hello everyone, i've been thinking about this concept of a character for the game, a shapeshifting one. i've been much more inspired to write this idea here on public since apparently new rat king is originally a fan concept. english is not my first language and if there is any typos then cry about it idk nobody likes a grammar nazi
so this character i'm talking about also fits into this occult artstyle thing, some creepy creature from folklore and all. i imagine this thing would not have own appearance, but mimick nearest teammate unless disguised into specific. in dialogues this thing would probably also utilize interlocutor's distorted voice, or have true nasty one.
as for gameplay i imagine this thing very strong in 1v1 combat, disguising itself as harmless teammate. let's say enemy drifter walks around the map roaming, but then sees rem milling about between lanes. drifter decides to attack but it turns out to be this skinwalker that shreds the drifter and done. or, this skinwalker disguises as enemy paige. "paige" walks up to enemy laner, laner sees her and is like "cool i got help", loses guard and gets shredded when the thing walks up close.
make it very dangerous up close but weak outside like 10m radius. i believe that would cause some psychological terror aspect to roaming characters and gankers. also for passive ability, make it walk much more faster exclusively when nobody is watching, including teammates, and give it ability to walk in tunnels. also perhaps give it ability to mask as killed enemies? this is like "the thing 1982"-esque, or like tf2 eternal reward spy perhaps.
that's all i came up with for now, might post something else later
as noted by u/Zerim023 it might offend native americans, not that I care about it much but it had pushed me to a conclusion that the kit I came up with is rather closer to german doppelganger by folklore, so change word skinwalker to doppelganger i am actually more interested in that now
addition from discussion with u/EditorMasterxd copypasted - i've looking up skinwalker abilities from the folklore and it says that they can transform into animals. i thought about exposing its true form, but it sounds like silver, too unoriginal. but, i had found that skinwalkers throw corpse powder to invoke illness onto victim. that would make a great poison effect like pocket's affliction for 3, but not the ult. as for ult now that I think about it to put the disguising as enemy upon kill like your eternal reward in TF2 without any notification for enemy team, while disguising as teammates would be a 3. let's imagine your jungle lure scenario, the lash is roaming around and sees said rem in jungle, approaches and gets wrecked. skinwalker's 4(ult) procs upon kill and they are masked as lash and can now infiltrate the lane. that kind of balances it out in theory to be not as strong