Borrowed Faces

Borrowed Faces

Something out there is pretending to be one of you.

A Fabric mod for Minecraft 1.21.1 that adds the Skinwalker, a creature that steals the name and skin of a real player and walks around like one, until you get too close.

The Skinwalker

• It looks like one of you. When a Skinwalker spawns, it copies a random online player: their skin, their name and their name tag. Alone in singleplayer, it is Steve or Alex instead.
• It acts like a player. While disguised it wanders around, punches out logs, dirt and sand, and places the blocks it carries.
• Don't get close. If a player comes within a few blocks, it reveals its true form.
• It hunts. In monster form it is fast, strong and over four blocks tall, hunching down to squeeze under trees and low ceilings. If it loses its prey, it shrinks back into the same stolen disguise, and after a short rest it slowly heals.
• Where: on the surface of every overworld biome (except mushroom fields), day or night. By default it is four times rarer than an Enderman.
• Drops: 1–2 Distorted Totem Shards (more with Looting) and, if killed by a player, the head of the player it was imitating.

Form	Health	Attack damage
Disguised	20	does not attack
Monster (Easy / Medium / Hard)	60 / 80 / 100	7 / 10 / 13

Health carries over between forms as a percentage, so a hurt disguise turns into a hurt monster.

Items and blocks

Distorted Totem

Crafted from 4 Distorted Totem Shards around a bone. Hold it like a Totem of Undying: when you would die, it saves you with 1 HP, but you are Marked by Death and blinded by Darkness for 30 seconds.

Marked by Death: every mob within a configured amount of blocks hunts you, including animals, villagers and other players' pets. Your own pets spare you.

Purification Altar

Crafted from 2 bones, a ghast tear, an amethyst shard and 3 gold blocks (bones and tear on top, amethyst in the middle, gold blocks at the bottom). Mine it with a pickaxe.

• Right-click with any item to place it on the altar; right-click with an empty hand to take it back.
• Place a Distorted Totem on the altar, then right-click it with a Golden Apple to purify it into a Totem of Undying.
• Hoppers can insert into an empty altar and take items out of it.

Advancements

The mod has its own Skinwalker tab in the Advancements screen:

Advancement	How to get it
Something's Wrong	Get close enough to a Skinwalker that it starts transforming
It Wore a Face	Kill a Skinwalker
Shards of Something	Obtain a Distorted Totem Shard
Borrowed Time	Be saved from death by a Distorted Totem
Redemption	Purify a Distorted Totem on a Purification Altar
Outlived the Mark (challenge)	Stay alive until Marked by Death wears off
Nipped in the Bud (challenge)	Kill a Skinwalker before it finishes transforming
Mirror, Mirror (hidden challenge)	Kill a Skinwalker wearing your own face
Skin Collector (challenge)	Kill 10 Skinwalkers

Settings

Every setting can be changed in-game from the Mod Menu Mods list (select Skinwalker, then the settings button), or in config/skinwalker.json5. Changes made on the settings screen apply immediately; after editing the file by hand, restart the game or server.

Category	Setting	Default
Spawning	Natural spawning	on
	Spawn rate (% of Enderman)	25
	Spawn in daylight	on
Identity	Copy real players (off = always Steve/Alex)	on
	Show name tag	on
Monster	Monster difficulty: Easy / Medium / Hard	Medium
World & Items	Gather blocks / Place blocks (also need doMobGriefing)	on
	Marked by Death range (blocks)	50
	Marked by Death duration (seconds)	30
	Altar purification	on

The settings belong to the server. In singleplayer the settings screen controls them directly; on a dedicated server, edit config/skinwalker.json5 on the server. Settings changed on a client do nothing on someone else's server.

Installation

Requires Fabric Loader 0.16.14+ and Java 21. Additional mods required:

• Fabric API
• Cloth Config (15.0.140+)
• Mod Menu (optional, needed for the in-game settings)

On a server, install the mod, Fabric API and Cloth Config on both the server and every client.