Why the Sorcerer is the worst NK and how to quick fix it

#1

The idea behind the Sorcerer is a good one. The basic design is simple:

Advantages:

  • Unlike other NKs, the Sorcerer can work together with the Evils and doesn’t need to harm them

Disadvantages

  • Unlike other NKs, the Sorcerer has to worry about the Inquisitor

Design flavor:

  • The Inquisitor and the Sorcerer have their own little “mini-game” of finding and eliminating each other
  • The Sorcerer is supposed to be stronger than other NKs, since she has an Inquisitor hunting her

As you may have noticed from playing, the Sorcerer rarely wins. This is mostly due to the fact that her “advantage” does not help her survive very much. The fact that the Evils are no threat to her doesn’t help her very much. The problem is simple: The Sorcerer is the easiest NK to find by far. Consider how you go about finding any other NK- they’re neutral and they’re killers. Sorc is the same, except she’s also Magic. In other words, she is objectively easier to find than any other NK. The “advantage” that Sorc doesn’t need to worry about the other Evils does not realistically help her at all because it’s too difficult to find other Evil members, and can’t win if she dies. Sorc’s only defensive ability only helps against the Inquisitor leaving her completely open to any and all BD checks, this is a glaring weakness considering she’s supposed to be “stronger” than other NKs since she has an additional burden of the Inquisitor weighing over her.

Proposed solution

There’s tons of ways to make Sorc more viable, but I have a simple suggestion to not only buff her but also add more flavor to the game. Currently, Sorc is too easy to find for the BD (usually Sorc doesn’t even die to the Inq she’s just killed day 3 after a neutral check). My suggestion is: Make Sorc appear as BD to King checks. This simple buff would not only buff Sorc but make the “Inquisitor vs Sorcerer” flavor stand out more- because the Inquisitor would be a much more valuable asset. Right now, you don’t care much about the Inquisitor because usually the BD will kill the Sorc without his help. With this change, the Inquisitor has a bigger responsibility, and the little “Inq vs Sorc” mini-game in the background of the game stands out more.

I wouldn’t consider this overpowered, since the Sorc could still be found via Princess checks or by simply checking her logs for inconsistencies.

Only problem I see with this change is that adding ANOTHER passive to her would clutter her class card a little bit, but I feel like this is a small price to pay for how much better she would feel.

What do you guys think?

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#2

Sorcerer is weaker comparing to the inquisitor, but are you sure its win rate lower then reaper/possessor?

#3

Sorcerer is weaker comparing to the inquisitor, but are you sure its win rate lower then reaper/possessor?

I can’t possibly know that for sure since I don’t have access to the statistics- if I had to make a guess I would be pretty confident in assuming that Sorc has a lower winrate than the other NKs, though.

#4

I support.

#5

the one little thing I’d have to point out… while yes the sorc’s problematic off the charts, and yes very much the worse NK by a large margain… I would also point out, the inquisitor itself isn’t equipped to find the sorc. Magic dust really needs to be reverted, or tweaked (maybe unlimited use single target?).

To me this is the biggest problem in the inquis sorc duo…

inquis is currently the only class that sorcerer can baffle, and he baffles it so much that the inquis is effectively useless until the sorcerer goes down… at which point he becomes the ultimate cult killer. or just confirmed non unseen but not trustworthy either.

Sorc is very OP with regards to covering himself from inquisitor, he just sucks with regards to every other method NKs can go down. He can’t throw others into knights like a possesor, he can’t bypass healing or negate conversation like a reaper.

#6

I would also point out, the inquisitor itself isn’t equipped to find the sorc.

I think the Inq is perfectly well equipped to find the Sorc, the only issue is that he never gets to actually do it because the BD will find the Sorc on their own without him. The Sorc basically gets 3 days of cover from the Inq at best, but she almost always dies before that time is up anyways. In the best case scenario you get to night 3, get one nice circle of death and that’s it, you’re finished the next day.

Sorc being able to bamboozle the Inq is a small consolation for the fact that she has absolutely NO way to bamboozle the BD which, sure, are the bigger threat for the most part- but only because she never gets to live past the point where the Inq would actually be useful in finding her.

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#7

The Sorcerer is mostly fine.
It does has some issues, but I think these are issues that are common to all Neutral Killers: the lack of good classes to fake claim makes it extremely difficult to survive till the end of the game and the ability of the starting King to find Neutrals means that your game can finish very early if you’re unlucky enough to be one of the four players the King chooses to check.

This is an issue with the game itself and not the Sorcerer class. The game needs more viable fake claims.
Also I think that the King should only be able to find Unseen/Cult, not Neutrals. The evil factions can easily recoup even if one of them is found by the King early. But if you’re Neutral, it’s pretty much instant GG.

Personally I have mostly issues with the Inquisitor class, and not the Sorcerer.

  • Despite the entire concept behind the Inquisitor’s creation was to have a Neutral Investigative, the Inquisitor’s investigative abilities are mostly irrelevant to find the Sorcerer, because of Magic Dust.
  • Why would an Investigative class even need to be able to kill their target directly? The Blue Dragon already seems to treat the Inquisitor as an honorary BD, why not let the Inquisitor interact with the court and try to have their hung?
  • Most importantly, though, I think the Inquisitor’s objective should be revisited. Right now, after the Sorcerer dies (for whatever reason) the Inquisitor can just claim and shrink the pool of possible evil players. Moreover, since they already won, they can affect the game a lot without any real aim (with their abilities, or even just by voting). And this is even worse for Cult, because the Inquisitor can easily find them (even though he should have no real incentive to do so). Considering the Sorcerer’s objective is to survive till the end of the game and have the BD lose, I think it should be fair to change the Inquisitor’s objective to survive till the end of the game and have the Sorcerer lose.
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#8

my point is the sorc gets 3 days cover, but the inq has no idea which 3 days those are. If say you are a sheriff or king, and getting tricked by a fooled/scorned. Unless you were going off of someone saying to check at the last second of a day… you know statistically it is waay less likely that you just happened to be checking on the same night that the person you checked happened to be chosen to be framed.

If you are an inquisitioner on the other hand, you factor in that 3/10 days everyone is framed (just a ballpark there), plus the psychic/CW etc… that aren’t your objective to get killed. Assuming on average 7 unknowns at any given time (obviously more early game, less late game). checking an unknown is about a 1/7 chance, of being the sorcerer (IE 17%), while closer to a 30-40% chance of being framed/BDmagic users. Meaning calling out or stabbing magic users you find… is a bad play.

But yes I agree, that it’s more than appropriately balanced to make the inquisitioner worthless, so long as the sorcerer is pretty much doomed to get caught by the BD in general, my point was, the inq himself is actually more likely to accompish his job just by letting the inevitable result where the BD kills the sorc for him, than to actually try himself. In short he’s the least accurate or capable person to catch him.

The point I was getting at though, was if we fixed the sorcerer so that he wasn’t super doomed to the BD… was that the sorcerers inquisitor bamboozlers do need to be nerfed.

Right now, the sorc is too powerful at avoiding the inquisitior, and too weak at avoiding the BD. If we fix one of these problems, we do have to fix the other as well.

1 Like
#9

Magic dust should make Sorcerer appear to be Bd/non magic

Circle of death should be self targetable

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#10

Magic dust should make Sorcerer appear to be Bd/non magic

That could work

#11

I think a major buff for all NK’s would be, like the MM, not appearing to be occupy immune to other players. The means that any occupy immune player is automatically suspect, and the real immune classes can be hard to fake, especially late game. (Reaper should also just become occ immune as well)

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#12

I agree that sorcerer needs a buff, but this is not the right way. It’s too specific, and it doesn’t fix the sorcerer’s main problem(inquisitor). The only buff sorcerer needs is the removal or rework of inquisitor. Circle of death should also be self-targetable and be usable at any time

#13

That’d make her too good, her abilities are already very powerful.

They should just change her goal to “Survive to see the inquisitor defeated”, that’d make her easier to win. Right now the game is not balanced it’s hard af to win as evil, the evil factions relies too much on the NK to do damage unless ur lucky and got the Prince early (which is ridiculously overpowered). I really think they should consider adding more evil friendly NK’s (like the Sorcerer) into the game.

#14

Survive to see the Inq defeated, then she wouldn’t really be a NK though. It would just make a back ground game that two people were secretly playing with each other.

CoD being self target wouldn’t be terrible, but having to wait a few days is fine. Day 3 is crazy early in the game and she can wipe out all the healers pretty easily. Her biggest problem is that she’s so easy for the court to find and so hard for the Inq to find. Most courts don’t even really care if they execute the Inq, because he just kills Psychics and Paladins anyway and she’s easy to find once you know she exists. If someone claims it on the stand and you pardon, you can throw a butler at them to confirm anyway, or just revote if they don’t die that night.

I think she needs the old MM ability to be occupy immune but not show as such and maybe even the ability to appear as BD when checked (even if only for the first 3 days it would cover most Allies checks). Then remove dust (or make it much less effective). Then the Inq is the best person to find her since usual detection methods of throwing a Butler or Allies check around wouldn’t work.

Sorc should be the best NK at hiding her nature. Which is why she has a whole person specifically devoted to finding her. Instead she’s probably the worst at it and said person looking for her is one of the worst people for trying to find her.