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Doctor
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A very powerful ally to the Town. Each night, the Doctor contacts the Game Moderator, choosing one player to protect during the night from a night kill. When used in combination with a Cop, the Town has a sharply increased chance at catching Scum.
Generally, the Doctor can not heal/protect himself. Also, if the player is targeted by more than one Mafia family (or a family and Serial Killer), that player still usually dies.
In a Werewolf game, the Doctor is frequently referred to as the Archangel (blocks mafia kills) or Sorceror (blocks werewolf kills).
Sanities
- see also: Faith Healer
There are five variations of the Doctor role, typically called sanities analogously to the Cop sanities.
- Insane Doctor: This doctor has 50% chance of killing his patient instead of protecting him.
- Paranoid Doctor: This doctor not only protects his patient but he also roleblocks him. See also: Jailkeeper.
- Naïve Doctor (a.k.a. Quack): This doctor's protection is ineffective.
- Weak Doctor: This doctor dies if he protects an anti-town player.
- CPR Doctor (also a Quack variant): This doctor kills his patient if he is not attacked.
When a Game Moderator uses these roles, the player receiving the role is usually only told his/her role is Doctor. Sometimes sanity is revealed upon death, but frequently not, leading to ambiguity if a Doctor is killed early in the game.
Setup Design
The doctor, as with other protective roles, interferes with the mafia's ability to kill whoever they want. This has two effects:
First, it discourages killing of better or more experienced players simply because they are better or more experienced. In general, this helps town because it can keep the most helpful townies alive longer than they otherwise would be, and, by extension, the mafia have to make less-than-optimal night-kills.
Second, the existence of a doctor allows for another power role to claim and still be protected from the night-kill.
The first scenario is usually considered a plus; it's no fun for a good player to constantly die the first Night. For this reason, the doctor role is relatively common.
The second scenario is usually considered less than ideal. At the very basic level, if the claimed power role is a Cop, the game can devolve into Follow the Cop. It is not advisable to have a setup where the mafia's ability to win is reliant on finding and killing the doctor.
A very common workaround for the second scenario is to give the mafia a Roleblocker -- in this case, a doctor could protect a claimed power role, but the mafia can neutralize that power role without having to find and kill the doctor.
Another point to watch out for is having too many protective roles; two doctors, for instance, could start protecting each other and be unkillable by the mafia.
In games that feature multiple scumteams, or that feature the Vigilante or Serial Killer, you may have mafia doctors.