Unconvertible
Helpful to BD
Confirmable
Pick 2 (or 1 even)
https://forum.imperium42.com/t/addressing-neuts-out/10561?u=sketch
There need to be claimable neutral classes to avoid a dearth of claimspace.
If only BD classes are claimable, it creates tremendous pressure, as you have legitimate BD, evils and neutrals competing for the same claimspace. It disproportionately favours confirmable BD classes and encourages a method of systematically killing off the weakest claims and use a simple process of elimination instead of actual deduction and investigation.
I’m not saying Neutral claims should be just as valid as BD claims, though. I’m saying that there need to be helpful Neutral classes that BD wants to keep around and provide claimspace for evils. Executing a helpful Neutral class without solid evidence should feel like a difficult choice. It should feel like BD is losing something, such that a skilled evil player can manipulate BD into letting them live just one more day (which is often enough all you really need).
We need more appealing Neutral classes that are hard to confirm but are still tempting to BD keep alive, not less. Otherwise, we run into “Oh I have 4 Sheriff claims. Let’s start killing them off one by one.” territory.
2 Likes
He’s both 1 and 2. Helpful essentially means that BD wants to have them around. Since Mercenaries cannot win with the Unseen/Cult and have abilities that favor BD such as Shield, then he falls under 2. If he’s given 3 he’d become too strong.
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The Old Mercenary meta was basically to let your first contract die and the re-contract the Prince or a confirmed neut that nobody would bother such as an Alchemist or the Inquisitor. It was an interesting concept but in practice the idea was terrible. Plus, it was stupidly easy to confirm so you couldn’t fake it.
They’d by default just side with BD as the current win-rate is roughly split 52/38/10 for BD/Unseen or Cult/NK. It’s far more reliant to just side with BD.
Or add more BD-aligned classes that are difficult to confirm. BD-sided neutrals in general are pretty meh as the entire point of neutrals is to serve as wild-cards with their own goal in mind.
3 Likes
You can do both! And Neutrals can be both, too.
The Mercenary, Inquisitor and Alchemist’s goals are cleverly designed, in that while there is encouragement to side with BD, it’s not mandatory. If they are fine-tuned/reworked to a satisfactory point, they could become decent wild cards that BD is tempted to keep around and evils can claim as.
Having only more BD classes leads to a very “roll of the dice” claimspace for evils, where they might be forced to claim early and later executed on the spot when it’s revealed that 2 of the classes they claimed as were already present in the game. Sure, the situation is rarer the more overall BD classes there are, but with some classes being guaranteed, others being unique and others being easy to confirm, the pool of viable BD claims needs to expand dramatically for that to be viable. It’s a lot easier to improve the helpful Neutral classes instead.
I’d be curious to see a chart of Merc win rates since Sellsword’s inclusion to see if others are having similar experiences as I am.
I’m not a pro, but I do have hundreds of hours in game, so not entirely a noob either 
The 2/3 rule is great and I’ve seen it each time it’s been posted…
But - “helpful” is not a universal definition. No offense intended, but linguistically, this “rule of thumb” needs clarification, especially if being used to determine balancing needs; please define Helpful as it applies here, so that we can reference it for the rest of this thread; it’d be quite…Helpful 
Reason it needs defining here is because it’s an opinion-based defintion. Sure, I think Merc is hugely helpful. But how are you asking the Average Moon2sub to weigh that when they load a game with no reference point?
Helpful to BD? Undoubtedly! I believe Merc is one of the strongest BD assets!
Helpful in the EYES of BD?.. well, now that’s another matter entirely, and while it seems that there are independently plenty of players who support Merc’s on their BD team, I have yet to see evidence of that in the actual game.
Forums != Gameplay; so let’s see some statistics! Those stats should really actually tell dev’s all they need to know on this issue, tbh. I’m just making some noise to call attention to it
You’re not exactly wrong here, but that’s true for neutrals as well. 2 alchs or 2 mercs pop up? The other guy claiming it is lying. Heck, if you get one alch, a merc, and then a fool dies, you know any more neutral claims are evil. It’s a lot better to have claim able BD classes than neutrals, as neutrals have a lower hard limit.
But having more claimable Neutral classes as well as BD classes being less confirmable is the best of both worlds, as it reduces the odds of that scenario happening by providing more options for everyone. Not to mention that Neutral classes being viable claimspaces is a slight buff to Neutral Killers against faction-detecting abilities.
Neutral claims should be riskier/less trustworthy than BD claims, but they shouldn’t be altogether invalid.
do you mind including some “Helpful” content? like the reference?
I’d argue that neutral claims shouldn’t be viable at all. Simply put, neutrals never have BD’s goal. Yes inquisitor and merc have goals that line up with BD, but at no point are they forced to work with them. Neutrals are risky because of this, and bd should only trust them in times of desperation.
2 Likes
Here. Mercs don’t need any buffs as their win rate is insanely high at the low sixties.
Can block people from visiting and prevent kills/conversion, has one night of night immunity, and basically need to see the Unseen or Cult lose in order to win.
It really depends on how you are playing. If you claim early and cooperate with BD, scumread Unseen/Cult members and get them lynch, help BD by properly Shielding and Guarding, and whatnot then you won’t be executed. If you claim d5 without doing anything while expecting BD to carry you, then that’s a surefire way to get executed.
Mercenaries are pretty much fully reliant on BD as Possessors and Reapers have extremely low win rates while you absolutely cannot rely on Sorcerers as they also win with the Unseen or Cult. Meanwhile Alchemists suffer from the 3-checks issue and they need to be reworked as the majority of times it’s far better to side with BD rather than evils unless BD is playing horrendously. Right now neither of them are wild cards.
The same 2-class limit applies to neutrals and it’s even worse as there is also a limit of neutrals in the game, so if you’re fakeclaiming Alchemist while a Fool and a Mercenary are dead in a Sorc game, you’re basically a goner. We don’t need more claimable neutral classes while expanding the amount of BD classes would easily remove the 2-class issue.
They aren’t invalid, it’s just that players are going to be far more open to any accusation or suspicion levied towards you. You can’t mud the waters by claiming you got framed as since you can’t be a Scorned target then it’s extremely unlikely that a Mystic or Noble got converted, and you’re less likely to get players on the fence as if a neutral claim ends up executed then it’s no loss to BD.
In short, claiming Neutral as a chainsaw defense against a 2-use secondary ability from a class that may not even spawn or even survive until the late-game. Genius. You’re far more likely to get stuck in a 3-neut game than being peeked by an Observer. And there’s also the fact that if it’s already mid-late game and a NK is still out loose, BD will start by culling off the neutral claims.
A potential way to make Mercenary more interesting to play while maintaining the goals I mentioned before is to make Mercenary Unique but convertible into the Sellsword (whether or not we want to make Sellsword unavailable if the game has a Mercenary or we’re okay with a two-Sellsword game is another matter).
Making Mercenary convertible allows for them to be buffed so that they perform a significantly powerful service for BD at the cost of, if converted, become an anti-BD class that doesn’t count against Cult/Unseen numbers (but can’t coordinate with them at night).
Might also want to change the Sellsword’s Intimidate for something less likely to tip off BD? Maybe making it an occupy that makes the target think the action went through? With limited uses, of course.
Now this idea necessitates the new Mercenary to have a truly useful ability that makes it tempting for BD to keep it around.
“Helpful” as in “Significantly helpful to the Blue Dragon”.
As FK said, Alch and Merc are “helpful” classes because Alch’s kit and Merc’s wincon and kit encourage them to work with the BD
Issue is there’s literally never going to be a reason not to convert a Sellsword for the extra member
