Why are you trying to do this?
20% Spite
80% Tangent
Introduction to the Problems that are D6 Mafia
This is often run as a Light or Newbie setup, which means that roughly optimal numbers will be a tad bit more townsided than setups looking for pure balance.
Premises:
- 3 PR rands are significantly stronger for town when compared to 2 (or 1) PR rands.
- Mafia rands where they have 1+ of Roleblocker/Jailkeeper are disproportionately stronger than rands where they do not. This is especially so in 3 PR rands.
A potential justification for statement 1 could be that an additional claimable role is often worth significantly more than the slight power increase roles get (which is not properly counterbalanced by the additional scum PR in 3 PR rands). It gives an additional clear and some form of utility, however minimal.
A potential justification for statement 2 would be in terms of action economy. The factional killl does not render most PRs useless for the night, except for those in the investigative column (assuming the kill actually goes through). As a result, scum without a roleblocker/jailkeeper have little counterplay for any attempts by the villagers to make night plans or FtC strategies. Even if villagers do not make specific plans, a lack of counterplay means that openly being a PR without a scum roleblocker/jailkeeper often will not impact your mechanical relevance.
Methodology to Improve the Setup:
- Improve some rands that are guaranteed to be 2 (or 1) PR setups to be slightly stronger.*
- Rework scum PR system.
*- Outside of specific instances such as Role Cop being significantly stronger than contemporaries in most situations potentially justifying a nerf, nerfing the lower value town roles may prove to be volatile to the setup due to how many interactions they would have with the overall setup.
Guaranteed 2 (or 1) PR setups:
5I (+ 1P or 1K)
6I
6P
6K
- 5I (Tracker) is at a strange impasse where it either has significant power or is nearly useless. It cannot get standard greenpeeks on players until there is only one remaining member of the scumteam alive, and even at that point its previous checks mean very little unless it hit a member of the scumteam either doing the factional or their PR performing an action. This, alongside the fact that the scum PR can choose to holster, puts this role on a similar power level to Role Cop overall. Role Cop has an even higher scaling potential due to its previous checks being useful if scum PR(s) are the only scum alive. I’d compare it to JOAT^2, but in that setup scum aren’t nearly as guaranteed to have counterplay as they do here.
- 6I is horribly weak. Scum know what PR is in game when it rands. To be better than the base power level of a 3 PR rand, not counting potential utility offered by the various PRs, the PC needs to live until D4. That’s kind of ridiculous.
- 6P is around the same power level of 5P while not having the additional PR that 5P gets. The best case scenario is both PRs living to the point where there is only one scum left alive and the scum PR is either dead or an investigative (wow investigative scum kind of suck here, who would have thought).
- 6K is only marginally better than 5K at a strict power comparison and also doesn’t have the additional PR.
Potential solutions:
- 6I is pretty simple. We can either go the route of making the role a normal Cop (with or without N0), or we can make 6I two different investigative roles. It could be Voyeur/Inno Child + Tracker. It could be Voyeur/Inno Child + Role Cop. It could even be MoDet + MoDet (which is a little silly). We could even use roles outside of the current setup.
- Making 6P into Jailkeeper + Doctor seems to be the natural move. The doctor could have some form of gating, but since scum are getting a PR regardless there’s the possibility that it might be ~fine as is.
- 6K is a weird one given that, since the setup is automated, it needs to be roles that work via modbot. As a result, I’m going to take a risk and say Vigilante + Vengeful. Vengeful is an extremely strong role. While it is a bit unfun to play against, it may just be worth it to go through with it.
- 5I is weird and I don’t have an exact fix. It might just be worth it to have the role break step with the rest of the setup by being a JOAT, or do the dumb thing and make the role a weaker cop-like role.
Scum Changes:
For scum, I might want to change how randing works. In setups where there are 3 PRs, scum will be guaranteed a scum manipulative (either roleblocker or jailkeeper) by rolling from a specialized wheel for their first PR. The randing for the second PR will operate as normal (I’m a bit uncertain on this one).
Why is this a thread?:
Mainly due to not being sure which options should be taken for the 2 PR setups and the scum randing. Thus, I wanted to open up discussion for that.
