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Why do I do these things to myself
That's right, after two years of prodding Mfan for this purpose, I've finally decided to take the helm and create this tier list myself. With my perspective as a host, I think I'll have even more insight for how these roles are tiered. Overall, I'd say that Awards Killing Game 3 actually has a good balance with its roles, despite what some particular... outliers will lead you to believe. But let's take a deeper look at that, shall we?
Tier lists are ranked within each tier... kind of, but some roles could be easily switched around in the order. Also, these are entirely my subjective opinions, which may vary from even Pitohui's, so keep that in mind. Without further ado, let's get analyzing!
SS Tier
Yep, we had roles so powerful in this game that they elicit this tier
S Tier
A Tier
B Tier
C Tier
D Tier
That's right, after two years of prodding Mfan for this purpose, I've finally decided to take the helm and create this tier list myself. With my perspective as a host, I think I'll have even more insight for how these roles are tiered. Overall, I'd say that Awards Killing Game 3 actually has a good balance with its roles, despite what some particular... outliers will lead you to believe. But let's take a deeper look at that, shall we?
Tier lists are ranked within each tier... kind of, but some roles could be easily switched around in the order. Also, these are entirely my subjective opinions, which may vary from even Pitohui's, so keep that in mind. Without further ado, let's get analyzing!
SS Tier
Yep, we had roles so powerful in this game that they elicit this tier
Where to even begin with this role.
The Ultimate Text Editor is the role that shaped the public impression of AKG3's role pool. Frankly, I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking the rest of this game's roles were an absolute mess if I had seen this one. Basically, if you've played Baba is You, the Ultimate Text Editor follows the rules of the game. By rearranging nouns and adjectives around, and with the ability to draw any word out of any object, they can essentially do anything. If they create WATER IS HOT, all water on the map becomes scalding; if they rearrange to ARMOR IS YOU, every piece of armor on the map is now controlled by the player. I don't think I need an explanation on why this is absolutely absurd. Pair this with the fact that the text isn't a physical thing on the map and instead acts as an invisible role power, and the fact that the Forbidden Action is essentially "don't get killed"... Yeah. What an incredible, disastrously powerful role. In the right hands, this role can essentially become God.
The Ultimate Text Editor is the role that shaped the public impression of AKG3's role pool. Frankly, I wouldn't blame anyone for thinking the rest of this game's roles were an absolute mess if I had seen this one. Basically, if you've played Baba is You, the Ultimate Text Editor follows the rules of the game. By rearranging nouns and adjectives around, and with the ability to draw any word out of any object, they can essentially do anything. If they create WATER IS HOT, all water on the map becomes scalding; if they rearrange to ARMOR IS YOU, every piece of armor on the map is now controlled by the player. I don't think I need an explanation on why this is absolutely absurd. Pair this with the fact that the text isn't a physical thing on the map and instead acts as an invisible role power, and the fact that the Forbidden Action is essentially "don't get killed"... Yeah. What an incredible, disastrously powerful role. In the right hands, this role can essentially become God.
The Ultimate Ghost comes equipped with a number of absurd powers, such as the ability to switch door entrances around on the map and commanding a ritual at an alter to debuff the stats of other players. Easily the most important part of the role, though, came about with a bit too much host leniency. Initially, the Ultimate Ghost could go up and down between floors, moving between the rooms at will without an object in their hand. However, over time the role morphed to where the player could move through any wall, effectively rendering the map's walls nonexistent to the player. While it might seem like a limitation to not be able to bring objects with you, the sheer ability to go wherever you want whenever you want is an unrivaled power.
S Tier
The Ultimate Remnant of Despair has what is arguably the most versatile of the "pick your powers" roles, of which there were several in this game. The player had a link to a document with a set of previous roles from Awards Killing Game 2, and once per night, they could choose one of fourteen roles to inhabit the powers of. Now, thankfully, not every role from the previous game was made available; otherwise, there would've been some real role fuckery. Only roles which had "simpler", one night powers were considered, but this still created a wide breadth of opportunities, ranging from the Ultimate Diver's ability to travel between areas of water to the Ultimate Artist's ability to bring anything to life by painting it. With the Forbidden Action only being "don't say what your role is", this was a lot of power for one player to carry.
The Ultimate Bird's placement is a bit trickier to figure out, but S tier feels appropriate for the sheer potential this role has. The first thing to note is that the Ultimate Bird can actually fly short distances, allowing for the player to reach much higher areas or distant platforms with ease. While this is already cool enough, the second half of this role is what really sells it. The player can submit to the host what bird they'd like to represent that night, and in turn, they receive special abilities or boosts based on the bird. For example, choosing a hooded pitohui bird would make you inflict any players in the area with your toxicity. Of course, if you chose a flightless bird like an ostrich or penguin, you'd lose your ability of flight, but with this role being limited only by the player's imagination of what birds could work, this role is diverse and incredibly fun.
The Ultimate Goo Assistant has the handy capacity to be completely immune to physical attacks, be it stabbing, squashing, beating, or any other form it took take. Anything that would act completely fatally would, at most, render them knocked out and splattered for the rest of the night. To make up for this, they're much weaker to elements like ice or water, but honestly, with how much more circumstantial situations like that are, they're definitely much more likely to survive any given night. Not only that, but they can take off pieces of their body to use as adhesive, meaning they've always got materials to set up traps or climb up walls, no matter when. The Ultimate Goo Assistant serves as a unique and expansive survival role that has enough staying power to make it an S tier.
I flipflopped between making this role bottom S or high A, but I think this is the best place for it. The Ultimate Silhouette has the ability to hit a player with a ball of energy that will make them lethargic for a short time, as well as hide in mirrors and other glass surfaces, giving a lot of variance already. The part that pushes this up to S tier, though, is the dash ability, which can be used at any time and replenishes when you hit the ground. Theoretically with this role, you could perfectly dodge a flurry of swipes or punches without a single hit on you, and you can use the ability to gain height in ways you couldn't otherwise. Be thankful that I didn't give this role the ability to "mirror" other roles like I initially planned.
A Tier
The Ultimate Lifeform starts the game off while carrying a Chaos Emerald, which can be used to fire Chaos Spears from your hand and, more significantly, pause time for a few seconds, thereby allowing you to completely avoid something coming at you. Couple this with the role's ability to teleport to different rooms in the map, and you've got a recipe for a powerful role, one that is only neutered by the Chaos Emerald randomly teleporting to a different room each time you teleport. The player's still told where the Chaos Emerald is on the map, but it can be risky since they'd have to travel there to retrieve it and hope it doesn't get damaged in the meantime. Without the random placement of the Emerald, the Ultimate Lifeform would definitely be S tier.
The Ultimate Masquerader receives access to three masks at the beginning of the game, all of which altering the player's stats and attributes. Already this is a boon to the role, but what makes it far cooler is the ability to take the mask of a player they murder, allowing them to completely transform into the person for the night, stats, abilities, and all. This murder requirement even applies to murders where the Ultimate Masquerader is an accomplice, so with the right team-up, a different player's identity could be all theirs.
The Ultimate Duplicator, as the name suggests, has the ability to duplicate any portable and unliving object, creating a perfect clone that can be utilized however wish. While the duplicates turn into dust at the beginning of the following night, there is no limit to how many duplicates you could make, which leads to unfathomable possibilities when paired with something like bombs or bullets. The FA restricting water access keeps this role much more at bay, but I'd argue it's still enough to keep this in A rank.
The Ultimate Thief begins the game with several tools under their belt, including an Escape Rope that can whip the player around the map in a flash, a Silph Scope for watching the other side of the map, and a Pokeflute that can knock any players off their game or force them awake. The role doesn't stop there, though, because if the player gets away with a murder, they become upgraded to the Ultimate Business Executive, sporting all of the same abilities from before alongside two new ones. They gain access to the Despair Ball, which can transport any object in the game regardless of size, and the Game Corner, which they can use to collect coins from other players. The Escape Rope functionally is already enough to create a fast role that flies around unharmed, but with everything else layered on top, the Ultimate Thief has massive potential.
The Ultimate Memory Manipulation Specialist, beyond just being a mouthful of a title, has a powerful secret. Once during the night, they can send out a blast of light from their hands that will supplant a false memory in the nearby players, effectively altering their accounts of the night. Naturally, this false memory can be proven to be contradictory to the physical evidence in the space, but it's a perfect way to cause havoc and confusion. This role also has access to blinding lights at any other time and a one-time use Trick Room, which will completely swap the speed stats around for every player. The FA for this role is that whoever receives the false memory cannot see themselves in the memory, which serves as a uniquely limiting FA without squandering any potential that the rest of the role has.
The Ultimate Party Crasher gets access to five different Orbs, which they can pick one of to use each night. As far as "pick a power" roles go, this one is fairly contained, as you can only choose one per night, and you cannot choose the same orb back-to-back. Still, the orbs range from completely knocking out a player who walks into a room, to turning invisible for a short amount of time, to magically warping a player from one room to another on the map. Powerful stuff to play with.
The Ultimate Host receives access to information both during the Day and Night. During the Day, they get to learn about the role powers or stat spread of a player, and during the Night, they get to see the finest details of any one room, revealing any secrets it might hold. While information is powerful, what else is powerful is the ability to get items from executions via the item shop, making it so they have access to all sorts of dangerous equipment and objects. Both of these aspects make for an A rank role, and the player also gets to add a message to the end of every execution! Fun!
You'd think we'd learn our lesson about paint in Killing Games by now. The Ultimate Graffiti Artist can use their magic paintbrush to cover an entire room in sickly, gloppy paint, which will hold up players and cause their energy to deplete. More importantly, the paintbrush can be used to create M Portals anywhere on the map, and each one can spit you out at any other one. Once you've got three or four portals prepared, you've got an entire network of passageways to take, all across the map, and anybody else can take them out. The one thing keeping this power in check is that the portals are easily washed away with water, meaning that your access points aren't permanent.
I must admit that I'm a bit biased towards this role, because I consider it my favorite in the entire game. The Ultimate Monster Salesman has the unique ability to craft monsters based on the Kirby series, all by combining item shop objects together. Ranging from a walking Waddle Dee to a freezing Ice Dragon to an explosive Bomber, the list of potential monsters expands as the game continues... or at least, it would've, had YFJ not died too early to gain anymore recipes. By the end of the game, this role would've been able to craft creatures as powerful as Nightmare or Kracko. The two things holding this role back are that monsters have to be traded out, rather than being used by the Ultimate Monster Salesman directly, and their Forbidden Action is reaching zero coins in their inventory. Still, the potential their example monster list had was immense, and could've created for an even more chaotic game.
The Ultimate Plant rules the dominion of the Piranha Plant, and it shows. Not only can they plant seeds that will grow into Piranha Plants by the following night, they also get to choose between one of four types of plants to plant, and they can make Piranha Plants burrow into the ground before popping back up in another room. The Piranha Plants will follow the Ultimate Plant's orders, which made for the wackiest kill of AKG3 in the form of the Piranha Plant Chain. This role ended up becoming more buffed than initially intended, due to some oversights with how the plants were moving, but it still is weakened by the obviousness of the power, since you have to physically plant the seeds or talk to the Piranha Plants, and Piranha Plants can only do so much. They're just Piranha Plants, after all. You also have to make certain not to accidentally or intentionally hurt the other Piranha Plants in any way.
Oh, and the role can spit out a small fireball. I always forget about that part.
Oh, and the role can spit out a small fireball. I always forget about that part.
The Ultimate Survivor wears King Boo's crown on their head, which allows them to call forward or channel ghosts for their own purposes. By inspiriting a Greenie, a Slammer, or a Sneaker into your body, you could become proficient with any object in your hands, become an offensive beast with plenty of muscle, or move through a certain space entirely undetected. Beyond that, you could summon forth a Polterpup, who would run around the map and do any tasks you assigned to the best of its ability. There's plenty of reason for this role to be A tier, but honestly, just being able to summon your own pet Polterpup is enough to place it here.
B Tier
The Ultimate Coalition Builder has weight in how other players can play the game. They can bar one player from voting in the trial, as well as bar another player from visiting any of the shops the following night. Along with that, they can put a notice on a door that will make it so nobody can enter the room or space behind it, unless they have a social stat of 5. While all of these abilities disrupt the flow of the game, especially nixing a vote, it still does not have as much impact on the game as several other roles do.
The Ultimate Hero can choose an object to christen as their shield, immediately fortifying it and making it stronger. The shield can theoretically be any object in your hands, so long as you determine that it is your shield. You can only have one shield at a time, so there's no building up a reserve, and your FA is ever parting with your shield, creating some tricky situations. A strong defensive role, but still weak in regards to this game. The Ultimate Hero can also hit other players with an attack that... makes them more susceptible to kill attempts for the rest of the night? Huh. I mean, sure.
The Ultimate Wolf has an acute awareness of every one of their senses, which is actually quite a bit more helpful than you may expect. I'd argue that Ultimate Wolf is the most "vanilla" role in the game, with the powers kind of being "normal guy + awareness", but there's still a lot to be said about being able to hear actions from rooms over, being able to see in the dark, and being able to smell poison in food before you consume it. It got Mfan up to the final case of the game, so something must've been beneficial about it.
The Ultimate Sky Guardian, in their Angry Sun form, is constantly warm and impervious to fire or lava. And that's pretty much it, unless they trigger their transformation into The Moon, which happens for one night only. The Moon is a much radically different role, making them invulnerable to a first kill attempt, allowing them to turn items into stat-boosting Moon Cookies, being unimpacted by cold, and causing all sorts of weirdness on the map, like npc's drifting around and water turning into poison. A very bizarre role, the Ultimate Sky Guardian has a lot of application for one night before doing little else for the rest of the time. Add that to the FA being that you "can't be smothered", and yeah, it's a B tier.
The Ultimate Vocal Mimic has the potential to produce any other sound with their mouths throughout the night, which has a lot more potential than I first gave it credit for. Emulating a gunshot or a loud crash could entirely through off somebody's perception of the nightly timeline, while you could also replicate the voice of another player to forge evidence on recordings. Additionally, the Ultimate Vocal Mimic can let loose a howl that will echo around the map, serving as an effective timelining tool. Nothing too spectacular, but with some good planning and creative gameplay, could do a lot.
The Ultimate Thunder God comes equipped with Truewaker, a pair of pliers that have mighty properties. Anyone who is worthy of wielding Truewaker can hold out their hand, and the weapon will smash through any objects or people in its path to reach them. They can also drop Truewaker as a massive weight, despite how light it is in their hands, and it can be used to cause a shockwave that will knock other players off their feet. But see, here's the thing: it isn't just the role who is worthy of Truewaker, it's also anybody who succeeds with getting away with a murder attempt. Granted, other players might not know that they have this ability or try to summon Truewaker to them, but in turn, the Ultimate Thunder God's FA is killing anybody who is worthy of Truewaker with Truewaker itself, so... That part's a mess to deal with.
The Ultimate Fairy has the ability to perform for any players passing them, stopping them in their tracks to watch. They can also burst down a hallway with immense speed by sweeping up wind under their feet, and they can stop any player from attempting on another player of their choice. The maneuverability of this role is what places it in B rank, as well as the way it interferes with the actions of other players. Stopping a player from attempting would be a strong power, but with the way that it only stops the person from attacking another specific player, it pretty much comes down to luck.
The Ultimate Tsundere starts off the game by choosing a love interest, and interacting with that player at any point will raise your stats up by one. Boosts layer, which means that if you stay around for love interest for just two nights, all of your stats will be up to a maximum 5. This is pretty cool, but the downside is what happens when your love interest dies. Your role becomes the Ultimate Yandere, and it requires you to kill the person who killed your love interest in three nights. Every night that passes without catching them or killing them, the weaker you get, until you're stumbling around with just 1's across the board. You also have to be responsible in some way for the culprit's death, either through your deliberate actions or your vote, so if you aren't on the train for their death, it's game over. Once the murderer is killed, you just stay at all 4's without any role powers. So yeah, an interesting dynamic for a role, but its potential downside is too great in a game when you can expect your love interest to die at some point.
The Ultimate Puzzeele comes with the ability to light up their body, illuminating dark spaces fully and blinding other players. They also get to cause a night-long blackout in a room of their choice, and produce a force field that will keep other players away. The blackout is a particularly notable aspect of this role, but otherwise, it's fairly basic with its defense capabilities, and blinding other players with your lights is an idea already tied to a different, better role with Beheeyem.
C Tier
The Ultimate Shop Scout is a role that has a little bit of everything, without an explicit strength in mind. They can cook meals to boost the stats of anybody who eats them (assuming the map they're on has a kitchen); they can store items on the map in Brick Blocks, though it's hard to break them to get the objects out; and they can use the Game Boy Horror SP as a camera or a walkie-talkie, which has circumstantial uses. The stat boosts can be helpful, but the rest of the role is rather haphazardly thrown together with its abilities.
The Ultimate Fortune Teller can take the clothes of a player and use it to receive a mystical hint, one that will point towards that player's role abilities and/or stats. This role isn't a bad concept in any measure, but what weakens it is the additional steps that need to be taken to make the readings happen. Not only are you required to take clothes from the player to make it happen, you also have to decipher the meaning yourself. Given that there's already another role in this game that does the same thing but better and immediately, the Ultimate Fortune Teller feels redundant and weak.
The Ultimate Gambler must always make a gamble when submitting their night actions. Each phase, they can send in two sets of actions, and depending on how their luck pans out, they will end up using one set or the other. Rarely, though, it's possible that this "coin" won't land on heads or tails, and instead land on its side. When this happens, your actions will actually split off in the middle, leading you from one set randomly into another. The other power this role has is gambling on who the killer is, which you can wager your stats on. If you're correct, you will gain the number you wagered, and if you're wrong, you lose it. Your stats will permanently rest at 5 if you get that high, or 1 if you get that low. Ultimately, the ability to max out your stats permanently at 5 is the only thing keeping this role from D tier. Otherwise, you've got a number of abilities that don't add very much benefit to the player, and instead add randomness for the sake of randomness.
D Tier
And here's the other big headliner.
Alright, let's get the actual role out of the way. The Ultimate Building Project Manager passively notices minor details in rooms, can ask the host for more details about a room, and can immediately repair damage to the room or building, restoring entirely destroyed areas. We all know what you're here, though. That good ol' Forbidden Action that says you can't use the pronoun "I" at any point in time during the game. Not just during your testimony, mind you, but in Discord conversations too. Saying "I" is what did MrConcreteDonkey in, despite having one of the best roleplays in the game. Was this Forbidden Action worth it in the slightest? Not at all. The role didn't nearly come with enough power to justify a FA so constrictive. At one time, Baba and Realah T. were combined as one role, The Narrator, who could affect stuff in a Baba-y way, but was restricted by such an immense FA. The two split during planning, though, and while one soared, the other plummeted.
I'm so sorry, Realah T., and I'm so sorry, Ernest Clineborg. You deserved better.
Alright, let's get the actual role out of the way. The Ultimate Building Project Manager passively notices minor details in rooms, can ask the host for more details about a room, and can immediately repair damage to the room or building, restoring entirely destroyed areas. We all know what you're here, though. That good ol' Forbidden Action that says you can't use the pronoun "I" at any point in time during the game. Not just during your testimony, mind you, but in Discord conversations too. Saying "I" is what did MrConcreteDonkey in, despite having one of the best roleplays in the game. Was this Forbidden Action worth it in the slightest? Not at all. The role didn't nearly come with enough power to justify a FA so constrictive. At one time, Baba and Realah T. were combined as one role, The Narrator, who could affect stuff in a Baba-y way, but was restricted by such an immense FA. The two split during planning, though, and while one soared, the other plummeted.
I'm so sorry, Realah T., and I'm so sorry, Ernest Clineborg. You deserved better.
