Court Wizard; Mimicry ability

It is the lack of a vets or ranked mode, blind BD that litterally totally ignore no cost obvious instant tests… are far more common that one should expect… hence also why so many people think observer is claimable (it is, if either nobody asks for your logs, or thinks to compare your logs with their own visits).

Currently if you assume everyone is a blind idiot… the game is well balanced. Should there be a single opponent on the blue dragon, that actually knows how the game works, most of the currently good strategies would be auto lose.

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I feel that one option for CW is some sort of “ultimate”-style ability that you very rarely get to use but which feels incredibly satisfying when you do. This fits the theme of the class (a big wizard ritual) without disrupting anything. But I’m unsure of what it would be or how it would work.

Part of the problem is that it’s hard to come up with ideas for a Support class in the first place. Directly stopping people’s actions is Offense; killing people is Killing; and anything that primarily gathers information is Investigative. Saving people’s lives is already covered by the Doctor.

The CW is the anti-conversion role, which is necessary, but… incredibly unsatisfying because it has no visible effect (even with the indicator, you don’t know what you blocked - you have no idea if it was vital, mildly helpful, or actively unhelpful.)

Here’s a suggestion:

CW’s barrier only blocks the actions of evils (and blocks all non-killing actions of evils.) While this is a buff, it also removes the potential to theoretically be confirmed by BD RBers. It does remove the potential for occ immune roles to say they were barriered, but really, all that accomplishes is give the CW a rare chance to prove themselves, since people will expect him to confirm anyway. It removes the possibility that CW could hurt the BD by accident with their barriers, which is… honestly fine. CW doesn’t need that risk, especially since they already have the backfire-prone tornado.

Additionally, when the CW’s barrier blocks something, they’re told if it was a conversion or not. The key thing is that knowing you blocked a conversion, specifically, is satisfying.

Blocking something with this change would, I guess, let you know that the victim is not Cult / Unseen already. Is that too much information?

That change IS good but it doesn’t solve the problem. You still don’t any interesting strategys as the best move is to barrier the same BD the whole game.

I think CW has interesting strategies to be honest. Swapping prevents killing by the evil faction and barrier blocks conversion. Knowing which one to use is enough interesting play to me. Perhaps he just needs a spicy new day ability to reinvigorate him. Something like these:

Gather Mana (2 uses): Empower your barrier to also prevent kills tonight. The one hitting the barrier will be informed that they hit an empowered barrier. Knight will always suicide on impact with an empowered barrier. (Empowered barrier is stronger than death immunity?)

Clear Mind (2 uses): Target player cannot be TB’ed or chilled. Fool/Scorned or Reaper will simply not be able to select the player anymore.

Give evil factions frequent ways to silently disable day abilities, because they lead to easily proving psychic/noble/butler and then give CW the following:

Arcane Armour (2 uses): Target player can freely use day abilities.

Gather Mana would make CW save lives more often, which is “exciting”, but still leaves him unconfirmable and stays with the support character. Arcane Armour would make CW THE class for asking other classes to prove themselves through day abilities. The disabling of day abilities should be given to a class frequently appearing like assassin/MM and CL/invoker.

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I don’t oppose informing the CW if he blocks a conversion. It’s non confirmable, and even can add some value to fake claiming it (can convince bd there’s less unseen/cult than there are if you trick them into thinking you stopped a conversion).

and does help the CW to a degree (he knows the person he covered, is someone the unseen/cult tried to convert, and thus isn’t unseen yet) without being extremely overpowering or informing.

I’d even be ok with just directly telling the CW what he stopped, (your barrier prevented an occupation) (your barrier prevented a conversion) etc… Though no notification on occupation preventions, and information on conversion preventions may be better. (keeps the cw as a reasonable doubt for occ immunes, because otherwise it would be smart for the meta for cw to universally call out when his target is occupied)

The obvious solution to reducing the use-day-ability-to-prove meta is what others have suggested-- give evils a Bewilder that works on any player. Some classes need to be fixed in specific ways, though. Like Servant needs a fake poison king ability.

the problem if you are meaning the entire unseen… (or MM or assasain), that’s like having an extra unseen vote, which is pretty damn strong. I’m slightly less concerned on the poison king side… it’s a pretty darn high risk to prove thing especialy now that it’s been accelerated, if the king is good, and there isn’t a phys/alc (or they are occupied or jailed) the butler and king die… that’s a pretty big risk. But yeah nobles point, psychics telepathy etc… are all pretty rapid testables.

the problem if you are meaning the entire unseen… (or MM or assasain), that’s like having an extra unseen vote

I don’t think the Bewilder should prevent voting. Just class-specific day abilities. So for example, the Possessor could claim Noble and say he was “bewildered” if asked to force-vote.

oh forgot about that ability, yeah a halt day abilities ability could work… could replace (or just redefine) distract.

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Perfect! I think this would be the single best thing the devs could do now to improve this game.

What if we changed Court Wizard’s barrier to something that makes a target permanently occupy and target change immune?

honestly on the whole, the occupy/target change immune, is as far as BD is concerned, the drawback portion of the ability. 90% of the time, occupations and debauches are done by bd, for the purposes of finding or stopping evils. You don’t want the assasain occupy immune, you don’t want to be unable to tell if the sheriff is occupy immune because he’s the MM, or because of the CW etc… The only one certain enough that you would want something that strong on, would be something like the prince… but of course, that’s a moot point because he already is.

If I had to chose between granting occ immunity to an unconfirmed, and staying home… staying home is the better choice. Messing with conversions is what’s so darn powerful that it’s worth using.

Occupation should be for stopping evils, not finding them IMO

sure, which is also a further drawback of granting occupy immunity to an unconfirmed or convertable person. you make the assasain or CL occ immune, you just completely eliminated all value to the butler and drunk as possible killer stoppers.

The point still remains, occupy and redirect are four times as likely to be used by BD, than by evils (because evils have to happen to convert one of the few classes that have that ability, and then lose it as soon as that person is dead or promoted to assasain/cl So granting immunity towards, what is probably just a BD ability. Is still far more likely to be detrimental than helpful.

in the same way that killing at night is an evil ability, that is occasionally used by BD, (making random healing still a BD sided thing). occupy and redirecting is a BD thing that is only occasionally used by unseen/cult.

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true you make good points

That change IS good but it doesn’t solve the problem. You still don’t any interesting strategys as the best move is to barrier the same BD the whole game.

People don’t mind playing the Knight or Physician, though, who are often similar. I don’t think classes need hugely deep complicated strategies with their powers - there’s already a ton of strategy in the basic BD game already. What they need is to feel like the choices they do make are impactful.

90% of the time, Knight or Physician choices are obvious, but they have an immediate impact when they work, so people love those roles. The CW’s problem is that it’s never clear if you’re actually accomplishing anything.

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The fact that CW blocks conversions and that Knights and Phys block kills cannot be understated. As CW the second you stop guarding someone you instantly loose your guaranteed trust of that player. However this is not the case as a phys or knight, which means that for those classes it is more important to figure out who is actually being attacked rather than just who is the most important target. And that leads to proper WIFOM. And that’s why they are so much more interesting than CW.

What if CW worked like the ToS trapper, where your barrier lasts until something hits it, you can only have one out at a time, and you place one (or move it) every other turn?

Then we’d need to boost Tornado uses or replace it with some other infinite-use ability so they’d have something to do on other turns, but I think it could be workable - ToL gives you two abilities, after all, so placing your barrier and then doing something else until it gets hit is the logical solution.

And having the barrier be a lasting “enchantment” rather than a Phys / Knight-style one-night-only protection fits in with the wizardy theme of the class.

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Court Wizard

Blue Dragon Support

Passive: Fragile Magic: If you are redirected while using Tornado, you are occupied instead.

Night Ability: Magic Barrier: Make your target immune to negative effects (excluding death). You may only have a barrier on one person at a time. If the magic barrier is activated, it goes away and you are notified. Using this dispels your current barrier. Unlimited uses.

Night Ability: Tornado: Swap two players’ positions causing all players targeting one of them to target the other. Unlimited uses, bypasses immunity.

Something like that, although I would explicitly say that the barrier lasts until activated or until you place a new one (since people might assume it doesn’t, on account of most abilities being one night only.)