Changelings, and why they're just too damn powerful

[Walrus]

So I was talking with someone about this, and finding a happy medium between the old "changelings suck and you can kill abominations by shooting them with a laser gun like 3 times" and the new "changelings are practically invincible and if you see an abomination you should probably just kill yourself". We came up with kind of an idea for balancing that out: changelings should be basically as strong as they are now but have one weakness that can fuck them up real bad.

Basically, setting a changeling on fire should do nasty shit to them beyond just burn damage. A changeling who is on fire should hemorrhage DNA quickly, have their skin melt off, and spray geysers of blood, and eventually die if they remain on fire. A changeling who is on fire should be in extreme danger and have their priorities completely shift to "stop being on fire immediately". Abominations should be immune to the DNA loss and take far, far longer to die from it, but should not be totally safe.

Since using a fire extinguisher on yourself may be impractical when you're being stunned repeatedly by your own blood rebelling and attempting to escape your body, and surrounded by people continuously trying to reignite you, changelings should receive a new power for attempting to escape this situation(maybe it should just replace lesser form since I have no idea why anyone would ever use that). It costs no DNA to use. Upon use, the changeling's main body explodes into gibs, leaving behind just the head with 1 arm attached, and some little spidery legs. This form looks basically like a headspider, but is for escaping rather than infecting anyone. It's fire proof, very fast, can run under people's legs and can hold things, open doors, etc. with its arm. It's extremely vulnerable to damage, though, and the changeling can be quickly killed if caught like this.


The idea behind this weakness is essentially that portable sources of fire are not common enough that this would completely screw changelings, but they are common enough that if a changeling decides to throw stealth out the window the crew can prepare to make his life very miserable.

This is an excellent solution. Fire is supposed to be their Achilles heel yet i've seen shamblers shrug it off like it's nothing.