normal role/modifier tier list

[Alisae]

I feel Watcher is a very powerful investigative role, kinda like it as it's not as boring as a Cop but is still a high power role

ya its rly good and braindead its honestly a better doctor tbh.

[Nahdia]

i liked schadd's point about how watchers (and psych/det) complicate the calculus about who should be making the nightkill though. personally i think that whole song and dance is one of the more unfortunate, unfun parts of mafia. there should generally be a clear calculation as to who is doing the killing.

[schadd_]

loud is good because like. ME?????

actually announcing probably has that same charm

[Nahdia]

yeah i think loud/announcing are just neat ideas with a lot of potential behind them.

announcing i like less because generally the person who actually did the targeting can just confirm themselves and have their roleclaim be unassailable. otoh, announcing on an anti-town player with like, a roleblocker or a neopolitan or something is a really interesting dimension, especially if the scum harnasses that for wifom.

[Alisae]

loud and announcing are good ya
i like the version where the action is posted in thread by the mod like "a protection action was used on this person" or "player used a protective action" or "Player performed an action on X" but I wouldn't put them on a tier list higher then more generic modifiers that are more important for game balance.

[Alisae]

also while we're here
fuck ninjas

[Ircher]

What's wrong with strongman?

when a doctor protects someone but they die anyway it sucks. moreover that should uniquely suggest a roleblocker

I don't know... I feel (gated) strongman is useful for those situations where scum need a role to break a breaking strategy, but you don't want to give them the power of a roleblocker. I guess Macho works to an extent along the same lines, but meh...

[schadd_]

macho is better (it works regardless of when the claim happens)

[Vi]

Oh, wait, I misread Detective as "identifies whether this player

can kill

. Never mind then, good role.

Night 3 roles seem kind of awful in any Mini setup. Like if you're going to make someone wait that long for something it seems way more fun to have a Town (whichever Night you expect to have four players alive) Multitasking Vig + Vig instead. If you have an example of it working well I'm open to etc.

If an investigative gets three results by Day 5 then it seems like something else has gone drastically wrong for the Mafia anyway.

With multitasking it's more that I really don't want to deal with multiple results in one Night. In a game where you have a team full of unique and necessary power roles then it's kind of unavoidable.

Gunsmith feels like one of those roles that was invented after the boomers came up with Mafia but before any kind of standardization occurred. Like Hider. It's not openly bad-but-if-you-squint-it's-good like Usurper or Traitor but complex enough that I'd really rather not.

Neapolitan vs. Vanilla Cop depends on how many power roles you give the Mafia I guess.

Macho being unfalsifiable - Anyone can claim it and the only way to prove it is if they die. I'd put it anywhere. I'd put it on a veet to see what they do with it.

Follower being like Tracker - Nah. If you Track someone to a kill they can claim some other power role. If you Follow someone to a kill they're screwed.

I didn't follow what you meant by "no randomization" in re: Compulsive.


I want LOUD to be good but purely for memes
but like
confirming that someone is a power role feels like a slightly more dumb version of Friendly Neighbor (another post-boomer pre-standardization role), which at least gives them something worthwhile

now if it caused the mod to send someone a PM like "except you couldn't sleep because SOMEONE couldn't resist dropping some of the summer's phattest beats while they skulked in the dark" it would jump to the top of my list
and in fact this may be the strongest argument for the Tourist role (we're going to call Visitor Tourist now)


strongman is still bad because you're forcing a hidden and unforeseeable exception to a player's Role PM

[schadd_]

If an investigative gets three results by Day 5 then it seems like something else has gone drastically wrong for the Mafia anyway.

sometimes they just dont find the PR.

Gunsmith feels like one of those roles that was invented after the boomers came up with Mafia but before any kind of standardization occurred. Like Hider. It's not openly bad-but-if-you-squint-it's-good like Usurper or Traitor but complex enough that I'd really rather not.

the boomerosity of gunsmith is another positive for me

Macho being unfalsifiable - Anyone can claim it and the only way to prove it is if they die. I'd put it anywhere. I'd put it on a veet to see what they do with it.

sure. macho townie is good

Follower being like Tracker - Nah. If you Track someone to a kill they can claim some other power role. If you Follow someone to a kill they're screwed.

in practice i think tracker guilty is the most damning result that's still not a true Guilty, but sure there's a difference. as a sidebar there was a funny thing recently where nahdia (from this thread earlier. hi nahdia!!) got tracked to the nightkill target, that they didn't kill, except they were mafia anyway

I didn't follow what you meant by "no randomization" in re: Compulsive.

in normals there is the principle that nothing can be randomized, so in order to deal with that for compulsive, any compulsive role has to provide this whole ugly priority list in case they don't submit an action

strongman is still bad because you're forcing a hidden and unforeseeable exception to a player's Role PM

yes

[Nahdia]

i like follower as a scum role a lot. as a town role it's obviously more powerful but not untenable.

as a sidebar there was a funny thing recently where nahdia (from this thread earlier. hi nahdia!!) got tracked to the nightkill target, that they didn't kill, except they were mafia anyway

yeah that was.... idek. i look back on that and just wonder why the fuck i let that action go through, hahahhaa.

[Isis]

vig is kind of unlike these things - the reasoning to vig someone is different from the reasoning to cop someone, and simply appearing to be town is a much better counterplay against vigs than cops. in any case: vig is as high as it is because it's literally fun. waking up to a mafia getting shot is like mindblowing. if it doesn't get you giddy i have no idea why you play mafia

[Vi]

If an investigative gets three results by Day 5 then it seems like something else has gone drastically wrong for the Mafia anyway.

sometimes they just dont find the PR.

THEN PERISH
sometimes the town doesn't find the mafia

I didn't follow what you meant by "no randomization" in re: Compulsive.

in normals there is the principle that nothing can be randomized, so in order to deal with that for compulsive, any compulsive role has to provide this whole ugly priority list in case they don't submit an action

oh ew good point
I was figuring I would, like, verbally abuse the person with the role until they sent something in or I felt better
and then come back in four hours

[Alisae]

I was figuring I would, like, verbally abuse the person with the role until they sent something in or I felt better
and then come back in four hours

sounds fantastic i'll try it out sometime

[schadd_]

If an investigative gets three results by Day 5 then it seems like something else has gone drastically wrong for the Mafia anyway.

sometimes they just dont find the PR.

THEN PERISH
sometimes the town doesn't find the mafia

imo PRs should represent, like, 30-40% of gameplay at most

so somebody that, as scum, is dayplaying perfectly well but is actively sucking ass with finding PRs (and like: at the end of the day there is just not a lot to go on) should still have a relatively reasonable game

[callforjudgement]

rolestopper (why tf does normal use the "stops kills" variant of this????)

It effectively has both. The version that doesn't stop kills is Personal Rolestopper.

[Nahdia]

well that's a very good role.

[Isis]

I so very hard disagree with the idea that mafia should be expected to reliably detect PRs.

I believe a world where humans are that good at psychology mountainous setups would be balanced at 8:5 because there is a hundred times as much information leaking from alignments as there is from PRs

[Alisae]

I believe a world where humans are that good at

so a world that doesn't exist
got it

[Isis]

It's also not very fun to PR hunt while it is fun to find scum and to a lesser extent fun to hide being scum.

So diffusing weak power throughout the setup so that PR hunting is the least tested skill is appealing to me, and that sounds like it's what schadd does.

I'm probably gonna look for schadd's name next time I join a normal.

I believe a world where humans are that good at

so a world that doesn't exist
got it

Yes I am saying that world doesn't exist

[Isis]

It's also not very fun to PR hunt while it is fun to find scum and to a lesser extent fun to hide being scum.

So diffusing weak power throughout the setup so that PR hunting is the least tested skill is appealing to me, and that sounds like it's what schadd does.

I'm probably gonna look for schadd's name next time I join a normal.

I believe a world where humans are that good at

so a world that doesn't exist
got it

Yes I am saying that world doesn't exist

[TemporalLich]

rolestopper (why tf does normal use the "stops kills" variant of this????)

It effectively has both. The version that doesn't stop kills is Personal Rolestopper.

Minutiae: Personal Rolestopper stops Vigilante kills, while Asceticizer doesn't.

[callforjudgement]

That's why I said "effectively". Generally speaking this is a good thing in Mafia hands; I'm less clear on which way round would be more interesting/setup-usable in town hands, though.