Beholder

Beholder Alias: none Alignment: Town Mafia Role type: Investigative Choice: Night

The Beholder is a role that sees whatever their target saw during the night, and gets a report in the morning.

Standard version

Each night, the Beholder chooses a player; if that player uses an investigative role and learns any information as a consequence, the Beholder learns the same information. For example, if a Seer scans player A, who is a werewolf, they would get a reply "Your target is a werewolf"; a Beholder targeting the Seer would learn "Player A is a werewolf". (In other words, the Beholder's report contains the relevant context to deduce what information their target learned.) As another example, a Psychologist might get a "positive" result on their target, which would be explained to the Beholder as "Player has a killing ability but has not used it".

Note that a no result "result" is not an actual result; it's used by the moderator to let the player know that the moderator didn't forget to send a result PM, it's just that no information was learned. As a consequence, a Beholder will get a no-result if they scan a player who received a no-result themself, but will also get a no-result if they scan a player who did not use an investigative action, or if their own action was blocked. The wording of a no-result for a Beholder is thus a little different from normal, e.g. "You did not learn any information last night".

A Beholder can also see information learned by their target as a consequence of a different player's role, e.g. if their target is targeted by a Loud player, they will learn "Your target was targeted by Loud player last night", and if their target is targeted by a Mailman, they will see the received message. (Note that the Beholder does not learn why the information became available; the same "Your target was targeted by player last night" report might have been produced if the Beholder's target was a Tracker.)

The Beholder does not see information transmitted via private topics. If the Beholder's target is newly granted access to a private topic on the night the Beholder investigates them, they will learn that their target gained access to a private topic, but will not be told which private topic and will not gain access to it themself.

Variations

There are a large number of possible ways to resolve the no-result cases, all of which are somewhat reasonable. For example, a variant Beholder could learn whether or not their target had received a "no result" PM, or be able to distinguish between being blocked and observing nothing.

It is reasonable to make a Beholder incapable of seeing the text of a message received from a Mailman, or to make the Beholder capable of seeing only information that their target learned from their own role (rather than being given from some external source).

An alternative version of a Beholder would allow them to see the text of all PMs their target received from the moderator, but not the appropriate context. This version varies wildly in power based on the exact wording of a moderator's PMs, e.g. "Positive" or "Your target is town" are both fairly useless compared to "Player is town".

Use & Balance

Beholder results can be quite powerful sometimes; however, unlike other powerful investigative roles, the Beholder is quite hard to aim, and often will learn nothing useful at all. In this respect, it is comparable to roles like Tracker, which normally produce low-value results but sometimes produce very high-value results (although unlike Town Tracker, eliminatingscum does not make it more powerful). The role therefore has somewhat random balance implications. It is, of course, more powerful in a setup with more investigative or communicative roles, as this increases the chance of learning a result.

A Beholder in scum hands can serve as a partial counter to the massclaim strategy that's less overbearing than a Roleblocker or Strongman (and has less chance of unbalancing the setup if no massclaim is attempted); unlike most massclaim-counter roles, it does not entirely shut the town down, but does make it somewhat easier for the scum to play around their actions. (On the flip side of that, a Beholder in town hands makes massclaiming more powerful, as it makes the action much easier to aim and helps to mitigate the downside via rescuing a result once the scum start killing your investigatives. Thus, town Beholders should not be included in setups where massclaiming would otherwise be powerful.)

Play Advice

As a Beholder, your role is unlikely to do much except when targeting a player with an investigative role (unless you think they are likely to be the recipient of a message from somebody else, e.g. due to strategy discussion in the main game thread). However, the additional information is more useful if the information otherwise wouldn't be known to your faction; thus, it makes sense to investigate someone who belongs to a different faction (especially if you're scum), or a player on your faction who is likely to die overNight (and thus be unable to reveal any information they might otherwise have learned). Thus, look for likely or claimed investigatives, especially players who are on the opposite faction and/or unlikely to survive the Night (note that a claimed investigative will most likely be nightkilled unless scum, so for town Beholders, both these considerations point at the same target).

A Beholder action can also be used as a sort of unreliable Rolecop/Follower action, aiming to deduce your target's role based on the information that they learned; this likely isn't the best use for it, but there is a lot of overlap between good Rolecop targets and good Beholder targets anyway.

Sample Role PMs

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

• As a targeted action: you will learn all information that your target learns that Night. (edit)

Example (simplest form)

Welcome to game! You are a Town Beholder.

You have the following active ability:

• Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn all information that your target learns that Night.

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

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

Example (with modifiers)

Welcome to game! You are a Town 1-shot Loud Beholder.

You have the following active ability:

• Once in the game at Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn all information that your target learns that Night. Your target will learn that you targeted them (but not what action you targeted them with).

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

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