Strengthener

Strengthener Alias: none Alignment: Mafia Town Role type: Protective Choice: Night

A Strengthener is a player who can target other players to give them a temporary Strong modifier, preventing interference with their actions.

Standard version

A Strengthener can choose one target player each night (other than themself). That night, the Strengthened player's actions cannot be blocked, redirected (not even indirectly, e.g. by a Deflector or Nexus), or protected against (e.g. via a role such as Doctor, Bulletproof, or Alarmist). In other words, actions used by the Strengthener's target will nearly always go through as planned.

Even strengthened actions cannot affect a Commuter who is commuting that night (but they will affect an Ascetic player). Additionally, when using action resolution frameworks based on Natural Action Resolution, the Strengthener is not themself immune to being blocked or redirected; it would be possible to prevent the Strengthener's target's action from working via blocking both the Strengthener and their target. (For example, the Alien variant of Jailkeeper could block an attempt by the Strengthener's target to use an action; the rolestop portion would prevent the Strengthener's action working, and thus the roleblock portion would be able to prevent the Strengthener's target's action working.)

Use & Balance

In Mafia hands, a Strengthener is similar to, but a bit less reliable than, a Strongman. It lets the scum break up potentially broken combinations of power roles, although not later in the game (as the Strengthener will need a living teammate to support); note that this produces a potential positive feedback effect where the death of the Strengthener allows town to run away with the game, so you will need to take steps to keep swing under control.

In town hands, the role is most useful for checking claims in role madness games; it serves to make them a little less mad, by increasing the chance that night actions end up doing what their owners intended, and thus creating fewer scenarios to work through. It is somewhat weaker than roles like Tracker and Follower, who can typically get comparable information more directly.

Play Advice

As Mafia, this role has similar uses to Strongman. However, if the role has limited uses, you may want to use them earlier than normal, because it will become useless once your team is reduced to one member (players cannot strengthen themselves). Strongman roles are often added to setups to break up town breaking strategies, but Strengtheners are less likely to be needed for that purpose (as the resulting anti-breaking-strategy mechanism might end up too fragile).

As town, you of course want to strengthen players who have claimed a power role. It may be worth aiming for players whose claims you doubt; if the player has committed to a particular action, strengthening it becomes even more important, as if it turns out not to occur, it will prevent the player subsequently claiming that they must have been blocked. In any case, a town Strengthener likely implies a scum Roleblocker, and it's typically considered good strategy for scum to block claimed power roles rather than kill them (for fear of a Doctor). Note that if you suspect town protective roles might be important, you should be careful about strengthening someone who might potentially be fakeclaiming scum performing the factional kill.

Sample Role PMs

The standardized Role PM for "Strengthener" describes the action as follows:

• As a targeted action: that player's actions that night will also be immune to interference (i.e. they cannot be blocked, redirected or protected against). (edit)

Example (simplest form)

Welcome to game! You are a Mafia Strengthener.

Your team-mates are names. You may talk to them here during night phases and confirmations only.

You have the following active abilities, but may use only one per Night:

• Each Night, if no other member of your faction is performing this action, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will die.
• Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player's actions that night will also be immune to interference (i.e. they cannot be blocked, redirected or protected against).

You win if at least one mafia member is alive and all other players are dead (or if nothing can prevent the same).

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Example (with modifiers)

Welcome to game! You are a Mafia 1-shot Loud Strengthener.

Your team-mates are names. You may talk to them here during night phases and confirmations only.

You have the following active abilities, but may use only one per Night:

• Each Night, if no other member of your faction is performing this action, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player will die.
• Once in the game at Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, that player's actions that night will also be immune to interference (i.e. they cannot be blocked, redirected or protected against). Your target will learn that you targeted them (but not what action you targeted them with).

You win if at least one mafia member is alive and all other players are dead (or if nothing can prevent the same).

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.