Need Someone to Critique my Character Mod Idea

[FelineDreams]

I've been working on a mod for a character that is a empathic artist who serves a support role that would rely on followers and allies in combat.

The survivor is a support character that can create art pieces that can boost allies though with a downside alongside it (One such art piece I came up with is Insane Scribbles which boosts speed at the cost of a sanity drain) [these art pieces will not last forever mind you]. The survivor's boons are that she is an empath (when other players are below a certain percentage of sanity and are nearby it drains her sanity) also that she deals less damage (like Wes levels of damage) and takes increased damage from attacks.

Currently I'm in the design phase and my current concept drawing looks like this

One of my many worries is character balance as well as that my concept design isn't living up to the artist idea. So I'm posting this to see if people can provide some feedback on this.

[Hamurlik]

The character in her current state enforces a playstyle of always staying near teammates. Dealing less damage and taking more damage is really frail. I feel like players would rather have her die than have to help her. It's much a burden to keep her around, especially since she gets sanity drain when others sanity is low. Players would be unintentionally hurting a teammate for just farming nightmare fuel. Warly and Wigfrid also provide buffs, yet aren't useless by themselves, and can fight just as well if not better than other characters. But let's stick with the frailty idea. Just need to give other players a reason to care.

You could make her less wasteful using tools, weapons, armor, pretty much everything except staffs and amulets. Then players wouldn't feel bad for crafting weapons and armor for her considering she is a lot more likely to die and waste it.

You could go further with the empath idea, and make it a double edge sword instead of just a downside. Instead of her losing sanity when everyone else is insane, make everyone around catch up to her current sanity. So if she's insane, everyone will feel worse, but if she's happy, everyone will feel better.

What is she were more sensitive to everything around cause she's an empath? She would gain sanity from seeing pretty things like floors and flowers, and lose it from seeing skeletons and monsters. She could also gain more sanity from foods, so players won't think it's a waste to help her if she got insane by those things.

And going from that idea, you could also make her crafts require more than just the right ingredients. What if she had a sketchbook, and she would first have to venture out somewhere to see something and then sketch it to make a painting on it later? Similar to WX-78, except the buffs are for allies, and not her. The buffs could be better depending on how dangerous it is to be around. She could look at a boss from afar to sketch it, risking to provoke it. She could sketch a magma pond, or a shadow monster, etc.

And, if you want to make it harder, you could make sketching require not just looking at something and immediately running away, but actually interacting with it? Provoking a dragon fly, burning by a magma pond, staying insane for a while, etc. Or, to make it even harder, she could get traumatized by getting insane and get less benefits from foods for a few days.

And sketching doesn't have to be as simple as being in range of a thing. What if there were some really powerful sketches that required weird conditions, like having 10 rabbits surrounding you at the same time, or looking at multiple players playing as the same character at the same time? Just whatever you can come up with, really.

I also suggest giving her unique structures alongside the paintings. What if she could make special marble sculptures that would give sanity to everyone around in a big range, or, more interestingly, give area around the statue a buff alongside a debuff, just like her arts? What if she could make a statue that would speed up plants growing by 2 but occasionally spawn monsters?

Downsides are interesting. But it would be great if trying to activate a debuff would first call a vote to everyone around. Public server hosts will thank you.

That's all. Can't think of anything more.

[FelineDreams]

6 hours ago, Hamurlik said:

The character in her current state enforces a playstyle of always staying near teammates. Dealing less damage and taking more damage is really frail. I feel like players would rather have her die than have to help her. It's much a burden to keep her around, especially since she gets sanity drain when others sanity is low. Players would be unintentionally hurting a teammate for just farming nightmare fuel. Warly and Wigfrid also provide buffs, yet aren't useless by themselves, and can fight just as well if not better than other characters. But let's stick with the frailty idea. Just need to give other players a reason to care.

You could make her less wasteful using tools, weapons, armor, pretty much everything except staffs and amulets. Then players wouldn't feel bad for crafting weapons and armor for her considering she is a lot more likely to die and waste it.

You could go further with the empath idea, and make it a double edge sword instead of just a downside. Instead of her losing sanity when everyone else is insane, make everyone around catch up to her current sanity. So if she's insane, everyone will feel worse, but if she's happy, everyone will feel better.

What is she were more sensitive to everything around cause she's an empath? She would gain sanity from seeing pretty things like floors and flowers, and lose it from seeing skeletons and monsters. She could also gain more sanity from foods, so players won't think it's a waste to help her if she got insane by those things.

And going from that idea, you could also make her crafts require more than just the right ingredients. What if she had a sketchbook, and she would first have to venture out somewhere to see something and then sketch it to make a painting on it later? Similar to WX-78, except the buffs are for allies, and not her. The buffs could be better depending on how dangerous it is to be around. She could look at a boss from afar to sketch it, risking to provoke it. She could sketch a magma pond, or a shadow monster, etc.

And, if you want to make it harder, you could make sketching require not just looking at something and immediately running away, but actually interacting with it? Provoking a dragon fly, burning by a magma pond, staying insane for a while, etc. Or, to make it even harder, she could get traumatized by getting insane and get less benefits from foods for a few days.

And sketching doesn't have to be as simple as being in range of a thing. What if there were some really powerful sketches that required weird conditions, like having 10 rabbits surrounding you at the same time, or looking at multiple players playing as the same character at the same time? Just whatever you can come up with, really.

I also suggest giving her unique structures alongside the paintings. What if she could make special marble sculptures that would give sanity to everyone around in a big range, or, more interestingly, give area around the statue a buff alongside a debuff, just like her arts? What if she could make a statue that would speed up plants growing by 2 but occasionally spawn monsters?

Downsides are interesting. But it would be great if trying to activate a debuff would first call a vote to everyone around. Public server hosts will thank you.

That's all. Can't think of anything more.

That approach to the empathy mechanic would actually would work better than mine, I was having a hard time figuring out how to approach this kind of mechanic so everything you suggested really helps. I might just go with your double edged sword route. I'm going to forgo the fragility bit, since after some play testing I realized how easy it is to die on day 1 to literally anything (died multiple times to swarms of killer bees that just had to spawn close to the floral postern). She will still deal less damage but I think if she had a 0.75 penalty on her attack it might make it more bearable. 

As for the sketching mechanic, what you described is basically close to my original plan for the character back when I wanted them to be able to pull her drawings off the page. I scratched that idea since I have never coded ai before, it never really came to mind that I could use the same acquiring system I visioned for that with a buff system. Perhaps making it so that the sketchbook she starts with can hold one of the art buffs (kind of like the ecto-herbology buffs Wendy can craft for Abigail) and will for a period of time buff the other players in the world. Suddenly I'm thinking of how useful the bush hat would be for this. I may go with a risk equals reward route for the strength of these buffs and making it so only certain buffs from the sketches certain mobs (like the giants) will have downsides attached as well as having a call to vote so that there isn't any grief caused by it's activation. 

All in all, those are really good ideas there. Thank you so much for your help.

[. . .]

I don't have any critiques, but I just wanted to say I like your character's design! She's very kawaii! Good work!