Mafia! Mafia! Mafia! Character Role Discussions

[Kleene Onigiri]

if you investigating that mean you stalk them... right? that mean you are the 3rd person watching the 1st person doing something to the 2nd person.

No. Investigate is more like researching. Stake-out is, that you look at someone doing something. Or you look at a target and see if someone does something to him/her.

Otherwise, special investigate wouldn't be possible. Since special investigate is about investigating past actions. And I doubt Tome is a time traveler


Also, why should megure/shiratori be too powerful? I didn't see them arresting one player after another.
This round there were a lot of arrests. But none were done by megure or shiratori. Doesn't that mean they aren't TOO strong?

If you want every role to be exactly evenly strong... then you need to give every role the exact same ability anyway.

[Akonyl]

Otherwise, special investigate wouldn't be possible. Since special investigate is about investigating past actions. And I doubt Tome is a time traveler

my dreams... ruined!

[Schillok]

police as special investigation will bring the townie into a very very strong team again.

if that police is still alive in late phase, where only 4 or 5 people alive, he will get the BO in 2 phase! ( by trying to arrest and by investigating x kill y) so he will get 2 target proven even if he suspended

This is not any different from what it is right now.
Just investigate player B killing player C, D and E. And arrest player C for doing the last killing. It has pretty much the same effect. Well, of course you could also wait with that arrest until the next day and try to arrest either C, D or E for killing whoever was killed that night. Also very likely to find the BO and helps you to cover half of the remaining players quickly.

If you want every role to be exactly evenly strong... then you need to give every role the exact same ability anyway.

I know we can't make the evenly strong. But either we allow stronger and weaker roles and be fine with it (like I wouldn't mind much if it were that way), as long as the balance of town VS BO is okay.
Or we try to make each role roughly equally strong (like Akonyl prefers), but this can't be done by just keep adding abilities to existing roles and making everyone stronger. Because for the balance of town VS BO to remain stable we would in turn have to give the BO new abilities to compensate for the stronger town and give them ways to combat the new abilities. Or we keep the balance by removing some of the power of already strong town roles.

But - we can't have everything. Keeping the strong strong and making the weak as strong as the strong does not work. Or if it works it actually means a whole lot of other things that needed to be adjusted beforehand.
Ohh, and I would actually want to make the game not TOO complex. It is already intimidating enough for new players I imagine...

[xpon]

we need more agasa type !!

a type of role who done almost nothing and only active in day phase.

[Schillok]

we need more agasa type !!

a type of role who done almost nothing and only active in day phase.

Then again, I wonder how much fun it is to be Agasa.
I was him, once. And got killed during night 1. (Actually, I commited suicide, but it is basically the same thing.)

Maybe we can turn Jirokichi into some kind of Agasa #2? I mean, his gems already work as a protection against stealing. If they had a second effect for the players having them they could feel like permanent gadgets.
Though, I remember I suggested that already and was not able to come up with any proper ideas.

[Kleene Onigiri]

Well, maybe special investigate would make more sense for police anyway? I mean... take away their investigations that they have right now and have them all special investigate instead. It fits, since they are more often looking for clues who was the murder than actually stake-outing (which we can keep for some of the police I guess) or looking what their suspects are doing anyway. That way the crazy cross-investigating stuff would also be slowed down since it would take you an additional day and night phase before you can investigate something to prove a player who told you what they would do this night.
On the other hand it would mean that the main use of the Black Suitcase disappears. Only Anokata starting with it could take much of a use out of it if every police can just look what you did during night 1 if you try to prove yourself.

I've avoided saying this so far because I haven't seen Tome in action yet (if he's even been in a game) and I don't want him to be slapped before he has a chance, but aside from Megure and Shiratori, I think he has the potential to be the most powerful police role there is, solely because of Special Investigate. To others, Special Investigate is slightly more useful than investigate, but to a police officer who knows that a crime has been committed (killings especially), he can lock onto a specific crime and cycle through the suspects (either defined in the victim's will, or perhaps a deduction, etc). Increasing the number of police with special investigate would only make this happen quicker.

Well, I was a special investigator twice so far.
Tome for one night last game - which made me find out Kleene was not Sonoko and allowed me to fool xpon to think I am police (hopefully). But I guess that is a BO aspect so less important.

So, back to my game as Kir. It might also not be the best comparison, since it was the "much too fast over"-game Kleene GMed last (Round 16? 17?) and Kir was even weaker at that point.
Still: I spent most of my effort to find the killer during night 1. I was not able to do so before the game ended.
So from my experience special investigate is not that useful, especially in huge games like we normally have. Things might change a bit if you actually manage to reach the later stages in the game. (Or if you can be less worried about getting interrogated and killed in the process.) Or if there are too many of them running around with this ability.
But from my experience special investigate is weaker than investigate 3+.

I was also a special investigator once. And so far what I was able to figure out, it was quite good. Till I got to the point where I was discombobulated over and over again and couldn't do anything anymore :V
But if you think that special investigate isn't so strong anyway. then what's the problem of giving Kir and James 1 investigate and 1 s. investigate?

@Kleene:
If you don't want to weaken a role, then we can't make a weak one stronger either. Because we finally seem to have reached a point where the power of the town and BO are in a good equilibrium. So we can't just improve roles without compensating for it or we risk of unbalancing everything again.

So: Do you want to keep Okiya, James and Kir the way they are, so we can leave Megure and Shiratori alone? Or would you rather make some of them stronger and weaken the others?

I want to weaken/change the roles, that are too powerful. And making the roles a bit stronger, that are weaker compared to the rest.

But I don't think Megure/Shiratori are too strong, which conflicts with your opinion about it. They are strong, but they aren't too strong. Since the ability has a draw back, which can affect a player drastically. It's similar to the APTX. If they are correct, they get rewarded. If they are wrong once, they loose the ability.

I also think, since I played yuusaku, that the okiya player would have it hard to figure out the culprit from his deduction. It's not necessary to give him a extra ability. But I think it would be better than not giving it to him.

You also want to give abduct to Irish. That's not necessary either, right? But you still think it would be better than not giving it to him.

About my suggested James ability: Yeah, I know these are weaknesses. Having only 1 agent in the game makes him useless, so I guess he needs a similar treatment like the DB: He can only be in the game if there are at least 2 more FBI/CIA.
Some good and back luck are always included in the game (like for example which disguises KID and Vermouth end up with and how well it fits into the rest of the town/BO). And having James be a bit stronger in one game by chance seems fine. He should still be unique enough to make him a tasty Lollipop if you get him.

Giving him the DB treatment would be better, indeed.
But I don't think you can compare that to the disguises. Disguises are kinda being drawn and after you get your disguise, you decide what you do with it. So you're active with the actions.
While with the FBI leader information, you get a lot of information if you're lucky (which could make james too powerful. Or give vermouth(James) too much information too). But still, you're rather passive with that. You can't actively choose what info you want. Which is different from having a disguise with which you can choose what to do with the given abilities.

about the detectives, well being a police help the townie more, but we cant tone down all the police right?

but canon wise, the detective have 1 way to catch the bad guy all by him self

I still think people are overstating the effectiveness of the police because of the 6 arrests this round. In the past three games before that, there were 2 people, 1 person and 1 person arrested.

As for canon power, honestly, I think people need to stop being hung up on how powerful people "really are" in canon. If this was canon, it would be the BO vs Conan, his family, the FBI/CIA and a few select others. Araide would be off somewhere else, Ran would be left in the dark, the DBs would be playing in a playground completely obliviously, etc.

Just because Conan is the hero of the show does not mean that whoever gets the Conan role should be the hero of the game as well.

I also don't think you should aim to make conan, who is the main character, the strongest player in mafia.
But I do think you should make it as canon as possible. So I wouldn't give Genta the healing ability and Genta can arrest. While Sonoko can murder people etc. Since it doesn't fit the character XD
That's why I also don't want to give Kogoro "car-keys". Tho he does borrow cars and can drive them, he's actually being mocked for being a famous detective and doesn't own his own car.
While satou is famous for having her great car. So not giving her car-keys would be somehow wrong too.

I dunno about Okiya. He's a character we don't know much about. We could remove the car-keys from him. But he can also keep them.
Similar to bourbon and Anokata. We actually never saw them. But they still got some items that you can steal. Bourbon even has a hat afaik. That's because I thought about scar akai when I gave him his items :V Can also be removed if needed.

If you want every role to be exactly evenly strong... then you need to give every role the exact same ability anyway.

I know we can't make the evenly strong. But either we allow stronger and weaker roles and be fine with it (like I wouldn't mind much if it were that way), as long as the balance of town VS BO is okay.
Or we try to make each role roughly equally strong (like Akonyl prefers), but this can't be done by just keep adding abilities to existing roles and making everyone stronger. Because for the balance of town VS BO to remain stable we would in turn have to give the BO new abilities to compensate for the stronger town and give them ways to combat the new abilities. Or we keep the balance by removing some of the power of already strong town roles.

But - we can't have everything. Keeping the strong strong and making the weak as strong as the strong does not work. Or if it works it actually means a whole lot of other things that needed to be adjusted beforehand.
Ohh, and I would actually want to make the game not TOO complex. It is already intimidating enough for new players I imagine...

It's already complex. It doesn't change when you edit some roles now or not anyway D: But yea, not making it too complex would be good. But too late XD

We are balancing it. This means you make some stronger, some weaker or you simply want to change a role because you think something else fits the character more.
But who says if a character is too strong or not? The poll you made?

we need more agasa type !!

a type of role who done almost nothing and only active in day phase.

Then again, I wonder how much fun it is to be Agasa.
I was him, once. And got killed during night 1. (Actually, I commited suicide, but it is basically the same thing.)

Maybe we can turn Jirokichi into some kind of Agasa #2? I mean, his gems already work as a protection against stealing. If they had a second effect for the players having them they could feel like permanent gadgets.
Though, I remember I suggested that already and was not able to come up with any proper ideas.

The problem is more, if the current GM would include the stuff or not. I think there are a lot of good ideas. Just someone has to include it. And there are a lot of ideas for the same role. You can't include everything, especially when it's contradicting itself. Like weakening Megure/shiratori/Nakamori or not etc.

(tho I told you some of my ideas considering making the gems as gadgets... but you said "no" :x)

[Akonyl]

I also don't think you should aim to make conan, who is the main character, the strongest player in mafia.
But I do think you should make it as canon as possible. So I wouldn't give Genta the healing ability and Genta can arrest. While Sonoko can murder people etc. Since it doesn't fit the character XD
That's why I also don't want to give Kogoro "car-keys". Tho he does borrow cars and can drive them, he's actually being mocked for being a famous detective and doesn't own his own car.
While satou is famous for having her great car. So not giving her car-keys would be somehow wrong too.

I dunno about Okiya. He's a character we don't know much about. We could remove the car-keys from him. But he can also keep them.
Similar to bourbon and Anokata. We actually never saw them. But they still got some items that you can steal. Bourbon even has a hat afaik. That's because I thought about scar akai when I gave him his items :V Can also be removed if needed.

I agree that you shouldn't make genta a healer or something, and to a point, yes, you should be looking towards the show's canon so that you can keep a good DC flavor to the game. But if we went to the canon for power as well, the game would be horridly imbalanced.

I'd also like to point out Akai's Vengeance ability, which nobody's really contested, though. It has nothing in the show to give it a reason, and the sole reason he has that ability is because "Akai is a badass"

So, abilities don't have to be strictly in-character, though it's good to not have them be anti-characteristic. As for Sonoko murdering people... *looks at round 3*

And I'd forgotten that Kogoro just rented cars, so fair enough on that.

[Schillok]

I was also a special investigator once. And so far what I was able to figure out, it was quite good. Till I got to the point where I was discombobulated over and over again and couldn't do anything anymore :V
But if you think that special investigate isn't so strong anyway. then what's the problem of giving Kir and James 1 investigate and 1 s. investigate?

Well... because I didn't like the idea when I heard about it.
As harsh as it sounds, this was it. But I trust my feeling. If you have good arguments why they should get both, tell them. I won't push a good argument aside.
Guess I have to give arguments against it, though.

So, firstly: We reduced the number of investigators in the past. Now we are increasing it again.
Secondly: I don't see much of a synergy between investigate and special investigate. Why would you want to do both at the same time?
Thirdly: Like said before, investigate seems forced on those characters. Yeah, special investigate is the same, it mainly sits on them because of how the FBI was in the past. Giving them both feels even more like it was just tacked on them because we had no better ideas.
Fourth: I prefer having townies only a single ability each phase to worry about. Some "special" abilities like arrest or lawsuit are fine with me - you would only active them at specific times, not each night. Several abilities at once are fine on BO or criminals - they are special, they are supposed to be more complex. (Yeah, I am also not sold about the new ability on Akai. But since I never played as him it might be hard to judge about "bone-breaking" (Which does absolutely not what it sounds like to its target. ). Current Okiya is also fine for me since he actually "targets" only one of his abilities - he does not have to do anything for deduce, just like Kir with Betray.)

I want to weaken/change the roles, that are too powerful. And making the roles a bit stronger, that are weaker compared to the rest.

But I don't think Megure/Shiratori are too strong, which conflicts with your opinion about it. They are strong, but they aren't too strong. Since the ability has a draw back, which can affect a player drastically. It's similar to the APTX. If they are correct, they get rewarded. If they are wrong once, they loose the ability.

I also think, since I played yuusaku, that the okiya player would have it hard to figure out the culprit from his deduction. It's not necessary to give him a extra ability. But I think it would be better than not giving it to him.

This is why I made the poll. I wanted to know what other players think are the strongest role. I mean, I could be wrong with my estimation so having other players state their ideas would help to find out about that.
What do you feel are the strongest roles right now?

(Or do you want to state that we only have a few "weak roles" right now, but the rest are perfectly fine?)

You also want to give abduct to Irish. That's not necessary either, right? But you still think it would be better than not giving it to him.

Not exactly necessary, no. I just felt he was missing something, compared to the other BO roles I played with. Or maybe I just missed him having that ability.
Again, I could have been wrong.

Giving him the DB treatment would be better, indeed.
But I don't think you can compare that to the disguises. Disguises are kinda being drawn and after you get your disguise, you decide what you do with it. So you're active with the actions.
While with the FBI leader information, you get a lot of information if you're lucky (which could make james too powerful. Or give vermouth(James) too much information too). But still, you're rather passive with that. You can't actively choose what info you want. Which is different from having a disguise with which you can choose what to do with the given abilities.

Well... any other idea? I mean, beside the "Investigate AND Special Investigate" which I don't like for the reasons stated above.
But if there is anything else which is fitting well, tell me.
And yeah, this "passiveness" could be a problem. But allowing him to do anything else on his own would make him too strong I am afraid.

Mhh... maybe we could give him a second ability, which he could use INSTEAD of getting reports during the night instead? So he could become active on his own if he wanted, his agents got killed or when he is already in contact with all of them? Like... Special Investigate, for nostalgia reason (and because I have no better idea)? But only Special Investigate in that case.

I still think people are overstating the effectiveness of the police because of the 6 arrests this round. In the past three games before that, there were 2 people, 1 person and 1 person arrested.

The fact remains that the BO can't win as long as there is a police is in the game. Even if they already outnumber the town, a single police can still turn around the game.

In the worst case, a single police (like Megure) could win alone again 3 BO.
During the night, house-search the one trying to kill him (Yeah, requires a bit luck: 1/3 chance unless he has knowledge about who of them is still allowed to kill). During the day, house-search the second one, tie the vote. During the next night, house-search the remaining one, preventing him from killing you and win the game.

So it is not just about the numbers of arrests each game. And also: The single arrest during Round 17 was enough to turn what seemed like a victory for the BO into a win for the town right away. So arrests are really powerful.
Yeah, I still like it being in the game. For exactly since it allows to turn games around, just like a good day of APTXs allows it for the BO. But at the same point we should keep an eye on the rest of the abilities of the police...

I also don't think you should aim to make conan, who is the main character, the strongest player in mafia.
But I do think you should make it as canon as possible. So I wouldn't give Genta the healing ability and Genta can arrest. While Sonoko can murder people etc. Since it doesn't fit the character XD
That's why I also don't want to give Kogoro "car-keys". Tho he does borrow cars and can drive them, he's actually being mocked for being a famous detective and doesn't own his own car.
While satou is famous for having her great car. So not giving her car-keys would be somehow wrong too.

Exactly. If we give a role an ability, it should be justifiable (canon-wise or by the roles character/profession). But we shouldn't give them all abilities that somehow fit. Which would be such a huge number for Shinichi for example that it would be ridiculous...

I dunno about Okiya. He's a character we don't know much about. We could remove the car-keys from him. But he can also keep them.
Similar to bourbon and Anokata. We actually never saw them. But they still got some items that you can steal. Bourbon even has a hat afaik. That's because I thought about scar akai when I gave him his items :V Can also be removed if needed.

Well. The items characters have are just pretty arbitrary anyway.  ::)
Also, they have pretty little influence on the game (unless you think about adding or removing new items for all characters like... umbrellas. Or something like that.

If you want every role to be exactly evenly strong... then you need to give every role the exact same ability anyway.

It's already complex. It doesn't change when you edit some roles now or not anyway D: But yea, not making it too complex would be good. But too late XD

It is never too late to not make things more complex. Like I said, one of my major ideas about keeping complexity low is to have each townie just one ability for each phase that they would want to use every night/day. Again, special actions like arresting or law-suit seem fine to me, like do "passive" abilities that don't require the player to make any specific choices. (Like betrayal, or deduce which pretty much asks its user only to say "I want to use it".)
Major exception is KID of course, who by default will alway have 1 ability more (stealing) than the role he disguises as.  :P But I am fine with that.

We are balancing it. This means you make some stronger, some weaker or you simply want to change a role because you think something else fits the character more.
But who says if a character is too strong or not? The poll you made?

Again, we have to rely on our experience here. I have an idea which roles are powerful. Other players have their own ideas. But if more than 80% voted for the same roles (9 out of 11) I think we can be pretty sure we are on to something.
About the question if they are TOO strong: Probably even more subjective. But if we reduce the power of some roles (because we want to improve others without upsetting the balance), they are the right place to start.

The problem is more, if the current GM would include the stuff or not. I think there are a lot of good ideas. Just someone has to include it. And there are a lot of ideas for the same role. You can't include everything, especially when it's contradicting itself. Like weakening Megure/shiratori/Nakamori or not etc.

(tho I told you some of my ideas considering making the gems as gadgets... but you said "no" :x)

It is a while ago... what where you suggestions again? Maybe my mind changed during the past 2 games.
But yeah... it depends on the GM. And unfortunately some interesting ideas will get lost in this thread forever.

[Abs.]

Mind you, not all GMs peruse every single post in this thread before they GM a round. 

And all you have to do is give Abs. the Megure role, and it wouldn't matter if there was only 1 BO remaining, the BO would still win 

[Schillok]

Mind you, not all GMs peruse every single post in this thread before they GM a round. 

And all you have to do is give Abs. the Megure role, and it wouldn't matter if there was only 1 BO remaining, the BO would still win 

Even Abs. couldn't mess that up. Right? RIGHT?!?

[Kleene Onigiri]

I was also a special investigator once. And so far what I was able to figure out, it was quite good. Till I got to the point where I was discombobulated over and over again and couldn't do anything anymore :V
But if you think that special investigate isn't so strong anyway. then what's the problem of giving Kir and James 1 investigate and 1 s. investigate?

Well... because I didn't like the idea when I heard about it.
As harsh as it sounds, this was it. But I trust my feeling. If you have good arguments why they should get both, tell them. I won't push a good argument aside.
Guess I have to give arguments against it, though.

So, firstly: We reduced the number of investigators in the past. Now we are increasing it again.
Secondly: I don't see much of a synergy between investigate and special investigate. Why would you want to do both at the same time?
Thirdly: Like said before, investigate seems forced on those characters. Yeah, special investigate is the same, it mainly sits on them because of how the FBI was in the past. Giving them both feels even more like it was just tacked on them because we had no better ideas.
Fourth: I prefer having townies only a single ability each phase to worry about. Some "special" abilities like arrest or lawsuit are fine with me - you would only active them at specific times, not each night. Several abilities at once are fine on BO or criminals - they are special, they are supposed to be more complex. (Yeah, I am also not sold about the new ability on Akai. But since I never played as him it might be hard to judge about "bone-breaking" (Which does absolutely not what it sounds like to its target. ). Current Okiya is also fine for me since he actually "targets" only one of his abilities - he does not have to do anything for deduce, just like Kir with Betray.)

Well, my argument for giving them investigate and special investigate to be used in the same phase:
- To differentiate Tome, who is police, from James and Kir more. Since they are from different "groups" (police/FBI-CIA)
- Tome can arrest. So he'll mainly look out for crimes that were already done and try to arrest them. So he'll use special investigate to look for the crimes in the past.
While Kir and James can't arrest people. But Kir has betrayal, so she'll know which BOs are around. James knows how many FBI people are with him. So, to find allies, they would use investigate. But they also want to hunt down the BO, for which they can use special investigate.
- I was james and unhappy to just be able to use 1 investigation. My alliances almost forced me to have more actually.
- Giving them 1 more isn't such a power up. And I agree, that we could give them something different than investigate/special investigate completely. But till we have something better for them, giving them 1 extra investigation wouldn't be bad.


@1: Well. James and Kir always had some kind of investigation power. With giving them 1 more, we aren't increasing investigators XD
@2: Why not? Why using 5 investigations then? Also, like said, 1 can be used for forming alliances, and the other one to look for a past crime.
@3: well, do you have a better idea for both? Tho if you use the FBI leader you suggested for James, he still wouldn't have an active ability after you take the investigation away :V
James could get "Drive people around" and Kir get's "weather report" XD
@4: But agasa has 2, theoretically. And Kazuha too~
And I don't think it's a reason that they don't get another investigation... Since detectives have 5. So with your logic, they have 5 abilities they have to worry about?
And I don't think it's good to force every "non-special" role to have just 1 active ability
Well, Akai was kinda like a half detective with just 5 investigations. Since he almost never used vengeance anyway. And I wanted to give him something similar what he did with Calvados XD
And why isn't it doing what it says? The sniper get's injured? :V

I want to weaken/change the roles, that are too powerful. And making the roles a bit stronger, that are weaker compared to the rest.

But I don't think Megure/Shiratori are too strong, which conflicts with your opinion about it. They are strong, but they aren't too strong. Since the ability has a draw back, which can affect a player drastically. It's similar to the APTX. If they are correct, they get rewarded. If they are wrong once, they loose the ability.

I also think, since I played yuusaku, that the okiya player would have it hard to figure out the culprit from his deduction. It's not necessary to give him a extra ability. But I think it would be better than not giving it to him.

This is why I made the poll. I wanted to know what other players think are the strongest role. I mean, I could be wrong with my estimation so having other players state their ideas would help to find out about that.
What do you feel are the strongest roles right now?

(Or do you want to state that we only have a few "weak roles" right now, but the rest are perfectly fine?)

What I mean is, that the poll tells you who the strongest role is for most Mafia players. But not which role should be changed (whether weakened or strengthened.)

You also want to give abduct to Irish. That's not necessary either, right? But you still think it would be better than not giving it to him.

Not exactly necessary, no. I just felt he was missing something, compared to the other BO roles I played with. Or maybe I just missed him having that ability.
Again, I could have been wrong.

I didn't mean you're wrong. I also would be for giving him abduct.
But you didn't have a real good reason why he should for 100% get it otherwise the mafia game is DOOOOOOMED!!! XD Same with Kir and James on my part (tho I explained more now)

Giving him the DB treatment would be better, indeed.
But I don't think you can compare that to the disguises. Disguises are kinda being drawn and after you get your disguise, you decide what you do with it. So you're active with the actions.
While with the FBI leader information, you get a lot of information if you're lucky (which could make james too powerful. Or give vermouth(James) too much information too). But still, you're rather passive with that. You can't actively choose what info you want. Which is different from having a disguise with which you can choose what to do with the given abilities.

Well... any other idea? I mean, beside the "Investigate AND Special Investigate" which I don't like for the reasons stated above.
But if there is anything else which is fitting well, tell me.
And yeah, this "passiveness" could be a problem. But allowing him to do anything else on his own would make him too strong I am afraid.

Mhh... maybe we could give him a second ability, which he could use INSTEAD of getting reports during the night instead? So he could become active on his own if he wanted, his agents got killed or when he is already in contact with all of them? Like... Special Investigate, for nostalgia reason (and because I have no better idea)? But only Special Investigate in that case.

Well, I still see it a bit problematic. He'll get result from all FBI agents? Or randomly just 1?
Because if all FBI agents (+ maybe even Kir) are in the game and get all results from them... then he could have too much info too quickly and could too quickly find allies. Like if Jodie/Camel observe a child or teenager (after vermouth and Irish are dead) and so on.
Also if Vermouth is disguised as a FBI... observes a target and APTX him/her. James could figure out that one of them is disguised.

It kinda seems, as if it would be either too strong in one round and almost useless in another round. Depending on the number of FBI in the game.

And I don't have a better idea for a new ability. But I'm also busy and can't think about it for 100% atm D: Sry.
But I always thought about the idea, that one town role could get something like frightening. Tho this could hurt the town more than help them.

Oh, got a vague idea. Maybe something like: witness protection program? James can throw someone for some phases put of the game XD Whether it's a BO or not XD Kinda like forced traveling for a player.
Random Idea was random.

I still think people are overstating the effectiveness of the police because of the 6 arrests this round. In the past three games before that, there were 2 people, 1 person and 1 person arrested.

The fact remains that the BO can't win as long as there is a police is in the game. Even if they already outnumber the town, a single police can still turn around the game.

In the worst case, a single police (like Megure) could win alone again 3 BO.
During the night, house-search the one trying to kill him (Yeah, requires a bit luck: 1/3 chance unless he has knowledge about who of them is still allowed to kill). During the day, house-search the second one, tie the vote. During the next night, house-search the remaining one, preventing him from killing you and win the game.

So it is not just about the numbers of arrests each game. And also: The single arrest during Round 17 was enough to turn what seemed like a victory for the BO into a win for the town right away. So arrests are really powerful.
Yeah, I still like it being in the game. For exactly since it allows to turn games around, just like a good day of APTXs allows it for the BO. But at the same point we should keep an eye on the rest of the abilities of the police...

There was always the idea of limiting house-arrest too. Could be handled like APTX then?
But you can only have 3 house-searches overall.
So once you miss, you will loose the ability. But you can't do more than 3 house-searches overall during 1 game.

I dunno about Okiya. He's a character we don't know much about. We could remove the car-keys from him. But he can also keep them.
Similar to bourbon and Anokata. We actually never saw them. But they still got some items that you can steal. Bourbon even has a hat afaik. That's because I thought about scar akai when I gave him his items :V Can also be removed if needed.

Well. The items characters have are just pretty arbitrary anyway.  ::)
Also, they have pretty little influence on the game (unless you think about adding or removing new items for all characters like... umbrellas. Or something like that.

Oh geez. You can't be satisfied with any of my ideas anyway

It's already complex. It doesn't change when you edit some roles now or not anyway D: But yea, not making it too complex would be good. But too late XD

It is never too late to not make things more complex. Like I said, one of my major ideas about keeping complexity low is to have each townie just one ability for each phase that they would want to use every night/day. Again, special actions like arresting or law-suit seem fine to me, like do "passive" abilities that don't require the player to make any specific choices. (Like betrayal, or deduce which pretty much asks its user only to say "I want to use it".)
Major exception is KID of course, who by default will alway have 1 ability more (stealing) than the role he disguises as.  :P But I am fine with that.

But I think FBI leader is kinda complex (your idea). Since the player will get a lot of info (when there are FBis around) and he has to figure out things more. He doesn't need to think on who he uses which ability. But he has to think about his information and what he'll do with it.

We are balancing it. This means you make some stronger, some weaker or you simply want to change a role because you think something else fits the character more.
But who says if a character is too strong or not? The poll you made?

Again, we have to rely on our experience here. I have an idea which roles are powerful. Other players have their own ideas. But if more than 80% voted for the same roles (9 out of 11) I think we can be pretty sure we are on to something.
About the question if they are TOO strong: Probably even more subjective. But if we reduce the power of some roles (because we want to improve others without upsetting the balance), they are the right place to start.

Like I said. It told you the strongest role. Not which role you wanna modify.
Otherwise, if you conclude that from the poll, then remove my vote

The problem is more, if the current GM would include the stuff or not. I think there are a lot of good ideas. Just someone has to include it. And there are a lot of ideas for the same role. You can't include everything, especially when it's contradicting itself. Like weakening Megure/shiratori/Nakamori or not etc.

(tho I told you some of my ideas considering making the gems as gadgets... but you said "no" :x)

It is a while ago... what where you suggestions again? Maybe my mind changed during the past 2 games.
But yeah... it depends on the GM. And unfortunately some interesting ideas will get lost in this thread forever.

Ugh..I can't remember myself anymore :V
I also happen to have a great idea during a game don't write it down and forget it after the round is over >.<

[Conia]

Mind you, not all GMs peruse every single post in this thread before they GM a round. 

Except this one Though I usually don't read this thread if I'm just playing :x

Changes from Round 19:
-Criminals and Jirokichi removed.
-Irish recovers abduction. (Once he uses it, he can re-use it after 4 phases)
-Choose costumes upgraded. (Will choose 2 out of 3 costumes to use. Once he used them all, will respawn a night, then be able to choose 2 out 3 again and use them again as well)
-Erasing KID will reveal his disguise. Erasing Yukiko won't reveal her current disguise while being erased.
-Police changes! (viewtopic.php?p=411850#p411850)
-Tome will be able to S.Investigate AND Investigate on the same Night.
-About James as FBI Leader: Maybe, to avoid him getting too-overpowered, he will receive reports from half of his subordinates? So, if Camel, Jodie, Akai and Kir are in the game, he will receive reports from only 2 of them? (Chosen randomly)

[PT]

-Erasing KID will reveal his disguise.

To clarify: it'll only be revealed to his killer, right?

[Conia]

-Erasing KID will reveal his disguise.

To clarify: it'll only be revealed to his killer, right?

The role of the erased one, plus his/her will if there's one, is only revealed to the killer.

[PT]

Just making sure, since that could be interpreted as his role being revealed in the post.