Investigator rework (by kikigiri)

Suggest new roles or changes to current roles for the game here.

Investigator rework (by kikigiri)

Postby Brilliand » Wed Sep 15, 2021 10:23 pm

This is a repost of Kikigiri's Investigator Rework, purely to make it easier to find and read. All credit for this idea goes to Kikigiri.

Role Name: Investigator

Role Alignment: Town Investigative

Abilities:

Investigate one person each night to compare them against a role of your choice.

Attributes:
  • You will be told whether the chosen player matches the role you chose.
  • Each role can only selected once per game.
  • Non-town with detection immunity will get a "matches" result if compared with a Town role. This does not apply to Jesters.
  • A framed player will get a "matches" result if compared with an evil role, and a "no match" result if compared with a good role. (Follows the same good/evil classification as Psychic)
  • Only roles that can possibly roll in the current gamemode will appear on the Investigator's list.

Notifications:

"Your target matches the clues you checked for. They must be a <selected role>."
"No match. Your target is not a <selected role>."

Goal: (Town goal and win conditions)

Special Attributes:
Attack: None
Defense: None

Investigator Results:
Sheriff - Innocent
Investigator - Matches only "Investigator"
Consigliere - (Unchanged from current Investigator)

Additional Information:

This makes the Investigator extremely powerful at investigating claims - able to flawlessly confirm or deny them - but means they have to be cautious and strategic about doing so. It also makes the Investigator more clearly distinct from the Sheriff, who can investigate semi-blindly and hope for a hit - the Investigator needs leads in order to really do anything.

The Godfather rule is important because it keeps the Investigator's confirmation from being 100% (of course, Disguisers can fool him too) and allows the GF to trick the Investigator into wasting entries on his list. It also balances out the fact that the Investigator does have a one-shot chance to identify the Godfather and other NS evils directly, they just need to be very sure because they have to select that exact role and can only do so once, or be willing to spend two nights and burn two Town roles off their list.

And overall, while it might sound complex on paper, this is pretty straightforward - you select someone, select a role, and learn if they're that role; you can only check for each role once. A few people are investigation-resistant and will always show up as any town you investigate them as, but can still be found if you investigate them with their true role.

It is somewhat important that the Investigator's list only contain roles that could actually exist in the game, both for simplicity and to avoid giving them extra entries to burn when checking for Investigation Resistance (they can burn ones they've deduced don't exist, but that's a reward for knowing what's going on.)
Last edited by Brilliand on Sat Sep 18, 2021 6:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Brilliand
Godfather
Godfather
 
Posts: 1503
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:34 pm

Re: Investigator rework (by kikigiri)

Postby syjfwbaobfwl » Thu Sep 16, 2021 9:06 am

Why jester wont match with town roles? Jest shouldnt get prized for being investigated

Also I still think its too strong because if you dont count veteran and vigi, town roles have little to no reason to fake claim, making it a more complex sheriff
syjfwbaobfwl
Jailor
Jailor
 
Posts: 747
Joined: Thu May 07, 2020 1:50 pm

Re: Investigator rework (by kikigiri)

Postby Brilliand » Thu Sep 16, 2021 7:31 pm

syjfwbaobfwl wrote:Why jester wont match with town roles? Jest shouldnt get prized for being investigated


Look at what the current ToS Investigator gets when checking a Jester. Jesters come up as "Framer, Vampire, or Jester" - a resultset clearly meant to look suspicious. Seems to me the pattern "Jester looks good to the Sheriff and bad to the Investigator" is already in the game.

Are you saying Jester should be punished for being investigated by looking as townie as possible in that case? That seems wrong to me, because if the Jester is doing his job, but didn't get lynched instantly for some reason, he will attract investigations. Ideally the investigations shouldn't screw with the Jester much either way. In this case, it makes sense to me that if someone is trying to be caught in a lie, and someone outright checks whether they're lying, they should get the result "yes, that person is lying".

Of course, in the case of a Sheriff checking a Jester, there's the issue that that kind of check is likely to be random, and if it comes up guilty then the Jester is getting lynched without having done anything at all (which would really be a waste of a Jester). That isn't an issue with Kikigiri's Investigator, because the Investigator isn't going to be checking a Jester who hasn't made their play yet.

syjfwbaobfwl wrote:Also I still think its too strong because if you dont count veteran and vigi, town roles have little to no reason to fake claim, making it a more complex sheriff


The same argument applies to the current Investigator. Sheriff and Investigator are similar roles - but of course, they're both TI! But they do have meaningful differences.
  • Sheriff hard finds a short list of evils, and is useless against the rest
  • Investigator can find every evil, but must always deal with some uncertainty
  • Sheriff can only confirm itself by finding an evil
  • Investigator can also confirm itself by correctly identifying Town
  • Fundamentally, Sheriff is an "alignment cop" while Investigator is a "role cop", archetypes with a long history in Mafia-like games.

Kikigiri's rework reduces the Investigator's confirmability, and removes the pairing up of specific Town roles with specific evil roles. However, it stays true to advantages and disadvantages of Investigator relative to Sheriff, and it stays true to the basic characterization of Investigator as a "role cop".

(Even ignoring all that, though, why did you call it "too strong" because it's like Sheriff? Sheriff is weak.)
User avatar
Brilliand
Godfather
Godfather
 
Posts: 1503
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:34 pm

Re: Investigator rework (by kikigiri)

Postby Brilliand » Fri Sep 17, 2021 3:18 am

Due to the way ToS handles roles, a role-cop that gets "role but not alignment" is impossible. This isn't a perfect copy-over of the kind of role-cop you'd get in games where roles and factions are mixed and matched freely; it's an effort to make something resembling a role-cop balanced in the ToS environment.

Kirize12 wrote:
Investigator gets roles. Not necessarily good, not necessarily evil

This needs to stay in any Investigator rework worth its salt, but without a need-to-memorize list.


Kikigiri's Investigator gets both role and alignment, but with various kinds of uncertainty thrown in. It might be helpful to think of it as working in three different 'modes':
  • Check a player against their claim, to determine whether they told the truth on the stand. (Fails against Detection Immune evils)
  • Check a player against a Town role you know they definitely aren't. This will simply tell you whether or not that player is Detection Immune.
  • Check a player against a non-Town role that you think they might be. This is the riskiest option, but it confirms your suspicion very clearly if you're right. (Disguiser and Framer can still mess with this, though.)

I may be missing a fourth mode where the Investigator checks a player against a random Town role that they might be, and does something with that information. (Not sure whether that's viable or not.)

Kirize12 wrote:
(of course, people who claim outside of their bucket are confirmed evil)

This needs to be avoided in any Investigator rework worth its salt.


Does it really? Even if you're in a game where roles and alignments are separate things, anyone who claims to be a "roleblocker" but turns out to actually be a "role cop" is a liar, and liars are usually assumed to be evil.

Strictly speaking telling a lie doesn't necessarily mean you're evil, but that's what the assumption is going to be.
User avatar
Brilliand
Godfather
Godfather
 
Posts: 1503
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:34 pm

Re: Investigator rework (by kikigiri)

Postby Brilliand » Fri Sep 17, 2021 6:08 pm

Kirize12 wrote:Before I respond: a Framer should make Good roles seen as “False” and Evil roles seen as “True”. But that would require a Framer overhaul, including making it so Framer no longer is semi-permanent.


I had the same thought, but I don't want to go editing Kikigiri's rework without Kikigiri approving the changes.

It looks like the default if we don't change anything is "Framed players will only get a 'true' result if you check them against Framer", which isn't half bad.

Kirize12 wrote:I’m not opposing this role, but I think we need to make a good-faith effort to have it fill the same niche. Otherwise it’s not an overhaul, it’s a rework.


It's certainly worth considering other ideas for how to fix the Investigator, but I don't want this topic to become the place where we do that.
User avatar
Brilliand
Godfather
Godfather
 
Posts: 1503
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:34 pm

Re: Investigator rework (by kikigiri)

Postby Brilliand » Sat Sep 18, 2021 4:59 pm

Alright, I've edited in the new behavior for framed targets.

I decided to treat neutral roles that Town is allowed to spare as "good" roles for the purpose of framing, because framing is supposed to encourage the Town to lynch that person, and a NB/NE result might sometimes achieve the opposite.
User avatar
Brilliand
Godfather
Godfather
 
Posts: 1503
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:34 pm

Re: Investigator rework (by kikigiri)

Postby Brilliand » Sat Sep 18, 2021 6:06 pm

Kirize12 wrote:
Brilliand wrote:Alright, I've edited in the new behavior for framed targets.

I decided to treat neutral roles that Town is allowed to spare as "good" roles for the purpose of framing, because framing is supposed to encourage the Town to lynch that person, and a NB/NE result might sometimes achieve the opposite.

Should function identical to Psychic’s Good and Evil.


Oh, okay.

Edited.
User avatar
Brilliand
Godfather
Godfather
 
Posts: 1503
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2014 8:34 pm


Return to Role Ideas

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 8 guests

cron