I would think fool would be enough to stop blind executions, but I guess not. More neutrals would be good, but I don't think the game needs any more investigative classes, it's already hard enough to be unseen without being outed by some sheriff, or observer, or king by day 2 =/

I think inqs, and alchs, and mercs should just out themselves early on. A merc outed himself day 1, he was one of the last people alive.

Since a large portion of neuts (in my experience) often vote against BD, it really is in BD's best interests to get rid of them. "If you aren't one of us, you are against us." It's the only way to be sure that a neut who survives until the end of the game doesn't side with Cult/Unseen on votes when the numbers become critical.

There have been exceptions to this, but once you've been bitten by a neut who has sided with the evil faction, it's hard to accept them going forward.

But- if we were to entertain this- why not make the hunter a neutral character?

I don't think the existing neutrals have a lack of ability to be helpful to BD... the fact that they can chose not to help BD, is what makes them liabilities.

But IMO the real problem is, well the king. IMO the neuts out meta massively was lowered during the 2 or 3 days kings investigative powers were gone before enough whining brought it back.

The neuts out mentality is more or less, because starting king finds neuts as neuts. Kings accusation is basically impossible to argue against, king calls you out, you can't CC, you can't argue against it, you are getting executed, because you can't shed doubt onto the fact that he is king, and no matter what the kings alignment is, getting rid of NK is one of his higher priorities, as that's a sizable threat to either faction, and a big threat to survivability for himself.

Claiming neutral roles wouldn't be the most obvious NK play, if it weren't to deal with the king being the most likely investigative to need to work around.

To me the solution is simple... king can't find neutrals... neuts out goes away... Make kings checks more like sheriff/pali checks. IE only detect unseen/cult or framed scorned victims.


While I think a complete removal of investigations from king is the better way to go... the amount of whining and us only being able to keep it for a few days the last time it was tried leads me to thinking this solution while not the most ideal, is the best we can really hope for.

Good points all around. I like Vandalay's suggestion, although I doubt it will get implemented unfortunately. My thoughts for additional neutral classes:

Monster Hunter (Van Helsing) - Hunts for creatures of the night
Vampire - NK class, Has ability to confuse selected investigative classes (infinite), maybe force people into a trance where they can't talk for a day- win goal: eleminate all but neuts
Werewolf- NK class that can recruit others to its side win goal: pack wins

Magistrate - Able to investigate bodies for clues. Maybe they have two abilities: 1) investigate a body 2) investigate a person with they idea being that if they find the person who'd killed the person, they'd know. However, they'd only be able to investigate 1 murder at a time.

I'm sure there's others, but that's all my tired brain can think of for tonight.


I guess in the end, there are always those who aren't going to want to take a chance on neutrals. Hopefully there's a balance in there somewhere.

Hilarious confirmation bias posts, here.

Using actual statistics, the neuts in any given game are more likely to work against the best interests of BD than to help them.

Alchemists can yolo bomb (and do), which, regardless if they randomly killed cult/unseen with it, is detrimental to BD, as the odds they will kill a BD are higher than the odds that they will kill an antag.

Inquis is probably the most useful neutral for BD, but sorc can easily claim Inquis if jailed/accused, and then you have problems.

Obviously the NKs are detrimental to BD.

Fool/Scorned are obviously detrimental to BD.

Merc is not always detrimental to BD, but again, you cannot know if the merc claim is legit until 2 rounds have passed, and that eats valuable time. 1 day for the merc claim, 1 day for the "proof" of standing guard.

So again, statistically speaking, neutrals are more detrimental to BD than helpful. I always execute neutrals, I always kill neutrals, and I will continue to do so unless more beneficial neutrals are added which changes the odds.

If I am the Prince and I just execute any and all neutrals, I am effectively raising the chances of BD winning by removing inefficient accusations/claims/harmful classes from my game. No, I don't care if you're an alch who is healing the king all game (which can be detrimental in the case of an evil (or neutral) king). You are going to die, because you being alive is potentially detrimental to BD, especially if invests are wasted on you, or if confusion is sown on voting day because you claim alchemist but really are scorned or whatever.

@Kruniac Zio
You don't have any actual stats linked. You just claim the stats say. Executing the Neutral is not smart generally speaking. You have a 1 in 4 chance of killing the NK. You have a chance of killing a fool and costing the BD a day of executions while the while the NK and/or Unseen/Cult, continue to murder you. Also if you're shouting "Neuts Out" The Mercenary and Alchemist (and maybe Inquisitor) are going be far less forward about who they are, losing you possible allies and making them turn on you instead, creating a self fulfilling prophecy.

I like how people really just hate on Neutral classes. When I'm Neutral (unless NK) I'll side with the Blue Dragon, they are more likely to win because of numbers. However, should the Blue Dragon fail to get any leads on the Cult/Unseen and dont' seem to have any clear goals or objectives, throwing people up at random to execute. I might end up siding with the Unseen/Cult late game.

Originally posted by Quintem:

@Kruniac Zio
You don't have any actual stats linked. You just claim the stats say. Executing the Neutral is not smart generally speaking. You have a 1 in 4 chance of killing the NK. You have a chance of killing a fool and costing the BD a day of executions while the while the NK and/or Unseen/Cult, continue to murder you. Also if you're shouting "Neuts Out" The Mercenary and Alchemist (and maybe Inquisitor) are going be far less forward about who they are, losing you possible allies and making them turn on you instead, creating a self fulfilling prophecy.

I like how people really just hate on Neutral classes. When I'm Neutral (unless NK) I'll side with the Blue Dragon, they are more likely to win because of numbers. However, should the Blue Dragon fail to get any leads on the Cult/Unseen and dont' seem to have any clear goals or objectives, throwing people up at random to execute. I might end up siding with the Unseen/Cult late game.

You didn't post any stats to the contrary, but if you just tally the numbers in your head, you'd know that neuts are just a negative thing for BD in general. I gave a breakdown of every neutral possibility, and only ONE of them has no drawbacks for BD (Merc can be converted and protect unseen).

Sorry, but I'm executing them every time I see them, end of discussion.

When there are an equal number of positive and negative (for BD) neutrals, I'll change my policy.

@Kruniac Zio Thats not how burden of proof works. You need to prove to ME that your stats.

You do your thing, I'll do mine.

I'm still fairly new to this game but I think I've patterned the classes all out in my mind and comprehend the interactions. Based on this my understanding of the "neuts out" issue is the following:

Neut classes aren't really neutral in terms of gameplay. The Sorc wins from getting BD to lose, yet there's no neut class that wants to actually see BD win to counter balance the odds of getting a malicious neut.
On top BD have more players than cult/unseen at the start and therefore random people dying statistically works against BD more than it does against cult/unseen. The truly neutral killers are always a major liability to BD, making execution a good choice. The only time BD would punish themselves from executing a neut early on is when it's the Inquisitor in a Sorc game.

While this might not necessarily mean much in a single match averaged over thousands of matches you surely see that with neuts left alive early on BD more often loses than wins.

I'd peronally always want to see neuts executed for this alone, which is a shame as the ideas behind some of them seem pretty fun (the Fool being my favourite and the Mercenary being the most boring as you don't have to do anything and the class plays itself).

But again, I'm new - perhaps I'm missing something and neuts aren't that bad for BD as I believe they are . :)

I am always for Neuts In (and as a King i try to protect em if they claim to me D1+2).

That said, as long as the neutral Killer is still alive even i am for killing Neuts until he is found (proven non killer Neuts are a exception, e.g. alch that healed and merc that guarded).

The way i see it, taking the attitude of neuts out is a self-fulfilling phrophesy not in favor of the BD.

By creating more antagonism against neuts, you increase the likelyhood that neuts will turn against you.

An alch that was initially going to stand with the BD now has no choice but to oppose them, because no matter how much he wants to help out the BD, it wont do him any good since they will kill him categorically.

Not all alchs are yolobombers. I personally save them for suspicious unseen / NK targets.

When i get alch i usually just out myself to the king D2 to be their pocket healer and do the dirty work. Usually they let me to stick around but i had games where king just outright put me on the chopping block. can't really blame them if NK is still around, it's in everyone's intrest that NK gets out of the game soon as possible.

How about making it so that there's a chance that 2 fools can be in a game. A low chance, but enough of a chance to deter the "neuts out" policy?

That's how it is now, I've had 2 games with 2 fools in them recently

Every neut is literally detrimental to the bd alive.

Their win condition literally does not align with yours, and they can switch "sides" any time they want to.

Keeping a neut alive is about as low iq as it gets.