ROLE IDEA/REWORK: The Priest

[Komrad Saturn 2 / 1,007]

I think in total the Priest has to be the most frustrating and anti-fun role in all of Anarchy. In general it's not that useful, at most proving a couple of people as Innocent or Killing yourself and exposing a Traitor. But let's be honest, a 35% chance to ruin both yours and a Evil/Neutral Role’s game isn’t exactly very fun, and most of the time as Priest you are extremely lucky to get more than two Holy Deagle shots off in the first place. So I think a rework is in order, this is just a general concept, all numbers can be tweaked yadayada, I’m not a (good) coder so this is purely for speculation purposes.

The main point of this idea is to single in on the best part of the Priest, having that sort of Brotherhood bound, leaning in on your allies and not being worried about them shooting you in the back.

First things first, the Priest would now replace two Detectives, with whoever should have been one becoming an Innocent role. This would also prevent Defectives spawning until 24 players (When Two Detectives and One Defective spawn with the Priest).

Priests would show up on the leaderboard as a Detective would, and anyone in the brotherhood would also be confirmed there, just like the Doppleganger, having their symbol but not color replaced by the Priest one.

Hitting a Traitor, Neutral, Shinigami, Lycanthrope, Detective, or Pharaoh with the Holy Deagle would deal 25 Damage to the Priest, and cause them to take 50% more Damage for the next 10 seconds. The Shinigami, Detective, Lycanthrope, and Pharaoh are unable to be in the brotherhood for two reasons.
1. It makes sense, the Pharaoh would likely be a different religion, the Shinigami and Lycanthrope would be seen as unholy, and the Detective are based on logic, not religion.
2. So you are unable to call KOS off of it, due to (as you will see later) the Holy Deagle having a much shorter cool down on it, so it makes sense to only be able to highly sus off it.

(This also allows the Shinigami to know their role before they die and the Lycanthrope to know their role before it activates, allowing more strategic play from them.)

Hitting someone on the Innocent team (Minus the previously listed roles.) will cause them to join the Brotherhood, giving the target 10hp healed and 5 armor. For every new person added they heal 5hp and gain a 3 armor, Along with that for every person in the Brotherhood (Priest Included) you gain 2.5% more damage, speed, and resistance. (Ex. 5 People in Brotherhood is 15% extra stats). You are never shown the specifics of the stats for obvious reasons, if you were you could instantly tell once someone in the Brotherhood dies.

Hitting specifically a base Innocent will turn them into a Follower, causing them to heal 20hp and get 10 armor, along with healing 10hp and gaining 4 armor whenever someone new is added into the Brotherhood, as well as causing all of the extra stats to be 5% per person instead of 2.5%. (Ex. 5 People = 30% Extra Stats)

As the Priest, whenever you add someone new into the Brotherhood you heal 20hp, gain 10 Max hp (up to 200 Max hp), and gain 5 armor. Your stat boost is 7.5% per person (Not including you) plus a base 10% increase. (Ex. 5 People = 47.5% Extra Stats)

If you are confused by any of the wording or math or how it works theres a simplified image attached below.

Last thing to discuss is the Holy Deagle's new reload time, which. I’m not 100% certain what it is now but I think the timer should be reduced by about 25-50%, this stat specifically is likely the most needing of specific testing and fine tuning to make sure it's properly balanced. Along with this I believe the Holy Deagle should also use the model from the Golden Deagle workshop weapon, just for a little more character.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=253737047

Summary: Priest replaces two Detectives and has a Holy Deagle to add people into the Brotherhood. Holy Deagle'ing a Innocent role has them join the Brotherhood. Everyone in the Brotherhood is proven, gets minor stat ups per person in it, and gains Health and Armor when new people are added.

Anyways, that concludes my rework for the Priest, feedback is appreciated as long as it's not specifically focusing on the tweakable numbers- because that's not really helpful. The whole point of this isn’t to change numbers, it's to completely rework the Priest. The numbers aren’t the problem with the current Priest, it's the gameplay, and that's what this conceptual rework aims to fix.

I might end up attempting to Frankiestien code from the Detective, Priest and Doppleganger in order to get this playable, or maybe not because I am mid as hell at coding.

Thank you for your attention Sirs, Misses and everything else.

 

Edited July 30, 2023 by Komrad Saturn
Updated sheet to look better

[Stargazthepie 25 / 1,038]

i like it, im always down for role reworks and this looks hella fun cause i hate being detective but this seems incredibly op for the innos,

first: this would flat out remove defective cause it requires a ton of players and 24 people is a rarity. although i do hate defective as well so i love this idea.

second: how the hell would this work with dopples,

third: this makes jackals the most powerful role in the game if it works like preist.

fourth, infected and laz just loose when this role shows up.

fifth: the drawbacks to hitting other innos are meaningless when detective is proven and pharaoh can easily prove themselves and if a shini has died whoever you shoot that damages you is instantly kosed.

sixth: you have the biggest target on your back by being that role, prepare to get awped as soon as the round starts cause this is the biggest threat to any non-inno and sacrificing yourself to remove this from the round is always worth it cause this role is a giant snowball effect until a near guaranteed inno win.

finally you are pretty much unkillable until you hit a non-inno, rare that that would keep happening but it is always a possibility. 

i like this role idea alot and im sorry for this, but my god man this is the most overpowered inno role ive ever seen. this is like if we made doomslayer a detective role.

Edited July 29, 2023 by Stargazthepie

[Rhysin_ 540 / 13,203]

With these buffs the role should be stuck behind 16 players, that's just a general statement. 

 

Replacing two decently fun innocent roles for priest is a bit weird and also weakens defective (which imo is already not that strong) since priest is so easy to confirm. (Also by your math, at 24 players on a defective round there would be 1 detective, 1 defective, and a priest, not 2 detectives) I think taking 1 detective slot would be fine. 

 

I think it's current mechanic is fine as it is, which is wild cause I hate the role, but it's very useful but very balanced. It is pretty unfun though. I could see changing it from an information gathering role to a support buffing role working and I do like it not working on one of the stronger innocent roles, Pharaoh. But  the "50% more damage for the next 10 seconds" thing is not needed. It's certainly interesting. But it does seem like you're overcomplicating a role that's already ok.

 

On buffs, priest shouldn't be buffing itself, such a useful role should remain easy to kill and it should be up to the innocents to protect it (imo that'd be more interesting than the priest just being a tank on top of being good support.) 

Don't buff stats. Especially not on multiple people.

Buffs should be a one time thing imo. Not everytime someone joins the brother hood.  That's an easy way to make the innocent team too strong when it already has the numbers advantage (most of the time)

 

In all I don't think these changes are going to fix the main problem of priest being unfun to play against. It may be a little more fun to play as but it'll make it even more annoying to play against since it'd be constantly buffing innocents, especially if you do stats.  Don't buff stats, trust me it's just a slippery slope into making it either too op or nerfing the buffs to the point of them barely effecting gameplay.

[Komrad Saturn 2 / 1,007]

10 hours ago, Stargazthepie said:

I have no idea how to directly reply to messages or even if I can but I'm just gonna address Star's first lmao
Yeah it might be op as hell thats totally fair, I'd prob just recommend uping the Deagle timer instead of removing the third detective tho, since the Priest (purposely) doesnt really do the whole Detecting job, Priest is more about prevent while Detective is about avenging... sorta. 

First it would technically kill Defective when it spawns but it would be more of a 30% Priest Situation, 30% Defective Situation, 40% Normal Detective situation
Second.... yeah Dopple and Mimic would basically break the hell out of balance unless you kill them
Third no Jackals wouldnt be changed
Fourth, I think you are talking about Holy Deagle being able to kill them which would probably be removed
Fifth credit to mutedmike for this idea but the Lycanthrope being a Werewolf would also mean it shouldnt be able to be Holy Deagled, this.... sorta would help fix that problem
Sixth: Yeah this one is really valid, it could easily cause a snowball effect. But I think I didnt describe how many people would actually be in the brotherhood at a given time, which would only be 3-5 people on average, not like 8 or something, that is my fault since I never gave a real specific time for the deagle

Also dont worry im not offended or anything, im not like the WIZARD OF GOOD ANARCHY DESIGN its just more of a interesting idea I'm putting out there, no hate on Alex but thats sorta the problem with Gunsmith and alot of other roles, they are just Innocent with a shop or.... a special item or something like that. So thats why the core design of this was supposed to support a different more... group based play style, even if some people don't like that sorta thing.

 

 

[Komrad Saturn 2 / 1,007]

5 hours ago, Rhysin_ said:

Yeah the role can only spawn when there are two Detectives, thus replacing them.

Yeah I sorta agree there, I just wasnt trying to make it to op (Also yeah apparently I suck at math lmao). Although I gotta disagree with the Detectives being that fun part, the main problem with all the current roles is that they don't really play all that different, they are just innocents with a special item or shop or something small like that.

I added the 50% more damage thing so that Evil roles would be able to bait the Priest into shooting them, and then having a easy way to take them out if they are snowballing the round, I do get it does sorta overcomplicate shit tho.

Assuming it would be changed to only replacing one Detective then yeah the Priest not buffing themselves would be a good change, and I also 100% agree that stat changes are a slippery slope, and frankly sort of a boring way to buff things. But.... I can't really think of any other way to convey the idea of ya know powerful in numbers any other way. Like maybe they can see each other through walls instead? No too op, maybe they could all get a special gun? Eh thats kinda dumb, Maybe they could get their own team chat? Actually that one might be kinda cool- but yeah the point is I'm not really sure theres any other buff that COULD be given instead. Maybe like you said just a stat buff at the start might be better, I just like the idea of becoming better with more people to be more interesting, but it is for the sake of actual gameplay and design.

Yeah but you had alot of good points, I personally do disagree with this one here tho, not being able to KOS off of Priest deagle fixes the main annoyance Evil roles have with Priest, even if it causes a new one but... I mean.... one shot weapons :troll:

Anyways thanks for the feedback you did poke alot of holes in this lmao