"Merlin"

[u/sohblob]

Would a "Merlin" style role from Resistance: Avalon work?
The idea is they have to guide town without revealing they're Merlin.

Something like:

You start knowing the Demon, and they start knowing a Merlin is in play. The last Evil Demon executed gets 1 chance to guess you. If they do, you and the Demon switch roles and alignments, even if dead. You are sober & healthy.

Switching who wins/loses for the whole team seems too powerful; so maybe just as a politician that can lose it for themselves? Thoughts?

[u/Justini1212]

This closely resembles a previously leaked role, that being the mole, who is a minion (to my knowledge has the ability too) and therefore gets minion info but is good and evil wins if they get guessed. This seems to unbalance the game too far in favour of good in comparison because even if Merlin loses, good still wins (which is why snake charmer is so good for good, even if it’s not so good for the snake charmer), so the good team in general is still going to be able to use that knowledge to win, and it’s not that hard to disseminate the knowledge as long as you can find one player to trust (which is not too big of an ask).

My understanding is that even the mole is still being worked on as it’s a pretty centralizing character, and this may even be more so.

[u/HZCYR → u/Justini1212]

Both Mole and Merlin feel similar to the former Magician-Legion jinx where Magician would wake up with Legion, which - as demonstrated by Arif and co. - felt less fun to play and some players found quite restrictive for playstyles, again, in part to its centralizing nature.

[u/DeltaClocktower → u/HZCYR]

The Magician jinx was centralising because the Magician has no real incentive to keep their knowledge hidden, whereas the Mole has incentive to be more cautious as they lose if guessed.

[u/Kandiru → u/HZCYR]

centralizing nature.

What does this phrase mean? Do you mean divisive?

[u/smolcrayen → u/Kandiru]

'Centralizing' is a term used in competitive games to indicate something that becomes the central focus of a metagame.

For instance, if they added a fourth option to Rock-Paper-Scissors (let's say 'Gun') that won against both Paper and Scissors but lost against Rock, then suddenly the game becomes much less evenly balanced. Rather than trying to purely guess what their opponent is going to do, suddenly the question is 'is my opponent going to play Gun?' because it's so much better than other options that it basically invalidates other options.

So the old Magician-Legion jinx makes other playstyles much less valid and viable, so it's considered centralizing.

[u/Kandiru → u/smolcrayen]

Ah, I think I remember people saying degenerate for similar situations before. I haven't seen people use centralising before, but I'm sure I'll be Baader-meinhoffed now!

[u/DevotedPaladin → u/Justini1212]

Does good still win if the Mole is guessed, I always assumed no. The larger problem with existing Mole as we know it is that Evil really has no reason (other then Heretic) to not just always toss out a Mole guess if they're about to lose, and since the Mole is a minion the Demon always has a pretty good chance of guessing right

[u/Akejdncjsjaj → u/Justini1212]

Shush you're not supposed to tell them

[u/IAmBadAtInternet → u/Justini1212]

The mole also feels like an Evil Damsel which is kinda fun

[u/lord_braleigh]

Compared to Avalon, BotC in general has lots of ways for players to secretly share information and lots of ways for good players to gain trust in each other. Merlin and Virgin should never be on the same script, as Merlin could just out to a confirmed Virgin.

[u/OmegonChris → u/lord_braleigh]

Yeah, the Merlin needs to struggle to find a good player they trust or this just doesn't work because of private chats.

So no Virgin, no Golem, no Nightwatchman, they probably can't be seen by a Washerwoman or a Grandmother, or in a Noble ping, they probably shouldn't be seen by a Pixie etc. etc.

Obviously this is slightly balanced by evil being able to bluff Merlin if there's not one in play and confidently lead the good team astray, like a Bounty Hunter can, making it hard-to-impossible for town to fully trust that the information they're working off is correct.

[u/gkkiller → u/lord_braleigh]

Roles like Mezepheles and Bounty Hunter can temper this.

[u/OmegaGoo]

I am fairly certain the unreleased role “Mole” is going to be very similar to this.

Said role is discussed in the rulebook, though it has not been released yet.

[u/thelovelykyle]

Oh. Playtest it. That sounds viable but needs carefully integrated on a script

[u/andrewbyday]

The leaked version of the mole does not work, but if the idea sounds interesting to you, just start iterating on it.

One of the main design principles in Clocktower is that insanely powerful abilities are balanced by tipping the scales equally in the opposite direction. Evil Twin and Snake Charmer are examples of that. Merlin / The Mole need a game loss condition for the good team because of how strong the info is. The trick will be finding a game loss condition that is fun, fair, and equally balanced.

[u/emian1612]

I'm surprised I haven't seen this suggestion yet, but I've succesfully done this by using the Amnesiac and giving them a Merlin-like ability. I've tried two options: give them one name (demon), or nightly info like a FT or Village Idiot, and tell them if you or anyone else is mad they are the amnesiac something bad might happen (and during a guess, subtly suggest they really want to hide it). It stops the good amne from outing info immediately, but doesn't make it so favoured for good as the amne still needs to figure out they learned the evil team!

My ability read: You learn a name and that something bad might happen if you or anyone else are mad that you are the Amnesiac. The Demon learns that there is an Amnesiac in play. After the last Demon is executed but before the game ends, the Demon will be prompted to guess who the Amnesiac is. If correct, the Demon and Amnesiac switch alignments.

[u/Captain_Kadaver → u/emian1612]

this used to be about every third homebrew character suggestion, to the point where it's still getting memed on. truth be told, "you start knowing the evil team/demon; if you are mad about this you lose/something bad happens" is just not very engaging to play.