1) Paranoid Gun Owners (PGO)
Typically town-alligned, this role has the (possibly togglable) effect of killing whoever visits them. This does NOT prevent the visit from happening usually, but some mods choose to have it this way.
Okay, so this role is swingy as fuck. It has a massive effect on the game and has the additional penalty of often making Mafia needleslly WIFOM their kills. I’d say that including a role like this in your game breaks it towards Town’s side most of the time and only adds extra swing to no real extra gameplay benefit
PGO-isers are also things you should never include as well. So don’t gie your NKs Circle of Death or rampage.
2) Survivors
A neutral-alligned role with the goal of surviving to the end of the game.
It’s a kingmaker that also lobotomises the fun of whoever is unlucky enough to rand it. Survivor’s unfunness is self-evident at this point; trying to play Survivor in FM is asininely unfun, and the only reason people still include it is because it’s a “ready-made neutral”. Avoid unless you give it some interesting dynamics as well.
3) Informed Millers
A miller is a Vanilla Townie that scans as Mafia to investigatives. Sometimes informed, sometimes not.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “But Icibalus uninformed millers are bastard and bastard is baaaad”. Firstly, no. So long as you make it clear from the outset that there is a possibility your role will have the hidden quality of Miller you can file it under ‘Reasonable Doubt of Investigative Abilities’ and as non-bastard.
Secondly, having an INFORMED miller is against the point of Millers in the first place. There is NOTHING stopping an informed miller from claiming and diverting cops to other people. Even if it’s a possible scum move, scumreading exists for cases of people you can’t reasonably cop check.
Of course, this brings up the question of whether it’s a good idea to add Framing abilities in the first place, but I digress.
4) Jailors
Basically Prince
At what point did we all suddenly decide it was a good idea to include an infinite shot strongman occupier asceticiser anonymous neighbouriser 2-shot conditional strongman vigilante in our games? At what point did we think: “Yes- This is definitely balanced!”. Prince only functions in ToL due to the fact that BD don’t have enough time to coordinate and so require a crazy busted role, but outside of it jailors are just overpowered as shit and unfun.
You can include Jailkeepers that occupy and protect though. Those are fine.
5) Watchers that are also Trackers
Observer’s Follow ability.
Watcher is extremely powerful on its own and Tracker is extremely weak on its own. When their powers are combined, you’re left with a gamesolving machine. I’d argue that Watchers are bad to include as infinite-shot anyway, but imo including a Follow-style ability at ALL is a bad idea. If you give Town that ability, they usually get at least 2 clears and get themself cleared. If you give scum that ability, they can PR hunt without consequences and Town will get unfairly picked off. The other problem with this style of ability is it’s hard to tilt the game against it with it in the game; since the more visits there are the STRONGER this ability becomes.
6) Jesters
A neutral role that wins if they get lynched.
What a surprise, Ici hates Jesters, time to skip this section… no. Do not skip this section. Jesters have NEVER been a good idea, and I will avoid your games if you show a habit of including them against all the warnings that you’ve been given. You have been warned.
7) Elite Bodygaurds
Choose a player each night. If that player is attacked, you will die to kill their attacker.
This role is an omniscient town doctor vig which comes at the TINY disadvantage of dying when they save somebody. Again, including something like this in your game, even though it’s extremely commonly used, will make your game majorly townsided, and here’s the crucial thing; completely unfun. The Bodygaurd dosen’t have a fun job, because simply predicting who dies and then getting a free kill feels cheap, and no wonder. The scum sweat far too much about their nightkills and have to needlessly fret about every facet of their plan at night, when the scum should be having fun at night.
Include a Bodygaurd that simply dies in somebody else’s place instead. Maybe give them a bulletproof vest.
Just… don’t include an Elite Bodygaurd.
That’s all for now, I’ll be adding more to this list later. Also, you can MAYBE get away with these roles with some major modifications but you’d need to be very careful about it if you don’t want your game to be swingy and unbalanced for no reason. But please, try not to include these.
