Remove changelings experiencing pain/paralysis/stuns in general

This is yet another simple "fix" for changeling being total garbage that might be easier than a complete rework and actually make sense.

Why do changelings feel pain, if they are capable of altering their shape and controlling their body to such an extent so as to resurrect at will completely rejuvenated regardless of wounds short of decapitation? IC reasoning aside, the OOC implications of changelings feeling pain generally go like this ; Changeling has armblade. Changeling rushes person with armblade. The first hit does massive brute, as expected, but does not knock the person down. Person retaliates with one stunbaton hit. Changeling is downed instantly, cuffed and thrown in solitary, and then xenobiology for 2 hours. Replace the stunbaton with basically any simple means of downing people from disarming to tasers to anything, really, and you've got mostly all changeling rounds. The stopping point of every narrative is the first stun, and changelings have zero recovery or escape from being locked naked in some tiny room short of becoming a horror form and I'm sure you all know how rare those are.

This is a huge buff. Looking at playable synthetics, their lack of pain alone makes them extremely powerful, let alone organics who are effectively immortal. This will force changelings to actually moderate and care about their escalation like any other antagonist does because every single situation no longer has your entire round teetering on ending with a single disarm. Changelings will become extremely difficult to hold down as a result of this. Unlike the synthetics that feel no pain, there will be no direct hard counter such as EMPs or flashes to instantly end your round. How this is affected by changeling's antagonist status is yet to be seen, and it'll probably seem better in practice.

I approve, but it's more like the IPC revival: I don't think it addresses the core problem, which in this case is the mindset of the player.

There has been a lot of gnarly ling plays, but the general belief around Ling is that it's less fun because of the player feel of both powergaming and ganking. Ling revolves around the gank- The assassination with no trace, minimal time spent, always moving to the next kill and the next objective. Yet this style of play is not only frowned upon, it's against the rules entirely. Working out a way to allow the Ling to gank and keep a player involved and in the round is in my opinion pivotal before we move to buff it even more.

Vamp has this ability, and it's rather intuitive to its role. Ling has no such thing, nor should it have such a thing- but there's been a few mentioned possibilities of what we could do, from bringing them into a collective hivemind and expanding your troops ala Genestealers, or absorbing them into your body and them adding to the collective consciousness of the original player, now in accordance with their objective and working as a unison ala Goon ling.

I approve this change in general however, and thinks this addresses a problem that would exist regardless (stuns stronk) and thus would be vastly effective in the Ling's toolset.

I’d like the Ling to stay close to its roots. This is a pretty good idea and makes good IC sense so ye.

In regards to assassinating crew and leaving no trace, I’d dispute that as gank, because that’s what a professional hunter would do. As long as you give them suitable buildup RP, killing them without a trace is fine.

I'd love to see changelings immune to stun. Having this level of confidence in my ability to resist stuns I would be able to approach victims with more confidence.

I don't agree that changeling is inherently "gank". There is this idea that roleplaying has to be judged by the duration spent being subject to or giving dialogue and monologues before death.

We already know what changelings are like if they don't get stunned or feel pain. Changelings can evolve epinephrine sacks.

The answer is they get super fucking overpowered. If this was a constant thing with no drawbacks (smaller arsenal to use), it would be unfairly good. You'd need to resort to headgibbing them or similar, or else even if they survive on the lowest amount of health they can hide and recover fully in a minute.

Changeling is incredibly good with the tools it has at it's disposal. It's like ninja - it just has a high skill cap, not because it's hard to use effectively, but because it's hard to use effectively without upsetting people. I'd like to keep it that way.

Not really sure I'm that okay with this idea. Much like how cult are practically immune to stuns, this makes it so that security will always result to lethal options with lings.

What's the point of the security team if the only roleplay they can respond to you with is a quick death?

While I'm for removing riskless instant applications of stuns I'm not very much down for adding more stun immunity into the game. The balance needs to exist.

The issue with lings is their unsatisfactory progression system and their uninteresting abilities. That and they only exist to take other characters out of the round simply to progress, so...

We already know what changelings are like if they don't get stunned or feel pain. Changelings can evolve epinephrine sacks.

The epinephrine sacs do not prevent stuns, nor provide any resistance to them. It recovers you from one stun by expending half your chemical supply. So you can just get batoned again after a second or two, for example. At least that's how I remember it.

Not really sure I'm that okay with this idea. Much like how cult are practically immune to stuns, this makes it so that security will always result to lethal options with lings.

This is a concern too. However, cult is a team gamemode - you're guarunteed to fight more than 3-4 of them at round start (if they're hostile), and they can very rapidly increase these numbers with constructs and more people who can just as easily summon the stun immune armor. Changelings, unlike cult, aren't encouraged in any way shape or form to cooperate. It massively benefits changelings to work together but ultimately this is incredibly rare. On top of all that there is typically no more than 1-4 changelings, and this number can only decrease as the round progresses. How the immediate escalation to lethals affects changeling as a gamemode is something that will need to be seen in practice. For cult, it sometimes works great - not having the entire cult stuncuffed 20 minutes in can contribute to a good round easily.

What's the point of the security team if the only roleplay they can respond to you with is a quick death?

See cult. It often leads to really shit rounds when security is just decapped by cult with their free esword+stun immune armor when all security had were tasers and stunbatons. In regards to that, again, the lack of multiplying changelings and the fact that they're essentially solo antagonists more akin to ninja/wizard than traitors/vampires might help.

The epinephrine sacs do not prevent stuns, nor provide any resistance to them. It recovers you from one stun by expending half your chemical supply. So you can just get batoned again after a second or two, for example. At least that's how I remember it.

holy fucking shit

all this time i've just been charging in as changeling with no more protection than a wet fucking towel and have never been stunned once

i'm the luckiest fucking man on earth

yeah, give changelings some bonuses against pain at least. we cant all be as robust as i am

This is a clear +1

A simple, effective way of allowing the ling kit to be explored more freely, without having a ling rely on "bullshit" gank methods such as silence stings. Another suggestion would be make them more RESISTANT to stuns and pain. In the same way it takes time for them to reconstruct their genome after transforming, recovering from multiple electrical shocks should be rough. I've had dozens of round end simply because I am repeatedly stunned-cuffed as ling is arguably the ONLY killing antag with no built in access to armour. Cult gets robes, vampires don't need to kill unless they are cornered, mercs get voidsuits, traitors get access to heavy armour kits, revs have the ability to multiply very rapidly (and that round type rarely truly involves killing), wizard gets heals and a voidsuit and a pain-immune form, ninja can teleport and has armour, and lastly, raiders get voidsuits/whatever they spawn with. Ling has nothing like this except it's horror form, which has a long cool down and is very difficult to pull off. Ling may have stasis and rapid regen, but that means nothing when the only antag entirely forced to go full-melee to be able to down someone (without the ranged death/paralysis sting, which I've never seen pulled off) has no inbuilt defence against a single prod to the head.

I don't know, give them cool-down tramadol or something. Give them heavy armour suit valued armour. Give them /something/ to make them robust against stuns, but not something that makes them OP.

Again, +1. This is the smartest, simplest ling rework I've seen suggested. Even as a temp fix for a full rework.

I unironically support this.

Hard counter for changelog is given - if you put them in crusher while they are dead, under elevator or blow them up, throwing them into SM, using crematorium. On Exodus burning them in incenerator also worked.

Edit: I support it

Well, this was a refreshing post about a "rework" if any. I can see great potential in this, either in combat or laughing at someone for trying to inflict pain on you.

To me, lings are a very hit or miss. Either you stalk around maint and pick people off one by one, or you try to take on the entirely of everyone in one big swoop. Either way, kinda sucks.

Big supportive numbero uno for this one.

Bump.

Yeah, they need pain immunity. As it stands a changeling really has no way to escape from security once the stun baton comes out, making it one of the weakest on-station antagonists.

Yes, please. Ling is definitely the weakest on-station antagonist, in my opinion. 

This is an old-ass thread. As it were, I'd argue fire and similar should be what causes them pain. Fire as a whole should be their hard counter, with a greater resilience to physical damage. Alternatively, just remove them and realize Vampires are better changelings all-around.

1 hour ago, Carver said:

This is an old-ass thread. As it were, I'd argue fire and similar should be what causes them pain. Fire as a whole should be their hard counter, with a greater resilience to physical damage. Alternatively, just remove them and realize Vampires are better changelings all-around.

 

This is a very good point. Fire is one of the primary weakness of the titular "thing/thing from out of this world" from The Thing, and it's something that's not really easily accessible for the station's crew unless they go looking for it.

just need a dev to step up and touch LING CODEEEE

You may get your wish. I've decided to rework ling as my dev trial project. A project thread will go up once I have the first PR up. Pray reworking this mess doesn't kill me and ling might just become a fun gamemode instead of a meme. 

I've definitely taken the suggestions of this thread into consideration for my plans.