1... 2... Abra... 3... 4... Cadabra... *poof!* And, as you can see, ladies and gentlemen, Captain Farnsworth’s bag of gold has disappeared! Gone! Without a trace! Thank you, and goodnight!
Storyteller cues
First nightDuring Minion Info, point to the Magician and the Demon. During Demon Info, point to the Magician and the Minions.
Jinxes
The Magician wakes with Legion and might register as evil. Legion knows if a Magician is in play, but not which player it is.
If the Magician is alive, the Storyteller chooses which Minion babysits Lil' Monsta.
If the Magician is alive, the Demon doesn't know which neighbor is the Marionette.
When the Spy sees the Grimoire, the Demon and Magician's character tokens are removed.
If the Vizier is in play, the Magician has no ability but is immune to the Vizier's ability.
When the Widow sees the Grimoire, the Demon and Magician's character tokens are removed.
After each execution, the living Magician may publicly guess a living player as the Wraith. If correct, the Demon must choose the Wraith tonight.
How to run it (Storyteller)
How to play
- Core value: your existence alone corrupts the evil team's internal information — the Demon mistrusts their Minions and vice versa from night one, so simply being alive and unexecuted generates confusion without you saying a word.
- Out yourself early only when it breaks a specific deadlock: if the Demon is about to be executed and you need to redirect suspicion, claiming Magician publicly forces evil to question whether their Demon-signal target is really you.
- Wraith-guess timing: you may guess a living player as the Wraith only immediately after an execution, so keep a running mental shortlist of Wraith candidates each day and be ready to name one the moment a vote resolves — hesitating wastes the window.
- Information to share vs hold: revealing that you are the Magician confirms to good players why evil is disorganized, but it also lets the Demon identify and prioritize killing you — consider staying quiet until mid-game when your disruption has already done damage.
- Single most common mistake: assuming the Demon and Minions will remain permanently confused — a Demon who suspects a Magician is in play will start treating all their Minion-signals as potentially fake and adapt, so your disruption has a shelf life; use your information leverage before the evil team self-corrects.
How to bluff as the Magician
- Claim Magician confidently in a game where the Storyteller could plausibly have added it, then offer to 'confirm' your role by noting that evil seems unusually uncoordinated — this is unfalsifiable and makes you sound genuine.
- As evil, you already know who your teammates are, so you can fake the disorientation the ability causes: claim you aren't sure which players are evil because 'the Demon thinks I'm a Minion' — mimic the genuine Magician's uncertainty about evil's internal state.
- Target your bluff for mid-game when a real Magician's disruption would have already matured; claiming it on night one is riskier because good players may test whether evil actually seemed confused from the start.
- The tell that exposes a fake Magician: a real Magician's existence causes the Demon not to know which neighbor is the Marionette and the Storyteller to choose who babysits Lil' Monsta — if those characters are in play and their interactions seem clean, town may deduce no real Magician exists and call your bluff.
Key interactions
If the Vizier is in play the Magician loses their ability entirely, meaning the Demon and Minions receive accurate mutual information rather than the spoofed version — always confirm whether Vizier is on the script before deciding how aggressively to leverage your misdirection.
When the Spy views the Grimoire, both the Demon's and Magician's character tokens are removed from what the Spy sees, so the Spy cannot identify who the real Demon is — this is a significant blind spot for the evil team if the Spy is your own Minion, since they lose the ability to pinpoint the Demon through Grimoire-reading.
Like the Spy, the Widow sees the Grimoire with the Demon and Magician tokens removed, meaning a Widow cannot confirm who the Demon is from the Grimoire alone — if you suspect a Widow is in play, this partially protects the Demon's identity as a side effect of your presence.
Legion knows a Magician is in play but not which player — this means Legion cannot fully trust their night-information about who is and isn't evil, and the Magician may even register as evil to them, making the Magician a genuine liability in Legion games where the evil team needs clean internal knowledge.
While the Magician is alive, the Demon does not learn which of their neighbors is the Marionette, forcing the Demon to operate without that critical piece of team information — protecting the Magician from early death maximizes this sustained pressure on the Demon's coordination.