A lot of people are complaining that it is against the rules to bus your first contract. I have a suggestion that would both fix this problem while simultaneously making the mercenary more fun to play.
If they haven’t picked a contract by N2, they commit suicide.
This puts the burden of choosing a good contract on the Mercenary themselves, so they can’t complain about ‘randomly rolling the NK’ and not wanting to protect them.
It’s still basically random. At the point in the game you have little information, so all you can make is a guess.
And if you can choose King, that’s basically always the best option, since in general the King will die less often due to Guards!, and general BD trust.
An educated guess is still more interactive and fair than just randomly being assigned a contract. Picking your first contract is also a lot more fitting of the mercenary flavor.
Solution to the Mercenary question: If the Mercenary’s contract dies and the game ends before the Mercenary is able to give out his second contract, allow him to win
Lorewise, he could just give the second contract to somebody after the game
This incentivizes the Mercenary to stick with his first contract for as long as possible, because he has the safety net of the second contract keeping him alive either way
By ignoring his first target or actively bussing them, he makes his chances worse even if the second contract potentially has a higher likelihood of surviving
This is a solution through game design rather than one through ruling that potentially contradicts a decision to increase your odds of winning
One problem is that if you pick fool you immediately lose. I’d make it until N4 giving it the same rules that looking for work already does.
True. But at least the burden of picking a fool is on the merc. And the problem with making it until n4 is the Merc can just sit on their hands and be at no risk of losing. You’d effectively have until n8 to choose your final contract if you chose your first one on n4.
Doesn’t this remove the main risk when waiting to contract and make the Merc basically a survivor at the end of the game?
Burrito, that’s why you limit the amount of time he’s allowed to just sit on his contract to avoid him milking it until the last second. Make it an absolute priority that he immediately contracts somebody
I personally think we should make Mercenary have a limited second target window. That way you can’t ditch your target late game, without being screwed if your target is randomly killed.
But it’s not a problem late game. It would just encourage ditching him early game instead.
I think my solution is better because it completely disincentivizes ditching your first contract by making the act of holding onto a second contract valuable. As long as you aren’t the last man standing you’ll win.
