Hi,
I am a huge fan of the starting-neutral king. But unfortunately it got removed.
I don’t know why it was removed, but is there a chance, that he will come back?
I just registered here on the forum to ask this one question…
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He was removed because his existence didn’t add anything important to the game and removing him made room for a better odds system for the king.
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He was fun to play. Isn’t that a good reason to have him ingame?
He could team with BD and Evils and NK.
Thats what made him unique and enjoyable.
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The only route that allows that the other 2 don’t is NK. Who is likely going to just kill you anyways just incase
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He is fun to play.
Besides getting poisoned by a butler reaped bypassing your immunity ect
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Neutral King is completely indistinguishable from BD King if they want to be, up until they betray everybody and side with the evils because they can.
No thanks.
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Which is why I’m glad that they’re gone. The fact that they win with everybody means that they could play as a selfish/active king without any downside at all. Plus, surviving is a boring goal.
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They won’t guard a prince and can get bled/poisoned by scum, if they are too much of a town leader and healers are out. They could also fear a reaper and play more passive, because of that.
Saying that x role plays completely indistinguishable from x role if they want to honestly does not say much and can be applied in other situations too. The differences are subtle, but it also opens up doors for BD/evil kings to fake neutral king and possibly lure out some claims that way. Think of a 3 people endgame with one person being Possessor and another person any type of king. “I’m neutral king, who is Possessor?” is a valid strategy for every type of king in that situation.
I’d definitely support getting starting neutral king back and I didn’t agree with getting rid of him in the first place. The only real other survivor is Alchemist.
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I also support bringing starting Neutral King back. As far as n2 empower reaps and d4 butler poisons, those can be avoided by asking knights and alchs for help. The complaint about “neut king is indistinguishable from X until he betrays you” is really silly IMO, so what? Alch is also indistinguishable from a phys until he “betrays” you, are these people asking for alch to be removed too?
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To claim Physician as an Alchemist is pretty much suicide, though. Double Physician games are stupidly common and BD typically will try to hammer anyone changing their claims if they’re found out. From personal experience, claiming Alchemist upfront is a far better strategy than claiming Physician and hoping that BD doesn’t find out.
Except they are stupidly less common when there is an Alchemist in play, just because the game is trying to fulfill some healer quota, making it that much more attractive to claim Physician. Alchemists can also proveable heal and I’m really amazed you’d consider it suicide to claim it. Backtracking to Alchemist if you have a proven heal is really not that difficult either. Neutral kings are indistinguishable from BD/evil kings, but Physicians/Alchemists have no evil counterpart that can heal.
Except they are stupidly less common when there is an Alchemist in play, just because the game is trying to fulfill some healer quota, making it that much more attractive to claim Physician.
2 Phys+1 Alch games are still possible and happen quite often. In this situation you’re as good as dead unless you have a proven heal.
Alchemists can also proveable heal
but Physicians/Alchemists have no evil counterpart that can heal.
You need to get a prediction on who’s going to be attacked right in order for the heal to be proven or an Observer on you or the target. If you heal a bleed or a poison while another healer also does it then that’s not a strong alibi for you to survive.
Alchemists can also proveable heal and I’m really amazed you’d consider it suicide to claim it.
Unless you have crazy prediction skills or luck, then you won’t be able to get a confirmed heal by the time suspicion begins piling up on you. It’s far safer to claim Alchemist up front as the Neuts out meta long has been dead.
In short, if you want to fakeclaim then you need a very good alibi that you’re an Alchemist otherwise BD will straight up execute you.
Except they happen less than often, but since neither of us have data, the point is moot.
Those Physicians can also get converted and if suddenly an Assassin shows up, they tend to trust you a lot more, trust me. Not to mention, why should those 2 Physician claims not be executed first over you? Just outclaim them. You’ll have the logs to back it up if you play like a BD Alchemist. Throw in a “I innoced you” for good measure and you’ll be fine.
Princess can 100% confirm you, Butler/Drunks can at least semi-confirm you. Observer can confirm you. Sheriff/Paladin can semi-confirm you. Hunter can freely wolf you. That’s like half the BD roles…
All of this is irrelevant. An alchemist claiming phys can be mechanically confirmed to be a lier and is also less impactful in the worst case scenario.
The King has no means of mechanical verification so scum reading is your only tool. Since this isn’t a Forum game where people have plenty of time and godlike scumreading skills that means that the difference between Kings CANNOT be subtle by default. You NEED to be able to notice the difference without years of experience and that requires a large difference in objectives that a survivor goal simply doesn’t allow for.
Back on topic…
Alches claiming Physicians aren’t that major as by the time late-game comes they’d already either be night-killed, executed, or they’d be outed. A Neutral King was a problem as they had about 50% more night immunity uptime, cannot be mechanically confirmed, would not be suspected while BD would be hunting for the NK/MM/CLs, and didn’t have to fear being OE’d by the King or executed by the Prince.
Ultimately BD-feigning Neut Kings would too often survive until the end-game provided they were not reaped or the court was not regicide-happy, and then could easily turn the tides towards the Unseen/Cult in the last second.
Yes, Evil Kings can pretend to act like Good Kings, but it came at a price as if you’re intentionally helping BD then you’re making it more likely that you’re going to lose. Meanwhile Neutral Kings could fake being Good Kings and then stab them in the back without any risk at all. You’d need to be a top-tier scumreader to differentiate Neutral Kings from Good Kings in ToL’s short game-time, and then there would still be plenty of room for ambiguity.
In short, having a neut king on turbo was a pain as by the time you’d notice they were neutral it was too late and the game could already be decided by a backstabbing neutral king. The entire point of the Neutral King was supposed to be a class that had to balance how much they favored the evil and good factions, but the reality was that the King essentially was forced to play pro-BD as it feared nothing but the court and the Reaper, while at the same time had the ability to backstab BD at the end, which was frustrating to play against and boring to play as.
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A solution to your problems would be to give scum more tools to deal with an overactive BD/neutral king. Only Reaper/Butler/Enforcer are true problems for a king to deal with as of now. Possess going through death immunity, giving Servant a reverse poison, lowering the number of guards, changing 2-for-1 with an empower, giving a killer type cult, the possibility to empower CL. All these are ways that would rein in gamesolving active BD kings and make room for a role like Neutral King.
Starting Neutral King was the highest skill cap class in the game, bar none. With all the additional counters a King has (hidden poison from Butler (used to be known), Reaper, available to be executed from D2, etc), a Neutral King would be an even higher skill cap class to manage all these threats.
If starting Neutral King was reintroduced it would have to be in the old “King leads?” format. He would need the ability to check instead of having access to OE. Part of what safeguarded a Neut King was the promise that if he was healed/pardoned/etc he would share an Unseen/Neut he found. Not having OE would also mean a Reaper is less inclined to kill him, or any faction for that matter.
Neutral King in this current meta would not work as it did before. Kings are pretty vulnerable now.
I think the only way Neutral King could be reintroduced without the problems mentioned above is to give them a completely different win condition that doesn’t harm nor help BD and must be completed before the game ends, but requires the King to direct resources towards something that doesn’t actually help BD.
An example (not something I would legit propose, just something that illustrates my point above):
Neutral King’s Goal: Ensure the person blackmailing you is dead by the end of the game.
Now granted, this goal can be extremely swingy depending on how the game assigns the blackmailer tag (can it hit non-BD? if so, it might make it too easy for the Neutral King to fake Good King). For obvious reasons, the blackmailer cannot be aware of their own status.
Another possible goal can be to “retrieve a prized artefact from a thief”, with the NK having the ability to check a target to see if they have their stolen artefact, and then they win by OEing the thief (but if the thief dies in another way, the artefact jumps to another player).
These ideas illustrate a potential way to have the Neutral King actively pursue a goal that has nothing to do with BD (though it runs the risk of harming BD, so they have a reason to exe/poison a Neutral King).
Though perhaps Neutral King wouldn’t be the best name for this type of King. Perhaps Aloof King? Selfish King? Something of the sort.
This raises the skill floor not the skill ceiling. More challenges doesn’t make a good player more effective. It just makes a bad player less effective.
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It doesn’t really have to be one or the other here. It raises the skill ceiling and the skill floor. It tightens the leeway you get in terms of how willing BD/NK/Evils are to tolerate you. The tightrope that the Neut King would walk is much thinner, but they can still cruise through a game if they command authority.