by Skulomania » Thu Aug 11, 2016 3:10 pm
This is going to be my thoughts on the Ghost role only.
The Ghost role seems a bit odd. It essentially seems like an over-extended doctor that seems just too all over the place and unbalanced with escort and jailor abilities that borderline it as Town Support/Town Protective. I am going to outline just some of the points that make me feel this way. the point-taking style is being written as I read the role. A conclusion will be stated at the end.
1. It roleblocks its target. Seems counter-intuitive to roleblock your target as you are protecting them from death but are impeding on their ability. This seems like the jailor's roleblocking/protecting ability minus all the other things that happen in jail. So this also borderline is becoming a Town Protective/Town Support as you can potentially roleblock a scum role, like the jailor and escort can.
2. The inability to visit someone 2 times in a row, although is a good way to separate it from escort and jailor in a way, seems again, counter-intuitive. You essentially have just protected/roleblocked a potentially confirmed townie and wasted his/her night , to only have him/her die the next night. You essentially have delayed their death. It almost seems like this role should be played as a semi Town Support/Town Protective.
3. Its immunity to witches and roleblocks, essentially means no one can stop it from protecting/roleblocking a scum or townie. So, similiar to the Jailor in terms of it being able to target anyone it wants, although the execution part may be hindered. Not to mention with your roleblocking piercing immunity, you can roleblock anyone. This seems a little unbalanced.
4. So the role is also able to roleblock a jailor's execution if targeted, although it is also able to roleblock a jailor's execution by targeting the jailed person. So essentially a roleblocking role that doesn't even have to target the jailor to roleblock. i don't know how i feel about that. This is starting to sound more and more like an escort/consort on steroids with over-extending healing powers. Also the jailor is unable to execute the Ghost? Would the ghost not just say jailor execute me you will not be able to so i can prove myself i am ghost..So the role can now confirm itself?
5. Lookouts will not see the killing role visit. That seems rather unfortunate, and again, counter-intuitive and quite unfair to the lookout. The role is essentially healing/roleblocking a target and on top of that making it unable for the lookout to see who attacked. So essentially, nothing even happened. This seems to hurt town more than anyone, as it punishes the lookout for targeting the right person, in which lookout would of been able to lynch the next day. I do not see the point of this. And it also makes the mafia roles detection immune from spy if they visit the ghost's target. This also confirms the Ghost's presence in the game for the Spy, for if someone claimed to be attacked you would know it was the ghost who probably healed them. I do not really understand why a TP(although heavily TS in this case) should have such ability to inflict such detection immunity onto others.
6. The WW interaction i suppose means that the Ghost is immune if it heals a target attacked by the WW. the WW should not be effected like this. The WW is hard enough as it is.
7. There's just too much of everything going on here in this role unfortunately.
Conclusion:
Overall, I am not feeling it with this role. The thing about Town roles is that they a lot of the times have to be quite 1-dimensional, they cannot have too much power, but at the same time they cannot have too little. They also have to be careful of borrowing too many similiar features/abilities from other town roles in other alignments as the town roles were put into specific categories for a reason, and if a role overlaps too heavily, it makes it rather complicated and unbalanced. So while the Ghost role has good effort put into it, it is too all over the place for me and not balanced enough as a town role, and thus I do not think will be a good addition into the game.
Something this complex in its abilities would would fit better as a non-town role (not saying the Ghost should be non-town, but simply its complexity of its abilities), for non-town roles have a lot of the times more freedom in their range of abilities and impact. Town roles can have a bit of variety in their abilities as well, but they must all inter-connect and relate, as in they must all be apart of the realm of their alignment. Unfortunately the Ghost role doesn't accomplish the latter.