Roy made a very interesting and awesome suggestion for a way to balance it without changing the ratio:

Remove the Nurse, and make the Detective immune to night hits.

This is the sort of setup that's hard to theorize the outcome of because there's just so many ways it could go. It'd basically be two sides, Mafia vs Detective, fighting to determine the fate of the Town, and using the Town to achieve their goal.

I think this would be better than changing the ratio, actually. It achieves the same outcome, but the game will be more interesting.

I'd actually like to play this.

I added Doodan and omginbd. I'd really like 15 players before I start the game so that things are weighted well.

Hm...Are you sure you want the game balance as is, Kame? I think it's somewhat mafia-sided with unrevealed roles and only 1 Detective. Town has to guess who is mafia 4 times correctly to win, and if the mafia somehow kills the Detective and gets someone on their side to successfully pretend to be the Detective town is pretty much fucked. Revealing roles on death and/or reducing mafia to 3 would give the game a better balance imo.

That, or you can do Az's night hit-immune Detective idea too. That way the town wouldn't be fucked over by having their only investigation role killed by mafia without their knowledge, and mafia can still get the town Detective lynched if they're skilled enough.

Without seriously rehauling and changing the mechanics of the game there won't be an easy way to balance it. As for giving the detective automatic immunity: I would rather there be two nurses and it be a race for the town and mafia to figure out who the detective is; upon finding out the town can stick a nurse to them. Giving someone automatic immunity - especially since that person isn't guaranteed to be active - seems like a major waste of ability.

I'd have no problem with reducing the mafia back down to 3 (surprising how close this is getting to the original game layout) but I was led to believe then it favored the town too much.

My balance was for a reveal game. The mafia have multiple strengths for a no-reveal game that my balance did not account for.

Also, if you're still looking for players, I am willing to play.

Would revealing rolls even it out again?

I think it's one of the two balancing options you have right now. Basically, with around this many players, I'd reckon there should be 3 mafia with no-reveal or 4 mafia with reveal.

It'd most likely be the Mafia and Detective claiming Detective and both getting lynched, and it'd still run the risk of the Detective dying immediately, which would guarantee a Mafia win. With night hit immunity, even if a Mafia claims Detective, the Detective isn't obligated to counterclaim; he can bide his time, communicating privately with those he confirms instead, among other ways he could proceed.

The Detective doesn't have a lot of viable options against 4 Mafia in a no reveal game, unless he doesn't have to worry about night hits.


If the Detective isn't active in any of these setups, the Town is almost guaranteed to lose.

Additionally, the Detective/Nurse combo requires both the Detective and Nurse to be active, otherwise the Detective may as well be dead.


Well, what I said was:


Without revealed roles, 1:4 is fine.


There's three realistic options (Roy left out his own! I made it #3 )

1) Reducing the Mafia to 3 is the simplest way that ensures a fair balance.

2) Changing to reveal shifts the advantage from Mafia to Town, in part because it augments the Detective in a number of ways. Other things would also need to be changed to account for the Detective becoming a role that dominates and potentially breaks the game (since reveal helps Detective significantly).

3) Removing the Nurse and giving the Detective night hit immunity is another way to ensure a fair balance. The Town can easily lose even if the Detective never dies, and the Mafia would have a number of strategies for killing him still (all involving lynching of course). The Detective could focus on player interaction since he wouldn't need to worry about random hits, and the chances of the game being ruined by the Detective dying at random would be 0%.

Edit: For clarification, only one of these options should be considered, not any combination of them.

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Jan 16 2013, 2:44 am by Azrael.

Roy I was wondering if you would like to help me cohost.

Yes, I would be happy to co-host.

Silly Roy, she asked you to help (her) co-host, not to co-host.

Also, Azrael, just for debate - in your situation where there is no nurse and a detective with night hit immunity, consider the Detective claims his role, knowing he's immune to being killed at night. In response, a mafia member also claims to be the detective (or vice versa; a mafia claims and the detective counter-claims - it could easily work either way). The detective cannot prove his identity, nor can the mafia kill the detective. One of the two is certainly the detective, and the other is mafia; however, neither of them can be trusted to provide truthful night results, and thus the detective's night action is borderline useless.
The town's response is to either effectively relinquish their sole power role, or execute one of the two - if they get the mafia, excellent; the town is in a great state with an openly known invulnerable detective who may have already found other mafia members. If, however, they kill the detective, they now certainly know one mafia but are, as before, down their sole power role but now with no hope of reclamation.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 19 2013, 5:09 am by Observer12425.

@Obs: You realize they can wait for a few night results before offing one of the claimers, right? That way, they can wait until both claimers say they each found at least one mafia, then off one of the two. Even if they get it wrong, at least they still had the real detective's night results from several nights. Town can even appoint someone to which detectives relay their results to. Anyone both detectives clear as town is confirmed town, and anyone both of them peg as mafia should be mafia.

Also, the detective is immune to night hits. It is doubtful that he will ever claim, except if he has already found some mafia, is under threat of lynching, or trying to counterclaim someone else. Even if mafia fakeclaims detective early, the detective can still wait a bit before outing the impostor, as the impostor will have to watch his mouth while the real detective is still unknown, and if the fake detective goes unopposed he'll run into a wall, as unless he offers his own teammates up for lynch he can't produce any guilty results on anyone without outing himself.

You two are arguing a different scenario than the one mentioned. The invincible Detective scenario would be with no-reveal.

But seeing as we're probably not going to go down the path of an invincible Detective, it's somewhat of an off-topic tangent here; if you're interested in setting a game like that up, wait around for a chance to host your own game.

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I'm going make this a role reveal game.

I'll play.

Devlin has been added.

Nurses are allowed to save themselves now, but they cannot save the same target more than two nights in a row.

If Roy is co-hosting, I'm in.

Leon has been added.

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