Dullahan: Close quarters head hunter

[Hawf]

A close quarters hero based on head-shot mechanics.

Background: A cursed soldier from the trenches of World War One, now a hitman for the Irish Mob of New York. Known for his relentless pursuit of targets, and ruthless execution by shotgun.

Primary Gimmick: He has to carry his decapitated head under his right arm, because of this shots aimed at the plume of smoke coming from his neck do not register as headshots. Players must strike the skull protected under his arm to score bonus headshot damage.

Weapon: Double barrel shotgun. Low base clip size but high close range damage.

Ability 1 - Blood Blind
Sprays blood in an area around him that inflicts enemies hit with a miss chance on their bullet attacks, and at higher levels reduces player vision. (could be a client side inverse sphere effect that physically obscures what an enemy player sees at a distance.)


Ability 2 - Jaunt
Dashes forward with great speed, any enemies struck during this dash are knocked back and briefly slowed, and at higher levels can be even be stunned. Used to initiate or chase down fleeing targets, can also double as an escape.

Ability 3 - Hunter's Tally (Passive)
Anytime Dullahan lands a headshot, gain a small scaling percentage buff to your attacks that lasts up to 12 seconds. Encourages chaining headshots together for increasingly powerful attacks.

Ability 4 - Crom's Due
Dullahan casts his skull toward a highlighted enemy hero, cursing them for a short time. If the target dies while under the effect Dullahan permanently gains a damage buff. If Dullahan dies while missing his skull, the targeted hero gains the damage bonus instead. (Legion Commander rules) At higher levels, kills could yield more souls.

General playstyle should be aggressive, encourage running in close to isolate and pick off enemy heroes from their teammates. Shotgun pellet spread should help increase the probability of landing shots to enemy player's heads. Jaunt coupled with dashing should enable players to get in and out of combat quickly.
Coordination with teammates to pick off marked enemies should reward players with increasing power scaling over the duration of a match.
Should be a simple hero to pick up, but tricky to master.

 

[Hawf]

Additional artwork

 

[lbelvin.strikefund]

I like it but he needs a head for me to shoot

 

[sagejfox]

Oh I love

 

[Hawf]

felt like doing some more additional concept art.

 

[Hawf]

Updated ideas/alternate ideas for abilities

Ability 1 - Blood Blind
Same thing but make it single target, spraying a miss chance/blind in an aoe might be too much.

Ability 2 - Smoke Step
Grants Dullahan hasted movement speed and leaves a thick vision obscuring cloud of smoke in his wake (similar to the smoke vents) enemies that collide with this smoke are slowed as long as they are in contact with it. Higher levels would increase slow rate and smoke duration.

Ability 3 - Resupply
Instantly reloads you and your nearby teammates weapons, your weapon is over-stocked to 1.5x your current ammo count.
higher levels increase radius, decrease cool-down.

Ability 4 - Crom's Due (alt)
Dullahan casts his skull towards an enemy, it bounces between nearby enemy heroes dealing spirit damage and temporarily sapping 10% their weapon damage for each bounce (if it cannot find any other targets it will simply bounce on to the initial target again) after a set number of bounces it will return to Dullahan and temporarily apply the stolen weapon damage to him (for example, 5 bounces will yield a 50% weapon damage bonus)
When the effect of this bonus expires, all damage values of the affected targets returns to normal. Higher levels increase the number of bounces, skull projectile speed, and convert damage into life-steal. If Dullahan dies before his skull is returned or while under the effect of this bonus, all damage values are returned instantly.

 

[arcsymus]

Hmm... I like the art, especially that in-game mock-up, and the idea of a headless horseman-esque character. I'm not sold on the abilities. For the first one, I would prefer to see the vision obscuring on its own. I'm not a fan of miss chance there.

His gimmick and his ulti have me thinking about his hit box being separated from his body and what could be done with that. My first thought is just to have a very basic missile attack, or a homing missile, maybe a chain missile like Chain Frost, but I'm having a hard time justifying why the missile should be targetable, and more than that, give enemies the opportunity for a headshot. There's something there, but I'm not sure what it is.

As for basing him around headshots, I don't know. I think it's possible to make something work there, but it would have to be pretty novel, I think. Scoring headshots is a reward in its own, and I'm not convinced by the idea of just making it more rewarding.

 

[Hawf]

Hmm... I like the art, especially that in-game mock-up, and the idea of a headless horseman-esque character. I'm not sold on the abilities. For the first one, I would prefer to see the vision obscuring on its own. I'm not a fan of miss chance there.

His gimmick and his ulti have me thinking about his hit box being separated from his body and what could be done with that. My first thought is just to have a very basic missile attack, or a homing missile, maybe a chain missile like Chain Frost, but I'm having a hard time justifying why the missile should be targetable, and more than that, give enemies the opportunity for a headshot. There's something there, but I'm not sure what it is.

As for basing him around headshots, I don't know. I think it's possible to make something work there, but it would have to be pretty novel, I think. Scoring headshots is a reward in its own, and I'm not convinced by the idea of just making it more rewarding.

the reworked ult is supposed to behave a lot more like chain frost but it doesn't need other targets to bounce to. The missile itself wouldn't be target-able, you might have misunderstood one of the ability descriptions.

I'm also reconsidering the headshot angle, I think his head hitbox being tucked under his arm is fine because it's funny and more interesting, but trying to get a shotgun hero to score headshots is counter intuitive. Dunno what I was thinking.

 

[Klar]

Very cool concept. Though I don't know if miss chance is a thing that should be added, that seems like a very frustrating mechanic to play around. And the head being at his waist level would be difficult when fighting him from low ground because you cannot see his head with the normal camera angle, a fix could be to lower the camera but that isn't elegant nor would be fun to play as

 

[Tenebrae]

Excellent idea.

Love the overarching theme, the nestled head gimmick, artwork, etc. Overall great idea...not my style of hero, but a superb addition. The only thing I'd criticize is the miss percentage, as folk tend to look on chance unfavorably, outside RPGs.

 

[Hawf]

a selection of armour exploration sketches and a more refined illustration

 

[Hawf]

Crazy idea, a lot of the characters have unique weapon quirks (like how Abrams can reload shots individually but everyone else needs to reload entire clips, or how pocket always has perfect hexagonal shot spread) I figured since Dullahan uses a Double barrel shotgun, instead of ammo scaling his number of rounds per clip he can only ever load two shots and his ammo attribute scales the number of pellets PER shot.

So maybe he starts with a simple 8 pellets per shot, but by collecting gold pots and buying items that boost his ammo % he could be shooting rounds with 20 or even 30 pellets per shot.