New Antagonist Role: The Serial Killer

[BaneOfGiygas]

so I thought of a way that Killers could use their points or whatever that kind of fits the theme: creating/upgrading signature weapons/equipment

I'm basically thinking of this as "slasher movie villains" and all of them have some kind of iconic thing that they use/wear. Like Jason has a hockey mask, Freddy has his weird claw things, etc. I remember there's a weird admin-only thing in this game(that I haven't seen in literal years) called the Welder who always shows up with a welding mask and a big machete type thing. So I figured if we're talking about basically having that type of thing be a bad guy people can roll up, why not base their powers around creating that kind of thing for themselves?

Like you get your murderpoints and you can apply them to whatever weapon/clothing you want to make that specific thing better. So you have Joe Blow's wrench, which in anyone else's hands is just a wrench, and to anyone else looks like any other wrench, but in the hands of Joe Blow, vicious maniac, it's a devastating melee weapon. And it's ONLY that wrench, he can't just grab any wrench, and he can tell it apart from all the other wrenches because it's his special killin' wrench. So if someone takes his fucking wrench he's gotta go get it back because it's got all his murderjuice in it. And then there's Joe Blow's space helmet, which on anyone else is just a space helmet, but on Joe Blow lets him take a c-saber to the face and keep truckin. The more murderjuice you pump into something, the better it is, but the more fucked you'll be if someone steals it. And maybe if you pump enough into one object it starts becoming obvious to other people that there's something weird about it, like it looks like a wrench but somehow pulses with fucked up murder energy.

This has made me go from ambivalence to full-on approval. The balancing might be something that requires tweaking of specific numbers, but I absolutely love the sound of this kind of mechanic. It paves the way for stuff like theme-killing and calling cards and other fun things that I'm sad doesn't happen more frequently during your typical traitor round.

The only issue I foresee with this kind of game mode is that of difficulty. Without the gear of the traitors, the stings of the changelings, the spells of the wizards, or any other kind of fancy power whatsoever, the early game would be absolute HELL for this kind of an antagonist. Even wraiths get three chances before they're out; fleshy meatbags typically can't be counted on to have more than one. Some kind of measure to help a budding serial killer get their mojo going in relatively inconspicuous ways would help alleviate this.