Bunyip

Bunyip Alias: none Alignment: Town Role type: Investigative Protective Choice: Night

A Bunyip targets a player each Night; it protects vanilla players from kills, and allows the Bunyip to learn whether or not their target was vanilla.

Standard version

Each Night (or with timing determined by a Modifier), a Bunyip chooses a player to protect. If that player is a vanilla of their faction, they will be protected from kills that Night. (The protection can stop any number of normal kills, but will fail to stop kills that specifically state they piece kill protection, such as that of a Strongman.)

For common factions, a player is considered to be a vanilla of their faction if they are a Vanilla Townie, a Mafia Goon, or a Serial Killer with no abilities beyond their nightkill (e.g. if the Serial Killer is bulletproof or investigation-immune, they do not count as vanilla). Rarer factions also typically have vanilla members.

Additionally, the Bunyip is informed as to whether or not their target was a vanilla of their faction (and therefore protected), gaining results in the form "vanilla", "not vanilla", or no result (the "no result" result appears if and only if the Bunyip is blocked or otherwise unable to complete their action, and is a distinct result from "not vanilla").

Variations

A Bunyip is almost equivalent to a Combined Vanilla Cop Simple Doctor; the only difference that it protects from any number of kills, not just one.

A variation of a Bunyip that protected only Vanilla Townies, and returned a "Vanilla Townie" versus "Not Vanilla Townie" result, would be reasonable (and more powerful, because it can confirm some players as town).

Outside town hands, a Bunyip is effectively equivalent to a Vanilla Cop or Neapolitan, and would likely not be used in such contexts due to the added complexity.

Use & Balance

One common issue with including a Doctor in a setup is that it can be used to protect power roles, creating breaking strategies like Follow the Cop; these strategies are often broken up using role modifiers, but this has the issue that modified Doctors tend to be fairly weak. A Bunyip can therefore be seen as an alternative to a Doctor that removes most broken combinations, but gaining some minor investigative ability to compensate; in particular, if the Bunyip selects a target they can't protect, they will typically be informed of that in time to change targets.

Play Advice

Simple Doctor is normally a much stronger role than Vanilla Cop, so you should generally aim to use the role for its protective ability, aiming to target the player who you will be targeted by the factional kill (you will gain some information about them, as a bonus, but it isn't the main power of the role). However, you should of course avoid known or claimed power roles – if they're town you won't gain any new information, and if they're scum then protecting them is unlikely to be useful. In theory, you could use the investigative side of the role to catch a Mafia Goon who is fakeclaiming a power role, but this is probably too unlikely to pull off (especially as your target may turn out to be a Mafia-aligned power role and thus show up as "not vanilla"), so sticking to targeting claimed vanillas is probably best.

As scum, you are unlikely to actually be a Bunyip, but it may make for a good fakeclaim (especially if you are actually a Rolecop or similar role investigative, and thus can make sure you can correctly call players as vanilla versus not vanilla). Note that you will be unable to make "obvious" kills on Vanilla Townies for the rest of the game (lest players ask why you didn't protect them), but unlike a Doctor claim, this is unlikely to lose you the game (you will still be able to shoot at power roles, and may be able to get away with claiming that you didn't protect a given player because you thought they were a power role).

Sample Role PMs

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

• As a targeted action: you will learn whether or not that player is a vanilla of their faction; if they are vanilla, you will also protect them from kills that Night. (edit)

Example (simplest form)

Welcome to game! You are a Town Bunyip.

You have the following active ability:

• Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, you will learn whether or not that player is a vanilla of their faction; if they are vanilla, you will also protect them from kills that Night.

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 Bunyip.

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 whether or not that player is a vanilla of their faction; if they are vanilla, you will also protect them from kills that Night. 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.

See also

The Bunyip is associated with the BooneyToonz series of games, which use it much as though it were a Normal role.