How to fix the Mercenary and Sellsword

Feedback/Suggestions
#1

There are a few ways to consider. Using an “idea” format. I will list them. Also adding a few buffs.

**Mercenary (Option 1: 1 Target)**

Conversion Immune (if not, look below)
Goal: Choose a contract, and Make sure that your contract survives the game by any means necessary.
Passive: Bound by Blood: Immune to Death. Your target is immune to death on night one and night two. If your target were to somehow die of poison, that will not occur until day four.
Passive 2: Curse of Shame: Your target’s death will lead to your immediate (not a nightly suicide. Immediate) death and loss. Failure to secure a contract in the first four days will trigger this passive.

Special Circumstances Re:The Possessor
  • If the Possessor uses “possess” to jump into your target, the possessor IS YOUR TARGET AND YOU MUST PROTECT HIM. [It’s better than losing instantly due to a jump. Works well with “lore” of poss.
  • If your target is a Possessor, and he uses “possess” to steal someone else’s body, your job is still to protect the possessor. He is alive and well, and he will still of course, offer your payment.

Day Ability: Infinite: Negotiate: Offer a contract to a player. This player cannot be the King, The Fool (OP), The Scorned, The Psycho King, or another Mercenary.

Night Ability 1: Safeguard: 3 uses Stand Guard at your target’s home tonight, healing him and preventing others from visiting him. [This gives your target no notification]
Night Ability 2: Rebound: 1 use Choose a player who voted against your target. Kill them.
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**Mercenary (Option 2:Fix for 2 target version)

Conversion Immune (if not, look below)
Goal: Make sure that your CURRENT contract survives the game by any means necessary.
Passive: Bound by Blood: Immune to Death. Your target is immune to death on night one. If your target were to die of poison or bleeding, that will not occur until day three
Passive 2: Curse of Shame: If both of your targets die, you will instantly die. If you don’t secure a second contract three days after the first one dies, you will instantly dies

Special Circumstances Re:The Possessor

  • If the Possessor uses “possess” to jump into your target, the possessor IS YOUR TARGET AND YOU MUST PROTECT HIM. [It’s better than losing instantly due to a jump anyways. Works well with “lore” of poss. Also, if you’re outed Merc, then Poss would instantly get exed. Mutual benefit]

  • If your target is a Possessor, and he uses “possess” to steal someone else’s body, your job is still to protect the possessor. He is alive and well, and he will still of course, offer your payment.

Day Ability: Infinite: Negotiate: Offer a contract to a player. This player cannot be the King, The Fool (OP), The Scorned, The Psycho King, or another Mercenary.

Night Ability 1: Safeguard: 3 uses [Can only be used starting from night 2]Stand Guard at your target’s home tonight, healing him and preventing others from visiting him. This ability refreshes its uses on the second contract. [This gives no notification]

Night Ability 2: Rebound: 1 use Choose a player who voted against your target. Kill them.

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Sellsword

Goal: Unseen win condition
Passive: Stonewall :Unseen members will have collective Death Immunity. This lasts for two attacks (On the third attack, an Unseen member will die)

Day Ability 1: Volunteer: Infinite Use (insert picture of the contract) Offer a contract to the Assassin. This contract, if he accepts it, transforms the Assassin to become his previous converted class [Original Assassins can choose these classes: Servant, Alcoholic, Nightwatch, Herbalist, and Enforcer.], and you become the Assassin.

Day Ability 2: Magic beans: One use: On activation, this ability grants the Assassin an extra use of 2 for 1. If the Assassin uses 2 for 1, you will use Cover Up on both of his targets due to an inability to sleep. [One use of Cover Up and One use of Revenge will be used up] {If 2 for 1 is not used, no ability charges are used.]

Night Ability 1: Cover Up : 3 uses: Select a target. Nobody except the Assassin may visit that target. [Can target Allies]

Night Ability 2: Revenge: 1 use: Choose a player who voted against an Unseen member. Kill them.

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Mercenary will no longer give notifications.

Note: If a possessor jumps into your target and jumps away, the person he jumped into is still your target. Works both ways at once. And in the case of Mercfix#2, he is still your first target. Not the last.

1 Like
#2

Option 1:
I like Curse of Shame.
I don’t like Mercenary as immune. Makes it annoying to take out if it is in the way.
Would you get a failed notification if Negotiate failed? It would give you information, which I don’t like.
Just guard target instead if having Bound by Blood
Stand Guard works better since it prevents investigation if you protect an evil.

Option 2:
I kinda like the Possessor jump thing. Helps a little.
Safeguard shouldn’t refresh. Mercenary should be punished, not rewarded if their target dies.

Sellsword:
It would be better if Stand Guard didn’t give notification, so it wouldn’t be a problem.
With Volunteer what if your target was the original Assassin? Also I’d rather keep Stonewall.

1 Like
#3

I feel like the Merc being immune opens her up to new strategies like baiting attacks. Also, having to worry about the lives of two people isn’t a part of her job description.

  1. You wouldn’t necessarily have a notification. if devs wanted it, sure. If not, no.

  2. Poss jump thing is universal. Just saying. It should just be commonplace.
    Safeguard refreshes because you shouldn’t be punished for trying to guard your target a few times. (Doesn’t encourage people to save guards “for the next guy”)

Sellsword: I’ll take that into account. I want to give people options. Original Assassins get a few classes to pick from.

#4

Why did you change the function of stand guard? Visit Prevention is what makes it useful on evils such as Possessor or Sorcerer.

#5

Fixed!

Didn’t intend to change that ability.

#6

The only problem with choosing a target is you confirm people as fool or scorned

2 Likes
#7

Why are people proposing these huge complicated Mercenary changes. I didn’t intend to start this sort of giant rewrite - Mercenaries are mostly all right.

All they need are to have the messages removed so they don’t auto-confirm, and to have the rules and their goal rewritten so they can betray their first target. Both of these are simple, easy-to-accomplish changes that would require just a minor tweak and which aren’t likely to drastically disrupt the game.

I don’t understand why people are suggestion vastly more complicated things - what’s the goal here? Mercenaries betraying their first contracts isn’t a problem to be solved, it makes the role more interesting and smooths out the random way that it’s assigned.

#8

The messages are an easy change, but Mercenary should in no way be allowed to betray their first target. It really defeats the point of the class, while adding little drama. Mercenary can already be converted.

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#9

How does it defeat the point of the class? They’re a mercenary. Mercenaries are traitorous. And it adds a huge amount of depth to the class because now you can no longer auto-assume that a merc will side with you, or that your target will be truthful. It makes playing a Mercenary more interesting because it gives them options and considerations beyond just “mindlessly defend target as much as possible.”

I don’t see anything remotely wrong with it; and the only arguments people seem to be able to present against it is a vague hand-wavy “it feels wrong.” The point of the class is whatever the game’s design says it is; that can be changed or rewritten. The important question is whether the Mercenary plays better (and more interestingly) if it can betray its first contract or not, and whether that leads to a more interesting / deeper meta.

I feel that it’s obvious that it leads to a better game, and I think I’ve presented pretty detailed arguments as to why.

#10

If your so traitorous, why do you commit suicide when you fail?

You already can’t assume it will side with you, as it could be converted. If we remove messages, it could even be fake claiming.

The point is to defend your target. If you change the goal, the point is entirely different. The only reason we have target #2 is too avoid mercenaries just getting screwed over early game.

Would you want Fool to have a play that doesn’t involve their execution? No, it’s ridiculous and goes against the point of the class.

Perhaps you could have a class about betraying their first target, but it is NOT the Mercenary.

#11

The ability specifically says that it’s because they can no longer find work, not because they actually care about their target. Their goal is to succeed as a mercenary; this means everything to them, which means that (while betraying a target carries a high cost and wouldn’t be done lightly) it is something they would absolutely do if it advanced their career.

The point is to defend your target. If you change the goal, the point is entirely different.

Slightly different (although, again, most people already think they can betray their target and it doesn’t cause any problems.) You’re still a protective who primarily focuses on keeping a target alive to the end of the game; you just have one chance to switch targets, at a serious risk, by betraying your first one.

Explain how it would be bad. Yes, it would be a change, but you’d still have to keep a target alive and would be taking serious risks if your first target died (since there’s so many ways your second target can die unexpectedly, many of which you can’t really prevent.)

#12

It would remove your incentive to protect target #1. You could save your target, or save those precious abilities for your next target. It encourages passive play, and I don’t think that has any value,

#13

This is already true (the rules don’t require that you take any action to protect Target #1.) More importantly, your incentive to protect Target #1 is that you only get two targets, so allowing Target #1 to die is always extremely dangerous.

Beyond that,… overtly betraying your target is not, by any stretch of the imagination, passive play. The simple fact that the option is there would make the Mercenary a much more active and interesting class. What’s passive is just mindlessly protecting your target on key nights and doing nothing else; removing the option to betray your target is obviously the more “passive” version of the Mercenary, since they have fewer options and really only one meaningful line of play, governed by only a single concern.

Active classes have more to think about than that and force other people to think more about them in turn, which, for the Mercenary, means they’ll be better if you have multiple options for how to interact with your first target rather than a boring “ALWAYS PROTECT THEM 200% NO EXCEPTIONS.”

#14

Betraying your target isn’t passive play. Saving your uses for #2 is.

The fact the game already encourages it is why it should be changed to encourage the protection of your target. Like losing uses if you go on to contract #2.

Is Fool a boring “ALWAYS GET EXECUTED 200% NO EXCEPTIONS.”?

Same goes for Scorned. It can still be an interesting goal, and there are different ways to go about it.

#15

I mean, are you OK about every merc you get, getting you killed because they didn’t choose?

2 Likes
#16

Mercs don’t have any more power to kill their target than anyone else (unless you deliberately out yourself as evil to them, which is obviously a risk.)

I don’t feel that getting a merc randomly assigned to you at the start should be a free +1 vote in your favor with no drawbacks, especially given what a benefit it can be to evils (who can effectively win a night sooner, right from the start.)

#17

The thing is that others such as me disagree with this. Having a trustworthy ally in the merc is the whole point. If you remove that then you are dealing with an entirely different even if similar class.

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#18

The refresh gives the mercenary incentive to use all the guards instead of saving them for the second contract.

#19

The thing is that others such as me disagree with this. Having a trustworthy ally in the merc is the whole point. If you remove that then you are dealing with an entirely different even if similar class.

The role of “trustworthy allies” is, for most classes, already taken by your actual allies. (I’m assuming by “trustworthy” you mean “trustworthy when confirmed”; of course, since lying about your role and / or determining who to trust is the entire point of the game.) Turning the Mercenary into a trustworthy ally would be redundant with that. And it doesn’t really make sense to take a neutral and then functionally assign it to a faction at random at the start of the game - all you’re accomplishing is making the setup more swingy.

I mean, stepping back a bit… in your opinion, what’s the Mercenary’s purpose in the larger meta? Not its goal or how you want to feel when playing one, but the purpose it serves in the meta as a whole. The Fool and Scorned serve vital roles in giving a reason to doubt accusations. The NK serves a vital role in adding an additional enemy that strategies can play off of. Most BD and Cult / Unseen roles serve vital roles for those factions, while also serving as potential fakeclaims (BD) or having the power to fakeclaim specific BD roles (Cult / Unseen.) The Inquisitor balances out the fact that the Sorcerer is Cult / Unseen-sided. Even the Alchemist, while neutral, serves a vital role by giving another way to cure poison / bleed (the Physician alone would not be enough.)

Give me a summary like that for the Mercenary - a vital contribution he makes to the game as a whole, not just how you feel he should play with regard to himself and his target. Because as things stand I’m completely unable to understand what you think the Mercenary should add to the game. It feels like you’re only considering it from the perspective of “playing as the Mercenary” or “playing as the Mercenary’s first target”, and want to maximize the benefit you can get out of it in those roles, with absolutely no important interactions with anyone else; or that you’re thinking of it solely in terms of lore / roleplaying - you really, really want to roleplay as a devoted bodyguard and don’t really care about the larger impact it has on gameplay.

I don’t think that those are good ways to assess a role. The important thing about a role - the main question you need to ask, before anything else - is what impact it has on the meta. How everyone (all 15 other people in the game) interacts with it, what doors it opens for them, what challenges it poses, what new strategies it introduces. A Mercenary adds the most strategies, options, and challenges to other players if it is:

  1. Unconformable, or at least extremely difficult to confirm, and,

  2. Untrustworthy, at least to the extent of being able to betray its first contract.

With those things, his role in the game is clear. He serves as a potential fakeclaim and source of lies (both from the mercenary and between the mercenary and his target), which makes it harder for BD to solve things by collecting everyone’s claim, and increases the chance that they’ll waste a lynch on a neutral at a vital moment. The game depends on having reasons to lie (and ways straightforward strategies can go awry) to remain interesting, so that’s a decent purpose for him to serve.

When you remove these things you narrow it down to a role that really only matters to itself and its target, and which can be safely ignored by everyone else (outside of occasionally protecting its target safely, but - from the perspective of everyone except those two people, ie. the really important perspective - that’s a purpose already served more than adequately by the Physician, Alchemist, Knight, Court Wizard, and King; adding an additional protective that only cares about one person and doesn’t really interact with anything else doesn’t make any sense.)

Again, I’m trying to understand what people want out of the Mercenary, but most of what I’m hearing falls into “I only care about the interaction between Mercenaries and their targets” and “I want to roleplay.” Those aren’t really the first things we should be considering when designing or balancing a role.

Because, I will be completely blunt here, I would much rather see the Mercenary removed entirely rather than have any of the suggestions made in this thread applied to it. If it’s not going to serve a useful purpose in the meta and just serves as a mindless, randomly-assigned buff to his target, I think it would be better to give the role the axe and let games have another Fool, Scorned, or Alchemist instead - roles that actually serve important purposes in the meta.

#20

This 100%.

If you’re a good Mercenary, the refreshing of abilities isn’t so that people can just spam guarding. Still use abilities sparingly (when you think your target will be targeted), but you shouldn’t be punished for doing what you’re supposed to do (2nd target [which the King probably forces you to pick the Prince who outed himself because he knew your identity already so he’s going to die] and you have no uses so you’re in a bit of a jam.)