Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27575896-20170918135919

Anyway, what this is all about is a concept I'd like to introduce aimed towards newbies and inexperienced players who are still trying to get the hang of the mafia and how they work as a whole. Of course, veteran players will find this very inaccurate (because they can't read). This is a generalized look on how the mafia works, so obviously it won't work in certain specific situations.

This is not 100% true facts, just my way of seeing it, my guide of how you can mafia better.

Without further delay, I present to you, canc- I mean, the diagram for this whole thingie.

 Why did I waste time thinking of this for the past week? Why did I make this? What am I doing with my life? 















You'll notice the mafia roles have been distributed into levels, or classes in a pyramid as shown to the left (Duh...). Before I explain to you the use of this class system, I owe you an explanation of why the roles are arranged the way I arranged them and my thoughts on it.



 Top Class and Class 1 

-Godfather is obviously at the top, being the best mafia role there is. He possesses two advantages no other mafia can have, having basic defense and detection immunity. Having a role that can somewhat protect itself is better than roles that get easily get killed. It's better to survive an extra night when attacked plus having a chance to fake something and get away rather than just instantly die that very night. 'nuff said. A mafia is always much better with a Godfather

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">-Mafioso is next in line, because his method of killing is just as direct as the Godfather. He also gets the perk of getting promoted to the best mafia role should the initial one die, which is great. He also serves as a first line of defense for the Godfather, allowing him to live another day instead of getting killed by a wild BG, Crusader or other threats. It is mandatory to have a Mafioso or a Godfather in every mafia that really wants to have a chance at success, they're that important.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">Now you may be asking, Ambusher is a killer too, why is he in Class 3 instead of Class 1? I'll explain down further.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;"> Class 2 

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">-Consigliere is the mafia's #1 source of information, hands down. Finding the exact roles of people is very valuable information for the killers and is a very easy way to trump neutrals since the Town would believe a Consig's results. This role works extremely well when cooperating with other roles, and thus deserves a spot in Class 2.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">-Janitor is a great role for deception and gaining information exclusive only to the mafia and hidden from the Town. Think about it like this: The information a single townie has, like a Sheriff for example, isn't information in the Town's favor until he decides to shareor reveal it. The Janitor's clean hides his will from the Town, thus preventing the potential from reaching the Town and only being accessible to the mafia, so you could kinda put it under gathering information. The better thing about this role is the confusion and the claimspace it gives for your fellow mafia members by cleaning roles. It has limited uses, but its damn useful.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">-Hypnotist is a unique role because of one word: flexible. Most mafia roles are pretty straightforward with their jobs, visit this guy, do this, done. Hypnotist is different, he has 12 different messages to choose from for every night he decides to deceive someone to believe something. This helps him have a suitable thingie to do for each different situation, and can help cause confusion or provide fellow mafia members with legit role claims by setting up deceptive measures here and there along with some coordination between the mafia. Flexibility is very important for the mafia, because that's what helps them dodge and counter varieties of threats and suspicion. No legit defense = no life guarantee after all.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;"> Class 3 

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">-Ambusher, in Class 3. An extra kill for the mafia is pretty nice, and independent mafia killer is a good addition, except that the Ambusher isn't the dream killer you've always wanted. A Mafioso is better than an Ambusher in my eyes. You can use the Ambusher as an extra killer, an upgrade to your killing power, sure thing. However, I believe an Ambusher can't and should not ever be used as a main killer, because it would be horrible. Both roles can fail if the one they're killing has basic defense, both roles can get killed by a Vet, or a WW at home, or even a Medusa.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">An Ambusher has roleblock immunity, which is the only advantage I see in him as a killer, but the disadvantages outweigh that by a ton. A Mafioso is much more direct, just visit a target, kill him, go back home. An Ambusher has to wait for a target, which means he could fail and waste a night if there were no visitors. And if the visitors were more than one? Your name gets outted to every visitor to your target other than the one you killed. Either you get outted instantly the next day and get lynched or you have your name written on a will with your role next to it, marking you for guaranteed death either way.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">The Mafioso is more flexible, and doesn't have to worry about visitors and targets as much as the Ambusher, he's simply more efficient. Y'know what's even worse? GF dies, Ambusher can't be promoted to Godfather, he can't even get promoted to a Mafioso, because he classifies as a mafia killer. In summary: The Ambusher is the mafia's knife, GF and Mafioso are the guns, and they face off against factions that have lots of guns. You know what they say, you shouldn't bring a knife to a gun fight because it's too risky, but Ambusher does that anyway and you have to deal with it.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">-Blackmailer is special because he has both a passive ability and an active ability, his passive being able to hear whispers and his active being blackmailing. With his passive ability, The BMer is able to gather information, just not as reliably or as valuable as the Consig. The issue is, people would whisper nonsense or information that's useless most of the time, so picking out info that's worth something can be rare. Plus, even though the BMer is part of the mafia, he still needs to beware of neutrals and Coven, who would obviously lie about their roles.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">But here's the catch, in some situations, especially against experienced players, you'll be forced to make a choice between one ability and the other. If you blackmail someone, they'll spam vote, which is a gesture for being BMed. This will alert people that there is a Blackmailer, and they will retract from whispering any important information, making you pretty much half useless. Basically, presuming worst scenario, you can continue for whatever amount of days you want with your passive ability and then switch to your active ability whenever needed, but there's no going back. Other times, you'll get lucky and be able to use both abilities if the Town is stupid enough.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;"> Class 4 

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">-The Consort is just an Escort for the mafia, there's nothing more to it. The consort can fully neutralize a single threat, be it an investigative, protective or a killer that isn't going to kill the roleblocker. However, she can't know what she is roleblocking or what she can do without guidance. A consort usually only buys time, and its extremely rare for the role to do anything more than that, which is why its down in Class 4.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">-Forger is a role that can rarely do its job right. Without any information whatsoever and no complete tracking of one specific role's actions, it can almost never make a fake will convincing enough to trick the Town, and thus announcing their presence. As a result, if the Forger doesn't want to be obviously present, he just leaves the will blank. It erases potential info and keeps it away from the Town, but it doesn't give the mafia that info. Plus, the Forger doesn't clean the victim's role, essentially making him a heavily nerfed Janitor. Whether you agree or not that it should be in Class 4, it has to be lower than the Janitor, that's for sure.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;"> Class 5 

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">-Framer is the most useless role along with the Disguiser. The role was designed to counter two roles specifically, Sheriff and Investigator. None of these roles could be in the game, causing Framer to be a waste of space and just a member with 1 vote for the mafia. Even if either of the two roles was in the game, The chances of Framer visiting the same target as the Sheriff/Invest in the same night is very damn low, which means a very damn low chance of success.Simply put, Framer is mostly useless.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">-Disguiser's only chance at being effective is when he dies. Disguisers can sometimes have their tricks fail if they disguise as the wrong role or fail to make a convincing enough will. That's not the major issue though, the major issue is the fact that Disguiser does absolutely nothing while alive, opposite to every other mafia role. Even worse, you'd be stuck in between a dilemma of whether you want the Disguiser to die and attempt a cheeky deceiving scheme or you want to preserve him for voting power and a replacement in line for killing purposes. Barely helps mafia.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">-

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">With the reasons explained as to why I have placed the roles in this ranking and classes, now we move on to a general guide of how this whole thing helps you and what to do with these classes.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;"> Top class and Class 1:  If you have two of those together, then your mafia squad is a killing-focused one, so don't waste nights not killing for the sake of a deceptive move or because of a WW or whatever. Kill as much as your mafia needs, and don't hold back. If you have only one of those and a valuable Class 2 role in your faction, then perform your killing with caution, avoid people who attract too much attention (and protectives), avoid suspiciously looking vet baits. Try to keep your initial mafia killer alive to prevent the Class 2 role from converting to a killer. You don't want that precious Consigliere to turn into a Mafioso early on, right?

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;"> Class 2:  These roles don't need information to be effective, they can be mobilized to work right away. Let them work as much as possible, the more they do, the more info you gather and the more you can set up for claimspace and mislynches. Avoid getting those roles converted to a killer as much as possible until they have been milked off their full potential or have no further use. These roles can help both lower and higher class roles be a lot more effective, so remember to arrange plans with them.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;"> Class 3:  These roles always have risks on the stake whenever they try to do something. One of these risks is announcing their presence whenever they go out to visit someone. These roles require precision and right timing for them to work nicely without having suspicion and angry townies with pitchforks behind their backs. Guidance and cooperation is very important with these roles and is a necessity for them to survive longer in the mafia.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;"> Class 4:  With these roles, its either have a low chance of contributing greatly or have guaranteed low contribution. These roles need information to be of more use to the mafia, or else they'd be randomly going around and doing things with no purpose whatsoever. Remember to guide them and use them whenever needed, better than letting them randomly choose targets.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;"> Class 5:  These roles rarely have any use at all. Do not let these roles constantly visit every night because they'll just increase their risk of dying and will feed info to a potential Spy about who isn't mafia. Use these roles only when there is a crystal clear opportunity for them to shine. Other than that, preserve the roles to maintain your voting power and people in line to become a Mafioso. If you're even good enough and can manage to pull it off, you can sacrifice one of these roles to confirm one of your mafia members as a townie or remove suspicion from them. For example: Your GF can claim Sheriff and say that you were a mafia member, so you get lynched and he gets proved innocent.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">---

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">Again, I'd like to remind you, this is a generalized look of the roles and the synergy between them, this won't help you in specific situations. This is not for pros, this is for amateurs, newbies, the like.

<p style="font-weight:normal;font-size:14px;">Now if you excuse me, I need to contemplate why I created this horrible concept. <ac_metadata title="Mafia Class System (Vertroyer)"> </ac_metadata>