Conversion

[ManateeDude]

What kind of conversion is bad? Obviously alignment conversion. But what about self conversion? Inventor changing abilities/passives?

Discuss

[Not Known 15]

If it would just be balance:
Any type of conversion is fine for balance as long as your game can handle its effects.
Depending on the type, this is not quite easy, and some types of conversion are swingy, and messing up balance can lead to lopsided results.

But you obviously want to make a fun game.
Bad types of conversion are those that could make players who recieve it unhappy for good reasons. You should avoid this.
The most notable of these is the alignment conversion.
Think like this: You have lead the town, and it has brought town 2 consecutive lynches of a Mafia with a 1-shot recruiter, and then at night the third, whom you already suspected, converts you into the Mafia. The recruiter is inevitably lynched... and with the counterbalance to lopsided results being some power roles who can sniff you out it doesn't take long until you are found and lynched.
You helped your then-team and played correctly and well, and suddenly all you did was help your now-enemies and you

were punished for playing well by losing.

This is part of the reason why alignment changes- especially of others - are disliked.
Role conversions are not bad unless the role you convert in is bad, or if you didn't balance correctly; OR if there are so many that the swing - and too much swing is not fun - becomes too great.
Example...

A Post Restrictor who changes the role of someone to a post- restricted townie/Mafia who can only speak in Morse code is bad because the post restricted role itself is so unfun that anyone who gets it will be really annoyed.

A role who gives other people guns and such is fine(obviously not in excess because it is a swingy role). Just be careful to think about the possible interactions(especially with mafia getting a gun).

Self- alignment conversion is still incredibly dangerous. Hidden ones are not good for the same reasons above. The only one that I'd think to be ok would be a role that has to choose an alignment(and cannot win otherwise). But you need to take extra care that there is some sufficient drawback for the faction that just gained one more member.

[callforjudgement]

I think the generally accepted standard for unfun/bastard role changes are those which invalidate a path to victory that a player might previously have relied on.

For example, if you need to kill all scum to win (e.g. Vanilla Townie), suddenly becoming a Cultist and needing to kill all Townies instead is pretty much a direct reversal of your path to victory, so all your efforts through the game so far now count backwards.

It's also bad to convert players to a role that's bad in its own right, but that's the fault of the resulting role, not of the role change itself.