Any tips about balancing a setup?

[BROseidon]

The point was more so common sense. I typed the first 3 roles that came to me (probably also the 3 most common).

If you change that to a one-shot vig, pretty much you get what most mini normals consisted of when I played them (2 of godfather/rolecop/roleblocker vs a town like that). Balance 3 years might be different than what it is now.

p.s. Most people hate follow the cop. From a personal standpoint, cop is a terribly overpowered role unless there are a ton of roles to interfere with it (eg. lots of methods for false negatives/positives).

Common sense here is actually "gut reactions to balance based on experience."

This advice is useless if you have limited design and play experience. Also, there's evidence that people are biased to overpower scum (as per Zoraster's data regarding recent balance).

[BROseidon]

I dunno, game balance seems pretty much common sense to me. I'm probably not explaining it real well, but it's not hard to realize when one side is far more power loaded than the other.

Again, you're mixing up "coming sense" and "gut reaction from having designed a lot of setups/played a lot of games."

Imagine someone who has never played, or even heard of, mafia. You then explain to them the rules of the game and tell them to make a setup.

Yeah, "common sense" my ass.

[BROseidon]

I used the most exaggerated example possible to make the point that what you call "common sense" is something that comes from having experience.

Which someone designing a setup for the first time lacks.

[BROseidon]

Someone designing a setup for the first time does not lack basic knowledge of the game for which they're creating a setup for.

Knowledge of game != understanding of balance. Presumably, someone asking for help with design balance is looking for actionable advice because they don't feel they have a good grasp on balance.