Killer Creation: The Effigy

Tarvesh

                    The Effigy

As always, any ability/perk numbers are given in tier 1/2/3 order.

Backstory:
Terrance Lawson was never good person. As a child he was violent. He picked on other children, tortured neighborhood animals, and regularly damaged property. He got no better as he grew.

Terrance grew more and more violent as he grew up, graduating to petty crimes to full on assault, crime sprees, and murder. Life was good for Terrance, if not a bit chaotic and occasionally interrupted with stints in jail. That was during the roaring twenties.

Prohibition made men like Terrance worth their weight in gold. He was enforcer, a booze runner, and cleaner. If there was a dirty job to be done, Terrance was the guy to call on. However, Prohibition didn’t last forever and was quickly followed up by the Great Depression.

As the Depression dragged on, Terrance’s job opportunities behave to dry up. Desperate for work, Terrance accepted a job at a farm. He toiled away on the farm doing basic labor; fixing fences, tending to farm equipment, working the fields... it was boring and pointless. And his nature was growing stagnant.

One day, he couldn’t take it anymore. He needed to get away from the farm and get back to a city where his skills could be put to more devious use. But he couldn’t leave anyone behind that could remember his face. So he decided to get rid of the farmer and his family.

He waited until the farmer left to sell some vegetables one day and slaughtered the farmer’s wife and children. Better to get them out of the way and get the farmer angry so he’d be easier to handle.

Except that the farmer hadn’t gone to sell vegetables. He’d gone to gather help. He had seen a wanted poster a few weeks before that looked like Terrance and had taken time to make sure he was the same guy. When he was sure, he knew he would need help in apprehending him.

When the farmer returned with a group of men armed with rifles, Terrance knew he’d been found out and had to find a way to escape. But the bloody evidence of Terrance’s crime, the farmer and his possey grew furious. They chased Terrance across the fields and finally surrounded him in the corn field.

They beat him bloody, and broke every bone in his body until he was as limp and pliable as a rag doll. The farmer continued to beat him fornhour on end. Eventually, he decided not to turn Terrance in. He was unrecognizable in the state he was in and never would be after the beating he took. So the farmer had a different idea.

He cut Terrance open in a dozen different places and stuffed the wounds with straw and feathers, then dress him up in old clothes and a hat. Then, he strung Terrance up on a pole and left him in the corn field as a warning to anyone else.

Terrance cling to life with no food or water, bleeding and suffering from infected wounds for days. Eventually, the crows began circle and land, picking at his flesh without remorse. His wheezing cries of pain went unheard even as his nose, ears, and eyes were plucked away.

As his torture continued, he began to hear whispers promising him a way to indulge his murderous desire and to turn his torturers to his control. As the whispers grew louder and Terrance’s willpower grew weaker, he finally gave in.

Base Speed:
115%

Weapon:
Pitchfork

Powers:
Whenever The Effigy is the killer, the amount of crows on any map is doubled.

Spies from Shadows - (This perk is baked into The Effigy’s kit directly) The crows found in the world can communicate directly with you. 100% of the time, cawing Crows give you a visual cue when you are within a range of 48 meters.

Pecking Order - The Effigy has no lunge attack. Instead, he commands a single crow within 20 meters to follow the target of this ability for thirty seconds. The survivor with a crow following them this way gains the Exposed effect. The crow will continue to caw during this time in a manner to alert The Effigy. Pecking Order has a cooldown of 10 seconds, and crows within range cannot respond to this ability if they are currently active for other abilities or effects (such as flying away due to survivors passing by, creating alerts via Spies From The Shadows, Carrion Crows, Impatient for Meat, etc).

Carrion Circling- Survivors in a dying state will have crows circling and cawing at them until they either bleed out or are healed from a dying state.

Perks:
Impatient for Meat- The killer’s bloodlust influences the desire for death in all the world around them. Stillness Crows begin to circle and caw, revealing a stationary survivor’s location in 25/50/75% less time and can be heard from twice the distance.

Hex: Effigy- Your ability to instill fear and panic overrides a survivor’s desire to save their friends. Whenever a Survivor is hooked, the auras of other survivors within 5/10/15 meters of the hooked Survivor is revealed for 2/3/4 seconds every 10 seconds.

Broken Body- You are used to pain, and all this time in the Entity’s realm has helped you learn forms of pain, and they only encourage you to spill blood. Whenever you become stunned or blinded, you gain a 5/10/15% burst of speed for 2/4/6 seconds after the duration of the stun/blind.

Snikers

I've always liked the idea of a crow-focused killer, and I think it's executed well here. The perks are creative and effective, mostly without being overpowered, but I think the time reductions on Impatient for Meat might go a bit over the top. I mean, we're talking like twenty seconds at level 3 of the perk, making it basically impossible for a survivor to lose a killer through stealth.

I'm not sure if giving perks for free is the right option (and Carrion Circling is basically a free - and better - Deerstalker). Given Spies from the Shadows is already a non-unique perk, it may be enough just to have double crows on the map (and in fact, that in combination with SftS may have the opposite intended effect and make it impossible for the killer to focus through the nonstop notifications). I can tell flawless tracking is this killer's thing, but there has to be a limit.

Pecking Order is very interesting, though it needs a cooldown. Gameplay wise I think it would feel similar to Leatherface's chainsaw; an instant-down weapon that relies on catching its targets away from any vaults or pallets. It also introduces some interesting counterplays if the crow needs to actually exist within 20m (and presumably not have flown off).

Tarvesh

Snikers said:

I've always liked the idea of a crow-focused killer, and I think it's executed well here. The perks are creative and effective, mostly without being overpowered, but I think the time reductions on Impatient for Meat might go a bit over the top. I mean, we're talking like twenty seconds at level 3 of the perk, making it basically impossible for a survivor to lose a killer through stealth.

I guess i’ve Just never really encountered a time when going 20 seconds in complete stealth has been necessary (except during a Hatch stalemate but that’s a whole different can of worms). I’m not the best at judging time for stuff like this so good constructive criticism is always welcome. Would 10/25/50% be better? That would move it to 30 seconds before they appear.

Snikers said:

I'm not sure if giving perks for free is the right option (and Carrion Circling is basically a free - and better - Deerstalker). Given Spies from the Shadows is already a non-unique perk, it may be enough just to have double crows on the map (and in fact, that in combination with SftS may have the opposite intended effect and make it impossible for the killer to focus through the nonstop notifications). I can tell flawless tracking is this killer's thing, but there has to be a limit.

Unlike Deerstalker, Carrion Crows wouldn’t highlight the auras of downed survivors. You’d still have to find the crows which I imagine would be circling closer to the ground (think Pig’s crouching height).
I think you actually figured out why I doubled the number of crows and baked in SftS. All that input would force a the killer to try and sift through all the information to figure out where his priorities should be.
But like I said, I love constructive criticism and if you have any other suggestions or way to work things out I’d love to hear them. I just thought forcing the killer to have to prioritize which information is important and which is being created by the other survivors to throw him off. Since so many crows and alerts can be used against the killer as a counterplay.

Snikers said:

Pecking Order is very interesting, though it needs a cooldown. Gameplay wise I think it would feel similar to Leatherface's chainsaw; an instant-down weapon that relies on catching its targets away from any vaults or pallets. It also introduces some interesting counterplays if the crow needs to actually exist within 20m (and presumably not have flown off).

I completely forgot to put a cool down into this (which I had meant to). I had meant to put in a 10 second cooldown. But you’re right that a crow needs to be within 20m to be used. But I also meant to add that the crows in range can’t be currently active with other abilities or effects (like being alerted to a survivor’s passing, triggering SftS, being used for Carrion Crows, Impatient for Meat, etc). 

I’d like to know more of what you think. And I’ll go ahead and add the additional conditions to Pecking Order.

The more it’s discussed, the more I’ll edit to make the Effigy as balanced as possible.

HatCreature

I saw you mentioned that the noise notification from the crows could be seen as a counterplay to the Effigy which makes sense, but what if there was ONLY the visual cue of the bird and no sound? 64m is pretty far and if you can't see distances very well you'll definitley see the bird and know someone is there. This way you'll have SFTS but it will be in a weaker? capacity and possibly still useful but not as annoying.

Also good job on your Hex, I've been wanting to create a Killer version of Kindred but thought it might be too powerful but you proved me wrong. I was thinking it would show the other Survivors everywhere but just near the hook is fine too, this way you'll know if someone is about to get insta-saved or if you have MYC and should start heading back. Also, maybe the Aura of the unhooker could be shown briefly after unhooking? I've been wanting to rework MYC with this effect but everyone says it's too much, your perk is perfect for it.

One more thing, Broken Body, a lot of people break the pallet immediatley after getting stunned, maybe the timer should pause during a pallet break? Then again this would go great with Spirit Fury or Brutal Strength, overall these are great perks good job on this whole thing man, I finally found a Scarecrow Killer I actually like.

Tarvesh

HatCreature said:

I saw you mentioned that the noise notification from the crows could be seen as a counterplay to the Effigy which makes sense, but what if there was ONLY the visual cue of the bird and no sound? 64m is pretty far and if you can't see distances very well you'll definitley see the bird and know someone is there. This way you'll have SFTS but it will be in a weaker? capacity and possibly still useful but not as annoying.

At that distance you wouldn’t be hearing the crows regardless. The only thing you would get is the visual. You probably wouldn't even see the bird itself. The idea is to give the survivors a way to give false information even when they’re on the opposite side of the map. Forcing the killer to try and decide on what’s good info and what’s bad info is built into the Effigy in this way. Too much of a good thing.

HatCreature said:
Also good job on your Hex, I've been wanting to create a Killer version of Kindred but thought it might be too powerful but you proved me wrong. I was thinking it would show the other Survivors everywhere but just near the hook is fine too, this way you'll know if someone is about to get insta-saved or if you have MYC and should start heading back. Also, maybe the Aura of the unhooker could be shown briefly after unhooking? I've been wanting to rework MYC with this effect but everyone says it's too much, your perk is perfect for it.

First, thank you very much for he compliment here. It was tricky trying to find out a way to make hooking a player somehow new and unique. I considered making saviors auras visible, but I figured that would make it too powerful. There are already perks that show where a savior is, so trying combine where would-be saviors are and where actual saviors are seemed like it would be too strong. I was trying my best to keep things fair and balanced.

HatCreature said:

One more thing, Broken Body, a lot of people break the pallet immediatley after getting stunned, maybe the timer should pause during a pallet break? Then again this would go great with Spirit Fury or Brutal Strength, overall these are great perks good job on this whole thing man, I finally found a Scarecrow Killer I actually like.

It’s a speed buff even after a full pallet stun duration (which is 2.5 seconds). Even if you break the pallet when the perk activates, you still have a .5 second speed boost (not much but it's still there). At tier 3 you have a 3.5 seconds speed boost (which is considerable). There are also a number of perks that will allow to instantly break pallets, somcombining the two effects didn’t seem fair since you could simply add multiple perks in your build.

I’m really glad you liked the killer! He was fun to try and make and balance. I’m always trying to figure out how to balance him out and hopefully inspire the devs to simply take it and use it. Lol