Deafener (Mafia Support)

[JCRFM]

Role: Deafener

Alignment: Mafia (Support)

Attack: None

Defense: None

Unique: No

Ability: Make people go deaf.

Attribute: Make people go deaf for the day. They will be unable to see the chat or the voting system. If there are no kill-capable Mafia roles left you will become a Mafioso. You can talk with the other Mafia at night.

Mechanics:
-Choose 1 person a night to Deafen.

-The deaf person will be unable to see the chat. They will be able to chat however.

-When the Voting Phase starts they will be unable to know who anyone else is voting for.

-You will be able to know what everyone is voting. (Instead of saying [Player Name] has voted, it would say [Player Name] has voted guilty/innocent.)

-There cannot be both a Deafener and a Blackmailer in the same game.

Investigation Results:
Sheriff: Your target is suspicious.
Investigator- Spy, Blackmailer, Jailor, or Deafener.
Investigator (Coven) - Spy, Blackmailer, Jailor, Guardian Angel, or Deafener.
Consigliere - Your target makes people go deaf. They must be a Deafener

Goal: Kill anyone that will not submit to the Mafia.

Wins With: Mafia, Survivor, Witch.

Must Kill:Town, Vampires, Coven, Plaguebearer, Pestilence, Arsonist, Serial Killer, Werewolf, and Juggernaut.

[cob709]

Seems like a reverse blackmailer.
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[cookies4you]

This role is useless.

Blackmailer is powerful because it can collect information from whispers and its ability shuts down TIs without needing to kill them. The Town relies on their numbers advantage to get lynches during the Day, and blackmailing a Spy or Lookout locks them out of the information they need to decide who and who not to kill.

Deafening a player, on the other hand, does nothing. TIs don't care about being deafened because they don't need to rely on Day chat to make decisions about who to check. They always have the option of targeting random players or staying on the Jailor. Once they've relayed their results during the Day, they can rely on the rest of the Town voting with their information. The best it can do is stop the Jailor from scum reading, but even then, it's not like random jailing isn't a viable strategy.

[JCRFM]

Not really, you make it so they can’t gather information, vote well, or know what to do.

[Cavespider17]

I think the biggest issue here is if feels rather weak in comparison to the blackmailer, and also it could be rather boring for the person who has been deafened. At least if you have been blackmailed you can still participate. Here it feels like you are taking all that away. Imagine being deafened all game and unable to do anything.

Maybe instead of not allowing them to hear anything, you could have it so they cannot tell who is saying what instead, but can still hear what's being said, while being unable to tell who is voting who.

Alternatively, you could have it so the role could have a fixed number of uses, but last indefinetely while considering what I said previously - while players will find a way to communicate with the deafened player, late game or in 5v5s for example, someone could fake being someone else to the deaf player, to persuade their vote.

[cookies4you]

Not really, you make it so they can’t gather information, vote well, or know what to do.

You stop one player from gathering Day information, voting well, and knowing what to do. Blackmailer stops eight players from knowing who to vote for and can snoop out the ones who do. Doing three different things poorly is much less useful than doing one thing very well.

Also, this role only becomes useful once the Town starts thinning. Blackmailer is immediately useful and remains a threat throughout the entire game.

[alex1234321]

I don't think the issue with this role is that it's too weak. Particularly in low Elo games, I can imagine that deafening someone could make it almost impossible for the town to organize since players would need to ask what information was gathered the previous day.

However, I would not support this role because I think the chat is an important part of the game and should not be messed with. I don't like Blackmailer as a role for that same reason. Everyone should be able to fully use the chat, Town roles for sharing information and scum roles for misleading the town.