Broken or cool? Tell me what you think of this mechanic (poll)

One of the features of my FPS game I’m working on is that I want 4 distinct paradigm shift mechanics.

That is, 4 separate power ups that will completely redirect combat and be a giant leap forward to players in their combat capabilities.

One of them turns a nasty enemy friendly. Another allows you to instantly break through shields with melee attacks. Both are pretty circumstantial.

But the last two definitely synergize with one another and I’d like some input.

Ability 1) Blood absorption. You absorb spilled blood to heal. It can not be on the ground. So essentially doing damage with the right weapon at close range rewards you with health and it turns weaker enemies into health packs.

Ability 2) Last stand. If you have more than 1 hp and take lethal damage, rather than dying you go to 1 hp, get a brief moment of invincibility, and max out your rage meter. I don’t want to bore everyone but simply put your rage meter increases stuns to enemies making fights more manageable if you keep the pressure on.

So you can see where this is going…

If a player is near death they can whip out a katana (the weapon that heals the most from blood absorption) to heal. If they get hit the last stand kicks in and gives them a window to heal up while invincible. Rinse. Repeat.

The obvious work around is a cool down to the last stand.

But should I?

Or should I make it the “screw attack” of the game that trivializes most combat?

Or should I meet it somewhere in between?

On one hand I HATE Dooms required glory kill system and want my players freedom of expression. I don’t want this to become mandatory.

On the other hand, I get a tingle down my spine thinking about giving the players the ability to berserk out and ignore their health and clear out swaths of enemies while always being on a knife’s edge.

Tell me you wouldn’t squeal nearly dying and getting back up again and again.

Maybe I should disable the blood absorption while invincible so that they have to time their attacks for when it goes down?

What would you do?

Should I just allow it to break the game and program fights to evolve around this mechanic?

Does it sound completely rad to be able to dance on a knife’s edge while chewing up mobs?

EDIT: I should mention that one of the things I love about this is that I have 8 weapons: 4 work horses and 4 over powered weapons. And the 4 work horses by sheer coincidence happen to benefit most from this synergy.

My plan is to start off with four core weapons that can be replaced with objectively better versions.

Then the op weapons out class them.

When you replace them they are still underpowered, but this would flip that.

So let’s say the starter weapons are all 0.5 effective. The replacement weapons are 0.75 effective. And the OP weapons are 1 effective.

If you want to be bored I’ll leave gross details here:

Spoiler

My 4 work horse weapons are:

Katana - basically halos energy sword. Swipe and lunge. Tons of blood and unlimited ammo.

Flak Cannon - basically the unreal flak cannon. Shotgun and contact grenades. Lots of blood.

Lancer (needs a less on the nose name) - basically gears of war’s lancer. An assault rifle and a chainsaw. Lots of blood.

Railgun - Quakes railgun basically. Lots of blood, but bad at close range.

Then my OP weapons are:

Flame thrower - a flame thrower, duh. No blood.

Plasma Rifle - Dooms plasma rifle with a BFG alt fire. No blood.

Rocket launcher - rocket launcher with grenade alt fire. Lots of blood, but good luck getting it without getting hit.

Mystery weapon I don’t want to mention. No blood.

 

I like all except the last one.
If you make the players when they reach 0 hp go to 1 and gain some invincibility, is impossible to die, since if they hit you again, you will have 1 hp again.

You could make that, when the player hp reaches 0, it sets to 1, and it enters in "rage mode" or something, faster and dealing mkre damage. If y the hp reaches 0 in rage mode, game over.

I like the rest, but I consider the blood healing one is a bit agressive.

Keep In mind that I maby didnt understand you

 

A little, and I’ll be honest I may have been knocking a few back when I wrote this, the idea of last stand is basically if you get a fatal blow and you’re above one HP it goes to one. But if you are at one HP you die.

so essentially last stand will not be ready again until you heal.

 

I like the idea.

 

I believe a lot of FPS games do this silently without advertising it, so you might need this kind of behaviour for the game just to not feel like you're unexpectedly dying all the time. But you could extend the invincibility window with the powerup.