Sentinel Strain: Witch, a support strain focused around special venom compounds

Development Ideaguys
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450 health

same speed/plasma

20 slash damage maximum

Replaces the neuro abilities and tailstab to give some unique ones

Select Venom Type: Will cycle between toxic/pain/hallucinogenic venom, to be used by the next two abilities

Fire Venom Barb: 40 plasma. Fires a quick, medium range barb loaded with a custom venom type, intended to have a short lasting effect from relative safety, has IFF, unlike slowing spit

Venom Injection: 100 plasma. The witch stabs a human with her tail, injecting a more powerful compound of the selected venom, can be done instantly on a prone human or with a 1 second delay if the human is standing.

Now I’ll go into each of the custom venom types. Keep in mind this is a rough idea.

Toxic Venom: Very low toxin and heart damage, slow but long metabolism. Injected: Slightly more toxin damage, moderately more heart damage, marine can suffer a heart attack once their heart reaches a certain damage threshold.

Painful Venom: Rapidly purges painkilling chemicals from the targets bloodstream, decreases the amount of pain required to go into paincrit moderately. Injected: Increases the amount of pain received by all sources by 20 percent, paincrit lasts longer.

Hallucinogenic Venom: When fired as a barb, it makes no sound and gives no indication it has been fired (no projectile/chat message). After a delay, target will hallucinate one of a number of effects, lasts for a short time.

Potential Hallucinations: Queen stomping (~5 seconds), fake lights, fake Cas/Mortar/Ob chat messages and sounds, fake gunfire/xeno abilities, fake xeno sounds.

Injected: target becomes unable to perceive fellow humans. Sprites, shoulder lamps, pointing disapear, audio emotes don’t play, blocks leader orders.

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qualifying info: the barbs are fired as a projectile from the tail if you needed visual inspiration

the toxin damage is mostly to make marines rely on medics more, it wont kill a target any faster than an equivalent number of runners slashing them or spitters spitting acid at them.

I’m torn on if injecting hallucinogens should block all humans or just allied ones, could cause weird HvH interactions but running a check for allies might add strain

I am not firm on the specifics for the painful venom, I would like it to be balanced so that a witch could put a single marine out of the fight without making it impossible to fight back. I guess it would only be a real concern if the marine is alone, in which case this just makes it easier to cap them.

I think letting toxic venom cause a heart attack should be carefully balanced; a marine getting spat at a couple times should be fine, but if you inject them with heart attack juice they should be on a timer to go find a medic or hope they have something with anti toxin in it. I wouldnt be opposed to giving marines anti toxin pills in the marine med if this was added also

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Heart damage might be a bit too much (it’s one of the main ways of attrition for marines who die a lot), and making marines paincrit is almost beneficial to marines since they cannot be capped. Unless you plan to make it a solocapping method with a hugger on standby at all times.

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paincrit marines cant fight back, so in a large fight they have to be taken out of the fight or they can be easily killed/pulled away

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Pain crit marines take oxy damage, and also take massive oxy damage or straight up die if xenoes try dragging or hauling them.

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Sounds very interesting.

Generally the idea is fine, but it suffers from the same problems base senti suffers from.
The lack of feedback. Not to the marine, (well kinda too but not the point) but feedback to the sentinal.
If you hit something and dont see any results of it yourself, it will feel like shit.
Even if john marine, after getting hit, gets a c-t scan back on the almayer showing his heart will violently explode in 4 seconds.
But at the very least, even the hallu spike will need a proper reaction for the senti to see. Like, having the projectile visibel to only xenos or some bs like that.
Ya know?

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Hallucinogenic Venom sounds diabolically funny if it isnt totally ignored

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Would it be LRP as a marine to shout BURN THE WITCH?

@kooarbiter I full support this addition just to be able to say that.

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why shout it when you can do it yourself

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