Best Role Ideas?

[Mr. Flay]

Argh. It's Memento, folks. Not Momento.

That said, I like the role idea.

[Mr. Flay]

I don't think the answer to the swinginess of F11 is to make the Cop instances MORE swingy. That is all.

[Mr. Flay]

Players are not always told they are illegal immigrants.

Untenable.

malthusis: There's an old role called Actor, but it hardly ever gets used.

[Mr. Flay]

I find the actual names of the roles to be becoming increasingly useless. Am I alone in this? Is seems like mods tend to just make roles DO shit, and names seem to come along. For instance, I've heard joker, king, senator, etc mean at least 4 different things over the course of my mafia career.

I think overt names for obscure roles are kind of pointless.

I think the thing mods need to be more careful of is not giving roles names that already mean a different role. Kind of how we ended up with the Watcher/Tracker/Night Watchman problem, or what a Governor/Mayor does.

Overt role names are fine, partly because it gives the mod something to reveal them as at death without posting the whole role PM. It's the repurposing of names that drives me crazy.

[Mr. Flay]

Hitman is interesting but perhaps overpowered in Closed Setups, and may be nerfed in Open Setups. Perhaps they have to personally kill 2/3 or all-butone on their list, which would penalize them if somebody dies to a lynch or other nightkill but not make it impossible for them to win.

Alarmist and Deprogrammer already exist, though I'm not sure what the usual name is.

[Mr. Flay]

ITT PokerFace steals credit for roles I invented.

I never said I made it. I just posted it here because it is a good role

X

You never said you

didn't

write it, which leads any reasonable person to assume that you authored all of the content of the post.

[Mr. Flay]

Don't know if this variant has been done before, but...

You are a

Hypnotist

. Once per night, you may send me the name of one person you wish to hypnotize. That person will not know you targeted them. You will give them a hypnotic command to kill the rest of the town. Once you plus the amount of people you have under your control equals half the remaining players, you will give the kill command and win.

It's a cult, but with a twist that if you get recruited, you don't know it and your alignment doesn't change.

Possible use in nightless games and/or mafialess minis or a large game.

Seems a bit too strong, since you only find out when it's too late.

More or less strictly inferior to a normal cult. I hate all forms of cult though.

I thought that most people hated cults because the recruited switch their alignment. In this variation, that doesn't happen, which makes it much harder for the hypnotist (cult leader) to win.

LOLwut? How does this not switch (add to) your Win Condition?

This is worse than a regular Cult because you have no idea it's happening. Do not do it in regular forum play (Marathon Day might be okay).

[Mr. Flay]

I misunderstood who won with the Hypnotist; it's still a terrible role, but for a different reason.

I assume as you've now described it, the player doesn't know they've been hypnotized?

[Mr. Flay]

What is you doing in this thread?

Fixed for you.

[Mr. Flay]

Anyway, I have a role idea (or rather, someone else had a vague idea for it offsite and I expanded upon it):

You are the

town lynch doctor

. Each night, you may target one player in the game. If, on the following day, the town votes to lynch this player, the lynch will fail, and the day will end without a lynch.

It's essentially a nerfed form of the mayor/governor. Not knowing for sure who the target will be allows for unlimited usage. Horrible idea or viable?

Viable, but I'm not sure if it'll actually benefit the town, unless the game is very night-action heavy. Getting rid of lynches tends to be a bad idea...

[Mr. Flay]

the Town Instigator. Your main goal in this game is to instigate chaos and ruin the mafia’s plan. Each night phase you will choose one player to instigate something with.

You will PM me the choice of one of these options to do to one other player:
a. Give bad info to them.
b. Switch them with another player in the night, meaning both players targets will be switched.
c. Make them vote randomly the next day phase.
d. Get one player drunk thus making them unable to vote the next day phase.

b = Bus Driver, d is a Vote Stealer and c a Vote Redirector variant, and a is not specified enough.

the Town aligned Weight Watcher. You spend most of your time sneaking food out of the refrigerator but you are the only one who sees what’s going on in the house since everyone else is outside talking or sneaking off. Choose one player to watch each night phase and you will learn who that player targeted or who targeted them, maybe both. You will do this comfortably close to the food you love. You win with the town when the mafia is eliminated.

the Town Shit Magnet. Your goal is to investigate who is doing what. However, in order to get the information you need, you have to get into the middle of the action. Each night you will PM the name of one player to hang around with the entire night phase. You will know what actions that player did that night.

Tracker is probably what you're looking for (though the one is a variant for actions, not player names).

[Mr. Flay]

Putting that role in a 9-player game (w/2 Mafia) would be cruel and unusual. Town could win with a single lynch, including Day One by pure accident! Essentially it's more like giving everyone an extra Night, and reducing the endgame numbers for Mafia majority by one (assuming that he does count for endgame, which your role isn't entirely clear about).

[Mr. Flay]

Might make an interesting fix for dethy^2 though.

Now that sounds like a good idea.

Agreed; or a SuperCop who can go through Godfather/SK immunities, but only if they're guessing right.

[Mr. Flay]

Huh? Maybe I misunderstood the proposal...

1. Cop investigates Prox N1: "I think they're innocent."
   Incorrect (Godfather)
   ; Cop gets result of "Innocent", and keeps going.
   
2. Cop investigates Flay N2. "I think they're scum."
   Correct (SK)
   ; Cop gets a result of "Guilty", and keeps going.

[Mr. Flay]

I'd hate to get it if it's not optional, especially with a night start.

I would think Perfectionist would HAVE to be optional, to make it remotely fun. Any Town Power Role's power should be optional, IMO, it just usually doesn't make sense for them to skip (cue Doc in Prisoner's Gambit situation). This time, it does make sense.

[Mr. Flay]

What would a SuperJailkeep be? I was just in Harry Potter mafia and we had one of those, but he got lynched D1 so we never found out.

Also, the mod disappeared so he was never able to tell us.

I'm guessing he's still on about this. I'm not sure how he expects us to know...

At a guess, I'd say maybe it was unblockable? Or had a Cop side effect, but that's WAY overpowered.

[Mr. Flay]

FBI Special Agent: Investigates one person per night, if he/she finds scum, scum dies. If scum tries to shoot him/her, he/she goes down with whoever sent in the kill. If cop tries to investigate him/her, cop dies.

Also, there's an old role called FBI Agent, which is IIRC a SK-hunter.

[Mr. Flay]

So at Dragon*Con we play FTF in the Wheel of Time track. Most of the games are smaller, 10-15 players, and their win ratio is pretty bad overall. They LOVE the SK role (Padan Fain) but it tends to decimate Town, even in a 12:2:1 setup with both a Cop and Doc.

So this year Orbiting introduced a One-Shot Dayvig to help balance. It was hysterical, because both times he shot Day One and hit Town, but it did make him a confirmed Townie for the rest of his life. The role name... can anybody guess?

Rand al'Thor, using balefire

[Mr. Flay]

Hmm. I just wanted to try something.
You are

Bad Lieutenant

.
You are town-aligned, can role-check during night-time, but you can also choose not to check and survive the night.
So if you check, you know who someone is, but if you don't check, you are bulletproof for the night.

Self-protecting Cops are a pretty bad idea, generally, unless you've got a ton of killing roles.

[Mr. Flay]

Cautious Vig:

Each night, you may select one person to kill. If that person is mafia, he/she is shot. If that person is town, however, they vig will not kill that person and can select someone else.

The Cautious Veg wins when all threats to the town have been eliminated.

sounds interesting.

No, it's broken as all get out. Even if it's once-a-night, you've essentially combined the strength of a Cop with the strength of a Vigilante. There's a word for that...

Herodotus' 3p use is interesting, but too random for my tastes. Also, not Mafia, and get off my lawn.

[Mr. Flay]

You are a Framed Cop. Eah night you may target a player and will get one of two results: Mafia or Not Mafia. From the night after that then your target will investigate as a member of the Mafia. You win with the town.

So.. A millerizer Cop, then?

Yeah - odd mechanic idea. People hate Death Millers, but this would be one of the few situations I could see using them. Maybe after the Cop dies you learn who they Millerized.

[Mr. Flay]

They're both partial roleblocks.

Personally, I'd find the role rather swingy in anything but an all-PR game. It's borderline godlike. But I do have to ask... why "Rogue"?

[Mr. Flay]

Well, high-level Investigative Roles ARE Godlike.

[Mr. Flay]

They're both partial roleblocks.

Personally, I'd find the role rather swingy in anything but an all-PR game. It's borderline godlike. But I do have to ask... why "Rogue"?

I guesso. They seem diametrically opposed though.

Eh. It just breaks up the usual Roleblock power into one that can be more surgically targeted (use the non-killing one to prove a Town claim, for example), AND means if you have good reads you can potentially stop 2 scum from acting. That's overpowered IMO.

[Mr. Flay]

Then I suppose it would be a fine role to use in Mish Mash?

Mafia-like games in Mish-Mash need to be cleared with mith, FYI.

[Mr. Flay]

Slightly less swingy Vengeful Townie. Not bad, actually (in the right setup).

[Mr. Flay]

Paranoid BB Gun Owner

You will shoot anyone who targets you each Night. However since all you have is an BB gun, you will not kill them, but instead give them a welt that will be visible to you when the group gathers at Dawn.

Sort of a Reflexive Watcher... unsure whether they should welt everyone they see, or just one person at random.

[Mr. Flay]

Yeah, that's why I didn't give it a default alignment. In the hands of Town, it's mostly a Named Townie. In the hands of Scum, it's gold.

[Mr. Flay]

Let's make an Even More Unstoppable Cop. Fantastic!

[Mr. Flay]

TBS is correct.

[Mr. Flay]

Wrong thread, as usual: http://forum.mafiascum.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4736

[Mr. Flay]

Nah, the resulting page-shuffle chaos wouldn't be worth it, since they've both been around about the same time.

They're both joke threads anyway... However, editing the first posts with links to the other might not be a bad idea.