Town of Salem is a murder mystery game set during the era of the Salem Witch Trials but in an alternate universe. Instead of accusing witches, all sorts of types of people can be accused in the alternate town of Salem, Massachusetts. Inspired by the party games Werewolf and Mafia, there are many roles a player can be randomly selected to play during the game that fall under different alignments: Town, Neutral, and Mafia. In fact, there are a total of 33 roles (49 with the Coven expansion) ranging from innocents, mafia members, serial killer, spy, mayor, werewolf, and more.
Obviously, some roles are better than others, and some roles are just awful. Let’s explore what the best and worst roles are that the player may be handed in Town of Salem.
10 10. BEST: Serial Killer
Aside from being one of the best roles in Town of Salem, the Serial Killer is also one of the most fun roles to play. The main goal of this role is to kill anyone and everyone that opposes you, and even if the player gets role blocked, the Serial Killer just kills whoever role blocked them instead!
Since all of the sneaky fun tends to happen during the night phases of the game, it is a definite bonus that this role cannot be killed at night. While this may not be even close to the hardest role to play, most agree it is a pretty fun one.
9 9. WORST: Disguiser
Often considered a relatively boring or useless role within the Mafia, the Disguiser picks a target to disguise itself as and will appear as that role if questioned by the Investigator. As far as anyone else in the town can tell, the Disguiser is really the role that they have targeted.
If the player doesn’t have a Forger to forge documents (mostly wills), it can be pretty hard to get away with being the Disguiser, especially if someone tries to rat the player out as being part of the Mafia.
8 8. BEST: Jailor
The mightest of roles might be that of the Jailor. This role can both protect and kill others, depending on how one chooses to play it. Whenever someone is locked away for the night, they are safe from all attacks, unless the Jailor decides to execute them. While the Jailor has someone locked away, the prisoner also cannot perform their night abilities.
The Jailor also has the ability to anonymously interview prisoners making it able to find out what role the prisoner has. This role can also role block others. Overall, the Jailor is fun to play and incredibly powerful.
7 7. WORST: Vigilante
As a seeker of justice, the Vigilante is out to take matters into their own hands. If the player feels another player has done wrong, they can go out and shoot them during the night. However, this comes with a couple of off-putting caveats.
As a role whose sole goal is to kill every evildoer and criminal of the town, it’s not really viable that the Vigilante can only shoot their gun three times. With that sense of justice comes another negative attribute, if the role shoots another Town member, even if it is a bad player, the Vigilante will end their own life over the guilt.
6 6. BEST: Jester
The Jester is the ultimate troll, making it a fun role to play. The main goal of the Jester is to get the entire town to turn against him or her and to be lynched by any means necessary.
While this seems counterintuitive, it sets the player up to have a lot of fun with the role. The main aspects that players tend to enjoy as the Jester is setting up others in the town and causing chaos in general. When it comes to the demise of this role, it comes with a twist. If the player is lynched, it gets to choose a player who voted guilty or abstained from voting the following night to kill from beyond the grave.
5 5. WORST: Framer
A Mafia role that focuses on deception instead of killing, the Framer does just what its’ name suggests: frames other players. While this role can choose a target to frame each night, there isn’t a whole lot that this role can do.
It can talk to other Mafia members at night, which is cool, but if there are no more Mafia roles left that can kill, the player becomes the Mafioso. It’s not that the Framer is a really bad role, it’s more so that is it kind of boring and at times seems a bit useless.
4 4. BEST: Witch
There are those who say the Witch is incredibly overpowered. They may be right, and that makes it one of the best roles to play if one can get the hang of it. This role is all about control. The Witch can control one player each night, though this control is limited to targetable actions such as killing and the player is aware they are being controlled during that phase.
While that may seem limiting the Witch can cause the player under its’ control to target themselves, which is pretty wicked in itself.
3 3. WORST: Transporter
The Transporter is a support role that transports two players a night; as in it swaps the players. While this role has the potential to actually save the day, it can be really hard to predict what other players are going to do and can easily go very very wrong (i.e. trying to save the Mayor by swapping it with a member of the Mafia that the Serial Killer has targeted).
The player can even transport themselves, but obviously, that too can end up going wrong. The Transporter is a role with potential but can be really hard to pull off correctly, making it one of the worst roles.
2 2. BEST: Blackmailer
Some may disagree with this choice, but there is a reason for the inclusion of this role. The blackmailer is essentially a fun, troll role. They are a support role for the mob, and their goal is to silence anyone trying to interfere with the dirty deeds done by the mafia. The blackmailer can target one person per night, and that person cannot talk during the next day at all. An example of how this can be used is if the Investigator or Spy know who members of the mafia are, blackmail them at night so they cannot rat anyone out during the next day.
If you want to be a troll, however, you could also target the same person each night to silence them for the duration of the game, effectively driving them crazy. Overall, the blackmailer has potential and can be fun to play.
1 1. WORST: Medium
A support role that is often both boring and seemingly below average, the Medium can talk to the dead while alive. Sometimes the player gets lucky and is provided with useful information from other players that have already met their demise, but oftentimes, they aren’t so lucky.
If the Medium dies, they become the one speaking to the living, but there is a catch. This ability to communicate with the living can only be used once during the entirety of the game. As a result, the Medium tends to not do a whole lot throughout the game and can be boring to play.