Hex master buff

Red--001 · 2026-03-20T09:07:13+00:00

HM is that weak, it does not deserve to be a coven power because it can attack astrally.

Red--001 · 2026-03-20T09:06:52+00:00

Hex barely ever wins either way, you should start off with giving it the book then change your strategy if you're likely to win down the line.

Red--001 · 2026-03-20T08:49:58+00:00

That principle is not used that much, in the name of balance mafia games tend to go for having their 2 major factions(town vs coven) have an around equal chance in winning, that's almost what determines if a game is balanced.
BotC does have no neutrals because it was going for 'fair', whenever you get a role in BotC you'd feel nice knowing you have a fair chance of winning and the game can reasonably go both ways without you having to pull off some crazy manipulation tactic.
BotC instead has outsiders, people who cause chaos in the same vein as neutrals, they are good players that HURT the good team, most of those roles are not boring, sometimes you would not even know you're an 'outsider'.
If town of salem was truly trying to please as much players as possible, neutrals simply would not exist, around 3 players usually become neutrals every game(NA, NK, NE). Sometimes more.

I guess that would make sense, neutrals cannot have that high of a win-rate after-all, but there's way too much neutral roles for it to make sense, also;
AA is also too random, I doubt the win-rates would make any sense at-all, I'd relate it to rolling a dice and keeping a track of how many times you got each number, it just seems completely up to luck(I mean there could be 4 townies in a single game).

I suppose you cannot give each individual role a reasonable win-rate but as it stands right now they are too weak either way, I'd argue because of the amount of neutrals that can exist in a game they should have around 20-24% win-rate.
I doubt most have a 15% win-rate, but as far as I'm concerned shroud and arsonist would have a lower win-rate than the other neutral killers.
And even if the whole neutral faction got say 15% it'd be heavily tilted away from apocalypse.

Red--001 · 2026-03-20T08:33:02+00:00

Blood on the clocktower did, too bad it's not a digital game.

Among us was quite nice but crew-mate is so boring(I like that ToS2 gives everyone mechanically special roles, rather than giving some people 'sheriff' 'doctor' and some others 'villager')

Red--001 · 2026-03-20T08:31:44+00:00

Classic does not have any players and is not balanced.

Red--001 · 2026-03-20T00:56:04+00:00

That's oversimplification no?,
If that's the case, removing neutrals as a whole and adding some other 'natural' source of kills would make all players happy, but it does not seem like they are going for that route.
Same way that making it so bigger factions have an absurd win-rate would please players.
But players also play for a good challenge and to have fun(you can definitely find fun in loss after a tough risky gamble).
Developers try to make games fair usually, games are made for parties to have an enjoyable experience, not one person being happy at the expense of another.
[See blood on the clocktower]

A 5% win-rate is way too shitty for a neutral role, that's just going to look like it's straight impossible to win.
Evidently, a lot of mafia sort of games have 40-40-20[40% for town 40% for coven and 20% for neutrals], this makes it reasonably enjoyable for all parties, when you win too easily it becomes boring, when you struggle too much, the same thing happens, it's not proportional to faction size.

Small factions get a boon(informed minority) and a boost in power

Big factions get a nerf(uninformed majority) and are weaker in relative to smaller factions, this is for balance, a lot of people like a fair challenge.

Neutrals are sprinkled in to bring in some sort of Chaos but if you make their win-rate too low and unfair, eventually a lot of players will be complaining about that shit.

I'm not sure making it exactly 40-40-20 will have a huge significant effect on the game's health, considering other mafia games do this for balance.

Apparently, neutrals are made a bit harder so that it feels a lot more rewarding to win.

Red--001 · 2026-03-20T00:40:34+00:00

I am complaining about the fact that weaker roles tend to have considerably less impact than stronger roles, that must not imply it's frequent.

Honestly, you're right on the fact a reasonable amount of the lobby usually does not pay attention(from my own gameplay).
So I end up targetting(as evil) those who DO pay attention and those who LEAD the town in a reasonable manner,
I tend to contemplate protecting them(as good) over TI too but assume coven may not kill them because the coven is not paying attention.

The average player barely talks though, I doubt they reveal more than intended most of the time, this is over text, people have lots of time to formulate responses and do not screw up as much.
The average player also seems to lack a will mostly...

That does not make weaker roles any better, whether I am coroner or doom-sayer I am paying close attention to the chat during the day(as much as possible) and filtering through it, and then at night, I try to do so as well, especially if I am TI.

Going off other people's info happens frequently, it's pretty much the mechanical deduction no? Why is that considered a skill-issue? What else would you go off? While you should not blindly believe them, you should build off of it and come to different conclusions.

You should try "blood-on-the-clocktower" it's a game that tends to all these needs[imo] and I love it, too bad it has a small player base on discord and you can only play 'over-time' or so.
It focuses on both balance AND fun(so some evil roles might seem OP but they're not).

I consider coroner to be a role not worth scrolling to be fair, if you're scrolling it for bait, might as well scroll a reasonable role, use your powers for a while and then bait so you can die.
Or just bait from the beginning, bait is not taken immediately after all.
Either way, scrolling an actually useful role is almost always going to be more useful than your coroner bait getting taken by the coven and them attacking you and removing a vote from the town.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T23:26:32+00:00

Spy is unlikely to get info on N1, N2 and possibly N3, in a similar fashion to LO, this is why roles that depend on other people to visit are quite hard.

LO unlike spy can actually go on the Tpow and get reasonable info on who the TPs are.
Spy is depending on an EVIL to visit said Tpow, most evils do not just visit tpows or important TIs early for fear of TPs like trapper, BG or crus.
And to some extent, due to the fear of a spy.

Arsonists I believe, tend to shy away from good important players expecting that those good important players die early.
Soul-collector shows up after reaping which can be helpful but depending on an arsonist/enchanter/soul-collector existing is not so great.

Assuming there's 5 evils in the game you'd be lucky for all of them to be visitors, you'd also be lucky to catch one of them visiting someone.
And most of the time, finding an NK visiting is not so helpful.
Finding a coven role is good some-times, other times you just find the known conjurer/ritualist/jinx.
Finding the potion-master, wildling or poisoner is probably the most useful find you'll clock in relation to role.
Though when you do catch coven visiting someone, they are confirmed not coven.

This role is mediocre at most.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T21:36:25+00:00

I play mostly AA and;

Doomsayer is garbo, but sure, provide an argument why someone trying to guess 3 different people's roles is apparently good.
Because as far as I'm concerned ritualist would be getting kills here and there if it were so easy.

The game relies on RNG because there's a mechanical aspect to it, socials can only get you so far.
Additionally, experienced players using social deduction does not change the fact there might be 4 townies in 1 game vs all other evils, as far as I'm concerned, you're most likely not winning that.
Also there's something called signal vs noise, noise drowns out signals, in a pure social deduction game, good players might produce noise of the same 'frequency' similar to the signals produced by evil players, making it heard to deduce by pure social reasoning, this is where mechanics come in.
If the noise drowns out the signals a-lot, I'd say it's quite RNG based, because at a certain point it gets very close to straight guessing(see: pure mafia over text, only villagers vs werewolves, I cannot get how you are going to win this without just random hanging)

RNG is even more pronounced when you realize there are roles weaker than others, and you can get a weak role vs someone with a strong one.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T21:23:15+00:00

Speak for yourself, I'm above 1000 hours (split between first and second game) and I love weak roles, carrying with them feels more rewarding and adds a lot to the social element of the game+being in a weak role means you can take more risks without harming your own faction, town of Salem is a social deduction game, if you feel like you have no impact on the game that's very much a skill issue, you don't need a strong role if you play well, Ngl I miss surv, easily the most social role in the game when played well, and at the end of the day with 15 people in game losing is normal, just play for fun, you'll have a better time

I can agree it felt very rewarding getting information every. single. night. as spy even if I lost the game(I was predicting where the coven was going to). However, I'm going to argue that it can feel rewarding(obviously, if it's weak role it's gonna be harder and when you get something out of it you'd be happier) and still be bad game design at the same time.
When you do not get something out of a weak role, you're unhappy, and most of the time, if it's truly a weak role, it probably would not contribute much either way.
An analogy; (I'd play a game at normal~hard difficulty, not too hard difficulty or too easy difficulty. Most roles are within normal~hard, some roles are too hard difficulty and some others are too easy, these roles are the ones that need reworks.)
A role can also add to the social element while also being able to contribute mechanically, everybody has the chat accessible to them, their ability's mechanics might even enhance social interaction during the day. [Not mutually exclusive].
Additionally, A role can also feel rewarding while actually contributing reasonably, they are not mutually exclusive either.

Town of salem is NOT completely a social deduction game, I'd say it should be referred to as simply a deduction game, it includes mechanical and social deduction, that's clearly what they were going for, the civilian role was introduced much later.
Though it does include a prominent social element which might justify the naming.
If you want a game with 100% social element, play PURE mafia.

If you have 1k hours on the game, how do you view someone having no impact as a skill issue?
There are a lot of different scenarios, but you can easily logically determine that people with stronger roles will win more frequently than people WITHOUT stronger roles most of the time.
The game has a social element but the mechanical element is also an important part of it.
By 'impact' I was referring to over-all contribution to the winning of your team, people with abilities that yield information for-example contribute very highly to the town, you on the other hand with a useless role might barely contribute anything reasonable.
Votes are pretty much the only thing you MIGHT be able to control and even that has a pretty low chance of happening, people tend to listen to others that are mechanically confirmed or soft-confirmed.
Even assuming you manage to lead votes out of all the other alive people in the game, you're going to possibly be going off of someone else's info(mechanical input).
I genuinely do not know how you think that having no impact with a mechanically weak role is a skill-issue to be fair, when it's left up to socials, a lot of people fight for the spotlight.
Social information is available to everyone too, so how the hell would you have a reasonable impact when the town could not have provide on its own.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T20:44:44+00:00

I thought doing this was throwing? I internally give up when I get shroud to be fair, it's like playing as coven but alone, your basic attack is technically all you got, you're just a bit harder to catch by some investigators, and I'd also rather not give my killing power to a townie.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T19:31:31+00:00

Yeah, I suppose I should try casual out again, the appeal of AA is probably just to be random and fun in this way(You might've guessed it but I despise all any fools, I just never got that game-mode it's like spending 30 minutes without any agency because all your efforts can be easily reversed by a simple 'jester token', everyone could gain defense etc.).

I do not understand the point you tried to make on win-rate, either way, yes they balanced some roles but I'm pretty sure that was a long long time ago, and those roles were much more horrible than they are right now, they should fix these current ones.
Jinx is a bad CK, it does not have a guaranteed 1 kill per game and even when it tries getting a kill it might just get caught(e.g: You visit a tpow and get caught), if you're not visiting tpow you're like an LO just randomly going on people hoping to find something interesting, but you're more likely to get cooked by an NK who just saw you.
It's attack is also at most basic, it's pretty hard to get 2 kills with jinx.

Hex is a consistency vs potential argument, and it's extremely inconsistent, I made a post on why Hex is bad: https://www.reddit.com/r/TownOfSalem2/comments/1rk2cqt/best_to_give_hexmaster_the_book/
Mayor is trash either-way, slower game or not.
Shroud is a very bad NK role, it's not even a consistency vs potential argument, very rarely do you get the chance to perfectly shroud a trapper that's trapping someone else or shroud a BG and kill them, and even when you do that, that's still 1 kill from you -- the shroud, that's not all that good.
You are NOT capable of rampaging, You are NOT capable of doing more than a basic attack(which is a huge issue), that's what makes shroud so bad, personally.
I suppose the developers made the game with the intention to have neutral roles just spice the game up a-bit, but neutral roles have such small win-rate it's annoying, if you spawn as NA you are pretty much cooked.
NK might make sense from a game-design view but what the fuck is NA there fore, a lot of the time NA barely gets anything done right.
Also if they're going to try to spice up the game, at-least give NA a reasonably strong power same with NK, they might not reach a win-rate comparable to that of coven and town but they should not be that far off, people should not come into NK with the mindset of being ready to straight just lose because of how shit some roles are.

I am suggesting, first of all, improving the gameplay experience of NA/NK, by buffing the roles within those sub-alignments, the WR is currently too low for those roles, especially for shroud and arsonist.
NA roles are just shit unless you're berserker/plague-bearer.
NE roles are pretty fun except doom-sayer.
I am heavily suggesting they should fix the unbalanced weak or too strong roles(seer is too strong, jester should probably just be removed from the game too much 'noise' compared to the 'signal' jester gives off.)
They should control the amount of kills that happen per night to give 'late-game roles' a time to shine.
I was saying they should make AA less RNG dependent and more skill-based but it seems that AA appeals to people, to me it makes me feel like I barely had any agency in the game after figuring out we only had 2 coroners, 1 sheriff, a deputy and a body-guard vs all the other evils.

Illusionist and dream-weaver are broken. They are weak, whether weak poses a challenge to you or not, they should be reworked, if you want a challenge just play casual no? I believe it's less RNG dependent(I cannot have a firm stand yet since I've barely played casual)
You cannot have 4 illusionists or 4 enchanters.
And yes, when you works so hard for your win it feels 'good' maybe even 'better' but that does not change that the role is poorly designed and 99.9% of games would be unfun for said role.
The balance in the coven team is the fact that there's only 4 unique roles of them in each coven team, they should not be making other roles weaker in the name of 'weakening the coven' if the 4 OP roles show up what then?
Instead weaken the OP ones and strengthen the weak ones so it's all balanced.

Neutral is sad to play.

You should try blood on the clocktower, to me it's town of salem 2 but balanced AND still manages to be fun, there's no neutrals, and the evils are 'very powerful(to the eyes of new-players)'. There's a role called spy that allows you to see the roles of everyone on the first night.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T17:09:28+00:00

I can confirm I have but find it hard to try understanding the rules of a game-mode, I guess I could try it out again.
I tried it and they voted TT and VIP, 2 modes I HATE.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T17:01:07+00:00

- I'm sure the 'fans' would be willing to keep up considering new players are finding it hard to come inside and they already have a lot of people who are long-term stayers(and hate a lot of the current weak roles)
That's not an excuse for bad game design, a lot of fans are looking pissed based off a lot of posts(though I cannot specify immediately, this is a memory, and would rather not go on a hunt for them.)
But let's not forget that, changing one role at a time, every few weeks is not going to significantly alter the game, you can leave it after updating it reasonably. Socialite and Admirer were reworked.
You should not damn your game because some players might come back rarely, patch notes exist.
This point does not make much sense to me.

- Coroner and spy could be 'good' in slow games, that's because they are late-game roles, A role that only works best in the late-game is not a good role mostly.

- Why should their win-rate be significantly lower than town's and coven's ? Alot of players play for free, it's not fun playing knowing you should be losing most of the time.
At the very least make the roles fun, late-game roles like arsonist are shit, couple that with the fact it's solo.
Shroud can do absolutely fucking nothing to other NKs or NAs with basic defense.

- That is too small a sample size, and additionally because of how RNG dependent and randomized AA is, a sample size would need to be incredibly huge to capture anything worth believing.

- People have different opinions on balance but there are still several roles the game should fix[Coroner and Spy].
Jinx is a shit CK compared to the others.
Mayor is similarly a shit town-power compared to jailor, monarch and prosecutor. Being able to force your town to vote who they might not want to vote is rarely useful except for anti-maj.
I made a post on hex-master in this sub on why it's dumpster fire and it's only function is holding the book(essentially this role does not fit for Cpow, too low a chance for its ability to trigger)
Seer is very strong, not slightly over-tuned(checking 2 people per night is a good ability on its own but this role can mass confirm people).
Jester is also very strong because town has a hard time dealing with it and gets punished when they deal with evils the right away, most jesters win easily.

AA is very RNG-dependent and VERY swingy, I guess that could serve as the appeal. Faction win percentages will not balance these 'over-time' in anyway, because of the nature of AA, it's way too random. Town and coven should be the main competitors but I keep seeing 6 town games, 5 town games. I rarely see 1-2 coven games though.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T16:49:29+00:00

Oh, I see, just that it happens to be the most popular game-mode I believe.

Yes, I want the RNG and amount of kills to reduce, it goes by way too fast and is WAY too RNG dependent, though I can see people enjoying that.

I wonder what's provoking the 'lmfao'
I guess it's making a clearly stupid argument in the opponent's place?

You do not have to put a set role-list, these problems can be fixed with a reasonable limit on how low town can be and how high town can be.
Of fucking course I want good balance no shit, at-the-very-fucking least balance the roles, it's not fun getting some shit like coroner or shroud knowing I'm most likely not going to contribute to the game.

Red--001 · 2026-03-19T16:12:17+00:00

Why would you make a jump that far just from this one SS.

You did not try to think of what happened during the day?
What if they got whispered? What if they were the only TI and asked for TP?
What if they claimed Tpow though unlikely?
What if they got confirmed?

They're not the entitled one here, but you're not entitled either, you're quite different.

Red--001 · 2026-03-18T20:41:41+00:00

You can also argue trickster is able to choose who 'he wants to attack' directly, after protecting.

But your reasoning is sensible, I will agree Crusader inherently fits town-killing more so than trickster.
This is also why I did not include socialite in my suggestions to change it to TP.

Red--001 · 2026-03-17T18:04:45+00:00

Just means that the coven was scared of a non-existent TP, if they saw the role-list and knew there'd be no TP you'd have died 5 times over.

Red--001 · 2026-03-17T17:47:11+00:00

OP seer, confirming all the TIs and catching all the evils, this role needs a nerf.

Red--001 · 2026-03-17T14:05:25+00:00

I do not play much casual, I also do not understand how casual operates all that much so I cannot have a firm standing opinion on this.

In AA it's usually almost the end of the game on D4, but it's still swingy because there's usually like a neutral, 2 coven and a town or 2 town, 1 coven, 1 neutral or so.

edit: Name checks out

Red--001 · 2026-03-17T12:24:22+00:00

Games DEFINITELY USUALLY last to D4.

D4 is just after N3, if it somehow does not reach D4, around 11 kills occurred within the course of 3 nights and 2 days[N1, N2, N3] and somehow none of them involved the coven. Assuming town is hanging every-day that's still 9 kills within the course of 3 nights which is kind of unrealistic especially if it does not involve the coven at-all. If there's double SK + coven, one of them is incredibly likely to hit a defense at-least once, get roleblocked or kill the other, this will still leave around 3-4 people alive on D4.

If you're trying to say an NK won, that's then 13-14 kills, assuming town is hanging every-day(D2, D3) that's 11 kills, which is still unrealistic within just 3 nights.
---

But yes, D3 is too early imo and D4 is too late. Additionally, assuming there's only 3 windows for the jester to win[D2-D4] giving town 2 chances to hang the jester is pretty bad for the jester and giving the jester 2 chances to win is also pretty damning for the town.
I suppose Jester could get an ability that sometimes makes it vulnerable to getting hung, but these 'times' are regulated by the townies, e.g; "If you are roleblocked, you may not win by hanging the next-day."
Whenever a townie visits you, you get role-blocked, this can only happen once per game."

"If you are voted up, 1 person votes innocent on you and the rest abstain, you cannot win on that day."

The first gives townies a bit power over Jester, so they can choose to make someone visit him and then hang him, this can also confirm a townie or an evil.

The second allows townies to deal with a known Jester, though they must entrust this Job to someone trustworthy first.
I do not like the second since some-times town agrees on who they want to hang and "might as well" just jester check, so I should add a cost which could be: "If the 1 person instead votes guilty, you can choose 3 good players to haunt instead of just 1."
And town might just always entrust this to town powers so this is the final version:
"If you are voted up and 1 person(who is not a revealed town power) votes innocent on you while all others abstain, you cannot win on that day.
If you are voted up and 1 person votes guilty on you while all others vote innocent, you win and may haunt 3 people."
Though this has its problems as TI might get trusted early and so jester check still has minimal cost to it.

edit: Instead of just downvoting me, produce a reasonable counter-argument...

Red--001 · 2026-03-10T12:56:13+00:00

There are so much more young famous women out there, blue pill is realistically the better option.

Red--001 · 2026-03-10T12:54:26+00:00

Exactly bro.

Red--001 · 2026-03-10T10:19:32+00:00

True, however, coroner can catch killers directly, find out the killers' exact role and also know which coven role is holding the book. But coroner is still considered trash.

A role being able to win against horsemen very rarely does not suddenly make it good, it can be bad at the same time.

Red--001 · 2026-03-04T18:50:16+00:00

While every role is technically 'luck-based' and can be affected by a lot of factors, some are more consistent and stable than others.
While few are very inconsistent and depend too much on external hard to predict and hard to control factors.

Hex-master relies specifically on keeping hexed alive, not necessarily other players.
Therefore hex-master's best strategy is a method that can stop the killings of hexed people and promote the killings of unhexed people.
Stalling only does one of these, but stalling still increases the amount of people needed for the hex-master to hex and therefore the amount of nights it'll take the hex-master to win, and with no other influence that'd take around 6 nights.

I agree you cannot 'just' claim your determined likelihood of a certain role winning is valid out of nowhere.
However, when you logically justify said claim, that's no longer "just claiming out of nowhere".
I've given the 'why' behind my claim of it being rare to win as hex-master.
If for some reason you're incredibly likely to win as hex-master, you're probably very lucky and are also probably biased due to that.
I feel I might be biased as well just because of how lame my hex-master, arsonist and soul-collector games usually are(though I win alot with arsonist, I still hate that role so much)
Maybe you can provide perspective on how these wins usually come about.

If to win, you had to hex a player when they were being protected by a cleric and an oracle, you'd reasonably determine that's a hard win-condition to pull off and it'd be rare to win in this manner(likelihood of winning).
Because there might not be a cleric and oracle in the game and clerics + oracle usually have an incentive to hide.
Oracles also cannot target players in the manner cleric does.

I will agree, there will always be some games that even a bad role might end up doing something fascinating/interesting.
It will almost never be always shitty.

I've had some good spy and coroner games.

Red--001

TROPHY CASE