Small changes to improve balance

[wozearly]

As a long-term Ranked player who has experienced the game from ELO Hell through to Master Tier, I thought it might be useful/interesting/hideously controversial to collect together a set of suggestions for small tweaks to roles that should (generally) be fairly easy to implement and would help to improve balance and/or gameplay in ToS.

These tweaks are made primarily with Ranked in mind, in some cases explicitly to undermine consistently effective Town meta-strategies, although they shouldn't cause problems in other major game modes. Generally speaking, most of these changes have the effect of making it less straightforward for Town to confirm roles, giving the Mafia and Neutral roles more viable options for claims and excuses if they fall under suspicion.

Town Investigatives

Lookout - Choose one target at night. A Lookout can see the identity of a maximum of 2 visitors to their target. If more than 2 visits are made, which 2 visitors the Lookout sees are determined at random. If 2 or more visits to the target are made, the Lookout is informed that "others may have visited your target".

This is based on a suggestion floated by the ToS developers to further undermine the "TP/LO/Spy/Escort on me" meta-strategy by preventing early confirmation of multiple roles. Outside of this situation, it is fairly unusual for there to be more than 2 visitors to any particular target on any particular night.

This change makes it more difficult for Lookouts to cross-confirm each other, as they may not receive identical results if a third person visits. Evil roles can also more effectively claim Lookout and dispute Lookout findings if at least 2 visits to the target are made. For example, any RM visiting the same target as the Mafioso would make it impossible for a Lookout to know for certain whether anyone else did or didn't visit their target.

Spy - Spies no longer see all Mafia visits automatically. Spies may apply bugs to two targets (using Transporter/Witch interface). Bugs work as normal, allowing the Spy to see what events happened to the target that night. In addition, they also inform the Spy whether or not a member of the Mafia visited their bugged target that night.

This change increases freedom for RMs to visit, especially in the early game, without automatically confirming non-Mafia targets or giving away the types of RM in play. This also reduces the likelihood of a Spy identifying an NE/NK role with defence who was attacked by the Mafia. The change makes it more plausible for non-Mafia roles to claim Spy in games with a real Spy and deceive the Town (although probably not the Mafia). It also allows Mafia Spy claims to present misleading results when a genuine Spy is in the game without forcing an immediate challenge.

This makes Spy a less passive, and less trustworthy, role. Spies are also more at risk of being disrupted by Transporters, Veterans or Werewolves.

Town Support

Transporter - Transported targets are no longer informed that they were transported.

Reduces ease of confirmability for Transporter roles, and makes Transporting more disruptive to TIs unless the Transporter is willing to reveal. Makes it easier for evil roles to fake Transporter and disrupt/challenge TI findings.

Retributionist - resurrection action priority reduced to below killing actions. Optionally, resurrected target returns in a similar state to being blackmailed. They may act and vote as normal, but cannot speak or whisper.

A reduction to priority means that Retris killed on the night they attempt to revive will not successfully revive a Town member. This gives evil roles more opportunities for dealing with a revealed/identified Retributionist. The optional change would prevent the resurrected Town member from immediately confirming any Mediums and bringing back information from the dead. This information could be recorded in their will, but would only be revealed if they are killed (and are not Forged/Cleaned).

Town Protective

Bodyguard - A bodyguard guarding their target is hit with an unstoppable attack. Optionally, set the priority of who the bodyguard attacks to prefer Town Killing > Mafia Killing > Neutral Chaos > Neutral Killing.

Make it more difficult for Town Protectives to cross-guard, and provide a plasible excuse for why a Doctor would not want to be healing a Bodyguard claim / confirmed Bodyguard. The optional changes reduces the randomness of who is killed by the bodyguard on the rare occasions that multiple attacks occur on the guarded target.

Credit where it's due, though we don't always see eye to eye, both of these suggestions came from BasicFourLife.

Neutral Killing

Werewolf - players killed by Frenzy have their last wills wiped (ie, set to "we could not find a last will").

This makes it more difficult for other players to determine exactly what action the werewolf took, or was forced to take if jailed/roleblocked. This makes rampaging at home a less risky option, and gives additional utility to Medium roles in games with a Werewolf.

Mafia Support/Deception

Forger - In addition to amending their target's will, a Forger selects what type of Town role their target will appear to be. If the target dies, their Forged role will be announced to the town and remain displayed in the graveyard. The Forged role expires at the end of the night, and does not continue into the following day. A Forger may only Forge twice per game.

Investigators, Consiglieres and Witches visiting a Forged role will see the person's true role, rather than the Forged role (ie, it affects how they're displayed in the graveyard and role announcement on death rather than their actual results). Disguisers will disguise as their true role, rather than the Forged role.

This one arguably fails the test of "small tweak" as it requires a UI change. However, the idea is to retain the core mechanic of the Forger but give them more practical utility in most games without overlapping with other Mafia support/deception roles.

Essentially, this amended Forger has more options to create confusion. As they no longer need to know their target's role before forging successfully, subtle attempts to frame Town members or back up Mafia members' claims become possible (although at risk of discovery via a Medium, prior claiming or an investigator who had visited them earlier in the game). It also casts doubts on the last wills of Town members...was that silent person really a sheriff who found a Mafia N1 and didn't tell anyone? Or have they been forged?

The trade-off for this more effective forging is that the Forger may only Forge twice - and they may also be found out if they forge an incorrect role on someone who has been confirmed by the Town.

[shapesifter13]

Actually a big fan of a lot of this, either in part, or as a whole. Will be watching this thread to see what other community members have to say.

[Brilliand]

Yep, these mostly look like great ideas. I'll just list the ones I'm not so sure on:

Retributionist: This nerf idea is probably not enough. The Ret needs a bigger nerf than this.

Werewolf: Actually might be a great idea, I just can't work out just how much this will help the Werewolf.

Forger: This is great for the Forger in isolation, but it overlaps the Janitor to a massive degree. Limiting it to 2 uses helps with that, but making the Forger a super-Janitor with fewer uses doesn't quite sit right with me.

[shelboo]

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[wozearly]

I had intended to give time and space for people to respond after shape's broadly positive response, then RL took over, so only just coming back to the thread now a fair bit later than planned. Appreciate your responses may not have been exhaustive, but given the thought and effort I wanted to come back with a response as to what my thinking was at least - see the red responses from me embedded in your quote below.

But speaking in general first, I empathise and in many cases agree with your feeling that some of these changes are not an ideal long-term position for any given role or for the balancing of all roles. The spirit of this thread was "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good", so it comes at improvements from a very short-term perspective. This is a totally different angle from, to pick an example at random, the fantastically thought-provoking balancing overhaul thread you began.

I'd post long explanations as for why each change is good or bad, but I'm lazy so I'll just do a small(ish) TL;DR of each. In my opinion, on the whole, these changes are at either situationally better than the current version of the respective role, or just flat out better. So pretty good changes.

Lookout: OK short term change, meh long term change. In a world where a confirmability meta does not exist, which is what should be aimed for in ToS Ranked (and all game modes), this change is largely unnecessary and comes with additional issues such as RNG involvement. In the short term, it is effective in reducing extreme advantages of the Lookout in a confirmability meta.

Although the primary impact of this change is to undermine the confirmation meta, the fact that it makes claiming Lookout more plausible for other roles extends into the medium-term as the Lookout is difficult to the point of impracticality to claim as a non-Town role in its current form. I agree it would be unnecessary if the confirmation meta was wrecked by other means (no objections here) and if a Mafia role was introduced/modified to see visits to cast doubt on Lookout claims - but those are more sweeping/time-consuming changes.

The introduction of RNG here has some legitimacy as without uncertainty in the results, Lookout would remain practically impossible to claim as you'd have to know both who was going to visit and their priority to determine who would be seen (arguably even harder than the current situation for multiple visitors) and a fake LO would be restricted to claiming identical results to a legitimate LO, removing the advantage of being able to produce a credible alternative result to challenge an LO finding even if visiting the same target.

Spy: Significant improvement over current version by way of being more direct and not being spoon fed information, though it enters the realms of high complexity by way of the Spy having too much information each night to keep track of, and the main inherent issue of Spy still remains (degeneracy caused by disincentivizing Mafia visits) albeit to a far lesser extent. I also question the viability of the Spy with this change as compared to other roles.

This should reduce the volume of Spy information actually received in most cases, although I agree that Spy wills would be less straightforward to read/communicate. It's something that would need testing to see whether the new risk-reward balance for RMs vs Spies makes the two more balanced in challenging each other (currently the Spy dominates). It also allows utility for multiple Spies, although I agree that this may pull the teeth of any individual Spy too far compared to the other TIs - suggestions to further tweak the Bug mechanic to offset this would be welcomed.

Transporter: Probably the lesser of two evils, but the Transporter would still not be good. You are essentially altering a somewhat chaotic role with stupidly easy confirmability to be a very chaotic role that is probably detrimental to Town at many points even with high skill players (thus transporting disincentivized in many instances) with low confirmability. But yeah, given the current meta where confirmability is overly prevalent, I'd prefer the latter.

Transporters shouldn't be any more chaotic and detrimental once confirmed than they are currently - although absolutely agree that getting confirmed as a Transporter, particularly in the early stages now becomes a heck of a lot less straightforward. Ultimately, it'd be up to the Transporter to judge the risk/reward of early transportations which might lead to some interesting choices and twists in the meta for both the Transporter and people faking Transporter. I agree it's a lesser of two evils situation.

Retributionist: The role's mechanics would still be awful on the whole; the role just needs to be removed from Ranked altogether. That being said, the changes here are fine despite not being enough to make the role's mechanical functionality OK. I can imagine some argument against the optional change along the lines of "but being alive and not being able to communicate with alive chat is boring", but I don't think this argument is nearly strong enough to outweigh the benefits, especially considering they otherwise would have been dead anyway if they were not resurrected. One thing I would alter about your optional change is the idea that the resurrected player should still have access to their Last Will and can out information from the dead in this way; I do not think the resurrected player should have a Last Will. Any ways in which one can give information from dead -> living should just be cut off.

The suggestion of blanking the Last Will of a resurrected player is a solid addition to the optional change - good shout. I agree that this doesn't "fix" the Retributionist and it would still have problematic impacts on balancing, but this would at least take the edge off the overwhelming impact it can currently have at an early stage by confirming itself, a resurrected Town member and any/all legitimate and fake Medium claims. The effect would reduce to confirming the resurrected Town member (who can no longer speak or bring back info from the dead) and confirming that a Retri exists.

As the primary change is a disincentive for a Retri to claim before resurrecting as it would make them a high priority target, it should create additional headaches for the Town in deciding what to do in the face of a Retri claim through VFR and give more options for the Mafia and Neutrals to respond to a Ret claim or to counterclaim a Ret who hasn't revealed in advance. We'd need to test it to see if this rebalanced the meta in favour of waiting for more useful roles (and risking an early death) rather than resurrecting at the first opportunity, as several resurrected roles would be functionally useless except as voting fodder.

Bodyguard: Both alterations are definitely good, and priority list is in the correct order in my opinion. These changes are a must have for Bodyguard.

Werewolf: Retributionist syndrome; the Werewolf is mechanically awful on the whole (and should be removed from Ranked as a result) and this alteration does not change that, despite being a fine alteration.

Forger: Not really sure how I feel about this. The overall aim is largely the same as Janitor, to prevent Town PoE from being nearly as effective and creating confusion amongst the Town in general, but there are nuances in how one would go about playing Forger as opposed to Janitor, such as decision making involved in attempting to choose the optimal Town alignment, and also the deceptive element has the potential to be more potent than the Janitor's in many cases since the Town oftentimes will not be aware of the Forger's input (unlike with Janitor). This is almost certainly a better idea than the current Forger functionally, but I can see where one might be coming from in saying that it is largely a more deceptive Janitor with less uses. Also, I have a question; what would happen in the case where the Forger forges a scum role as Town and they die? Would they flip Town or their original role?

The idea of the tweaked Forger is for it to continue to bridge the space occupied by the Janitor and the Disguiser while retaining its own playstyle and complementing rather than overlapping with the other RMs. Interestingly, my worry about where it might potentially be too strong wasn't the overlap with the Janitor but the overlap with the Disguiser.

Janitor:
Hides a role from the Town and shares this information with the Mafia.
Disrupts Town's understanding of the role list and boosts Mafia understanding of the rolelist.
Is an obvious action which reveals the presence of a Janitor.
Janitors do not need to be aware of the role they're cleaning to clean effectively
Cannot frame innocents or confirm other Mafia members.
Can be hard-countered by a Medium.
Town can use existing information to identify the cleaned role (investigators, the dead role having claimed openly or via whisper, etc.)

Disguiser:
Makes their role appear to be something else.
Can disrupt Town's understanding of the role list and may boost Mafia understanding (if the disguised role was not known prior to the Disguiser's death).
Is a subtle action which does not necessarily reveal the presence of a Disguiser
Disguisers must typically be aware of the role they're disguising as to write an effective fake will (failure can reveal the Disguiser)
Can frame innocents or confirm other Mafia members (if not revealed)
Cannot be hard-countered by a Medium. The Disguiser maintains the deception after their death.
Town are not typically able to use existing information to reveal the Disguiser
Requires the death of the Disguiser to be effective.

Tweaked Forger:
Makes someone else's role and/or will appear to be something else on their death.
Can disrupt Town's understanding of the role list (but not guaranteed, e.g. a RT role appears to be a different type of RT role). Does not boost Mafia understanding.
Is a subtle action which does not necessarily reveal the presence of a Forger
Forgers do not need to be aware of the role they're forging to write an effective fake will (but failure can reveal the Forger)
Can be hard countered by a Medium.
If a Spy sees the 2x Mafia visit, or an Investigator has visited the person, they have a high likelihood of identifying the Forge.
Can frame innocents or confirm other Mafia members (if not revealed)
Town can use existing information to identify a forged role (investigators, the dead role having claimed openly or via whisper, etc.)


The tweaked Forger has more flexibility than the Janitor or Disguiser but shouldn't be as effective in their areas of expertise:

Janitors bring back information to the Mafia about viable claimspace and don't have to create viable fake wills in order to clean their target (ie, it doesn't require co-ordination and preparation time with the Mafia Killing roles regarding the target, what to do with the forge and a credible fake will). Forgers are more likely to change temporary perception of what the claimspace looks like.

A successful Disguiser can be incredibly difficult for the Town to identify, as they can maintain the deception past their death and there are few mechanic-based ways for the Town to confirm that someone is a Disguiser once they're dead. If the Disguiser doesn't have to make repeat visits to renew their disguise (as is currently the case), this would set them even further apart. While Forgers can achieve a similar effect without requiring their death, in principle, there are far more ways for the Town to identify and disregard the forge.


Having thought about this a bit more since the original post, I've removed the suggestion that Investigators should be fooled by the forge. On balance, having more mechanical ways to identify the forge can only be a good thing, and there's no reason for the Forger to slip into the Framer's space.

In answer to your question about scum roles, my starting assumption would be that anyone dying while forged, irrespective of faction, would flip the forged role (as with Janitor and cleaning). In most cases, it's not particularly going to help the Mafia in claimspace terms to have accidentally forged one of their own or one of the neutrals. Was there a situation you had in mind that would suggest a different approach?

[wozearly]

Yep, these mostly look like great ideas. I'll just list the ones I'm not so sure on:

Retributionist: This nerf idea is probably not enough. The Ret needs a bigger nerf than this.

Werewolf: Actually might be a great idea, I just can't work out just how much this will help the Werewolf.

Forger: This is great for the Forger in isolation, but it overlaps the Janitor to a massive degree. Limiting it to 2 uses helps with that, but making the Forger a super-Janitor with fewer uses doesn't quite sit right with me.

Retri: The proposal reduces the scale of impact the retri can have on confirmation and bringing back information from the dead - but yes, bringing back a Town member with abilities and votes is still incredibly powerful in its own right.

Werewolf: It will help them to some extent - the idea is to make it slightly tougher for Town and Mafia to confirm who the Werewolf is as a result of their attacks. The main benefit would be to a WW on the receiving end of a random roleblock/jailing on full moon. Currently, even if they survive the experience, it's difficult to talk yourself out of that situation without a pretty solid and/or confirmed claim.

There's a smaller benefit to a WW self-rampaging - again, it doesn't point the finger of blame at you if the dead person had you last on their visit list, or if more than one person (e.g. 2xTIs) decided to visit you on full moon night.

Finally, wiping information from the wills of visiting roles, particularly TIs, will help to slow down the spread and easy reference of information across Town. This should give a slight boost to all of the non-Town roles in WW games.

In all three cases, a Medium role would have more influence than currently, so it also gives a bit more utility to a somewhat underloved Town role.


Forger: I put a more thorough explanation of where I think it sits between Janitor and Disguiser in the post above. I think there's more of a risk of it being a super-Disguiser than a super-Janitor, at least in terms of the Ranked roleset.

[Seththeking]

Just use Paralax’s Retri Change!
I love it!


Role Name
Retributionist

Role Alignment
Town(Protective)

Summary
You are a skilled mystic who can reanimate the dead.

Abilities
-Cast a spell onto a player each night, your spell will only work if they die.

Attributes
-You will clean players you cast a spell on, and they may not communicate with the dead and medium, until you're in the graveyard.
-You will resurrect all players you’ve successfully casted a spell onto upon being successfully attacked or incinerated, this action is 1st priority. (Disruption Immune)
-You will NOT resurrect any players upon being lynched, but instead reveal their information.
-Your cleaning notification is identical to that of a Janitor's.
-You may choose to commit suicide, reanimating all players with a spell casted onto them, this can be disrupted.

IMO to fully nerf Retri where it can’t hurt scum to the point they lose is to do this Replacement.
Making them unable to talk, Whisper, make last will won’t do much.
They can vote and still perform their night action.
However with this if a player was revived, no one will know if their town or mafia which is what Retri needs.
Retri needs it so the players they revive aren’t confirmed Town.

[Brilliand]

Just use Paralax’s Retri Change!
...

This really isn't the place to advertise your favorite role changes. This thread is about wozearly's small tweaks to various roles; Parallax's Retri rework is not a small tweak.

[wozearly]

Just use Paralax’s Retri Change!
I love it!

So an even more powerful Retri that occupies the TP slot (without actually protecting anyone), can resurrect multiple roles, has a high chance of being able to confirm itself before death, and is essentially a "ha ha you lose" hard counter to NK roles in the late game if the Retri is still alive, to the extent that Retri is even more dangerous to NK than Veterans. And all of this to add a small chance that revived roles are not confirmed Town (which, given that Town aren't usually the faction doing the killing at night, is pretty slim at best).

Each to their own. But I'll pass, thanks all the same.

[Transcender]

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Do not use the Suggestions forums for Role Ideas or Role changes, use the Role Ideas forum instead: http://www.blankmediagames.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=27

Thread has been moved to Role Ideas. Topic creator has been notified.

I like how the dev didnt notice

I like the changes, good work