Guardian Angel | Neutral Support (basically contract merc)

Class/Lore/Fanfic
#21

That’s a good start, but it wouldn’t deter against Observers visit tracking/Princesses. I personally put in a lot of work for FoL Merc and had reasons to go that route, so of course I’m going to tout them here. :stuck_out_tongue: Do with it what you want.

Your targets can be converted and are likely to get converted, because one, they have a Merc and are more likely to live longer and two, if you get deduced, they are great conversion targets, because evil will also get a Mercenary on their side. Knowing this, it will also be beneficial to be wary about openclaiming Mercenaries and their targets, because it will make BD more suspicious about the targets being converted. This is kind of the mechanic in FoL that prevents a Merc openclaim to a degree.

So far they don’t know the class, so an evil doesn’t need to out to whoever claims to be their Mercenary (which can also be faked by Mystic private matters, I actually remember this being done a lot back in the day).

I’m always a big fan of confirmability at a cost. That’s why FoL Merc, can prove themselves beyond reasonable doubt with… taking the lynch. :smile: This “you would be pardoned” could be a great mechanic for evil “Mercenaries” or Mercenaries with evil targets to get mislynches on others, but now it can’t be, because Mercenary targets are informed they have a Mercenary through confirmable private matters links, so you now always have 3 players claiming the same thing, which is nigh impossible to fake for evils, so extremely confirmable through that day ability. Having it also be confirmable in that way negates the former to try and get a mislynch through it, because “targets” will never agree to the Mercenary being real. I would think about if it is necessary for the Mercenary and their targets to work together so explicitly and having them be able to confirm themselves to them.

The FoL version here is that the Mercenary sacrifices themselves to be the lynch, which would negate this dynamic and be helpful for both scum/town/the Mercenary itself. It’s confirmability at a cost, which is the missed lynch on an actual scum, but now a Mercenary for the town and the cost for the Mercenary is well death, so they can’t protect their targets anymore.

There is a similar story with Butler Party or Physician self heal or the confirmability of a Noble/Mystic helping the target throughout the day. Or also starting Assassin/Cults being worse targets than a Mastermind that cannot be checked and is naturally death immune. There is no way to win here, so best is to just allow it all and just have it be natural difficulty variance for the Mercenary. Things like Merc to Prince, I would definitely not allow either though.

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#22

This is because the former is against large variance for the Mercenary difficulty, which is a single neutral entity and the latter is against large variance for the Blue Dragon difficulty, which is the main town faction and way more players would be affected by it in that way.

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#23

Hmm… looking at FoL Merc it does seem like it’s more flexible which faction they’re siding, and I don’t really want to suggest a heavy BD sided neut…

(Angelic Shield): Redirects any non-conversion abilities directed to one of the players you’re soulbound with to yourself. You will be death immune tonight. Your target will not be notified you are protecting them. (3 uses)

I’m intentionally keeping it as a redirection so occ/redirection immunity counters it, what are your thoughts on that? I’m really starting to feel like I’m shamelessly copying FoL merc now, hehe. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all…

This is something I want, personally. Open claiming neutrals aren’t very engaging. The concept of a contract merc isn’t explicitly siding towards one faction, but I’d love to convert someone who has a personal bodyguard :eyes:

Well, I assume you know that Mystic doesn’t have PM anymore. I do think the ability to fake being a merc with it as Mystic would have been cool, though. I do vaguely remember it from back in the day.

I get the philosophy behind taking the targets place, but I didn’t think it’d translate as well into ToL. Games generally last long enough that buying your target one day in exchange for your life isn’t optimal (unless your other target has died, I guess) but FoL games seem to average a much shorter duration, to which one day could make the different much more frequently.

I suppose I could be wrong, but the average FoL game ends around day 4-5 right? From my (anecdotal) experience recording ToL games, only about ~20% of the time does it end by day 5. ~65% of the time it ends days 6 or 7.

Hmm… The only difference I can think of is that Hunters bear is their main ability, whereas Physician selfcare would mean they’re usually not healing a more important person (and as such is rarely used) and Butler party is generally suboptimal as well. However:

You are entirely right with that statement.

Yeah, that one seemed waaaay too powerful :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks a lot for all of the valuable feedback, by the way! You’re definitely more experienced in class creation/balancing and as such you’ve thought of numerous things that slipped over my head. :heart:

Question: Do you think three uses is enough for the primary ability with the duration of the average ToL game in mind?

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#24

Well a ToL implementation of FoL Merc is still valuable, since it can’t transfer as it is with visit prevention not being a thing. I am actually quite outdated on the whole ToL interaction network, so I can’t comment much more on this except that this is probably better. Although I’ll maintain that the AoE occupy effect is less confirmable towards the Mercenary, so would be better however. It accomplishes the same things otherwise.

You assumed wrong. :upside_down_face: I play very sparingly nowadays, so most of my knowledge stems from reading a patch note here and there.

My pleasure and no worries. It’s a lot easier to pick apart things than to come up with them.

I think 4 total is fine. Old Mercenary also had 4 uses of Stand Guard. You can only protect one target at a time with it anyways and it’s a bad experience to die at night as a neutral, so they should have a lot of uptime on death immunity. It should still remain a meaningful choice that you don’t just press a button every night. This is especially true for a class that is so restricted in targets and ability decision-making. Having too many uses would just result in achieving the same if it’d just be a passive that that ability would be used each night then. I would always stray on making neutrals weaker than stronger as well, since they hold alternate objectives that should not gain precedence over the main faction war going on. The Mercenary is an extra number for whatever faction their links are, so making it too strong isn’t going to be fun for the faction that is already at a disadvantage due to the Merc’s dice roll on who their links are.

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#25

I’m not too sure what you’re talking about specifically, but I’ll try to specify what I think you may be talking about.

After being occupied, jailed, or redirected 3 times total: You gain occ/redirect immunity. So in this case, if you were an Assassin you could still kill a shielded contract if you’ve gained immunity. As far as I know, there’s nothing that bypasses this immunity anymore (except Jail, which you can only be jailed 3 times) after the streamlined update. (Hunters mark might?)

Yeah, I kept the primary ability at 3 uses because I think Alchemist having 3 stoneskins is already very powerful, any more nights of DI for a neutral just seemed downright OP. The other ability doesn’t give DI for that reason. But just wondered what you thought.

#26

Yeah, and in addition Invoker to Cult Leader or Servant/Alcoholic to Assassin can also bypass it, which I also think would be lame honestly, but there wouldn’t be a way to go around that if you want to keep it “streamlined”. I mostly referenced the fact that you’re more in the ToL metagame, whereas I’m very entrenched in FoL, so it’s hard for me to pick up on some things that are different. I was about to protest that NK’s can get past this, but forgot that that’s not the case in ToL. Still heavily disagree that NKs aren’t occupy/redirect immune, but that’s off-topic. :upside_down_face:

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#27

I agree with this, but yeah. Necessary evil and all. Servant/Alco to Assa at least gives value to a lesser convert in my eyes.

Ah, that’s what you meant, very true in that case. I’m interested in trying out FoL so I’ve looked into it, but the metagame is definitely not something I know very well… soon, though :wink:

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#28

Would love to see ya out there. It’s a truly new experience. :wink:

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#29

Seems reasonable.

Occ and Redirect immunity. Any particular reason why?
Why can’t you bind with Neutrals or Knights?
Why won’t you know their classes?

Do you regain a use if they are pardoned by the court?

Will whispers between the two of them also be hidden?

Why not just all abilities?

Seems reasonable. How would this work for the Knight’s defend killing them?

#30

To be honest, the occ/red immunity remained from when this was originally going to be a Merc rework. But I think it makes sense, personally. Especially since both of their night abilities involve redirection.

Originally I wanted to allow NKs, but I thought it’d just encourage the GA to tell the BD who the NK was. Didn’t seem very fun or fair. Fools wincon involves them dying. Alchemists with a guardian would be too powerful imo (a combined 6 nights of DI in a game which usually ends D7?) and I generally just don’t think it’d be very well balanced. No Knights because, as Solic said, it’d be unfun to lose because your Knight suicides after two successful defends.

No. Would be too safe to use.

No. Optimally, they wouldn’t even know who eachother were. But that’d be a decision for the GA to make, if they want to divulge that information.

Initially it was only attack abilities, but I felt it was too BD sided and Solic also had concerns about that. If conversions can go through, this class doesn’t have nearly as big of a BD bias and will pretty likely have at least one scum bound by the end of the game.

I’d assume that the Knight defend wouldn’t be redirected, since mechanically it seems to be a counter-attack of it’s own. So it’d probably do nothing to Knights.

#31

But the GA doesn’t know they are NK?

#32

Look at me, forgetting that I changed the passive from knowing their classes to not knowing their classes… Silly me.

That’s the original reason I decided against NKs… But since that doesn’t apply anymore, why not? Sounds like it could be fun, after all.

#33

How would this interact with Possessor?

#34

Optimally I’d say since you’re bound with the player, you’d still stay bound after a jump.

I suppose whether or not that’s balanced is up for debate though. In my eyes, it’d either be that or Possessor wouldn’t be a potential binding. Having them count as a dead link when they jump would be incredibly unreasonable, after all.

#35

This would cause reports to happen, as it would literally be against the GA’s Winning condition to let their bindings die willingly.

Whoops. Guess a neutral won’t win. We can’t all be winners

Seems reasonable

Makes sense

Well, it doesn’t matter if you do know them or not, the fact is, if your goal is to protect them and you willingly get them killed, then there would be some issues with it. IMO the suicide passive should still stick even after class change, or something, as to make becoming Neutral King less viable.

#36

I wonder if you allowed GA links to be able to win together if they were sole survivors if it would work. It would eliminate the GA having to pick between their targets eventually.

Now poke holes in this whim. :upside_down_face:

#37

Except they only need one to survive. I do think it’d be a grey area. I re-added NKs to the OP, I just wouldn’t be surprised if the community managed to make that a bad thing :stuck_out_tongue:

I agree, but given how Neutral King works in ToL at the moment… doubt it’d happen.

I like that a lot conceptually. But oh boy, would that be potentially abusable…

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#38

If you were a Neutral Killer, wouldn’t you report the very person who was supposed to keep you alive for gamethrowing, because they killed you?

#39

Oh yeah it’s probably a bad idea, but it would be interesting. :smiley: It could lead to links betraying their own faction, which would actually also probably cause bad blood. But the intrigueeee… the intrigue!

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#40

I’d want to.

But your wincon is to ensure one survives, bussing an NK, theoretically, helps the other survive.

Very very grey area in my eyes.