Activated

Some roles and role modifiers are passive, meaning that the player with the role has no control over when or how to use it; it triggers automatically. A role or role modifier that is normally passive can be made into an Activated role; this gives the player a night choice as to whether they wish to use their passive effect or not. If the player chooses not to use it, it will be as though the role did not exist for that night. As such, an Activated role can be seen as an active version of a normally passive role.

Activated roles are very commonly X-Shot, especially if they would normally be purely beneficial to their owners. In this circumstance, activating the role uses a shot whether or not the role actually accomplishes anything. For example, a 1-shot Bulletproof player normally survives the first attempt to kill them; barring things like Strongman, a second attempt to kill the player can only be successful after a first attempt has failed. A 1-shot Activated Bulletproof player, on the other hand, can only choose one night on which to be immune to kills; they have no protection before then, and they have no protection after then even if nobody tried to kill them that night.

Commonly seen Activated combinations include:

• Activated Innocent Child
• Activated Bulletproof (nearly always X-Shot)
• Activated Bulletproof Ascetic (a role known as Commuter; this is also nearly always X-Shot)
• Activated Paranoid Gun Owner

Play Advice

It is generally best to keep other players in the dark as to which nights you activate your role on; if you're public about activating a Paranoid Gun Owner or Bulletproof shot, then your opponents are unlikely to target you (and if they know or suspect that you're out of shots, will be more likely to target you once the shields are down). In general, your role is more powerful if you can maintain the threat of potentially activating it every night (even if it's turned off on most of those nights). Along similar lines, an activated Innocent Child role should typically be kept hidden for as long as possible (i.e. just before you get lynched), as once your role is known you'll become a major target.