Nightmare Rework to reflect the ambiguous Dream World transition

To my mind, Freddy's power in concept is along a similar vein to the Pig and Sadako. He's a stealthy m1 killer going for downs and hooks, who relies on the threat of pulling survivors into the dream world to slow survivors down.

The looming threat of the dream world should encourage survivors to miss skillchecks at the expense of giving Nightmare slow down and information to wake up fast, leave gens to take time to wake each other up, or spend time reaching the alarm clock for all the benefits. Freddy meanwhile tries to apply pressure amidst this slowdown with downs and hooks... Like Sadako he has a gen teleport to help with map traversal to keep up the pressure.

While survivors are awake, Nightmare has a limited stealth ability. Survivors hear his terror radius, but see him intermittently between 16-32m and see him normally at 16m. Due to the need to pressure survivors while they are awake as well as asleep, Freddy can hit awake survivors normally. Successful hits/time pulls survivors into the dream world...

The dream world is meant to be where Freddy shines, once pulled in, Survivors now can be affected by dream powers, which improve Freddy's chase and helps him score downs more quickly compared to his awake gameplay. Survivors need to get out of the dreamworld to limit this power and be relatively safe again, balancing completing gens with keep themselves awake.

Freddy's biggest issue is similar to old Sadako, his dream world doesn't pose enough of a threat for survivors to actually care to interact with his slowdown. Just like players ignored Sadako tapes, survivors generally ignore being asleep, as Freddy still has to hit them for it to have any value.

The concept is at base Freddy is not very strong, being a basic m1 killer with very limited chase power... but once in the dream world, Freddy should be way stronger, getting abilities to help him down survivors easily... sounds good.... however the reality is, once there, survivors only penalty is that they hear his lullaby instead of his terror radius, but you can see him normally. This isn't much of a upgrade... but now we have his big game changing strength, which is.... he actually gets to use his dream snares or dream pallets... 🤨

Needless to say, this is why he is bad, neither of these things is especially strong. In the dream world, he is still at his core an m1 killer who is now about as effective as Doctor in chase. Having to wait/play around to be about as good as Doctor is not really much of a boost to say this is where his threat of the dream world is supposed to come in.

This current iteration loses a big portion of what makes Freddy Freddy. He can attack survivors while awake, but when asleep, he isn't really that much stronger... it doesn't fit the idea of a "dream demon" or a "nightmare" at all.

When it comes to what I would want out of Freddy, I want to emulate the films surprise dream transition, where survivors don't know whether they are asleep or not until it's too late. I also would want an idea of Freddy's boiler room, that makes Freddy much more dangerous if players continue to ignore him and his dream world. Goals in detail:

- Have a more lore accurate distinction between being asleep and awake. Make being awake rather safe, but make the threat of the dream world strong. Actively encourage survivors to take time out of the busy gen repairing schedules to deal with being asleep before Freddy even shows up.

- Capture the uncertainty of being awake/asleep from the movies. Survivors shouldn't know they're in the dream world, until Freddy tips his hand.

- Capture an essence of Freddy's boiler room as an even bigger threat to Survivors in the dream world.

Mostly Unchanged, just updated for new terms. Other changes in his kit make a lot of these situationally better by default, with the only notable exception that blindness is now basekit in tbe Deep Dream World.

Wool Shirt - Asleep survivors and survivors inside the Dream World suffer from the following effects: Increases the Regression penalty of failed Repairing and Healing Skill Checks by +4 %.

Sheep Block - Survivors interacting with a Dream Trap suffer from the Oblivious Status Effect for 30 seconds.

Kid's Drawing - Unchanged

Garden Rake - Grants an additional 2 Dream Traps to the Nightmares trap limit.

Prototype Claws - Grants an additional 2 Dream Trap to the Nightmares trap limit. The Auras of Survivors interacting with Dream Traps are revealed for 4 seconds.

Outdoor Rope - Asleep survivors and survivors inside the Dream World suffer from the following effects: Increases the audible range of Generator-Repair noises by +8 metres.

Nancy's Sketch - Unchanged

Green Dress - Asleep survivors and survivors inside the Dream World suffer from the following effects: Increases the regression penalty of failed repair and Healing Skill Checks at +4 %. The Auras of Survivors failing these Skill Checks are revealed for 3 seconds.

Cat Block - Unchanged

Unicorn Block - Survivors interacting with a Dream Trap suffer from the Oblivious Status Effect for 45 seconds.

Paint Thinner - Grants an additional 2 Dream Trap Tokens. The Auras of Survivors interacting with Dream Traps are revealed for 6 seconds.

Nancy's Masterpiece - Unchanged

Jump Rope - Increases the volume of Survivors' Grunts of Pain by +50 %, if they are Asleep or in the Dream World.

Blue Dress - Asleep survivors and survivors inside the Dream World suffer from the following effects: Increases the Regression penalty of failed Repairing and Healing Skill Checks by +4 %. The Auras of Survivors failing these Skill Checks are revealed for 4 seconds.

Pill Bottle - Reduces the distance range at which Alert/Awake/Asleep Survivors see The Nightmare intermittently to 0 to 24 metres. The Nightmare is invisible to awake survivors beyond 24 metres.

Swing Chains - Asleep survivors and survivors inside the Dream World suffer from the following effects: The Footstep noises of Survivors are 50 % louder.

Class Photo - Unchanged

"Z" Block - Unchanged

Red Paint Brush - Causes all survivors to start the trial inside the Dream World.

Black Box : Asleep survivors and survivors inside the Dream World suffer from the following effects: Recently opened Exit Gates are blocked for 15 seconds.

I really want to capture the confusion Freddy has with regards to when survivors are in and not in the dream state, and I want the dream state itself to be far more intimidating. I hope this suggestion achieves the goal, and wouldn't require too massive a rework to implement... most funcitonality is already in the game, just repurposed for greater effect.

I don't think the damage immunity while awake makes him unviable here, as survivors will transition quicker to the dream world doing objectives, and he can wound survivors as normal while retaining his stealth while they are not in the dream world. If he needs to force someone into the dream world, and doing do starts building for the deep dream world.

Skill checks being changed to only tell you which state of dream progression you're in, and not waking you up is a significant time loss for the Survivors. The Dream World remains largely the same, outside of Freddy now having access to both Dream Pallets AND Dream Snares at base... but we now have the looming threat of the Deep Dream World, where Freddy becomes very potent.

This hopefully encourages Survivors to spend time waking themselves or each other up to avoid the more punishing aspects of the Deep Dream World.

As I say, I'm not an elite DBD player, so wouldn't claim to know if this would be too strong, or even not be good enough to make him viable.... there is natural anti -tunnel in his kit here, so perhaps making certain numbers stronger is in order.