Board Thread:Role Ideas (Neutral)/@comment-26234016-20181215141450/@comment-28112409-20181216170322

 Comments/Remarks 

Before I carry on, just a quick acknowledgement that this is an NC role. Meaning it will never see the light of Ranked or any competitive setting ever. Such a role needs to really sell how enjoyable of an addition it is with balance considered only to make sure this role isn't broken overpowered.

That being said, the concept is actually alright and the mechanics are overall decent with only a couple of issues.

This is definitely a unique role, as we don't have any proper roles with fleshed out interactions from the dead that aren't as linear as GA or as boring as Medium. Definitely a good choice of concept and mechanics that makes it quite the unconventional role, it stands out from the rest of the roles in ToS just like an NC role should be doing. Worth an honorable mention.

The role simply has to be killed to really get to do stuff, and it sounds like a plausible goal seeing how easy it is to get yourself killed in any way or form. The way the requirements to essentially 'activate' the role's abilities are made mean the player is bound to perform some action eventually regardless of who they get killed by.

 Mechanics 

The seances look pretty well made. When they're killed in the day/night, they have to wait for the next night to use their otherworldly vision or investigation ability, then become able to use seances the night after that in a sequential manner. It strikes a good balance between the role being a worthless bystander and being a broken son of a gun that everyone wants removed from the game.

My first issue is with the role's investigative abilities. The unlimited use of investigations is unnecessary. Having a possession capable of a powerful attack that can wipe the NK's forehead off the face of the Earth is threatening enough to them, alongside seances that can assist the Town (NK's biggest enemy) in delivering information when Medium and Ret are absent, in addition to the fact that they've wasted a night killing you already puts them at a disadvantage. Even if it was the last member of a faction, it usually means they'll be easily found and eliminated, or the game is approaching the late phase of it where the investigative abilities have barely any use. This part of the ability needs to be completely removed, because it's not exactly desirable for an NK or the last member of a faction to have an extra enemy that can severely annihilate them.

Then there's the otherworldly vision, which has its own problems. It's basically odd night Psychic except the Revenant gets to do it every night and this creates an issue. In your purposes, you said that the role is there to prevent VFR, which is directly contradicted by this ability when the Revenant is killed by non-Town. When Psychic gives 3 names and one of them is definitely evil, you bet the Town will start doing VFR to find that evil since a Psychic's vision confirms that at least one of those 3 is 100% evil. It's a solid lead, the Town will definitely follow it and because this vision comes every night alongside 3 seances, the role will cause VFR to occur up to 3 times in a game.

Psychic in itself is super annoying because of how solid of a lead it gives and how even more solid that lead becomes with VFR, paired with the fact that the evils have absolutely no way to counter it whatsoever. Making Revenant just as annoying turns it into an evil hardcounter more than anything. Not only that, but how effective the vision is completely depends on RNG. It can either fit in with Town's already gathered evidence so well and completely destroy the evils or it doesn't fit that well, VFR comes out as a result and then the evils gets destroyed anyway. There's a miniscule chance that it can cause a mislynch or not benefit the Town as significantly as a Psychic would.

The main problem here is how heavily tilted the abilities go in favor of Town and in "fuck you" of the evils. How useful exactly is otherworldly vision against the Town? Townies are pretty public with their claims and favor confirming themselves to find the evils faster and to give the protectives proper targets, which makes the investigative abilities and seances pretty worthless against them. The possession is harder to land too since no townie would just agree to an enemy Revenant taking over. It's also difficult to find the evils who are all trying to deceive the town and fake their roles, and the ambiguity of the 3 names otherworldly vision gives isn't exactly helpful in that regard either.

Using dead members of a faction to find out the rest of the faction isn't that viable either, because even the possibility of a Medium or a Ret would deter them from doing so. They wouldn't risk their entire faction being screwed for the assistance of a single role that isn't always necessary for them to win.

To summarize, the role's main mechanical problem is that it's more of a threat to evils than it is to the Town. Granted the Revenant is still fun to play, it's just not fun for evils to play against when this one extra NC can destroy them so hard alongside other factions that already pose a big problem while Town is barely fazed because of how incapable the role is against them. I can definitely see the role working, right after this issue is ironed out.

 Purposes/Reasons 

If the role and how it works is the majestic horse, this part is the donkey's arse. The reasoning behind the making of this role and the purposing of an NC role doesn't make much sense.

Just a quick reminder that this is still an NC role above all things, and making it absolutely balanced is not a necessity since it'll never be seen or played competitively. All it needs to be is balanced enough to not be an overpowered role and enjoyable as well. Keeping your NC role balanced to ensure that it's fun to both play as and play against is plausible but attempting to find a purpose for it in the balance of the game as whole is a stretch taken too far. Not like the Revenant significantly helps with any of the mentioned purposes anyway.

Discouraging random lynching is already done by the likes of Jester and Executioner, and VFR doesn't mean killing off a person. The purpose of VFR is to get claims to record for later judgment or lynching. It's also pretty contradictory to put this purpose here when the 3 seances in conjunction with the otherworldly vision is a thing, only furthered by Town not having much issues with an enemy Revenant compared to any one of the evils. Random lynching barely happens already and VFR's risks would still be identical for Town.

We don't need the Revenant to discourage random killing in all honesty, the game already has a good handful of roles to cause this. We got Lookout, the entire Town Protective alignment, Jailor, Veteran, Vampire Hunter, Transporter, Ambusher, Werewolf, Juggernaut, Pestilence/PB, Guardian Angel and Medusa. All of those roles discourage random killing already, adding another role for this purpose is saturation more than it is actual help for the game's balance. In some cases, factions cannot help but random kill since they have pretty much nothing to lead them or their targeting, an issue highlighted usually in the first 2 nights of a game. It's inevitable swing that you can't really stop.

Keeping dead people relevant in the game sounds like a very weak purpose. If you're against an evil, it's still only the TIs that are helpful to you, identical to a Medium. If you're against Town, evil factions will have that reluctance of revealing their entire faction because of a Ret's or a Medium's potential, so they'll be properly deterred from cooperating. Why would dead players even bother having their relevancy be through this NC role?

It's a casual game mode they'll be playing, so they are free to leave the game once they die and get into another one directly after to actually start doing stuff and be relevant by being alive. It's definitely more favorable than having an existential crisis about whether to tell the Revenant about your faction or not as an evil role. The Revenant wouldn't realistically make all dead players relevant significantly more than Medium does to the dead Townies, people would still leave and not care much. The Revenant's main attraction is being able to operate from the dead, so you'd be better off sticking to that.

Basically, I don't think you have the right parameters for designing an NC role as all the previous purposes are either insignificant or try to throw the Revenant into fields of balance it shouldn't even be involved with. It would be much more clarified if you took a look at the current NC roster.

Vampires are just a faction that absolutely destroys Town but are then hardcountered by a Vampire Hunter who absolutely destroys Vampires and acts as a real obstacle to them, neither of them are there to really assist the balance of the whole game. PB/Pestilence's gimmick can easily be countered by no one visiting at all once Pestilence is revealed and just focusing on lynching him, he's not balanced nor does he contribute to game balance. Pirate is literally a Rock-Paper-Scissors role that is too reliant on luck to win. None of these roles have anything to do with game balance.

Balance is not the priority with NC. It should still be considered to prevent OP roles from being formed but the main objective of an NC role is to create new venues for engaging gameplay via unconventional mechanics and concepts that can really shake the game. Their main objective is to be fun, both to play as and against. Let's take another look.

What if you couldn't trust even your confirmed townies? Out comes Vampire and all the new difficulties of finding this role along with it. It also poses a significant threat to any faction with high numbers, specifically Mafia and Coven. Not being able to trust even confirmed townies is a big game changer for everyone involved. It's fun, and Dracula's Palace is not as deserted as Vigilantics so that must say something about how much fun Vampires are.

What if we had a godlike role that is invincible and can only be lynched? PB/Pestilence. No one would like this role from a competitive standpoint because of how low the chances for winning can be, but that never was the point of Pestilence. Turning into an absolute harbinger of chaos and destruction, watching everyone else soil their pants in fear and getting those kills brings a unique joy to anyone who enjoys power. The role's fun, it's still defeatable but it is quite entertaining to melt overly eager players completely.

What if we made a role for assholes? Pirate. I've gotten to play Pirate, and it's fun to screw everyone's day over. You got this role that you can win with, but it can also mess you up and the luck reliance makes it very unpredictable. It doesn't care about killing everyone like most roles do, it can just finish up a simple goal and then do whatever it wants after that, be it continuing to butcher players in the game or be as smug as an Executioner that has already won.

None of these roles help game balance, but none of them are boring to play either. That's the point of NC as an alignment, supported by the fact that these can only be seen in casual game modes and never in a competitive one. Each one of those NC roles have unique mechanics, you won't find any role in the game that is really a copy or sharing any of the mechanics these 3 roles have. They're meant to be unconventional and unique, their current structure reflects that very clearly.

Other than all that, decent role. Deserves a Kudos.