Well for a start: the scum's roles not only are perfectly suited for locating the town's power roles, but also make fairly reliable safeclaims--there's nothing inherently scum about a loud vanilla cop or an even-night watcher, and to the contrary, those roles actually act as roles that are disproportionately likely to be town roles in a vacuum.In post 6193, Titus wrote:How did you think this was balanced?
Scum has only two PRs (even night watcher, loud vanilla cop) against 3 clearing roles (3 shot GS, n3 GS, Disloyal Roleblocker), an IC (the vig once claimed is unexecutable), a watcher (allows for follow the gunsmith/clears since scum have no way to bypass, PLUS it makes the even night watcher autoguilty), a motion detector plus neighborizer (has more multitasking than the scumteam and stops scum from lying about their actions). Plus the 3 shot GS was loud which meant the loud vanilla cop was CCed. Not even a rolecop to prioritize shooting the watcher.
Scum was really lucky all the PRs were outed/killed early because a loud rolecop can't investigate anywhere they want because they have to have a fakeclaim that justifies every visit. Even worse, it's only a vanilla cop.
There is the double/triple-up of the scum watcher and town watcher + motion detector (which could lead to a scum realclaim being seen as a fakeclaim), but that's mitigated by the town having a double-up of its own in the form of two gunsmiths, so in the event of a mass-roleclaim, the fact that the setup has double-ups of town roles would mean that the town would be able to figure out that double-ups aren't inherently scumclaims.
Overall, scum's roles were fairly safe and still gave them multiple avenues to locate and eliminate the town power roles--and the town, once scum identified a town pr, could do nothing to save them (aside from the disloyal roleblocker correctly identifying the scum killer, although the watcher does mean that if the watcher is watching the nightkill the scum lose a member--but then there's zero protection for the watcher).
The gunsmiths have two false guilties each--the other gunsmith and the vig, and as mentioned above, the scum vanilla cop realclaiming gives them a shield because a town vanilla cop shows up as a guilty to a gunsmith, giving scum some extra safety.
The town has a grand total of four investigations (aside from a watcher guilty), and all of them are gated heavily--the gunsmiths don't know that there's no mafia doctor so an innocent isn't a hard-innocent, and have false guilties (plus a scum who, while technically guilty, can easily escape the guilty result).
Even if both gunsmiths live three nights and even if none of their investigations get false guilties, that's at most four clears. Add in the vig, who is confirmed due to public townVscum numbers, and that's at most five clears, at
most
five clears, in a game where there's 21 starting players, the gunsmiths would need to live, and their investigations also need to live.Yes, if the game gets down to only one scum alive, most of the town roles are good at catching the last scum or clearing town. Watcher can, motion detector can, disloyal roleblocker can. But aside from the watcher, they do require only one scum alive to actually clear town/catch scum. With two scum alive, with the exception of the watcher, those roles are almost worthless. They do give small utility, but by and large, don't give the town a huge advantage.
In a perfect storm world, the town could crush--but on the other hand, it's not hard for the scum to decimate the town, either.
When I passed the setup, I noted it was swingy as fuck, but I believe it is balanced because the town's strengths do have counters and limitations. If they get a lead, yes, they can turn it into a win fairly easily, but if they don't get that lead, then they'll struggle to get ahead. The town had only one truly strong gamebreaking role (watcher, although I guess you can argue a vig is as well), with the rest being heavily limited in their use.
So, no, I don't think the town wins this 99/100 times.
I do think it's much closer to the 55% range. (In hindsight, maybe the ungated watcher made it lean towards town, thus not a perfect 50-50, but the watcher being ungated does not in of itself make the setup suddenly swing past the 60% cutoff. So by my estimate, 55%--passable, albeit in hindsight with ever so slightest the edge towards the town.)
