I've been PMing captainmeme about role balance, I'll just copy/paste the pertinent part to give my opinions on those roles, using the Bomber as an example.
"So like I said, the key dynamic here is that the town hunt mafia. This hunt is able to occur because the two sides have different information and incentives. If either the information or incentives are changed, you run the risk of losing that hunt and therefore the purpose of the game.
By this standard, the bomber mafia is a bad role. Let's look at how his role is defined:
- He does not know who the mafia are and doesn't coordinate with them.
- He can suicide bomb anyone's place.
- He wins with the mafia.
On a basic level, how is this role supposed to work? If the bomber doesn't know who his teammates are, how does he know who he's supposed to kill and who he's supposed to keep alive? It's pretty easy to figure out when to blow up -- when you're going to die anyway, or when a town PR claims -- but as far as advancing the mafia's win condition, it's nearly impossible to know what to do.
And conversely, how is the town supposed to catch the Bomber? The Bomber doesn't have the information he's supposed to have, which distorts his incentives. The town can't get an accurate read on him because he doesn't act like a mafia; he can't."
This also applies to the serial killer, but I think as long as it's a single person alternatively being hunted, it's not that big a deal. I wouldn't go any further though (and it'll be apparent later).
So one at a time here:
- Lawyer/Framer/Miller/Godfather: These take the cop concept (which already distracts from the hunt to an extent) and make it dominate the game. False information from the GM distorts the hell out of the hunt.
- Stalker's fine, one of the mafia's jobs is to rolehunt and it's hard to do without powers.
- Hooker's also fine, but I think the factional roleblock is better for reasons we discussed before the first game; the roleblock is a vital counter to overpowered town role combos (like a cop and doctor, who can scan people with impunity), allowing it to expire mid-game distorts the hooker's incentives by making the hooker prioritize survival over advancing the mafia agenda.
- Bodyguard: Probably okay, I would make the mafia choose a member to make the kill to remove the randomness aspect. Imagine if the bodyguard randomly killed the hooker n1 in a game with cop and doc.
- Gunsmith: Same thing as a 2-shot vigilante with the possibility of one player totally boning it for the town by giving the mafia extra kills. Cannot recommend.
- Fool: The fool completely ruins the hunt, because it's trying to act scummy. Town constantly worries about the possibility that the guy they've been *rightfully* scumreading is actually the Fool. Mafia have a tough dilemma as well because on the one hand, they don't want this guy around either because he'll get himself lynched and everyone loses, but on the other hand, that's one less person they can deflect blame on to. Worse, they can't actually deflect blame onto *any* suspicious townie because they run the risk of mislynching the Fool and auto-losing.
- Bulletproof: The concept is fine, he needs fewer vests though I *think*. What I've typically seen is a variant called the Veteran, which survives the first shot fired at him in the game (but can subsequently be killed). I tend to prefer this one, but the Bulletproof isn't a bad idea so long as he's not able to hand out armor to other players.
- Oracle: Probably fine as-is, I've seen it where the Oracle is required to select someone the night before and can't change it during the day. I think I prefer the latter one but I can't really find anything logically wrong about the former. Either way, this is a good role imo.
- Mastermind: Terrible, the whole point of the mafia faction is that they have near-perfect information and can coordinate, you can't do that if you're required to kill off someone in your faction (whose identity is unknown) before you would normally win the game.
- Cultist: On principle I don't use conversion roles. Why? Because incentives inform behavior, and so mid-game incentives changes result in obvious behavioral changes that mess up the game. The town's incentive is to catch bad guys, including the cult, so good townies will make an effort to catch bad guys. The cultist can freely kill off townies on the right track by converting them, because then those townies end up disavowing everything they said before in order to achieve their new goal (win with cult instead of with town).
- Redneck: Not a fan of this one either, it doesn't really fuck up the point of the hunt so much. See the point about "unnecessary noise" earlier in the thread, this is a perfect example.
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Feature: Min/Max DipPoints for New Games
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