I've had a few ideas I had in mind for a while on how to make Changeling more creative and fun. I thought i would make a thread on changelings to suggest ways we could make them more interesting and come up with new ideas for them.
Here is a couple of them, feel free to suggest anything to make these ideas better or come up with your own.
Powers
Chemical absorption: Allows the changeling to store any chemical in it's body for a short period of time. ( After a while the chemicals will begin to effect the changeling)
Changeling Claw: Allows you to form a claw to tear into a victim and cause heavy brute damage (Uses 1 Dna point for every second it's active)
Harden Skin: The changeling uses it's DNA to make it's body resistant to brute damage. ( Requires DNA points to stay active)
Adrenaline Rush: The changeling uses Dna to strengthen it's legs muscles allowing it to jump and run extremely fast for a short period of time( Cost ten points)
Stings
Paralysis Sting: Stings the victim and makes them incapable of moving for a short time ( Cost 5 points)
Silence sting: Makes the victim mute and unable to speak
Injection Sting: Injects any chemical the changeling had in it.(Cost 5 Dna points)
Monkey sting: Turns the victim into a monkey (15 Dna points and requires a monkey to have been absorbed previously.)
Genetic Sting: Allows you to stealthily inject any special (Or terrible) powers you have acquired into a victim.
babayetu83 Wrote:i've always wanted the ability for the ling to have like a mind-slave ability
except it'd end up being a brain-feasting parasite that kills its host horribly after a while
Sadly, the headspider is essentially this, because of the thematics of the changeling. The changeling doesn't need a mindslave ability, unless the ability is very limited. It should make eating the victim slaving them less viable, or make their head explode in a dramatic fashion or something. Something very obvious when people see it.
I want the ability to shapeshift to flash rainbow colors and speak in super loud comic sans on command. This is a good changeling suggestion. No really, if we have fake moustaches, I want to be a seizure monster. Stealth is for nerds.
babayetu83 Wrote:i've always wanted the ability for the ling to have like a mind-slave ability
except it'd end up being a brain-feasting parasite that kills its host horribly after a while
I had this old thread where I made this big long effort post about a parasite mode, that was more or less a mixture of changeling and rev. Quoting the bits that might work here.
Frank_Stein Wrote:Husk Bomb -The infected crewman can stab a victim, and implant the body with several egg clusters. This will rapidly decompose the body, rendering it into a husk...5 minutes after the husk was created, it will burst open in a gaseous explosion...
Originally this was supposed to be a fakeout method where a parasite infected crewman could trick people into thinking there was a changeling, and tricking the crew into bringing a body into medbay and infecting more people.
I think it could be modified into something for the actual changeling,though. A mindslave sting where the victim explodes into a several acid spit shots shortly after? Or a husk the victim player can detonate into an explosion? I'm sure a dead player would relish the chance to take others out with them.
Entrapment: Changeling leaves a puddle of goo on the floor that costs dna points. Someone who walks into it gets stuck. Basically Fly paper for the ling. Since lings are not friendly to fire, heating the goo should work as a removal method. Or smacking it with a fire extinguisher until it loosens up, but fire or heat should work faster.
Drone: Ling spawns a small chunk of itself that can travel through vents and spy, but it's probably only controllable by the ling (unless the admins are cool with gross skin chunks being controlled by dead people serving as ling's mobile vent spies.) The drone doesn't really have a combat purpose as it's just a gross vent crawling mass that can spy on dudes, and maybe smuggle small items to the host. e.g Use a vent in captain's office to smuggle out his ID or something while your host body goes brain dead for a bit. Or provided letting dead players become ling spawned meat chunks sounds cool, Make it so that they can only communicate with the ling.
Feign Injured: Ling looks like a bloody and gross human, but is otherwise fine. Good for getting people to open medbay and then stinging them.
Feel free to take/leave/ignore/hate these suggestions.
atomic1fire Wrote:Entrapment: Changeling leaves a puddle of goo on the floor that costs dna points. Someone who walks into it gets stuck. Basically Fly paper for the ling. Since lings are not friendly to fire, heating the goo should work as a removal method. Or smacking it with a fire extinguisher until it loosens up, but fire or heat should work faster.
Instead of goo it could just be ling blood, though you'd still have to use the ability.
The reason I say this is because blood would be less obvious looking, though perhaps give it an examine option to find out the truth.
Also because Changeling blood, if going by "The Thing" rules, is living, and it would make sense for living blood to just grab your feet as you step in it and hold you in place.
maxiumattack Wrote:Spend 15 points to have a limb pop off and become a hostile critter would be neat.
That would be really neat.
would fit the John Carpenter's The Thing vibe as well. frankly changelings need more gross methods of escape instead of gross methods of going loud.
I've thought before that headspider needs to be updated to be something that's more about escaping than taking over a new body. Have it work instead like a high cost ability the changeling can activate that on death has the body break apart into pieces, with one being player controlled and the rest attacking nearby people. The player controlled one would effectively be a fast monkey, with the goal to hide and then regrow into full changeling.
changelog:
"Changeling acid spit now functions as a splash of fluorosulfuric acid rather than that illogical knockout biz it did before."
Hey if the name of the changeling's most important ability and indeed literally the only thing that makes them at all dangerous has a name that doesn't make sense, maybe change the name instead of making them completely incapable of incapacitating people before they can call for help and summon the horde of assholes to murder you in the face 5 seconds into the round
I dunno about the chemical thing, it seems like any chem-dependent power is generally underutilized by most of the station who don't have time for that while some chem nerd spends half an hour making some horrible mixture that instantly annihilates the station when put into play.
Some kind of monster-summoning power would be fun though, I've always wished changelings had some kind of way to go loud that didn't instantly result in getting dogpiled. Also the monkey sting is hilarious and I would use no other power. Except for the fact lings can't currently eat monkeys.
While I didn't really enjoy acid spit in its old implementation, I think the most bullshit part about it was the homing ability. You had a very short window of time to hit them with neurotox and remove their headset before they were up and screaming. I think if you just removed the auto-homing so you had to aim it, it could work. Alternatively give lings some kind of alternative paralysis/silence ability while the neurotox kicks in.
Hmm
While I don't disagree with the spirit of the acid spit nerf (the whole homing nonsense was my issue too) I felt like you've now taken away the changelings only actual manner of being stealthy.
How is spitting fluro stealthy? All that does is a bunch of brute(or burn, i forget), melt off their facegear, which makes for a mobile, vocal angry crewman. Unless it KO's the spaceman too, then that's ok. Or is it? Then it's more of a buff than a nerf, seen as now the ling can strangle the victim far easier.
I've always wished the spit was like a dilophosaurus spit. Remember this scene?
How about instead of KO'ing players, or just melting off a mask, it melts off a mask and REPLACES the mask with a glob of green acid.
This acid restricts the player from being able to see or speak. Like a muzzle and blindfold in one.
The mask cannot be removed, but dissolves at a similar speed of the acid spit knockout, so about ~10 seconds. Costs no changeling points, and does not restrict the victim being strangled.
Then add a paralysis sting that lasts about the same speed as an acid spit knockout, ~10 seconds. Make it cost like, I dunno 2-3 changeling points.
This would mean a changling could acid spit someone, then sting them with the paralysis sting and absorb them, while they're still conscious, pants shat. It essentially separates the acid spit into two powers, but these two powers are on two different cool downs, so it's not really a nerf as such, but opens up more avenues of a ling being dastardly in combat against several players whilst removing the acid spit nonsense.
Goonhub
