest to generate points, the crew has more opportunities to attack it as currently there is little reasons for a wraith to show themselves.
The plaguebringer
Intended to be somewhere in between the trickster and the harbinger when it comes to deadliness. This form is meant to spread disease and hexes upon the crew and slowly tear it apart.
Abilities;
Hexes: Hexes, or curses, are unique debuffs that can be applied to humans. There are five of them, but the fifth curse can only be applied if the target already has all other four curses upon them. The idea of curses being that they can be spread out among the crew, or stacked upon one person while trying to kill them. Hexes can be removed either by drinking holy water, or by staying in the chapel for a while. If a curse has been removed from someone, it cannot be reapplied to the same person for a long while. Additionally, upon recieving your third or fourth curse, the user gets a message about otherworldly forces beginning to grasp their soul and impending doom. The available curses would be the following:
Curse of blood: The target gains the hemophilia trait, randomly coughs up some blood or vomits blood rarely.
Curse of enfeeblement: The target has lower stamina and stamina regen, and suffers from random slows.
Curse of blindness: The target recieves eye damage at regular intervals until they are completely blind.
Curse of rot: The target occasionnally coughs, empty their stomachs by projectile vomiting and refuses to eat food or drink
Curse of death: The fifth curse, which is meant to kill the target. After a short delay the target collapses, convulses, and their soul is instantly devoured by the wraith.
Raise bloated corpse: Turns a rotting corpse into a bloated corpse, which is begins to roam and look for crewmates. It does low damage with its punches, but explodes into gibs and miasma upon dying, giving tox damage to everyone around in a way similar to how exploding limbcritters do with burn damage.
Infect: Adds disease reagents picked from a list to a container, such as a glass or a food item.
Point generation;
The plaguebringer has low point regen rate, however their "devour soul" ability now gibs the body, spreading miasma, and gives more points if the target is greatly decomposed or toxified, up to a cap.
Counterplay:
Disposing of bodies quickly will drastically reduce the points that a plaguebringer can generate. Additionally, if a plaguebringer attempts to devour a body with holy water or formaldehyde into it, they will take a non-negligible amount of damage.
The trickster
Is meant to be cunning, stealthy and generally somewhat similar to the wraith we have now, with a few key differences
Abilities:
Area emagging: The trickster can, after a delay, cause a 5x5 pulse emagging all machinery around it.
Terror: The trickster warps a human's mind and causes them hallucinations
Signal from the afterlife: The wraith hijacks the station's airwaves and speaks on the radio, with a disguised name of their choosing.
Area messaging: The trickster speaks to every human in a large area, similar to whisper but in a zone.
Haunt is now different for this specter, allowing it to spawn as a copy of a crewmate in appearance, but unable to use items. They can talk and generally impersonate the person of their choice. The ability no longer ends automatically, and can be ended at will after at least 20 seconds have passed. Taking a low amount of damage however reveals you instantly for who you are.
Possession: In order to offset this form's low amount of direct damage, this ability allows you, after a delay and with a hefty point cost, to take possession of a human that they have been close to for awhile while manifested. The wraith can keep this form for a while, but eventually gets kicked out of the person's mind. The possessed human suffers from serious brain damage and is generally close to death or dying by the end of it.
The "create poltergeist" ability that wraith has is now exclusive to the trickster, as it fits the idea of being a disruptive, steathy ghost.
Point generation; Trickster, similarly to harbinger, gets lower point generation overall, but much higher point generation upon manifesting near people.
Counterplay; The trickster can be defeated somewhat easily by making sure that the person that you are talking to isnt a wraith in disguise. The fact that they have abilities mostly suited for stealth means that they should try not to be spotted in the first place, but their point generation should generally force them to manifest.
This concludes my thoughts on what would make for a more interesting wraith, with more options, more customizability, fun abilities while also giving the crew some fun ways to deal with them!
Wraith is in a strange place right now. It is a very unique antagonist, with it's own gameplay loop, it's unique way of being fought and generally warps the rules to force you to adapt to them. I love the general idea, but i would like to use this post as a way to lay down the thoughts i have been mulling over for a good while on what i think would help improve the wraith further.
The aspects that this project would be aiming to change would be the following:
- Giving the wraith players some form of customizability allowing them to better tailor their specter to their playstyle.
- Improving counterplay and making it generally less cumbersome for the crew to fight the wraith
- Expanding on already implemented concepts and reworking some already existing ones.
Modification to the existing wraith:
In order to achieve this, there would be a significant amount of changes to the already existing wraith, which would generally result in a much weaker antag early on.
The following three abilities would be removed from the wraith: Make skeleton, Create revenant and summon poltergeist. This would make the wraith less of a threat early on and gives the crew some time to figure out what exactly they are facing. Point generation scaling would also be generally adjusted so that it isnt essentally infinite after a few consumes.
An additional rework would be the creation of rotating "zones" where the wraith gets increased point generation while nearby, and slightly less point generation when far from it. This is meant to help solve the issue of wraiths always camping medbay. Instead, this strategy is still doable, but with a slightly lower point generation. Or they can choose to follow the zones with the highest spirit affinity at the moment, and enjoy spreading the scare around with increased point generation!
Additions:
The wraith would now have a single new ability called "transcendence" which costs a fair lot of points and a minimum amount of consumed bodies. This ability allows the wraith to transform into one of three different wraith subclasses, each with their own unique sprites, abilities and counterplay. This would allow players to choose the form they find the most fun, but would also grant each wraith form a new unique weakness on top of the already existing salt-lines. However, the new forms do keep all of the previous abilities of the wraith. Each form also has a uniquely different way of getting points.
The three possible paths are intended to provide different approaches to wraithing and would be as follows;
The harbinger
This form is intended to be the most involved of the three, regularly breaching the ghostly veil to assault the crew with physical threats. It would mostly revolve around creating minions, creatures and summons to directly assault the crew.
Abilities;
Open summoning portal; After a brief activation period, a portal begins to open at the wraith's location. The portal is inactive for a short while and can be destroyed by the crew relatively quickly. If the portal is ignored, it will begin to activate and summon in a certain amount of dangerous critters up to a maximum, then despawn. In order to avoid floods, the creatures despawn after a while.
Summon warrior: Similarly to "create poltergeist", this sends a message to online ghosts and allows them to spawn in as a unique robust minion initially presented as a meatcube. The spawned player has some time to choose which specific minion they want to appear as, then once fully spawned is free to wreak havoc on the station.
The harbinger also get the "create revenant" and "summon skeleton" ability the wraith we already know has.
Point generation;
The harbinger has somewhat low point generation by default and must use "haunt" in order to increase it. This point increase is higher than the one wraith currently has to offset the higher risk. In exchange, while the wraith is manifested, all of it's creatures are granted a small buff to their health and damage.
Counterplay:
Since the harbinger is forced to manifest to generate points, the crew has more opportunities to attack it as currently there is little reasons for a wraith to show themselves.
The plaguebringer
Intended to be somewhere in between the trickster and the harbinger when it comes to deadliness. This form is meant to spread disease and hexes upon the crew and slowly tear it apart.
Abilities;
Hexes: Hexes, or curses, are unique debuffs that can be applied to humans. There are five of them, but the fifth curse can only be applied if the target already has all other four curses upon them. The idea of curses being that they can be spread out among the crew, or stacked upon one person while trying to kill them. Hexes can be removed either by drinking holy water, or by staying in the chapel for a while. If a curse has been removed from someone, it cannot be reapplied to the same person for a long while. Additionally, upon recieving your third or fourth curse, the user gets a message about otherworldly forces beginning to grasp their soul and impending doom. The available curses would be the following:
Curse of blood: The target gains the hemophilia trait, randomly coughs up some blood or vomits blood rarely.
Curse of enfeeblement: The target has lower stamina and stamina regen, and suffers from random slows.
Curse of blindness: The target recieves eye damage at regular intervals until they are completely blind.
Curse of rot: The target occasionnally coughs, empty their stomachs by projectile vomiting and refuses to eat food or drink
Curse of death: The fifth curse, which is meant to kill the target. After a short delay the target collapses, convulses, and their soul is instantly devoured by the wraith.
Raise bloated corpse: Turns a rotting corpse into a bloated corpse, which is begins to roam and look for crewmates. It does low damage with its punches, but explodes into gibs and miasma upon dying, giving tox damage to everyone around in a way similar to how exploding limbcritters do with burn damage.
Infect: Adds disease reagents picked from a list to a container, such as a glass or a food item.
Point generation;
The plaguebringer has low point regen rate, however their "devour soul" ability now gibs the body, spreading miasma, and gives more points if the target is greatly decomposed or toxified, up to a cap.
Counterplay:
Disposing of bodies quickly will drastically reduce the points that a plaguebringer can generate. Additionally, if a plaguebringer attempts to devour a body with holy water or formaldehyde into it, they will take a non-negligible amount of damage.
The trickster
Is meant to be cunning, stealthy and generally somewhat similar to the wraith we have now, with a few key differences
Abilities:
Area emagging: The trickster can, after a delay, cause a 5x5 pulse emagging all machinery around it.
Terror: The trickster warps a human's mind and causes them hallucinations
Signal from the afterlife: The wraith hijacks the station's airwaves and speaks on the radio, with a disguised name of their choosing.
Area messaging: The trickster speaks to every human in a large area, similar to whisper but in a zone.
Haunt is now different for this specter, allowing it to spawn as a copy of a crewmate in appearance, but unable to use items. They can talk and generally impersonate the person of their choice. The ability no longer ends automatically, and can be ended at will after at least 20 seconds have passed. Taking a low amount of damage however reveals you instantly for who you are.
Possession: In order to offset this form's low amount of direct damage, this ability allows you, after a delay and with a hefty point cost, to take possession of a human that they have been close to for awhile while manifested. The wraith can keep this form for a while, but eventually gets kicked out of the person's mind. The possessed human suffers from serious brain damage and is generally close to death or dying by the end of it.
The "create poltergeist" ability that wraith has is now exclusive to the trickster, as it fits the idea of being a disruptive, steathy ghost.
Point generation; Trickster, similarly to harbinger, gets lower point generation overall, but much higher point generation upon manifesting near people.
Counterplay; The trickster can be defeated somewhat easily by making sure that the person that you are talking to isnt a wraith in disguise. The fact that they have abilities mostly suited for stealth means that they should try not to be spotted in the first place, but their point generation should generally force them to manifest.
This concludes my thoughts on what would make for a more interesting wraith, with more options, more customizability, fun abilities while also giving the crew some fun ways to deal with them!