Town of Salem Wiki:Making New Roles

Making New Roles has been made together by the Town. Be wary of anyone claiming the hard work as their own, especially if it's yours.

Town of Salem is a game with many roles and alignments, so many people want to make more to possibly be put into the game! If you want to make an idea, see these tips first to get a general sense on how you might want to make it. These are not strict rules that one must follow to get a working role; generally, however, people in the forums and everyone else will agree with these guidelines, as they balance the game fairly well.

Though this is optional but recommended, post all role ideas in the Wikia Forum, then go to BMG if you get an okay response! This way, BMG will receive better roles. And remember, few people will review your role here in the comments, unlike on our Wikia boards. If you want to get to the Wiki forum, simply go to "On the Wiki" near the top then click "Forum." So please post your new role idea on this Wiki's forms, not this page's comments.

General Rules and Guidelines

Here's a list of what you should try to avoid in your role. Remember, these are simply just rules that will, on usual notices, break the game by themselves. However, if your role breaks one rule but manages to exist fairly balanced, then go ahead! (Note: Some roles in the game break some of these rules, but these apply only for new ideas.)

Role Dependency - Any role that requires another role to be in the game.
Hardcounters - Any role that exists purely to counter or nerf another role.
Re-hashes - Mafia/Neutral versions of Town roles or vice-versa.
Night Chat Town - Any Town roles that allow multiple Town roles to chat at night.
Slightly Changed Role - Any role that is extremely similar to an existing one.
Independent Mafia Killing - Any Mafia Killing role that kills on its own, giving Mafia two kills.
Buddy Role - Any role that requires another specific person to survive to win.
Conversion Role - Any role that converts other people into its own role.
Night Immune Town - Any Town role that is night immune.
Combination Role - Any role that is a combination of other roles.
Self-Confirming Town - Any role that can confirm itself as innocent easily.
Evil Retributionist - Any role that can revive Neutral or Mafia roles.
Neutral Chaos - Roles that are part of the Neutral Chaos alignment.
Anything Chaos - Actually, just don't make any chaos roles.
Roleswapper - Any role that swaps/changes others' roles.
RNG Role - Any role that depends on random chance.
Visitor - Any role that has a win condition involving visiting other people. (An example of a bad win condition would be "Visit 6 Townies").
Copycat - Any role that uses other role's night abilities.
Survivor Rehash - Any Neutral Benign role whose only goal is to survive to the end of the game.
Neutral Investigative - Any Neutral role that investigates people.
Non-Evil Neutral Evil - Any Neutral Evil role that cannot win with the Mafia or (other) Neutral Killings, or can win with the Town.
Omniscient Town Killing - Any Town Killing role that can only kill evil roles. (it can't mess up)
Omniscient Neutral Killing - These are roles that can only kill Town or Mafia. They are less powerful than Omniscient Town Killing roles but are still bad.
Limited Neutral Killing - Any Neutral Killing role that has a limited number of kills or commits suicide.
Negative Utility - Any role that hurts its faction more than it helps it.
New Alignments - Do not make new alignments or factions to the game. Your role idea should have an alignment that exists in ToS, not a custom-made one by you.
Breaking the Trial System - Any role that can mess with the process of reporting players, such as the Pre-1.5 Disguiser.
Town Plus - Any role that actively buffs the Town or nerfs non-Town roles.
Day Controller - Any role that controls what another role does at day, E.G. speaking, voting, etc.
Reverse Escort - A role that role-blocks visiting roles from someone, causing an infinite loop which will then cause the game to crash (The Vigilante is roleblocked, so they stay at home, so they aren't blocked, so they go out to block their target, so they are blocked by the Reverse Escort, and so on). This can be negated by BMG creating a proxy system.
New roles in the " Town Power" Alignment: - The point of the Town Power suggestion is to reduce excessively powerful roles, not make more of them.
Overly Complex Role - If it would take way too long to program, it's probably not worth suggesting. (If the role is complicated, this doesn't count. The rule applies only to the programming process of the role.)
Suppliers - Any role that gives any forms of protection or bullets to another role. These are rejected since it mainly buffs Townies.
Reverse Blackmailer - Any role that "deafens" or prevents a role from hearing any chat said by anyone, or any votes seen.
No plagiarism - Any roles that are from a different series (i.e. Jabberwocky as a new NK role). We don't want BMG getting sued.
Postmortem Lookout - Seeing who visited a dead player, or worse, who killed them, is a bad idea

Specific Roles to Not Create

Firefighter - This role is an Arsonist hardcounter, and would be an omniscient role as it can only specifically conflict with the Arsonist, along with being role-dependent.
Werewolf Hunter - Basically the Firefighter of Werewolves.
Any "Hunter" - If you make a role that is only designed to kill a certain role, it will get rejected for hardcountering.
"Yandere & Senpai" - These two go hand in hand, usually if the Senpai dies the Yandere must kill whichever faction killed it. This is a prime example of a "buddy" role.
Cupid - A role that makes two people 'fall in love', IE of one dies so does the other. This role promotes gamethrowing, so it generally gets rejected.
Hobo - This role is a Survivor, but has to visit other people's houses. Otherwise, it will commit suicide. These get rejected for being a rehash of a Survivor.
Vote Buyer - The concept of a vote buyer is that you visit someone, and then the next day use that person's vote for them. This concept is either too overpowered (allowing you to vote someone twice) or too underpowered (making your vote Away From Keyboard while you take over that person's vote). This also breaks the trial system due to "gamethrowing" players.
Vote "Stopper" - Same as a vote buyer except instead of controlling people's votes, it stops people from voting altogether. These get rejected for countering Town too much as it takes away their only effective way of killing.
Hangman - Any role that takes away the noose during the day. This gets rejected for the same reason as a vote stopper. It's usually best not to make any roles that mess with the voting system.
Mafia Transporter - A member of the Mafia that has the mechanics of a Transporter. This gets rejected for being a rehash and usually being overpowered.
Postman - Any role that can send private messages to other players. These get rejected for being self confirming.

Role Suggestion: Formatting

Give your role name, alignment, abilities/attributes, win conditions/goal, attack and defense stats, and Investigative Results. Lore is unnecessary, as it all is rejected along with the role itself, being lost in the cold tundra. Down below is an example of a format.

Role Name:

Alignment:

Abilites:

Attributes:

Unique:

Attack:

Defense:

Investigation Results (down below):

Sheriff:

Investigator:

Consigilere/Witch:

Other Notes:

Making Investigative Results

One of the things that are always troubling to make are investigative results. Remember to make your investigative results based off of already existing ones, not making up your own (as that completely messes with the original system).

A common pattern between investigation results, is that roles in the same result either counter each other, or are extremely similar in nature.

Investigator, Consigliere, Mayor - Similar roles in nature with one Town, one Mafia, and a Unique Role that easily confirms.

Lookout, Forger, Amnesiac - A Town role and a Mafia role, with a Neutral Benign tacked on the end.

Sheriff, Executioner, Werewolf - A powerful Town role, but a role that is accused by many (Executioner), and a unique killer.

Medium, Janitor, Retributionist - An easy claim for any role, a Mafia role, and an easy to confirm Unique Town.

These general patterns are important to learn from, and are crucial to interactions between your role and other pre-existing roles.

Town Roles

Currently, Town has the most wins, and so creating a Town role should mainly consist of finding something that adds variety and tweaks the balance of Town's win-rate down without being negative utility. These roles should never have permanent night immunity.

Town Protective

Remember to not do rehashes of what are already done. Also, do not make this role night immune; instead make it have 1 self ability, continuing the trend of Doctor and Bodyguard.

Town Investigative

Remember, we already have many roles that can find out the roles of others, so only make this if they are very unique to other Town Investigatives. Many ideas are revolving around revamping Sheriff because it is not balanced.

Town Support

Since we already have 5 support roles, the most out of any alignment in the game, new roles here are generally not needed. However, if you make a creative Town role and it doesn't seem to fit any alignment, this is normally your place.

Town Killing

Remember not to make it Night Immune to prevent this role from being overpowered, and its killing shouldn't go through Night Immunity. Otherwise, this is an applicable alignment, since there are only two.

Mafia Roles

The Mafia are pretty balanced compared with neutrals, but compared with Town, this faction is generally underpowered. So, try and make some roles that nerf Town, but not Neutrals.

Mafia Killing

You generally shouldn't make any roles in this alignment, as it is not needed. This is true especially if it kills by itself, which is an independent Mafia Killing. Keep in mind that you're free to make this role; just make sure that it doesn't lend Mafia suddenly more killing power than it should have.

Mafia Deception

Excellent alignment to make roles for! Many ideas are for revamping the Framer.
Attempt to not do a "cloaker" role, or a role that hides other roles from visiting. This hardcounters the Spy, which has already been nerfed (Mafia can see that the Spy can hear them), in addition to Werewolf, Lookout, and Veteran. This also can cause the game to crash.

Mafia Support

Excellent alignment to make roles for! it should either have 3 powerful uses or infinite uses that are less powerful, keeping in trend of the other Mafia roles.

Neutral Roles

Neutral roles generally struggle to win, especially the Neutral Killings. If you want to make a role in this faction, be creative, and make sure it is not underpowered.

Neutral Benign

These should be allowed to win with anyone.
They should not be night immune permanently.
Try to prevent them from having the power to not visit; remember, this hardcounters Lookout, Werewolf, and Veteran.
Remember that the point of a Neutral Benign is for the role to be able to help all roles and all factions. Don't let your role be able to directly hinder other factions in any way.

Neutral Evil

Neutral Evil roles are supposed to harm the Town ( Jester and Executioner can break this, but they only win with Town if they complete their goal). Also, these should generally not be night immune.
Try to prevent them from having the power to not visit; remember, this hardcounters Lookout, Werewolf, and Veteran.

Neutral Killing

Neutral Killing roles should never be able to win with other Neutral Killing roles; even further, anyone but their own faction. They should also be Night Immune every night to prevent it from being underpowered.

Try to prevent them from having the power to target others, but not via visiting; remember, this hardcounters Lookout, Werewolf, and Veteran.
Make it able to kill every night to prevent it from becoming a limited Neutral Killing.

An interesting route is called Passive Neutral Killing. Basically, people will visit you, and someway, you'll be able to kill based on people visiting you. However, here's a few things to keep in mind:
- Do NOT make a bad Neutral Veteran. These have been rejected a fair amount of times already.
- There are five roles in the game that don't visit, and independent factions must kill: Medium, Retributionist, Veteran, Mayor, and Spy. You have to set up a condition that allows Passive Neutral Killers to be able to kill these roles

Neutral Chaos

Under normal circumstances, please don't make one of these, as these tend to get rejected by BMG. However, you can feel free to do what you say with this, and it's a fairly new pool to swim around in. Make sure that you make something that isn't game breaking, however!