Doctor

Doctor Aliases: Archangel Sorcerer Alignment: Pro-town Role type: Protective Choice: Night

A Doctor is a role that targets a player at Night to protect that player from kills made during that Night. They are not told if their protection was successful.

In a Werewolf game, the Doctor is frequently referred to as the Archangel (blocks mafia kills) or Sorceror (blocks werewolf kills).

Variations

Most moderators do not allow the Doctor to self-target.

In order to prevent Doctors from protecting the same player constantly, some moderators do not allow Doctors to protect the same player on consecutive Nights.

Some moderators cause Doctors' protection to stop all kills that would resolve on the target that Night; most moderators only allow Doctors to protect from a single kill that Night. In other words, if a player is protected by the Doctor and targeted by kills from the Mafia and a Vigilante, the protected player will still die.

While this is highly frowned upon at mafiascum.net, some moderators will tell players that they were saved from death via a form of protection (i.e. Doctors). Some moderators will even announce who was saved from death publicly at the beginning of the next Day.

In games with kills made during the Day, Day-Doctors have been known to exist. However, Doctors who protect at Night may or may not be able to protect against daykills.

In games with poison, it is up to the moderator as to whether Doctors protect against the poison. If not, occasionally specialized Poison Doctors will be introduced.

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): If the patient is NOT saved from death that Night, this doctor kills its patient.

When a Game Moderator uses these roles as sanities, 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.

These "sanities" are very rarely used as such. However, CPR Doctor and Weak Doctor have gone on to become viable roles in their own right, and players are generally told that their full role names.

Use and Power

Doctors exist to hinder the Mafia's killing power. This can be used as a standalone power role dedicated to stopping obvious Townies from dying, or it can be intended to stop power roles from dying after they claim.

In practice, Doctors serve to amplify the power of other power roles. Doctors are notoriously bad at protecting against Mafia kills when there is no obvious target; they are weak on their own. However, if a power role claims, the Doctor has no reason not to protect that power role. This prevents the Mafia from killing the power role, and that role can go on to safely and publicly aid the Town as well as it can. Thus, Doctors make the game much more focused on power roles and Night actions.

It is not unheard of for Mafia to have Doctors of their own in games with Vigilantes or Serial Killers. Their power is about the same in practice as that of standalone Town Doctors.

Follow the Cop

A particularly well-known example of Doctors protecting power roles involves a Cop claiming Day 1 while the Doctor stays hidden. The Town proceeds to No Lynch while the Cop gleans investigation results each Night. The Mafia, assuming it has no power roles, cannot do anything to stop the Cop until the Night after their Night-kill finds the Doctor. This is in practice too late for them; thus, Follow the Cop is a breaking strategy.

Another somewhat common broken combination is that if two Doctors are in the same game, they can protect each other each Night.

These and similar problems are especially dangerous in Open Games, where it is known well in advance whether a Doctor exists and thus whether these breaking strategies can be formed. As a result, a number of countermeasures have arisen.

• The Mafia is given a Roleblocker. They may not be able to find the Doctor immediately, but they can stop the Cop's results.
• The Mafia is given a Role Cop. This helps them find the Doctor faster. It is unclear whether this is as good as giving the Mafia a Roleblocker.
• Following one of the above variations, the Doctor is not allowed to protect the Cop on consecutive Nights.
• The Cop is given the Macho modifier - in fact, this is why the Macho modifier was created.
• Rather than use Doctors, moderators use Jailers instead.

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.