I made a Normal role tier list

[GuyInFreezer]

It's based on my opinion it's not to be treated as 100% truth yadda yadda. I also viewed the roles mostly from town PoV as mafia is already considered as informed group and most of these roles are designed to find mafia. This also assumes that there are no modifiers attached on these roles.

Tier List

S:

Cop, JoaT, Role cop, Strongman

A:

Alien, Commuter, Doctor, PT Cop, Roleblocker, Role Watcher, Security Guard, Traffic Analyst, Watcher, Town-only power roles

B:

Babysitter, Bodyguard, Detective, Gunsmith, Hider, Jailkeeper, Neapolitan, Psychologist, Tracker, Follower, Voyeur, Rolestopper, Universal Backup, Visionary

C:

Role Finder, Inspector, Mailman, Neighbor, Neighborizer, Reporter, Shield, Vanilla Cop

D:

Checker, Enabler, Encryptor, Fruit Vendor, Motion Detector, Visitor, Miller [VT is here for reference]

F:

Traitor

Alien

is a role that both roleblocks and rolestops target. It has a "jailkeeper" problem where the player must decide whether they want to risk roleblocking the target for the sake of protection, but in a game with multiple kill sources this role can be stronger than doctor. A tier.

Babysitter

is a doctor but with a potential of double town death. So it has to stay below Doctor. B tier.

Checker

... checks self to see if player is roleblocked. Even considering the niche uses of this role I really don't see it doing anything important 99% of the time. D tier.

Commuter

prevents player from being targeted. Commuter without being X-shot is insanely strong. As town, you have no reason to not commute unless you want to be targeted by actions or something. As mafia, you have 0 reason to not commute every night. However, while it is very strong role, I don't think it deserves S tier as commuter can really only affect themselves. A tier.

Cop

needs no explanation. S tier.

Detective

checks if target has performed a nightkill before. So in normal Normal game (heh), getting a positive is basically a cop guilty. The only caveat is though, is that this role really works from N2 and onward. So, B tier.

Doctor

saves target. Pretty straightforward and easy to use, and its effect is powerful. Even the hint of this role's existance can make mafia hesitate on choosing optimal nightkill targets. But actually saving someone from nightkill is actually harder than it can look. Mafia doctor is also a thing to fool gunsmith, etc. A tier. S tier if doctor manages to protect nightkill.

Enabler

enables a role. I think this role exists to nerf the role it's tied to. So I consider this role a negative utility role. D tier.

Encryptor

allows a daytalk. It sounds pretty powerful especially for mafia. But games these days have daytalk available as a default. D tier.

Role Finder

is nerfed role cop that can only find the role it's tied to. Which is usually 1 positive out of, well, rest of the playerlist. C tier.

Follower

is basically tracker but instead of target, learns action performed instead. It can be informative but like its brothers (tracker, voyeur), it is inconclusive. B tier.

Fruit Vendor

... gives fruit. It can confirm its role to someone else. It could

maybe

prove itself to be town when there is only one mafia left, but even then it's not 100% and very niche. D tier.

Gunsmith

returns positive on set roles. It can find mafia, vig, or cop, security guard, etc. It can be informative but it has lot of false positives, and a potential false negative on mafia doctor. False negative is very dangerous in a mafia game. So B tier.

Hider

is basically commuter but with potentital of double death. So I can't put this as a same tier as commuter. B tier.

Inspector

is a voyeur but with whether target is targeted. So it's worse than voyeur. C tier.

Jack of all Trades

gets 1-shot of multiple roles. So it has to be S tier in theory.

Jailkeeper

protects but also roleblocks. It has this whole dilemma of "do I really want to roleblock my target to save my target." So I think this role is strictly worse than doctor or roleblocker. B tier.

Motion Detector

is like inspector but gives positives in both ways. So it's actually worse than inspector. D tier.

Mailman

sends message to player during the night. These kind of roles can either be useless or very strong depends on the player. But the role itself doesn't confirm anything so C tier.

Neapolitan

is technically a role finder but on VT. In normal games there are lot of VTs, so this can successfully confirm targets as town. B tier.

Neighbor/Neighborizer

has PT to talk to. Role strength is dependant on players using them. But role wise it doesn't confirm anything either, so C tier.

Psychologist

is like opposite of detective. It shines at N1 and its power wanes each passing day. I think Psychologist has higher chance to find guilty than detective, but I don't think it belongs in A tier where PT cop is. So B tier.

PT Cop

is... basically a cop. It has false positives like mason and neighbor. But while masons and neighbors are not always in the game, mafia always is. A tier.

Reporter

is checks if someone has acted. I guess it's better than motion detector. C tier.

Role Cop

learns roles. No false positives. Pure and simple. S tier.

Roleblocker

is simple and easy to use. You want someone to not take an action? Use it. It's a strong role as well. A tier.

Role Watcher

is watcher but roles. I rank it as same as watcher as upon targetting the NK target you basically get a confirmed scum in the list. A tier.

Security Guard

is watcher but target gets the result instead. It's slightly worse than watcher but it's also very strong. A tier.

Shield

is bodyguard but has to target a killer instead. It's hard to predict the nightkill. It's even harder to predict the killer. C tier.

Tracker

is one of those informative-but-inconclusive role. So I place it at B tier like its brothers.

Traffic Analyst

is basically a PT cop but false positive on Mailman. Who uses mailman in normal games? A tier.

Universal Backup

basically gives double role. Its tier really depends on the setup. But as a concept, I think it's a B tier since it's a way a faction can recover lost role.

Vanilla Cop

is worse Neapolitan since it gets positive on Mafia Goon too. C tier.

Visionary

is basically security guard but with voyeour. So B tier, a tier below security guard.

Visitor

... visits. That's it. It serves basically no purpose. AND it requires roles like tracker to even confirm things. Treat this as a miller and claim this in your first post so potential tracker doesn't bother to check you. D tier.

Voyeur

is like watcher but with actions. I think action names are weaker than player names so I'm knocking it down a tier and giving it a B tier.

Watcher

gives names of players who visited target. If target is nightkilled watcher basically gets a list that contains scum in it 100%. A tier.

Now for explicitly alignment-specific roles.

All explicitly-town roles except miller get A tier from me solely because having that role makes players confirmed town, and more often than not they can prove it too.

Miller

exists solely to get in cop's way. D tier. Claim this in your first post.

Strongman

bypasses basically all protect and roleblock attempts town throws at them. Easy S tier.

Traiter

is a bad role and you should never use it. I'm putting it in F tier.

EDIT: I forgot about Miller.

[GuyInFreezer]

I thought about giving watcher S tier, but in the end I decided that cop is just much better in terms of conclusiveness of result. Cop doesn’t need to trade a village player to get a guilty. But yeah Watcher is more closer to A+ if I had them in the tier list.

Babysitter I kept it a tier below doctor and vigilante because of the similar reason why I put jailkeeper a tier below roleblocker and doctor. It could be used like doctor or it could be used like vig, but player has to choose. And unlike doctor it can backfire with double town kill. This would be more B+ than B really.

Because of how I think about the potential to backfire, I would’ve put Vigilante and Vengeful in B tier if they weren’t town-only role. Town-only roles has merit of being unable to be scum while being provable after all.

Doctor I could put in S tier yeah.

[GuyInFreezer]

I think it would be more interesting to look at these and like modifiers in a tier list under a design lens

I plan to do modifiers too.
It’s just that it took way too long to write this to do both in one night.