Role Cop

Role Cop Alias: Scout Alignment: Town Role type: Informative Choice: Night

Role Cop Alias: Stalker Alignment: Mafia Role type: Informative Choice: Night

A Role Cop is an investigative role that receives the role name of its target. In Normal games, this is "Cop", "Doctor", "Roleblocker, and so forth. There is no indication of the target's alignment; if a Mafia Goon or Vanilla Townie is investigated, they return "Vanilla".

In themed games, the Role Cop has been known to return the target's flavor name (e.g. Pikachu), the target's role name (e.g. 1-shot Thundershocker), or both.

Role Cops have been seen aligned with Town and Scum, and is actually a somewhat popular Mafia role in games with many power roles.

Variations

In some role madness games or in games with multiple scum groups, the condition that Role Cop does not learn its target's alignment is not necessarily applied. Role Cops have been known to receive the entire role name of their target with their alignment, or even the entire Role PM of its target (with names and chat topic links deleted).

A Flavor Cop is usually a weaker version of a Role Cop, giving hints to someone's role without explicitly naming it.

A Vanilla Cop only gives results in the form of "vanilla"/"not vanilla".

Any role that gives binary answers based on someone's role (such as Gunsmith) is probably a derivation of Cop instead of Role Cop.

Use & Balance

In Normal games, Role Cops are about on par with Trackers in terms of its power - Role Cop does not learn who its target targeted, but Tracker doesn't know what kind of action the target used. In Theme games, Role Cop can be a somewhat unreliable Cop (or perhaps Flavor Cop) depending on how likely it is that the result they got would be attached to one faction or another. Either way, Role Cop is obviously good for shutting down fakeclaims if it lives long enough.

In scum hands, Role Cop is useful for hunting power roles to be killed on future Nights. Its drawback is that it takes an extra Night for the scum to kill someone the Role Cop finds is a power role.

Sample Role PMs

The standardized Role PM for "Role Cop" describes the action as follows:

• As a targeted action: you will learn that player's role (but not their alignment). (edit)

Example (simplest form)

Welcome to game! You are a Town Role Cop.

You have the following active ability:

• Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn that player's role (but not their alignment).

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.

Example (with modifiers)

Welcome to game! You are a Town 1-shot Loud Role Cop.

You have the following active ability:

• Once in the game at Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn that player's role (but not their alignment). Your target will learn that you targeted them (but not what action you targeted them with).

You win if all threats to the town are eliminated and at least one town-aligned player is alive.

Confirm by replying to this PM with a summary of your role.