superdog551 wrote:The comparison with doctor doing nothing isn't a good one, because the doctor is doing something. If a doctor goes on someone who isn't attacked, that person is still protected had they been and the doctor can still protect someone else the next night, whereas the blacksmith would have to try again to be on someone who is attacked AND THEN give protection the next night after that if they were successful. It's just too weak this way.
If the Doctor goes on someone who isn't attacked, they might as well have stayed home. Same with Blacksmith. The difference between them is what happens when the person is attacked. In the Doctor's case, the target receives an autovest, which automatically breaks that night because they were attacked. With Blacksmith, the autovest isn't automatically placed on the target. This gives the Blacksmith the benefit of choosing who to save (allowing them to watch over lower-priority roles who are more likely to be attacked) with the downside of not being guaranteed to save someone. You can argue that the downside is larger than the benefit, but the difference isn't very much, especially since most players die at night in any given game.
If you issue is that it wastes a night to give the armor to someone, why not just allow multitasking?
superdog551 wrote:Having a selected target getting lynched also count wouldn't really be helpful tbh because if the Blacksmith targets a town hoping that they die so they can get a shield and they do not die that night, then they would also be hoping for a mislynch. Either town would mislynch on purpose so the blacksmith can make a shield or it would waste a night. This would most likely, like you said, result in town purposefully mislynching "weaker" roles like medium claims to give the the smith a shield (something also exploitable by scum claiming to be blacksmith and pushing an innocent for their own goals, which may be a great claim for them but it would be terrible for the town). If the blacksmith counters this by only targeting people they feel are suspicious then they will be very unlikely to successfully get a shield through a night kill and also would have to hope they aren't pushing another mislynch if their scum read is not evil. Would it go through jailor too? Even then I still don't think it's strong enough.
I don't think you would see Blacksmiths pushing for mislynches to protect a Jailor/Mayor unless the next best alternative is to not lynch anyone. Even then, the smith would have to be strongly trusted to pull that off without looking like scum. I think the more common play would be to watch over someone who was almost lynched and is likely to be lynched the next day. Like if someone was acquitted and there wasn't enough time to get a suspicious person on the stand, the smith could target them and push for them to be lynched next. Or if a Mafia member is lynched, the smith can target someone who defended them when they were on the stand. Since autovests are powerful, watching someone successfully even once in a game can substantially improve the outcome for Town.
superdog551 wrote:Also imagine if a escort or consort finds this role. Escort at best sets this role back an extra day before it can try to watch someone die while a consort is almost a hard counter. This is because other TPs can protect the night after an escort or consort gets off of them, but for the blacksmith to get rbd twice in a row or more if it hasn't watched someone die and it still needs that extra night before it can even try to protect someone again can seriously cripple the role and the town's defenses.
I don't see how a Blacksmith getting roleblocked would be different from other roles being roleblocked. It would lose a night like anyone else and would be able to use its ability the next night assuming it isn't roleblocked again. I think the problem you're getting at here is the fact that the role is very inefficient right now, and allowing multitasking would fix that.
superdog551 wrote:If you really want it to not be dependent on the night number then there has to be a different yet still consistent method of gaining the shields otherwise it will never be as strong or useful as other TP. I really like the concept of giving shields that protect multiple people at once over time, I just really don't think it can work with such a small chance of it being useful.
Every other night feels OP tbh. That could lead to around 2 or 3 players being protected at once, which would almost always result in at least one player being saved from the armor and often multiple people would be saved. You don't see Doctors healing multiple players per game very often, and games where a Doctor heals nobody are fairly common. If enough people support this maybe I can add it, but I think it's OP and don't love its dependence on the night number.
I still like the idea of creating an autovest every time the Blacksmith targets someone who dies because of how natural it is compared to the Doctor. Of course, an autovest is weaker than a Doctor heal because of the chance that the player is lynched or survives to the end. You can argue that allowing lynches to activate the armor ability would also be very natural because it would give the Blacksmith an advantage compared to Doctor when the person being watched over is lynched and a disadvantage when the person being protected is lynched. Assuming those two things somewhat cancel out (I'd give the advantage to the smith here), the Blacksmith receives more versatility in exchange for less efficiency and the chance that the vested target survives to the end of the game. Allowing the smith to give armor the next night would cut this inefficiency in half.
Now that I think about it, maybe the Blacksmith can get a secondary ability where they can choose who gets the armor in the event that the person being watched over dies. If the person dies at night, the autovest activates immediately. If they are lynched the next day, the autovest activates that night. To prevent it from being a buffed Doctor, the smith can't watch over someone and give them the armor if they are attacked. That would completely remove the inefficiency.