Confounder - Mafia (Support)

[Ezradekezra]

Role Name: Confounder

Role Alignment: Mafia (Support)

Abilities:
- Each night, you may confound two players.

Attributes:
- Confounded players will have their targets swapped. Your first target will target your second target's intended target, and vice versa.
- Multi-target roles will be unaffected, but if you target a single-target role and a multi-target role, then the single-target role will target the multi-target role's first target.
- Players will not be informed when they are confounded.
- You may confound fellow members of the Mafia, but you may not confound yourself.

Notifications:
- You have decided to confound [player] tonight.
- You have also decided to confound [player] tonight.
- You have instead decided to confound [player] tonight.
- You have changed your mind.

Goal:
Kill all who will not submit to the Mafia.

Win Conditions:
Standard Mafia win condition.

Special Attributes:
- Access to the Mafia chat
- Roleblock immunity
- Control immunity

Investigative Results:
Sheriff - Suspicious
Investigator - Your target likes messing with people's plans. They must be an Escort, Consort, Transporter, Hypnotist, or Confounder.
Consigliere - Your target confuses people into visiting the wrong houses at night. They must be a Confounder!

Additional Information:
Probably not the best role name, but I couldn't think of anything that wasn't already a FM role.

[SilverCruz]

I had an idea similar to this once, except it was a Neutral Evil and switched the targets' abilities on their original targets. So like in that case if a Vigilante idles and a Lookout checks John Hathorne and they're both targeted, then John Hathorne gets shot by a Vigilante and the Lookout doesn't see any visits because they were influenced into not actually having a target (there was an asterisk where the Vigilante doesn't die of guilt from this, but if they get involved a second time they automatically execute a guided attack against the instigator which made it kind of overcomplicated). I don't think I ever posted that, though, and I think it also peeked at its targets' feedback, though not specifically enough to be able to tell which is who's what without outside context (it probably would've ordered results by result priority to achieve this, not based on whoever you selected first or second).

That said, in your own words, how does this help the Mafia? What situations can it instigate or break up that would give the Mafia an advantage? The main one I'm seeing that couldn't be done by an existing role would be getting an Escort off of a solo Godfather/Mafioso's back, but that seems rather niche and ultimately something that shouldn't be possible in the first place, plus Transporter interactions seem a bit messy, since "then the single-target role will target the multi-target role's first target." means that, in the event of the Transporter transporting itself with the Godfather, the outcome would be dependent on in whether they self-targeted or selected the Godfather first if I have that right. I feel that would require another caveat to keep those results consistent.

[Ezradekezra]

- Stopping Jailor from executing Maf
- Causing Vigi to shoot Town
- Getting TPs off of the Jailor
- Causing TIs to get incorrect results
- Stopping Escorts from chain-RBing the Mafioso/GF
- Can visit Maf but isn't forced to visit Maf, making it counter Spy to some degree
- Can be a silent Redirector at the expense of letting a Townie choose a teammate's target (works best with Mafioso when the GF is still alive)

All of these are possible utilities of the role

[SilverCruz]

Bit of cross-over with Consort and Framer/Disguiser, isn't there? Also Witch, to a lesser extent, but granted Witch isn't directly Mafia aligned.

[runningwiththepower]

I like this role, it seems fun & chaotic (i luv chaos)

I think it gets confusing with the whole " Multi-target roles will be unaffected, but if you target a single-target role and a multi-target role, then the single-target role will target the multi-target role's first target." but maybe that's just because that's a lot of words & targets hahahah

I actually really like Silver's idea of having it also be able to see the night feedback of the roles it Confounds............I don't think it would be that too big of an advantage because the Confounder would still need to piece together what feedback belongs to which person

/support for sure!



ALSO EZRA I played as your 'Servant' idea in a game of TOM on the Discord at last Friday's game & I really really loved it---it was super fun

[alex1234321]

It definitely has similar uses to an evil Transporter, but unlike that role it has to guess the player using the ability instead of the target. That's harder to do, so the role would probably be weaker than a Mafia Transporter, which would basically be a buffed Consort.

Even this role might be stronger than Consort since it can effectively stop two players at once from completing their intended purposes. A downside might be that you have less control with Confounder than you would with Consort. Still, you can prevent Jailor from executing Mafia and are highly likely to stop important Town roles from choosing their intended targets.

Maybe as a nerf you can change its Jailor interactions? I don't have any other ideas.

Also I would change the investigative results. It would be nearly impossible to fakeclaim Escort or Transporter without a notification. Maybe put it with Sheriff/Exe/WW? Not sure how the role could claim Sheriff better than anyone else but that's the only set without a Mafia role. Alternatively I think it could work with Spy/Bmer/Jailor.

Anyway, I really like the concept. /support

[Brilliand]

What immunities does this have?

Seems to me it has to have both control immunity and roleblock immunity, and be "control"-level itself (able to mess with escorts, but vulnerable to transporters; and able to mess with witches due to that crazy trivia that witches themselves aren't control-immune).

[Ezradekezra]

What immunities does this have?

Seems to me it has to have both control immunity and roleblock immunity, and be "control"-level itself (able to mess with escorts, but vulnerable to transporters; and able to mess with witches due to that crazy trivia that witches themselves aren't control-immune).

Yeah, it has RB immunity and control immunity

I'll edit the OP

[Ezradekezra]

Confounder's ability doesn't count as a control ftr, just a target swap

[Benn3]

https://i.ibb.co/XkmwD9c/Confounder-Clarification.png

Confounder's ability doesn't count as a control ftr, just a target swap

In our TG game on Night 1, the Doctor got swapped with a Vigilante, forcing the Vigilante to visit their target and for the Doctor to stay home. This caused the Vigi to shoot their target. Are they supposed to do that or do they just visit without shooting?

[Ezradekezra]

https://i.ibb.co/XkmwD9c/Confounder-Clarification.png

Confounder's ability doesn't count as a control ftr, just a target swap

In our TG game on Night 1, the Doctor got swapped with a Vigilante, forcing the Vigilante to visit their target and for the Doctor to stay home. This caused the Vigi to shoot their target. Are they supposed to do that or do they just visit without shooting?

I would have both of them stay home, since the Doctor wouldn't be given a target and the Vigilante can't act N1

Mostly going from a flavor point of view here, since Witch and CL use magic to force their target to act while Confounder sneakily swaps their plans, and a role that can't act on a given night would notice that the swapped plans are fake

Maybe we should test it both ways and see which interaction is more balanced

[Brilliand]

Confounder's ability doesn't count as a control ftr, just a target swap

Are you adding a new "swap targets" priority level between "transport" and "control"?

Most of the control-immune roles also can't be target-swapped. Examples: Veteran, Transporter, Retributionist. (Actually, Retributionist is a bit odd - swapping targets between Retributionist/Necromancer/Amnesiac could actually make sense.) So, for the sake of simplicity, I would use the same "control immunity" attribute to indicate immunity to Confounding, despite the mechanic not playing out in the same way for non-immune roles.

----

On a related note... let's say a Doctor is protecting a Vigilante while the Vigilante shoots that Doctor. The Confounder swaps those two players. What are those player's actions now? (For comparison, if this were two Witches forcing the players to self-target, the Vigilante would kill himself and the Doctor would get a free self-heal.)

[Brilliand]

This role was edited by the balancers of Testing Grounds!

Changes from the original role are in strikethrough or bold.

Role Alignment: Mafia (Support)

Abilities:
- Each night, you may confound two players.

Attributes:
- Confounded players will have their targets swapped. Your first target will target your second target's intended target, and vice versa.
- Multi-target roles will be unaffected, but if you target a single-target role and a multi-target role, then the single-target role will target the multi-target role's first target.
- If either of the Confounder's targets is immune to confounding, then the entire confound fails, and the Confounder is notified. (Roleblock-immune roles and double-target roles are immune to confounding.)
- Players will be informed when they are confounded.
- You may not target members of the Mafia.
- If one of the Confounder's targets is themselves roleblocked, the roleblocked person stays roleblocked and the Confounder's other target stays home.
- You may only use your ability 2 times.

Notifications:
- You have decided to confound [player] tonight.
- You have also decided to confound [player] tonight.
- You have instead decided to confound [player] tonight.
- You have changed your mind.
- You were confounded!
- Your confound failed, because one of your targets was immune.

Goal:
Kill all who will not submit to the Mafia.

Win Conditions:
Standard Mafia win condition.

Special Attributes:
- Access to the Mafia chat
- Unique
- Roleblock immunity
- Control immunity

Investigative Results:
Sheriff - Suspicious
Investigator - Your target likes messing with people's plans. They must be an Escort, Consort, Transporter, Hypnotist, or Confounder.
Consigliere - Your target confuses people into visiting the wrong houses at night. They must be a Confounder!