Alien (role)

Alien Alias: Jailkeeper Alignment: Town Mafia Role type: Protective Manipulative Choice: Night

An Alien can 'abduct' a target each night, making them immune to night actions, but incapable of performing actions themselves.

Normal version

An Alien's night action targets a player, attempting to prevent any night action made by that player, and any night action (other than the Alien's) targeting that player. (Factional kills are night actions, and are blocked the same way that any other night action would be.) The role therefore acts identically to a Combined Roleblocker Rolestopper.

Actions blocked by an Alien normally cannot succeed. However, actions that are specifically capable of piercing blocking effects, such as a Strongman's kill, will still take place.

If an action is blocked by an Alien, this has all the same consequences as if the action were blocked by a Roleblocker, i.e. X-Shot actions still lose a shot, investigative actions cannot (typically) see the blocked action, investigative roles will get no results (and if this leads to them not getting a results PM when they expected one, will get a no result PM telling them this).

Variations

Alien is a variant of Jailkeeper; the difference is that a Jailkeeper protects their target only from kills, not from other actions.

Mafia might potentially benefit from an Alien variant who doesn't stop their own factional kill. Generally speaking, this is most easily implemented using a Personal Alien (who does not block factional kills from any faction).

Use & Balance

An Alien is typically slightly more scumsided than a Jailkeeper (regardless of who it is given to), with the two roles having comparable balance properties; the only difference between the roles is that an Alien blocks non-killing actions aimed at its target in addition to killing actions, and most non-killing actions are beneficial to town. In particular, a Mafia Alien is likely to be somewhat stronger than a Mafia Jailkeeper, because in addition to being usable as a Roleblocker, it can alternatively protect an ally (who has no relevant night actions that night, or is a Strongman) from investigations.

In role madness setups, or Theme setups in which you fear a potential breaking strategy emerging from a massclaim, an anti-town Alien is one of the most flexible ways of interfering with any attempt by townies to coordinate night actions (being better at this than the more commonly used Roleblocker). However, when doing this, you must take care to ensure that your "counter role" doesn't unbalance the setup when not being used to counter things. Either factor the strength of the Alien into the balance of the setup, or else try to identify a weaker manipulative role that could be used to punish a massclaim.

Be aware that, as with most roles that roleblock their target, a Town Alien becomes much stronger when there's only one anti-town player left; every time a factional kill goes through, the Alien's target must have been town. It is often a bad idea to put too many roles with this property into a setup (unless it is White Flag), because a setup where town get much stronger when they're winning tends to have huge swing issues.

Play Advice

An Alien role lets you roleblock and rolestop a player. That leads to something of a dilemma in town hands, as roleblocks and rolestops generally want to be used on different targets. In most circumstances, it is better to use the role for its roleblocking ability (rolestopping as a side effect) than vice versa, but be aware that both options exist, and take into account any potential issues that the "unwanted" side effect might cause (e.g. you usually don't want to use your Alien role to protect a claimed Cop from nightkills, because it will also prevent them gaining results).

If you are Mafia-aligned, the role is rather easier to use; generally speaking, interfering with Town-aligned actions is a good thing even if you didn't mean to, and you can talk to the rest of your faction to make sure you won't accidentally block one of their actions. It is still usually better to use it for its roleblocking ability than its rolestopping ability, unless you have a Strongman (who is a great rolestop target and will be unaffected by the block), but look out for situations where the opposite may be true (e.g. you have a Goon who is likely to be investigated and is not needed to perform the kill).

Sample Role PMs

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

• As a targeted action: all actions used by that player that Night, and all other actions targeted at that player that Night, will be blocked. (edit)

Example (simplest form)

Welcome to game! You are a Town Alien.

You have the following active ability:

• Each Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, all actions used by that player that Night, and all other actions targeted at that player that Night, will be blocked.

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 Alien.

You have the following active ability:

• Once in the game at Night, you may target a player. Assuming no interference with your action, all actions used by that player that Night, and all other actions targeted at that player that Night, will be blocked. 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 name Alien is also used in an unrelated way to describe a groupscum faction which can only kill once. See Alien (faction) for more details on this.