[Rework Suggestion] The King! A more vulnerable, more social class

Same. Investigative results shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all of ToL.

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and with that you’ve lost me

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This ability is a staple of Mafia games, and if it’s going to be on anyone, it makes the most sense on the King. Having it as a passive over an active helps Possessor gameplay and allows the King to use Decide Fate without having to waste their Day ability proving they’re not possessed.

One shot immunity is not the end of the world, given that NK is going to want King dead most of the time, and prevents the King from randomly dying N1. Figuring out how to attack the King is no different than figuring out how to attack an outed Prince. It’s an important part of Mafia vs. Town gameplay.

It’s a one-use ability on a class that 40% of the time wants Prince dead and does not share BD goals. Whisper meta, under highly controlled circumstances such as this one, is healthy gameplay.

Investigative classes other than Observer can’t visit the King. Social and Offensive classes can’t visit the King. Hunter, Court Wizard and Prince can’t visit the King. The only BD classes that can visit the King are Observer, Physician and Knight. These classes having a choice as to whether they keep the King alive (who has only 60% chance of being Good) is good gameplay.

The King needs an ability like Private Matters and a reward for protectors to let them deduce and lead the court. The King has to ongoingly prove themselves useful to Bd to retain their protection, which in turn makes them more of a target to evils. It’s a dynamic way to create tension and back and forth. And again, 40% of the time, protecting the King will backfire for BD.

Do you just post without bothering to read the entirety of the thread?

Other things that can cause the Butler’s Wine to be prevented: target is jailed, target is guarded by Merc, target is guarded by Sellsword, target is a Butler who partied, the Butler trying to Wine is HH’d, target was a Support empowered by Court Wizard (if the Butler doesn’t get a prevented message when trying occupy an empowered Support, they should, because the Empower basically causes occupation abilities to be prevented).

The ability has limited uses and is literally no different than current king guarding alch for heals.

That is not a widely shared opinion. You’re not alone in thinking that, but you’re also not in tge majority. It’s a controversial issue.

I think we’re at the point where literally any whisper-related ability creates a knee-jerk “whisper meta!!!” reaction in players. Having a single day of whispering for claims to a class that can be 40% of the time not-good is completely different than having to ongoingly whisper every day to the Prince, who is basically an auto-confirmed good class. This, plus the Noble’s Spy, is actually a huge counter to the whisper meta people hate.

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King shouldn’t win in a 1 v 2 tbh.

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King still loses to Hunter in that scenario tho?

Yeah but the reason king can’t decide fate and royal finger is because of how op it is.
Just give it double votes passively and decide fate makes him lose the passive. It was oranges idea I think

You then can add another day ability

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If people prefer it that way, sure. Another alternative is to reduce the passive’s activation requirement to “when there’s only 2 people left alive”.

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King is always either going to be too op or too up. There’s never a balance I truly think you can give to the king.

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I do agree that people posting here about how this or that ability is too overpowered or generates unhealthy gameplay are not realising the King needs to have some sort of reward for BD or else they are useless and are literally better off dead every time. The King not being guaranteed good and not being useful enough to BD leaves them as an auto-kill class.

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Please point to me a setup where Mayors typically have a 1-shot bulletproof while a new Mayor appears if the old one dies.

I am just stating the it’s better in the current state. Right now it’s entirely possible to kill a GK without immunity-bypassing attacks by either predicting when he OEs or if he’s guarding another important BD member. This new ability just removes prediction altogether and uniformly requires evils to waste a night if they don’t have some form of immunity-piercing attack.

Even with the 35% chance of an Evil King spawning and with the threats of an Apostle or Aristocrat around people are still relying solely on the whisper meta. This is just going to make the meta worse.

The reward here should be keeping a productive King alive. This ability essentially encourages protective classes to just hide in the King’s chambers for immunity. Encouraging players to guard the King, even if they are useless is just bad play. This is especially bad as the King himself can’t guard important BD members anymore.

I read the class card and the wording there should be improved, to be fair.

target is jailed

Unless the Prince isn’t keeping logs, then this option is out of the window.

target is guarded by Merc

Again, if there are no Merc claims then it’s kind of obvious that this is out, and even then a Merc would have their logs.

target is guarded by Sellsword

Only feasible explanation so far, and even then it’s somewhat uncommon to have a SS in-game.

target is a Butler who partied, the Butler trying to Wine is HH’d

They’d get the message that their immunities were bypassed if this was the case.

target was a Support empowered by Court Wizard

The Cult Leader is not a support class.

In any match where the players are somewhat competent this is an extremely easy way to out yourself as an EK. There should be no visible mechanical differences between a GK and an EK. At all.

It’s a five-use ability where the charges refills to three every time a new King steps up. It essentially has an upkeep of 50%~100% of the time depending on game length. The issue here is that this guarantees the Alch guards as the King can’t target anyone else with it rather than the Alch having to trust the King, who isn’t even on the same faction as them, to waste their guards on a neut instead of the Prince or a Sheriff. Again, this ability further compounds the issue of Alchemists basically being unconvertible Physicians with a 4-shot night immunity.

It is. There’s a reason why OE is not included in FoL as it’s agreed by the player-base that the King should not have killing powers by himself.

The whisper meta is still very predominant. Plus, raising the odds for an Evil King to spawn too much will end up causing the King to become automatically considered Evil and will basically make playing GK an impossible task as they will essentially be class that depends on other players but at the same time is highly distrusted.

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It’s entirely possible to keep the King as a useful town leader without breaking his end-game. Letting him single-handedly execute players late-game shouldn’t be a thing.

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I was referring to the specific ability of having extra votes so that you win 1v1s. In Town of Salem, the Mayor’s votes are tripled instead of doubled, which literally lets them solo-kill someone in a 1v5. Having extra votes on a class is a staple of the genre, usually to some detriment.

Again, there are two separate factions that have their reasons for wanting to take a King out. Possessor and Sorcerer lose nothing by Puppet Stringing/Magic Missile’ing the King at some point in the game, and Reaper can just bypass the issue entirely. CL can choose the King as one of the Eradicate targets and still get 1 kill while popping the King’s passive. It’s only a wasted night for Assassin, who can just poison the King anyway once there are no healers left, and the passive might as well not have existed (CL can do the same too).

Let’s break down some basics: BD is an Uninformed Majority that wins by becoming informed before it stops being a majority. The two most fundamental ways to do so is either rallying behind a BD-claiming class (usually Prince) or Vote For Role so that all info is out in the open at all times. The Uninformed Majority needs, above all other things, 1) to gain information, and 2) to preserve numbers, in that order of priority. There is no change you can make to the game where BD doesn’t go for one of these two tactics.

If you manage to successfully eliminate all whisper meta and all rallying behind a BD-claiming class, you get Vote For Role every single game, starting from D2 onwards. I’ll take whisper meta every single time, because that at least has inherent risks and some degree of counterplay. There is no way to avoid Vote For Role giving Town useful information, because even if they execute a BD class, they still gain information and shrink available claimspace for evils.

A class that can be evil 40% of the time and has no truly useful abilities for BD is an auto-kill class. You have to understand Good King is competing with Prince. Prince is an incredibly strong class for BD and Good King already starts at a disadvantage by having a chance of not being BD-aligned.

I was under the impression these feedbacks had been merged when they did the “merge into prevented” update a couple of months ago. If so, they should really change that. A Butler should have no idea if they were HH’d or walked into another Butler partying, or into a jailed target, or into a Sellsword/Merc-guarded target. They already get Success/Immune feedback, the least they can do is merge all forms of “your ability was prevented” feedback.

I agree, but the current biggest problem for Cult is how easy it is to literally block the CL from doing absolutely anything every single night for 3 nights in a row, even without trying to do it on purpose. CL needs some help in actually getting those conversions/eradicates off.

It could easily be implemented that non-starting Kings get 2 less uses of their primary ability, like we have right now.

I think 40% chance of not-good king is the perfect number. It’s still GK majority but the risk is significant enough to matter.

Again: The King needs to be a powerful-enough class to reward BD for following them instead of the Prince, to the point where people are tempted to overlook the odds of the King being not-good. The King needs to be more than a 100% purely social role, or else the Prince is automatically better.

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My problem with the whisper meta is that people always whisper to the same classes. In otherwords whisper meta is the most fun when anyone can be the rally point and it comes down to who is most aggressive to see who actually is.

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Which is how it really needs to be - do you really want RNG to determine which side gets a role better than Prince added to their team for free?

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BD will tend to rally behind the strongest, most auto-confirmable class they currently have available. This is an inevitability. The class may change, but there’s no real way of having a free-for-all anyone-can-be-the-leader meta.

Yes? Because that knowledge being public means the King is inherently untrustworthy? So long as the King’s allegiance remains impossible to detect and can only be discerned through actions, they can be mechanically more powerful than Prince, but Prince will have a huge leg up on the King that the King can never match.

Except that in Town of Salem if the Mayor dies, they die. Here the King has some form of self-protection and when they die another player, likely a BD member, steps up to become the King. Their voting abilities can’t be that strong as they still can be replaced and have their survivability factored in. Having their vote count as 2 or 3 isn’t bad per se, it’s just that the rest of the King’s kit can end up making him too powerful.

It’s not. The NK or Assassin/CL waste a night that could have put BD closer to a LyLo scenario. As you did in your Queen suggestion, you are vastly underestimating the impact that KPN has on the scum’s game.

Or they can just put out information in the open. In high elo ToS games open-claiming is extremely common and is agreed to be the best way for the uninformed majority to win. The Whisper meta and VFR exist as a replacement due to poor play on the majority’s part.

Except that the King is an expandable leader/info aggregation and the Prince is less so as they can jail and execute. If the Prince outs and tries to play the same role as the King, they’ll be dead in most cases providing scum is competent, as in Empowered Reap, Eradicate into a Teleport, Frenzy, and whatnot.

Relying on an Evil King to do this would just make him mechanically confirm-able and would not work 60% of the time.

Making the King too strong will essentially turn the game into a race to see which faction can install their own King. The King shouldn’t be that vital for either side.

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Most classes can play the part of a town leader as long as they play well. Rallying behind a useless King over a CW who has been finding evils via scumreading and in general has been active because they’re the King is just poor play in general.

This is purely relying on mechanical confirmation over reads, to be honest.

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You’re missing the point. The untrustworthiness of the King may prevent you from feeling comfortable whispering all of your info to them, but that’s not at all what I was getting at.

The more powerful the King is, the swingier the game becomes and the more likely it is that the winning side is determined not by what happens in-game, but by which alignment gets the King. That’s a huge issue, and it can only be lessened by weakening the King.

Now, a super weak King would be pointless, but making him significantly stronger than Prince just ramps this issue way higher than it ever needs to be.

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All you really need to do is make the players exact class not the primary factor in rallying.

Once a Sheriff or Hunter or something can lead a whisper game I will be happy

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Why is it conditional? It’s already a niche ability. Just make it so your votes will count double normally.

What’s the point of this? The only BD classes that can visit king are phys, knight, and observer.

Again, death immunity is a bit redundant when mastermind already has it and assassin visiting EK would be a wasted night.

What’s wrong with Order Execution? It encourages people to claim to the king. Maid spy and 35% chance of evil king already discourage whispering to the king. It needs a buff if anything, it isn’t hard for healers/court wizards/sages to predict who the king will target.

That would be underpowered though. It’s already a niche ability.