Updated Role - Merchant

[Sherlock Holmes]

As listed in catalogue:

Merchant:https://www.thecouncilofmages.com/for...pic,822.0.html
Description: As a merchant, you thrive in a city with lots of people where you can do business. Because you come in contact with a lot of people so it's hard for an investigator or sheriff to determine your true role. However, you do not care whether the town or mafia lose, you came to the town pure out of economical interest.
Abilities: Choose 2 targets. The first target's exact role is determined and this information is passed on to the second target. You learn nothing. You have essentially "sold" 1 piece of information.
Win Condition: Sell a defined by host amount of pieces of information AND survive till the end.
Host Options:
1) Must sell at least 3,4,5 pieces of information to win
Credit: Carrein

Updated:

Merchant:
Description: As a merchant, you thrive in a city with lots of people where you can do business. However, you do not care whether the town or mafia lose, you came to the town purely out of financial self-interest. I see no reason why the merchant can't be investigated like everyone else.
Abilities: Choose 2 targets. The first target's exact role is passed on to the second target, if the second target agrees to put his information up for sale in return.
- No role is ever revealed to you, only to your buyers.
- You may only sell information which has been sold to you.
- You begin the game with information on one random person. note: this is only included to give the merchant a 'start'. I think it works. This random person could be informed that the merchant has his information.

Win Condition: Sell a defined by host amount of pieces of information AND survive till the end.
Host Options:
1) Must sell at least 3,4,5 pieces of information to win
Credit: Carrein

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I think this makes the merchant less overpowered, because otherwise he can just find anybody's exact role, which is more than the sheriff or investigator can do. To be fair, though, the merchant can't look at the information himself. However, the other reason why I propose these changes is so that there is more challenge in the merchant's role, and to give people more an incentive to kill or defend him. "He has so-and-so's information, keep him alive!" "He has my information, kill him!" If he has everyone's information, always, it seems like things would be flatter. I also think it makes the role more merchant-y, because this involves an actual exchange of goods.

I also wonder whether he shouldn't only have to survive until the end. You don't force the jailor to use his execution, for instance. The ability can be used to his advantage but it's not necessary. Maybe the merchant should be the same.

Thoughts?

I'm not certain that this is better than the catalogue version, but I do think it's an interesting idea. And I definitely think the merchant should be included, as he is quite an original character, as opposed to, say, the ninja assassin and the spree killer, etc. etc.

[FalseTruth]

I don't think this would work from a programming perspective because there would be too many prompts and not enough time to respond to them.

However, I have thought of another alternative that may be easier to implement to make the merchant less powerful.

Maybe when the client receives the information, he sees the person's investigator description instead of exact role OR sees "The merchant sold you information that someone in the town is a _____" so that the person receiving this information would have to contact the merchant to find out who the role belongs to.

[Sherlock Holmes]

If you're talking about prompts from an in-game time perspective, couldn't you easily have the merchant decide during the day who to target, and the prompt comes up immediately at night?

If you mean from a technical perspective, where things just wouldn't be possible to implement, then I cleave.

Your second solution sounds a little convoluted, and would only work with PMs in the game? The first solution would help. That's probably the best choice if my idea can't work, but I really think if technically it can work then it would be a good idea, balance-wise and strategy-wise.

[FalseTruth]

Like all roles in the Catalogue, we can't be sure of the Merchant's balance until we play it out. I think there should be a host option that says detects exact role just like there is for the invest. Other than that, your suggestion will only be considered if the less complicated previous suggestion is proven to be imbalanced.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Fair enough. Ockham's razor for the win.

[Sherlock Holmes]

My mistake, thinking of Rackham's Laser lolol. Occam's*