User blog:Calllack/Analysis - Crusader

Balance (difficulty)

The Crusader, I think, will make the game much more difficult for Town at first, then later it will be better for them and worse for the evil roles.

In essence what the Town has been given by this role is a Veteran who can move around and alert in a different place each night. This is great because it means the eponymous (does that even make sense in context?) 'vetbait' is no longer necessary. Instead, the Crusader has to make the decision about which role is more likely to bait in evils.

The problem is that, with people unused to the new roles or even to the game itself, they will try to visit someone who they think is in danger every night, as if they were an old TP. This means that lots of innocent townies will get killed at first.

tl;dr: how useful a Crusader is to the Town is massivley dependant on the skill of said Crusader, much more than even Mayor or Jailor.

Complexity

The Crusader's ability is almost identical to the Doctor or Bodyguard's in the sense that the evil roles visiting need to be aware that a Crusader could be defending the person they want to attack. In this sense no more complexity is added.

Scum roles with non-killing abilities were already in danger of detection by a Lookout. Little more complexity is added, apart from the fact that this is a more instant danger.

Town roles have a serious extra layer of complexity added because they now need to consider the likelihood of their target also being visited by a Crusader, which could put them in danger. This is especially prominent with the other TP roles. Look at this thought experiment for an example:

- A BG and a Crusader both want to guard the Mayor. Each know the other is in the game, but neither know the others' identities, and they cannot communicate because the scum would know who the TPs are.

- The BG has to figure out if the Crusader will visit the Mayor. If the BG thinks they will, the BG must then not visit the Mayor. On the other hand, if the BG thinks the Crusader won't visit the Mayor, the BG has to visit the Mayor or risk leaving them defenceless.

- The Crusader is faced with an identical problem. If the BG does visit, they must refrain from visiting - otherwise they should.

- This means each TP has to factor what the other player thinks that they will do into their own thinking. In other words, the BG and Crusader are both simulataneously trying to act typically of themselves - while factoring in whether or not the other player thinks, in this case, 'typical' is also 'most likely'.

Yep, it's confusing.