Umlaut's Micro Normal

[callforjudgement]

In terms of daytalk, it needs to be mentioned in the opening post unless it's from an Encryptor. That's an actual rule now, not just a movement. As for other rules things, the "please PM me day abilities" rule is out of place in a Normal (where Day abilities don't exist) and might just confuse people. Role PMs look fine.

The setup is definitely scumsided. I'm not 100% sure what the balance of a Watcher + 6 VT versus 2 Mafia Goons is, but I could believe it's win/loss balanced. (It's very swingy either way; the Watcher does literally nothing if they don't predict the kill, and outright catches scum if they do. Large amounts of swing tend to make the actual balance irrelevant.) Here, though, the scum have so much more strength than that! (Note that the Bulletproof Townie doesn't actually help town at all in this setup, as they have no way to get back to odds.)

As such, town are going to need more strength (and possibly scum are

also

going to need less strength) before the setup becomes approvable. I think Firebringer's idea of adding a Jailkeeper is along the right lines here, although I'm not immediately sure how that'd be likely to play out.

[callforjudgement]

I actually think it's possible that full Watcher + full JK versus full Ninja + full Strongman is townsided. If the same member of scum always does the kill, we have a relatively balanced setup (town have one useless power role, plus one full-powered power role that balances the game by itself). As such, if the scum mix things up, it's likely that the game will still be closed to balanced, because we're changing between two power roles with fairly similar win/loss balance every night. Once one scum dies, the town are aware of which power role will work, but that doesn't change things much. However, what

does

help out town a lot is a massclaim; when both town power roles claim, the setup should be fairly evident (especially if a scum has died or there's evidence of an action being interfered with, like a Watcher watching nobody kill their target, or a Jailkeeper's target dying). That's an advantage they don't have in the 1-power-role setup.

However, there's a fairly nasty twist here: once the Ninja dies, if town don't predict the existence of a Strongman, then they may end up accidentally confirming the Strongman as town via the JK action ("I blocked player X but the kill went through anyway, they must be town"). That's something that adds a notable amount of skew (i.e. onesided swing); in most cases nothing will happen, but we get a very lopsided result if that (fairly unlikely) situation actually comes up. Given that Watcher is highly swingy anyway (based on whether they hit), and Jailkeeper is also somewhat swingy (the role gets more powerful as the game goes on, so there's swing based on how long it takes the Jailkeeper to die), we're talking a pretty nastily swingy setup here, possibly too much so.

[callforjudgement]

It's unbalanced in the direction of being too swingy, which makes the win/loss balance almost irrelevant (because it's likely to be overwhelmed by random events).

[callforjudgement]

A Watcher is easier to aim than a cop is, but on the other hand it gives town no benefit at all if it misses (whereas a Cop gets a confirmed inno). It's therefore probably weaker than a Cop is, although it's possibly worth more than half? Very swingy, though, because the success case is so much more valuable than the fail case is.

[callforjudgement]

I like that, actually. The main issue is that the Strongman can override the JK once their buddy is dead, thus making town think they can't possibly have performed the kill and thus must be town. Perhaps you could make the other scum a Strongman Enabler, so that the Strongman shot can't go off when there's only one scum left?

Not completely willing to sign off on balance just yet (I'm too tired for that), but this is definitely going in the right direction.

[callforjudgement]

I mean, what we have here is a situation where both of the power roles

normally

do nothing. (Although note that if the scum fakeclaim VT, the 1-shot Watcher is fairly valuable for town purely on the basis of claim believability at lylo, even if they miss,) And the problem with power roles that normally do nothing is, do you balance as though they do nothing, or as though they do something? (It should be noted, incidentally, that the Strongman is much more likely to hit than they would be in a larger setup; smaller player counts make hitting with any role easier, and a 1-shot Strongman is best saved until you have concrete setup spec evidence that this is the right time to use it, which would most likely lead to it being used N3 in this setup. I think that's where mykonian's unease comes from.)

Most of the time this is just a JK+6 versus 2 setup (which is known to be balanced), except with random chances of a huge boost to one side or another from one power role or another, and where town has a slightly better claiming situation. The claiming situation can be fixed via giving scum a low-powered normally-town role (so believable as town alongside a JK, against unknown scum power) which doesn't do anything in context; they'll likely claim it, and the town won't have enough information to know which claims are genuine. The random swing spikes, though, are harder to fix. Overall I'd say this setup is normally moderately townsided, with a small chance of being hugely scumsided, and an even smaller chance of being hugely townsided. Is that acceptable? Probably not, but it's likely to need fewer changes than the previous setups did.

[callforjudgement]

The last setup there is within acceptable swing ranges (albeit still a bit swingy), but I think it's scumsided. (Town has one usable Watcher shot, and one usable Jailkeeper shot. I'd put that a little below the amount of power I'd expect town to have in a Micro, especially if the Ninja decides to use their ability D1; mathematically they should in an unknown setup but I don't expect most players to realise that.) I don't think setup spec saves town either (especially if the Goon claims late in a massclaim and has the presence of mind to claim Tracker, but probably even if that doesn't happen).

The first setup is really clever; limiting the Jailkeeper to two shots means that the night action timing works out almost perfectly to reduce the chance of a blowout (although it can't entirely eliminate it). I think it might be townsided, though it's an unusual enough setup that I don't have much to compare it to.

[callforjudgement]

It wasn't meant to be "1 shot Watcher" just Watcher with no limitations.
Since the ninja can escape one possible guilty, thought having just 1 shot Jailkeeper was enough against the Ninja who escapes a possible guilty.

There are multiple shots, but only one is usable; one of the N1 or N2 shots will work to full effect, but the other one will be blocked by the Ninja, and any N3 shot has the issue that it comes so late in the game that scum can just 1v1 you if you get a guilty (if you're even alive at that point), and you'll probably just be NKed anyway.

Post 29 setup is good, I think. Town should realise that they have so much power that there must be a scum power role specifically to counter them. I'd prefer it without the Backup Strongman, just because that raises the issue of town thinking "oh, the Strongman is dead, I doubt scum have another". I agree that it's on the townsided side, but that mostly comes from skew rather than a natural imbalance (there are scenarios where town runs away with the game very early, and if that doesn't happen the game is balanced).

If the townsidedness is concerning, it might be worth giving scum a Backup Watcher, basically as a hint that there's a Watcher in the game (the role isn't that useful in this setup because its information comes too late to be useful). That should reduce the chance that, after one scum being caught early, the other one makes an obvious kill and gets caught by the Watcher. Alternatively, if you want to adjust the balance rather than the skew, making one of the VTs Ascetic would give scum a "safe" but unaimed kill (if the Ascetic claimed; they often do), because the JK wouldn't be able to save them and the Watcher wouldn't be able to watch them; it wouldn't have much of an influence in most cases but would crank down the townsidedness slightly. That said, I think the setup is already reasonable as is.

[callforjudgement]

The rules aren't completely clear on how a Watcher + Jailkeeper interaction works, but I believe that interaction is the correct one for Normals (a roleblocked/jailkept action never happens, so Trackers and Watchers can't see it). I'd also like to remind you that if the Jailkeeper targets the Watcher, the Watcher will become aware that their night action failed (rather than being told they saw nothing).

I'm assuming the words "a private thread" in the scum role PMs will be an actual link to the PT when you send them.
The biggest mistake in the role PMs is that you've given the 2-shot JK a 1-shot Alien PM. You probably need to fix both those mistakes. (A Normal Jailkeeper protects a player from being

killed

, not from being targeted.)

Other than the things I've mentioned above, the role PMs look good, and I'd be willing to approve the setup when these issues are fixed.

[callforjudgement]

/approve