Berserker (NK)

[Brilliand]

Sorry for stealing your role name, DilbertAlmighty, but I had this crazy idea for a completely different role on the same theme!

Role Name: Berserker

Role Alignment: Neutral Killing

Abilities:

• Twice per day, as a day ability, you may deal a Powerful attack to a player of your choice.
• If you are voted to the stand but not lynched, you will deal a Powerful attack to every Guilty or Abstain voter.
• The Berserker has no night abilities.

Attributes:

• When you kill a player during the day, they die instantly. They can no longer vote, and any votes they did make are nullified.
• When you score a kill, the whole town is told who did it. You cannot kill in secret.
• Town Protective roles have no way to defend against the Berserker's kills, since they happen in broad daylight.
• The lynch immunity given by the Guardian Angel also prevents the Berserker from attacking that player.

Notifications:

• <berserker name> flies into a rage, killing <player name> in the town square!
• <berserker name> flies into a rage, killing <list of players who voted Guilty or Abstain>
• <berserker name> flies into a rage, striking <player name> with his axe to no effect! (Berserker attacked Pestilence)

Goal: Kill everyone who would oppose you.

Win Conditions:

(Standard Neutral Killing win conditions)

Special Attributes:
Attack: Powerful
Defense: Basic

Investigator Results:
Sheriff - Your target appears to be innocent.
Investigator - (Werewolf result set)
Consigliere - Your target is a fearsome man, who could fly into a rage at any moment. They must be a Berserker.

Achievements:

Brutal Self Defense: Prevent your own lynching by killing a Guilty voter during the Judgment phase.
Crowd Control: Kill a player while they were trying to vote you to the stand, and don't get voted to the stand that day.

[ZackTheMaf666]

Sounds cool, but would be useless without an evil majority, or if your kills cause an evil majority.

[Brilliand]

Sounds cool, but would be useless without an evil majority, or if your kills cause an evil majority.

Yeah, I'm convinced at this point that you just don't think these things through. "Useless" my ass.

This role has the potential to kill off the entire town at once if it can manipulate the voting correctly. Even if it doesn't quite manage to do that, the daykill ability puts the town in a sort of Prisoner's Dilemma situation - do they really want to be the first to vote, and risk dying for nothing? How about being one of the Guilty votes if the Berserker manages to swing the vote with his kills, and get innoed AGAIN? It's a tough situation, if the town doesn't already know they can trust each other.

[Silver1906]

Killing voters sounds like a pretty fun idea, but is likely going to be more of a hinderce like SKs ability to kill roleblockers. A competent town will likely find Berserker with ease with some form of meta developed around voting. Or just being plain smart.

[Brilliand]

Killing voters sounds like a pretty fun idea, but is likely going to be more of a hinderce like SKs ability to kill roleblockers. A competent town will likely find Berserker with ease with some form of meta developed around voting. Or just being plain smart.

Yeah, I am rather worried about that aspect.

Possibly the Berserker should get a button to do it (taking the same form as the Mayor's "reveal as Mayor" button), instead of it being automatic.

(I've made a similar suggestion about the Serial Killer's counterattack before.)

[Silver1906]

Yeah, I am rather worried about that aspect.

Possibly the Berserker should get a button to do it (taking the same form as the Mayor's "reveal as Mayor" button), instead of it being automatic.

(I've made a similar suggestion about the Serial Killer's counterattack before.)

Even if you could choose, I see it's usefulness being very swingy. Late game you will absolutely want to do this to kill the last few remaining players, but that's probably when it will be harder to do this since most players will be confirmed and the chances of you successfully defending yourself on stand, especially when a Berserker is known to be in the game, is unlikely. Chances are you'd have already been killed or lynched through process of elimination by this point if you hadn't killed at all, so the chances of you not being known are unlikely.

On the other hand, early game is pretty easy to use this perk, but the usefulness of this isn't too great. This has the original problem of you getting lynched next day by a smart town.

I like the idea, but I think it needs a bit of polishing. Maybe start from the drawing board again.

[Brilliand]

I like the idea, but I think it needs a bit of polishing. Maybe start from the drawing board again.

This idea feels complete to me. I might make a similar role in the future, but this thread can stay as it is, flaws and all.

It feels a bit like a super-Jester, will callbacks to my previous roles "Conquest" and "Death, Horseman of the Apocalypse". I like how it leans very hard on the idea of ruling through fear - something the Mafia does in real life, but not so much in this game.

[Silver1906]

This idea feels complete to me. I might make a similar role in the future, but this thread can stay as it is, flaws and all.

It feels a bit like a super-Jester, will callbacks to my previous roles "Conquest" and "Death, Horseman of the Apocalypse". I like how it leans very hard on the idea of ruling through fear - something the Mafia does in real life, but not so much in this game.

You do you. To me, this seems more like a idea you would put in a notepad for future use, it doesn't really seem very playable as it is to me.

Now that I think about it, this doesn't really fit a Neutral Killing. Neutral Killings jobs are to lower town numbers for Mafia, but still give the NK a chance at winning. If you kill too early with this, you're going to die straight away. If you don't kill early game, there might as well not be a NK for the first half of the game. Seems like a Neutral Chaos to me.

[Brilliand]

Now that I think about it, this doesn't really fit a Neutral Killing. Neutral Killings jobs are to lower town numbers for Mafia, but still give the NK a chance at winning. If you kill too early with this, you're going to die straight away. If you don't kill early game, there might as well not be a NK for the first half of the game. Seems like a Neutral Chaos to me.

To be fair, Arsonist kinda does the same thing. An Arsonist igniting early is usually seen as a mistake.

[Silver1906]

To be fair, Arsonist kinda does the same thing. An Arsonist igniting early is usually seen as a mistake.

This is to a much more extreme extent. You kill one single person and you get a big fat message saying 'I'm the Berserker, kill me!'.

[Brilliand]

You have a point about this role not really doing the "Neutral Killing" job right, but it does have exactly the Neutral Killing goal. If I changed it to Neutral Chaos, I would want to change the goal too, and I haven't thought of a better goal for it yet.

Also, while you're right that the Berserker would tend to wait to the end in games where he wins, I think you're wrong in saying waiting for the end is what would usually happen. I would expect a desperate massacre just before dying to be a very common failure condition, especially since the Berserker is free to off two people with his dying breath if the town catches him by scumreading.

[Silver1906]

You have a point about this role not really doing the "Neutral Killing" job right, but it does have exactly the Neutral Killing goal. If I changed it to Neutral Chaos, I would want to change the goal too, and I haven't thought of a better goal for it yet.

Also, while you're right that the Berserker would tend to wait to the end in games where he wins, I think you're wrong in saying waiting for the end is what would usually happen. I would expect a desperate massacre just before dying to be a very common failure condition, especially since the Berserker is free to off two people with his dying breath if the town catches him by scumreading.

You could just have a Neutral Chaos with a Neutral Killing goal, it doesn't really matter. The Vampire goal is basically a Vampire version of a Neutral Killing goal, where they want to be the last role alive.

The problem I have with this is that it's very difficult for the Berserker to win while fulfilling it's duty as a Neutral KIlling. If the Berserker kills a lot, as a Neutral Killing should, Berserker loses straight away. If it waits until the end, the game would have been unfair for mafia with not enough kills to stop town getting information on them. Same goes for Berserker, who will get found quicker.

If Berserker is a Neutralo Chaos, nothing matters anymore. Any and Custom games aren't balanced, or can be designed for balance in Customs case, so Berserkers lack of kills is not hurting anyones game.

[Brilliand]

Vampire is closer to being a faction (like Mafia). Pestilence is basically a Neutral Killing, though, and I've always been a bit uncomfortable about that.

Come to think of it, the Pestilence "don't kill for a long time, then suddenly become a tremendous threat" is quite similar to what the Berserker does, in its own way.

[Silver1906]

Vampire is closer to being a faction (like Mafia). Pestilence is basically a Neutral Killing, though, and I've always been a bit uncomfortable about that.

Come to think of it, the Pestilence "don't kill for a long time, then suddenly become a tremendous threat" is quite similar to what the Berserker does, in its own way.

Yeah, now that you mention it Pestilence is quite similar to this. I don't play much coven so I didn't think of that. I would imagine Pestilence is a chaos role also because it takes a long time to start killing, alongside being much more chaotic than Berserker.

[Brilliand]

It is literally the worst Neutral Killing in this board.

You exaggerate, sir. I believe you did not actually look through all the Neutral Killing roles on this board before drawing that conclusion. Please be more careful.

[lemonader666]

It is literally the worst Neutral Killing in this board.

You exaggerate, sir. I believe you did not actually look through all the Neutral Killing roles on this board before drawing that conclusion. Please be more careful.

This kind of talk won't get you far because of how pretentious it is
Also don't shame kirize

[Brilliand]

This kind of talk won't get you far because of how pretentious it is
Also don't shame kirize

It's nice to see you guys banding together, but I'm not seeing any indication that either of you know what you're talking about here.

How about explaining why you consider this a bad role? (I'm aware of certain problems with it myself, but nothing that would justify what Kirize said, and anyway I'm not inclined to give any ground to people who can't explain themselves.)