# Serial Killer Antagonist + Psychologist Buff Design Doc

**Abstract:**
The Psychologist is a severely underused and underdeveloped role in my opinion. Its purpose is almost Purley RP, which would be fine if we were a heavy RP server, but this is /TG/, the best you’re going to get is medium RP on Manuel. Because we aren’t heavy RP, an almost purely RP role is going to be unplayed, and when it does get played most players will usually ignore them to complete gameplay objectives instead of RP. If I see a psychologist in game, if I have the time I will always ask for a session just because I know they have nothing else to do, and the few times I played Psychologist (4.7 hours, about 3 rounds), I found myself ignored by the majority of the crew with no real purpose. The Serial Killer antagonist and a few buffs to Psychologist so people actually have a reason to interact and play it fixes this problem. There's only one problem. I suck at coding, and if I tried to do this myself it would probably not happen. Inspired by Mothblocks GDC talk, I have decided to draft this document to let the community code while I provide the initial sprite work and initial general design. Rebalances and criticism is welcome, I have never done anything like this before. **If nothing else please strongly consider my Psychologist traitor item and the therapy session buff.**

**Goals:**
Give people a reason to play psychologist
Create a fun new antagonist that allows for other people to expand on it.

**Psychologist Buffs:**
For the sake of clarity, if I say Psychologist, I mean someone with the psychologist skill chip.

The Psychologist now spawns with a Psychologist skillchip. This skill chip gives the Friendly and Empath quirks without needing to take negative quirks to balance it out. It also gives Psychologist an ability called “Give Session,” which allows the Psychologist to choose a player. Once chosen, for the next five minutes whenever the Psychologist speaks around this player they get a small mood and sanity buff. The idea of this is that a session should take around 5 minutes and the Psychologist and player should be speaking back and forth, improving the players mood. Spares of this skill chip are kept in the CMO’s locker.

The Psychologist office now has files on every crew member in his office too, in a file cabinet. Psychologists can study a crew member and learn randomly generated memory words that have different effects. On serial killers these effects are different from normal crew.
The effects for normal crew are:
Bully: A randomly generated first name that when said causes the player to have a mood decrease if not in a session.
Trauma: A randomly generated phrase chosen from a list of items that remind players of a past trauma. (it should be very specific so players don’t accidentally trigger it) This causes a player to have an extreme mood debuff and start crying if not in a session.
Happy memory: A randomly generated combination of a Name and Item that gives a mood boost.
Players can see their memory words in their memory panel and are encouraged to RP with what they’re given.

Memory words can not be triggered over radio.

This may seem overpowered, but I believe that a lot of players undervalue their mood so it won’t be too much. Drugs are also a very powerful mood manipulation tool that can be used as a counter or alternative. This just gives a real reason to justify Psychologists being on medical staff. The Psychologist also has a lot of counterplay to the serial killer that I will explain later in this document, similar to how Chaplain counters the cult.

**New Psychologist traitor item!**
Supa Hot Fires Guide to Roasting: A 5 tc traitor item that teaches Psychologists how to roast people. Gives an ability called “roast.” When roast is activated, the Psychologist first chooses a target in their view. Then they type out the roast. This roast lowers their mood a tier, and adds the moodlet “Holy shit I just got roasted” If a roast uses a players negative memory word, it lowers your mood 2 tiers and lowers your sanity a tier. It also sets you on fire. Really easy to metagame but It’s more of a joke item anyways. A character minimum on the roast might be necessary to stop really fast spam, or maybe just put it on a cooldown of like 30 seconds.

**New antagonist, Serial Killer!**!

When’s the last time we have had a new antagonist? The Serial Killer is to Psychologist as Cult is to Chaplain. Before I explain how Psychologist counters Serial Killer, let's explain what Serial Killer is. First of all, due to the extreme blood shed required of serial killer, it only spawns when the round start server population is above 40. When a player gets serial killer, they spawn with a DVD disc called “Greatest Horror Hits!” They choose a movie to watch by inserting the DVD into their PDA, then become inspired by the main villain of whatever horror movie they watch and emulate the villain. The DVD then gets too scratched up to be watched again. The idea is that Serial Killer can potentially have an infinite amount of classes, it's just up to the community to code and balance new ones. A Serial Killer starts off normal, but with every kill they get another level, and get more powerful, but more obvious too. The serial killer has an ability called “Mark Target.” For a kill to count towards their progression. The target must be marked. You can only mark someone once, and they must be non silicon and a starting race inhabited by a player. You can only have one marked player at a time. After a certain amount of kills, they have to put on their costume to get any more upgrade points for their kills, making it very obvious to the crew what type of antagonist they are fighting against. The very end of a serial killer's level up is comparable to an ascended heretic, and will need about 20 kills to unlock. The reasoning for this high kill requirement is that heretics are forced to kill a specific person, while a serial killer can kill whoever is convenient for them. I will be focusing on one new serial killer, Blake Byers.

Blake Byers 

So far the only art I have is a front view of the mask, but if the community shows support I will sprite more. I also welcome other spriters to make artwork better than mine.

Blake Byers specialty is just being extremely robust once he gets the mask on. His mask is extremely evil, so evil in fact that if anyone except someone with the psychologist skillchip picks up the mask they get an extreme mood and sanity debuff. Here is how Blake Levels:
1. You get Blake’s knife and mask. Wearing the mask is optional, but kills must be done with his knife to count. The knife does 20 brute damage and has a high chance of inflicting blood loss. The mask doubles your stamina regen, if you choose to wear it. You can not talk after you put the mask on, even if you take it off after. You are also immune to becoming deaf so that psychologist counter play is always able to work.

2. You now only take 90% damage from all sources. Stamina damage is still the same.
3. You get an ability, grab. Needs to be activated while your active hand is empty. If you click on someone while you have your grab in hand, you get an instant 3rd tier aggressive grab. You can strangle or cut throats really easily from here.
4. You now have killer vision, an ability letting you see people through walls, like thermal vision. Cooldown to be decided on.
5. You now only take 70% damage from all sources. Stamina damage is still the same. You also now have the strength to get out of cuffs in 10 seconds. Straightjackets still take the same amount of time to get out of.
6. Your knife now does 30 brute damage
7. You now have a 20% chance to “shrug off” hits. Shrugged off hits still make the same noise and appear to hit, but do no damage. In the chat box people see “Player is (attacked by weapon), but doesn’t seem to care!”
8. You are stronger! You can punch down doors, windows, and barricades with your bare hands. This does no damage to you. I don’t know off the top of my head but basically equivalent strength to a hulk.
9. Your grab is upgraded. You can now grab people from 2 tiles away, and drag them through physical objects and walls, destroying these objects and doing major damage to the victim. You can not grab through reinforced walls, reinforced windows are fine though.
10. When your mask is on you have full stun resistance. You must have your mask on to level up from now on. You also can not die by normal means anymore, unless you get beheaded or gibbed. If sent into hard crit, you enter a reviving stasis that takes 1 minute. After the reviving stasis is over, you get back up fully healed and destroy any restraints you had on you.
11. You now only take 50% damage from all sources.
12. You now have a passive self heal. Not sure on exact numbers, but basically after 3 minutes of no damage you’re basically fully healed.
13. You can now pry open doors with your bare hands. Similar to the jaws of life, it takes 2 seconds.
14. Your grab can grab through anything.
15. You now shrug off hits 50% of the time, and gain a new ability, “Power through” During power through you get 5 charges that last 3 seconds to shrug off hits 100% of the time. These charges take 30 seconds to recharge. Damage during power through is converted to stamina damage, ignoring the stamina damage resistance. (this would probably be a nightmare to code, thinking about changing this to something else)
16. Your knife can no longer leave your hand unwillingly, even if you are slipped.
17. Your knife is now guaranteed to inflict heavy bleeding on people if hit in an unarmoured area.
18. Projectile weapons only do 20% damage to you.
19. Your knife does 40 brute damage. You feel close to your true potential! You can now only walk though.
20. Everyone gets a message that says “You feel a terrifying wave of evil wash over you” All damage sources only do 10% damage. Anyone in your vision has a 25% chance to trip when moving away from you. If a shuttle lands on you, instead of being gibbed you destroy a tile of the shuttle, but are stunned for 30 seconds.

**Psychologist Counters Serial Killer**

Wow! That Seems blatantly overpowered right? Not so fast. The Psychologist has some pretty hard counters to the serial killer. First, no matter what stage the serial killer is on, if a Psychologist looks at a player very closely (Inspecting them 3 times in a row, similar to how you view persistent scars) during a therapy session they will be able to tell with certainty if a player is a serial killer. The flavor text will say “You see true evil lurking behind their eyes” The idea of this is to mostly be done for suspected serial killers to just make sure that they are valid. Hopefully people RP while doing this too.

Psychologists can also de antag serial killers and allow them to go back into the round. All it takes is one full uninterrupted therapy session that uses all the trigger words generated round start and the serial killer is deconverted. This is meant to be similar to the effects of holy water.

And lastly, Psychologists can use the serial killers memory words to have different effects on them. These words do not work over radio.

Bully: Stuns the killer regardless of anti stun for 10 seconds. Use this time to restrain or kill!
Trauma: Causes the killer to go into a rage, temporarily getting the buffs of 2 levels higher for 1 minute. If the killer can not go 2 levels higher it goes as high as possible. Has a cooldown of 3 minutes.
Happy Memory: Soothes the killer, making them unable to attack for 20 seconds.

Feel free to make changes and suggestions because I’m sure there's lots of problems with this.