A Vigilante (Vigi for short) is a role who may PM the Host with the name of a player during the Night Phase. That player will then be killed, unless any protective or manipulative roles get in the way. They are almost always Human-aligned.

Variations

Vigilantes are a frequent target for the X-Shot modifier.

Vigilantes may also be Compulsive, meaning they must make a kill every Night. This is often done to force a predictable death rate so that a game can be easily balanced.

There is no consensus on whether a Vigilante's kills should be distinguishable from those of the Wolves (or that of any other killing parties). Some make their kills indistinguishable from any other kill, while others make them distinct. See Kill Flavor for more details.

A Wolf Assassin is a variant that is aligned with the Wolves, but does not know them (and sometimes may not count as a wolf). In this way it is similar in function to a Traitor, though obviously much more powerful.

Utility and Balancing

In all variations, Vigilantes increase the death count (and thus the speed) of the game.

While it was once believed that a Vigilante was an incredibly powerful asset to the Human team, in practice it came to bear that Vigilantes vary wildly in skill and effectiveness. A Vigi that only kills Townies is a giant detriment to Town and gives the Wolves an express pass to victory; on the other hand, a Vigi that only kills Wolves can single-handedly win the game for Town, even without any "correct" lynches. However, until the role is assigned to someone and they start forming reads, it is impossible to predict where in between those two extremes a Vigilante will perform – making this one of the most unpredictable roles in terms of its net effect on the game.

At present, the Vigilante is considered a moderately strong Human role for the simple fact that it adds a securely Town-directed kill to the game that has a chance of hitting a Wolf (contrast the Lynch, which is necessarily open to manipulation by the Wolves; and the Wolf kill itself, which normally has no chance at all of hitting a Wolf.) A Vigilante can have a chilling effect on Wolf play, dissuading them from making risky moves like bold fakeclaims, sneaky insta-lynch votes, and wolf rushes, because a Vigilante paying any bit of attention will likely see these and kill them for it.

The Vigilante is usually a very confirmable role – not many roles kill people aside from the Wolves, so after an unexpected extra player dies a Vigilante can claim the kill, and is generally considered likely Human from that point on. However, in games such as Mystery Games where the presence of a Vigilante is not known for certain, and/or there may be other killing roles like Serial Killers running around, there can be considerable doubt about a Vigilante's claim, perhaps even enough to get the claimer lynched depending on the circumstances.

In games with the potential for forming an Alliance that is solid and large in number, the Vigilante greatly increases in power – possibly to the point of being broken if the Wolves have no way to counter it – as it will greatly speed up the process of elimination.

As a closing note, remember that LLF on the whole tends to be trigger-happy; when given the choice between killing someone and doing almost anything else, most players will choose to kill someone. Balance your games accordingly.

Play Advice

There is no general consensus on when or how often a Vigilante should kill.

One school of thought is that kills narrow down the pool of suspects, so any player that is not less likely to be a wolf than random should be fair game for being shot. This is often predicated on a psychological impact the role makes on the game: the idea that a locked-and-loaded vigi strikes fear into Wolven hearts, and encourages players to speak up and be active, lest they be gunned down. Those who subscribe to this school of thought often favor killing on every Night, including Night 1, when there is minimal information about any player. In games with strong Alliance potential and/or lots of investigative power, this philosophy tends to win out, as the possibility for a reckless vigi to wreck the game is limited.

The opposing view is that Vigilante kills unfairly take away majority-rules lynches from the Town, placing too much power in one player's fallible hands. Of course, simple math dictates that since there are much more townies than wolves, a Vigilante is more likely to hit town. This school of thought advocates that the Vigilante should act to provide a "second lynch", only shooting players who are very likely to be a Wolf (or even whoever the Town collectively dictates should be shot), and not shooting otherwise. Often when there is no solid Alliance potential, or little to no concrete role information available in the game, this is the philosophy that resonates the most, as the chances of killing a Wolf are often not much better than random, and error on the part of the Vigi is more costly.

These of course are not the only ways to think about Vigi play, and things tend to change with in-game circumstances anyway. It all boils down to the fact that since the best play as a Vigilante is to kill Bad Guys, the Vigilante is required to find Bad Guys – which there is no easy, universal way to do. Given that as Vigilante you often have the power to make or break entire games depending on who you target, your best bet is to make decisions that won't cause you to be hated by everyone else in the game. This is critical in games where your role is not confirmable, as boneheaded kills may get you lynched on suspicion of being a fakeclaiming SK or Wolf.

Be sure to adapt your play to the Wolf-hunting tools there are available in the game. If in doubt, here are a couple of general tips:

• Shoot lurkers, since most people want them gone anyway. In fact, it helps the town in a subtle but great way if they don't have to worry about getting proverbial blood from a stone trying to sort out inactive players. If you deal with them at night, during the day the town can actually focus on the people who are actively wolfing it up, and the wolves have been robbed of low-effort mislynches (if said inactive players weren't wolves already).
• If you have people who you strongly read as Human and/or agree with, but the rest of the town doesn't seem to be listening to them, another good strategy is to kill the people they suspect.
• If there's a conflict in the game that is highly disruptive and not doing anything useful – those raging tunnelfests cluttering up countless pages and chatlogs with accusations, quote-wars, and vitriol – it's a good idea to break it up by killing the most suspicious party. Wolves love go-nowhere fights because it usually keeps the attention off them, and crowds out productive discussion. Deny them that advantage.