Board Thread:Debate of The Week/@comment-28112409-20181230235210/@comment-26234016-20190108011602

Ah, was the lynchpin. I assumed you thought that Hypnotist was good.

But alright.

Now, take this with a grain of salt- I've never actually played as Hypnotist. I'm simply going to be going off of what I know about the role.

You've got your two criteria for evidence– you claim that is useful in more situations than the Hypnotist (and, but because you haven't offered any counterpoints for when I dunked you on Forger being better I'll let that particular sleeping dog lie), and that Ambusher is more intuitive.

More situationally useful– How in all hell is the Ambusher more situationally useful than the Hypnotist? With the Hypnotist, you can basically confirm yourself into being a town role– you were transported, nursed back to health, saved by a trap, etc. Ambusher does the exact opposite and if just one other person visits your target, your identity is revealed. Not that that's a bad thing, it's good balance-wise, but holy hell is it not situationally useful. Let's go to math:

"The chance of multiple players visiting the same person, randomly, is NOT that common of an occurance."

Let's do the math. To determine the chance of the Ambusher being outed by its ability, the formula I will use is:

[Percent of people the Ambusher would attack] x [Percent of people who could also visit the target of the Ambusher, and could conceivably reveal the Ambusher] = [Chance of Ambusher being outed by ability on given day]

To figure out how frequently that happens, divide by the number of games per day.

Only one other person is needed to visit the Ambusher's target for their whole story to fall apart. If we assume every member of the town is a visiting role (except for the, , and ), and we're playing in Mafia Returns, on the first night the Ambusher can visit eleven people, and (I'm assuming that Exe wants Mafia to win) there are ten roles that would out the Ambusher.

1/11 x 1/9 = 0.01% (rounded down).

According to, there are 50,000 unique players every day. A game requires 15 players, so there are ~333 games per day, which means about three games per day have the Ambusher revealed immediately. Not great, but hey, not horrible.

If the town has alternates between getting a member of the Mafia every day (50/50 odds), and the Mafia consistently kill town, then on day two the formula is

1/7 (one death from Ambusher, one from, and one from lynching) x 1/5 (assuming the Executioner wasn't killed) = 0.03% (rounded up).

Around nine games per day have the Ambusher revealed on day two, meaning twelve games every day have the Ambusher revealed on day one or two.

The Coven DLC was released on June Sixth, 2017. According to HowLongAgogo.com, the DLC was released 581 days ago.

581 x 12 = 6,972. There have been 6,972 games (rounded up) where the Ambusher was revealed on either the first or second day.

(the actual number is 7293.866447 but I'd like us to have simpler numbers, and because my rounding actually benefits you more than me I'd like for you to not yell about inaccuracies)

But sure, the Ambusher is always under the radar.

As for intuition, which is honestly the biggest stick in your craw:

While there isn't a set in stone way to define how easy to handle a role in ToS is, and in order to keep my brain from spinning off of my neck at the prospect of having to do non-schoolwork-related math, one thing that can overwhelm new players is large chunks of text. Which role is easiest to explain?

To figure that out, I looked at the Game Information card for both the Ambusher and Hypnotist. The Hypnotist's (taking out words like Summary, Abilities, Attributes, Goal) totaled 53 words. The Ambusher's had 63 (again, taking out words like Summary, Abilities, Attributes, Goal)– ten words more.

But that's probably not enough for you. You might turn to the strategy page, pointing out that the strategy for Ambusher is only 774 words, while the strategy for the Hypnotist is much more, almost four hundred words more. I wouldn't say that that's evidence, however– the Hypnotist, being a role, simply has more opportunities. What I mean by that is that there are more venues a player using the Hypnotist can take– you wouldn't accuse a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure book of being more complex than James Joyce's Ulysses.

Compared to other roles in the same category, the Ambusher has a strategy page almost fifty words longer than the (the 's strategy page is around 1,500 words, the Godfather has more functions than just killing, while the Ambusher and Mafioso both have the same basic purpose, functionally, so I'm not counting the Godfather). Meanwhile, the only role that has a smaller strategy page than the Hypnotist is the. I recognize that the sample size is smaller for the Ambusher, only two options instead of four, but that doesn't discount the fact that a role that was released in the summer of last year already has more complexities and strategies created than a role that has been out since 2014. One role has had three years for all its strategies to be found out, this role has already surpassed it in complexity in much less time. Whereas relative to the rest of the Mafia Deception roles, the Hypnotist is actually very easy to use.

Ambusher is not good in a good bit of situations and it is not easy to use.

Q.E.D.