Is Witch required to help evil when they die?

[Kyosji]

Question about an instance today. It's happened a few times, but today this dude got angry and loud and tried to get the town to report me for throwing. I am witch, and N1 of the game I found WW, logged it as a side note in my will. Mafia also attacked me, 2 mafia visited, and spy saw it. To top it off, the mafia whispered me saying "Hello witch" so I knew one of the mafia. This confirmed me as an immune, and well, no defense to that. Tried to play the invest, didnt work, and everyone guiltied me. My role of surviving is gone, I failed, so I had in my will and when the exe animation was going on, said all I new. Who the WW was and one of the maf. He's insisting that Witch works for Maf, which clearly isn't true, but demanded I be reported for game throwing. Here's the question. My role objective is "Survive to see the Town lose the game." Welp, I failed the first word of my role. I have nothing saying I have to let mafia or NK win, just to survive with evil, so am I still supposed to protect all the evils of the game even in death? or help the game speed along faster?

[ScarfVendetta]

If you die as a Witch, you have no obligation to help the remaining evil factions to win the game.

[Kyosji]

If you die as a Witch, you have no obligation to help the remaining evil factions to win the game.

Ty for clearing that for me.

[orangeandblack5]

That being said I would still encourage you to not give away all of the scum

It's not against the rules it's just kinda a dick move

[Kyosji]

That being said I would still encourage you to not give away all of the scum

It's not against the rules it's just kinda a dick move

Gives evils more of a reason to protect you IMO. If I die, I don't want to wait ~20 minutes for the game to end, I want it to end ASAP so I can move on to my next game.

[Brilliand]

That being said I would still encourage you to not give away all of the scum

It's not against the rules it's just kinda a dick move

It depends on why you died.

Generally it makes sense to punish the faction that caused your death (i.e. Mafia if they deliberately outed you or killed you at night, Town if they figured you out on their own).

[kyuss420]

That being said I would still encourage you to not give away all of the scum

It's not against the rules it's just kinda a dick move

Gives evils more of a reason to protect you IMO. If I die, I don't want to wait ~20 minutes for the game to end, I want it to end ASAP so I can move on to my next game.

Still a dick move, and not every town wants to be spoon fed info from the witch/consig/CL/PM, makes for a boring game for all concerned. Spite revealing just because you lost should be suspendable IMO.

[Kyosji]

That being said I would still encourage you to not give away all of the scum

It's not against the rules it's just kinda a dick move

Gives evils more of a reason to protect you IMO. If I die, I don't want to wait ~20 minutes for the game to end, I want it to end ASAP so I can move on to my next game.

Still a dick move, and not every town wants to be spoon fed info from the witch/consig/CL/PM, makes for a boring game for all concerned. Spite revealing just because you lost should be suspendable IMO.

Don't understand that since I'm revealing someone not of my group. That logic mafia revealing a NK because they hit him one night would be spite revealing, or vice versa.

I also want to point out that as a witch, I rarely help Arso unless I have control of them since N1. There is far too much risk in me protecting someone that you have no guarantee wont douse you or already has.

[KAKERMAN23]

1. It should absolutely NOT be suspendable, that would be complete bullshit.
2. While it's annoying, if you lose, you lose, so it doesn't matter what happens to the game afterward if you die as witch.

[wozearly]

Don't understand that since I'm revealing someone not of my group. That logic mafia revealing a NK because they hit him one night would be spite revealing, or vice versa.

I also want to point out that as a witch, I rarely help Arso unless I have control of them since N1. There is far too much risk in me protecting someone that you have no guarantee wont douse you or already has.

You're neutral, so you're not gamethrowing unless you're actively acting against your win conditions. At the point you're dead or about to die, you can technically do as you see fit.

However, it's a dick move to deliberately reveal information on NK or the Mafia in your will for no reason, as it typically hands the game to the Town and screws everyone else.


If you take the game you gave as an example, you were unlucky. There was nothing you could do once Spy outed you as immune; even the Mafia causing a distraction would only have given you a temporary reprieve. The Mafia member whispering you is an idiot if they did that after the Spy revealed, but it made no practical difference to your defence. The Werewolf didn't do a thing except get controlled by you.

In response, you wrecked the game for the Werewolf and outed one of the Mafia. You might not have meant to be a dick about it, but I hope you can understand why it was a pretty low thing to do.


As a general rule of Witch etiquette, you should never share information on evils that Town can use. Ideally, that means never storing it in your will in the first place (you never truly know when you might die at night). If you do, that means either disguising it in some way or wiping it the moment you realise you're about to be lynched.

You might threaten the Mafia or NK with revealing them in your will if you don't trust them to stand with you...but you don't need to actually do it. The threat is almost always enough.

Trust me, it's what you'd want Witches to do if you were playing other scum roles in a game with them.


The grey area in etiquette is when your allies deliberately get you killed by throwing you under the bus during voting (if they could have realistically saved you) or attacking you at night when they know who you are. In those cases, it's reasonable to out them in your will, or to the dead, or however you like - reminding the Mafia or NK not to screw over allies who can bring them down helps all future Witches.

[Superalex11]

Following some sort of etiquette like this just for its own sake is really a fruitless endeavor. If the goal is to win, this etiquette probably actually makes you worse off, because as Kyosji's said it's in your best interest to incentivize others to protect you, and by including their details in your will they risk being worse off by your death.

Of course this isn't to say it's not an understandable decision for a witch to maintain this etiquette (especially in more casual modes), but we shouldn't pretend that a witch playing to win is a bad thing for the game. At worst the only problems arising will be collateral, and that just means there's some balance issues to resolve - this idea is where the phrase "don't hate the player, hate the game" comes from.

[Brilliand]

because as Kyosji's said it's in your best interest to incentivize others to protect you, and by including their details in your will they risk being worse off by your death.

Note that if Town finds you on their own, it's in your best interest to make lynching you as useless as possible. Thus the situation is reversed - you're better off not outing the entire Mafia in that case (or at least convincing the Town that you won't out the entire Mafia if you die).

[KAKERMAN23]

If the town finds you, you should be able to do what you want. Sure, the mafia can still win, but if you're dead you don't. You can defend yourself all you want, and make your death seem as useless as possible for the town, but if they do kill you it doesn't matter anymore. Once the Town guilties you, there is no strategy. You lost. No point in following some "witch etiquette" or something.

[orangeandblack5]

Except there is because you're significantly more likely to be ousted by the evils if Witches generally betray them after death anyways

Now nobody wants to work with you and you lose significantly more often

Not a good trade-off for wanting to be a jerk imo

If the scum are like expressly going after you that's a different story and threatening to out them if they don't help you is certainly fine, but ultimately it is in your best long-term interests not to make people upset with you and your role by outing people that had every intention on working with you just because

Especially if you use recognizable names

[Superalex11]

Note that if Town finds you on their own, it's in your best interest to make lynching you as useless as possible. Thus the situation is reversed - you're better off not outing the entire Mafia in that case (or at least convincing the Town that you won't out the entire Mafia if you die).

Your first claim is correct. Your second is not.

The problem with your second claim is that it's true only if you (as a witch) are already caught and need to convince the town against your hanging. If there are no other leads, then town won't be swayed for or against hanging you no matter the information within your will. And if there are other leads, it's not like you've somehow escaped death and won outright - you've still got to survive to the end.
The only case in which you win as a result of a town deciding not to hang you as a result of your excluding evils' roles from your will (or at least their expectation of such) is one where the only reason you were ever considered for a lynching was a miscommunication between you and the evil majority (most likely mafia) in the first place.
Now that was a bulky sentence, so let me simplify: If a town knows you're a witch, the reason they hang you will not be because of the information within your will. It will be most likely because you are the biggest night-threat among the known evils.

You might look to a metagame argument wherein town would expect useful info in a witch's will, and thus hunt witches more than otherwise, but if we're being honest here intending to find witches compared to other evils probably doesn't correlate much to actually finding witches more often than other evils. It's not like there's an ability to see if a person is a certain role, where that hypothetical TI could check for witches rather than mafiosos.

Except there is because you're significantly more likely to be ousted by the evils if Witches generally betray them after death anyways

...no? If the idea of the witch's strategy is to encourage evils to protect her, this also implies discouraging evils from outing her. Why would, say, a mafioso, knowing his name (or one of his teammates' names) is in the witch's will, seek to get that witch hanged/killed, thus revealing information harmful to himself?

[orangeandblack5]

Counterpoint

What about when the Mafia find the Witch first?

It's not ideal to control scummy people anyways so in theory that should happen more often given the Mafia's starting informational advantage, plus the possibility of a Consig

[MysticMismagius]

It's not like there's an ability to see if a person is a certain role, where that hypothetical TI could check for witches rather than mafiosos.

Is this a sarcastic jab or did you just completely forget about Investigator
because Invest can differentiate Mafiosos from Witches

[dolphina]

Why?

1. The Witch doesn't win with Town, and it doesn't win while dead. However, they should still try to bolster the Mafia's chances of winning. Being a jerk gives you less wins, especially if you get pardoned only for Town to vote up the Mafia you revealed. Besides, it sucks to be Mafia and have a Witch reveal you. It's an a**hole move. Do you want to be an a**hole?
2. Having experienced this myself, I can confirm that it sucks a**. The Witch revealed us out of spite, claiming that we threw by voting her up. Sometimes, it's NOT in the Mafia's interest to prevent the Witch from being voted up. We reported the Witch for ruining the game. It's technically throwing.
3. It makes the whole game experience bland, especially if NK has already died.

[Superalex11]

What about when the Mafia find the Witch first?

I mean sure, in such case the witch may very well be worse off. But I don't think you're correct in assessing its likelihood. Assuming 4 maf to start, the witch will have somewhere between odds of 4/13 (base) and ~2/8 (fair?) of finding a maf in the early to mid game. In order for the maf to find the witch they'd either need to have hit her (neglecting docs for this scenario) or have a consig. With 0 consigs this gives them odds between 1/10 (base) and ~1/5 of finding her in the early to mid game. With >=1 consig the calculations get trickier because of variability, but given that 3 of every 4 games have 0 consigs, the odds yet remain in the witch's favor.
Overall the witch will still be better off, since even if the mafia find her first, it won't necessarily be in their best interest to off her anyway (even as a bus).

It's not like there's an ability to see if a person is a certain role, where that hypothetical TI could check for witches rather than mafiosos.

Is this a sarcastic jab or did you just completely forget about Investigator
because Invest can differentiate Mafiosos from Witches

My point was that you can't specifically search for witches instead of other evil roles. To clarify my example, there does not exist a role which can look at a player at night, pick some role as an option, and see if that person is that role. If there did, that role could go around checking specifically for witches, rather than, for example, mafiosos. Think of this hypothetical role as a pseudo-sheriff, where it shows "sus" if the person checked matches the role you chose to search for.



And @dolphina, I was going to put in the effort to respond to your post, but I've decided against it as I'd just be repeating myself. It still baffles me how people like you come into threads without reading them and make posts like these expecting to be seen as valuable.

[KAKERMAN23]

I don't know about the others, but I'm pretty sure this is talking about outing the mafia during your last words and/or in your last will, a time where there is no going back from death, so town wouldn't be able to pardon you. Outing the mafia during the defense phase could be seen as throwing in many situations.

Also, responding to alex, there is a way that town could specifically hunt for witches. Remember investigator? Lookout, forger, or witch is a pretty dead giveaway that someone is evil if they aren't a convincing lookout.

[dolphina]

And @dolphina, I was going to put in the effort to respond to your post, but I've decided against it as I'd just be repeating myself. It still baffles me how people like you come into threads without reading them and make posts like these expecting to be seen as valuable.

I read your posts, I just don't think they hold much water. Why are you arguing for an a**hole move that just makes people upset in the first place? The goal is to have fun, and to have your collective amount of fun outweigh the amount of frustration, to give you an enjoyable experience. Using this move as Witch decreases that net fun, therefore it is a bad move. Besides, you lost. You are not going to increase your own fun levels, so why not increase other people's fun levels? If you want to leave, then leave! And if it's Ranked, tank the loss. Leaving would make you lose more elo, anyway. Besides, if there is a Medium, you could lie to them about the Mafia members, potentially leading to two mislynches caused by you, which, in my opinion, is the best part of being an evil. If you can't fulfill your goal, just have fun! Increase the net fun of the game you're playing. Otherwise, it's a bad decision.

[wozearly]

Following some sort of etiquette like this just for its own sake is really a fruitless endeavor. If the goal is to win, this etiquette probably actually makes you worse off, because as Kyosji's said it's in your best interest to incentivize others to protect you, and by including their details in your will they risk being worse off by your death.

Of course this isn't to say it's not an understandable decision for a witch to maintain this etiquette (especially in more casual modes), but we shouldn't pretend that a witch playing to win is a bad thing for the game.

The concept of Witch etiquette exists to increase the Witch's winrates (and to a lesser extent, scum's winrate overall). It's not there for it's own sake, and it doesn't get in the way of the Witch winning themselves.

The underlying truth is that you gain absolutely nothing by revealing your allies in a situation where you've already lost. All you do is destroy their chances of winning.

The typical response to Mafia and NK to identifying the Witch, or the Witch revealing to them, is relief. It's a boost to their chances of winning to have an additional ally who knows who they are, and it means they're not going to either kill you by accident while hunting for an important but unrevealed role, or hit you and try to out you because they think you're the NK/Godfather respectively.

It's not necessary to have to threaten either the NK or Mafia with revealing them to gain their aid; they'll usually give it willingly, as it's in all of your interests to do so. Witches are almost always killed by the Town, or accidentally by an NK/Mafia who didn't know who they were. In Ranked, there are literally only two legitimate situations I can think of where Mafia or NK would deliberately try to kill the Witch:

1) If the NK is placed in a position where they have a viable chance of winning, but only by killing the Witch to prevent a Mafia+Witch win. As a Witch with a functioning brain in this scenario, you should have already picked whether you're winning with the NK or Mafia, be working openly with them and controlling the other to prevent them killing you. And if you really must control someone else, you'll have told both other sides you'll win with them. So dying in this situation is entirely your own fault.

2) Mafia are placed in a situation where the only possible way they can win is to avoid a Mafia lynch for one more day, and the only available person to accuse is the Witch. This in itself is an oddball situation, as it involves four roles in play - Mayor, [any confirmed Townie except Transporter, BG, Escort, Vigilante, Jailor, Veteran with alert(s)], Witch, Mafioso. The Mafioso here has no choice but to try to get Town to hang the Witch thinking they're the last Mafia so that they can kill they Mayor that night. But in this situation, the Witch has already lost - there is no way they can win if the Mafioso dies, and no way the Mafioso can survive unless the Witch dies.

Even in these situations, there is no benefit to revealing your allies.

The bits falling into the 'grey area' I mentioned earlier are ultimately variations on gamethrowing (which is reportable) or incredibly poor or stupid plays by the Mafia/NK, which I agree is legitimately punishable by the Witch returning the favour by revealing them as way to discourage it happening in future.


The examples given by you, Kyosji and Kakerman of when suspending the etiquette could be justified are demonstrably examples of incredibly poor Witch plays.

Example A)
"I've put the Mafia/NK in my will, so it's now their job to protect me if I get revealed - if I die they'll be outed."

If Town hold voting majority, the NK and Mafia have no way to protect you if you're revealed. The best they can do is try to push suspicion onto someone else and split the vote, which might buy you one night. That's absolutely worth it if you're all one night off gaining voting majority, but in most other situations it'll just delay your inevitable execution/lynching. You cannot seriously expect them to conduct wild futile sacrifices one by one to save you; and if they actually did, the odds of you going on to win that game are precisely zero.

There is neither benefit nor justification to including the Maf/NK in your will here. As you know you're about to die, you should remove/disguise that information.

Example B)
"Putting evils in my will gives them a reason to protect me. Plus, if I die, I don't want to wait 20 minutes for the game to end, I want it to end ASAP so I can move on."

The first part is incorrect (see A) because the others generally can't protect you from things that kill you. They can only protect you from being killed by them, but they have no reason to kill you anyway.

The second part is not against the letter of the rules, but is against the spirit of them and ruins the game for all remaining players. It's not gamethrowing, because it is not currently considered gamethrowing when done by a neutral role, but it is a dick move. Screwing over the Mafia may potentially lead to them having a reason to be a dick to Witches, which is not good for future Witch games.

Example C)
"Once I'm about to lose I can do what I want. Once you've lost, you've lost."

Fundamentally this is the same as B. You're being a dick because you can be, and because no punishment is attached because it's not "technically" gamethrowing.

Example D)
"But I have to do this, otherwise Mafia/NK might deliberately get me killed, or deliberately kill me once they can win without me"

Mafia and NK have no reason to deliberately kill an ally. You can also prevent them from doing it at night yourself, via control, in the really unlikely event you find yourself playing alongside a hostile Mafia. And to be honest, if the underlying cause of the problem is "my allies are making dick moves once they've won" then I fail to see how making dickish moves yourself pre-emptively, before anyone has won or lost, solves the problem. If anything, it'll just add to it by supporting the idea that being a dick to the Neutrals (and vice versa) is fine.

The only reason in this situation that Mafia would have to kill the Witch is spite, in revenge for Witches dicking them over in previous games for no reason other than spite. The idea of Witch etiquette avoids this happening, as it means you won't deliberately or accidentally screw over the other scum, so this avoids that issue coming into play - it might not help your current game, which is already lost, but it helps Witches in future games.


Sooner or later, all players will be on the Mafia/NK side of this equation. I've yet to come across a single player who would be happy with a Witch trashing their game because they died through no fault of the Mafia/NK.

[kyuss420]

You forgot to mention some people like actual thinking games, when theyre town... so revealing the maf and NK just makes for a boring game, even if you win as town... so its a dick move to every faction (not just the evils), and is basically spite revealing ''I lost and dont want to wait, so i will ruin the entire game for everyone involved'' GTFO

also tantamount to a gamethrow, as the role card states you should be siding against town, not helping them becuase you dont wanna wait an extra 3 minutes....

Its like you got caught by the teacher, so you dobbed in 3 other kids that nothing to do with what you were in trouble for, no one likes a snitch (not even the teachers) your face may as well be on the 6ix9ine meme....

can someone do that meme?? get the 6ix9ine template and write on it ''Yea Im witch. 7 is the WW and 4 and 12 are Maf!''

[wozearly]

can someone do that meme?? get the 6ix9ine template and write on it ''Yea Im witch. 7 is the WW and 4 and 12 are Maf!''

Hmm...sorry, sounds too much like actual work.

Oh, wait a second... https://imgur.com/6QyXewh

[Kyosji]

I don't see it as a bad witch play. If that's the way I want to play, and it's not throwing, why not? If I want to use the info to threaten the evils like the example below, it's my prerogative. If I want the game to end quicker and I have the ability to do so so I can join a new game, where does it say I can't. I also don't always have to say the truth. I could put 1 or 2 evils in my will then put a town in the mix to make them lynch one of their own. You all call it bad witch play, but you really don't have the right to say it since you're not me playing that role.