Let's Beef Up Bodyguard!

[callforjudgement]

Bodyguard as it exists today is a role that most dread getting. It's all lose and no win for the player.

Incorrect. In most setups, Bodyguard is more powerful than Doctor.

Protecting a player with a Doctor ability allows you to mildly confirm them, and they were probably pretty likely town anyway (otherwise the scum probably wouldn't kill them, and even if they did, you probably wouldn't predict the kill). Unless the protected player has a power role, or you manage to protect twice (gaining a mislynch), this has effectively zero use for town.

Successfully using a Bodyguard ability allows you to fully confirm

yourself

, because you flip, and is almost as effective as saving a town power role as a Doctor is (with the only real drawback being that they can't do it twice). Also, because the number of kills doesn't change, your flip doesn't change the number of mislynches town has. This is much more of a gain than the equivalent Doctor save would be (except in setups where blocking two kills is likely).

When balancing setups, I balance Bodyguard like a fraction of an Innocent Child (depending on how likely it is to hit). Meanwhile, the value of Doctor in of itself is based only on the chance that two kills are stopped and town gains a mislynch. (In both cases, other power roles can become more valuable due to the inclusion of protective roles in the setup; something like an unlimited Cop is much stronger if the setup also has a Doctor, but that's one of the main cases in which a Doctor is better than a Bodyguard.)

[callforjudgement]

Tell me cfj, where is the gain for a bodyguard to protect a suspected PR that winds up flipping vanilla?

The bodyguard ends up confirmed as town, and town don't lose anything in the process. Note that if the bodyguard protects someone, they don't end up flipping

at all

! Additionally, this increases the chance that the scum will try to kill the suspected PR again the following night (they see their kill didn't work, they see a dead bodyguard, it's not going to take them much effort to work out what happened and thus they know the kill won't be stopped again). Congratulations, the scum spent two nights killing a VT.

Or worse yet, scum crossfire?

In that case the protection is bad for the town, but a Doctor protection on the same target could well have been even worse (saving scum and denying the town information at the same time). However, in multiball (which is rare), odd/even considerations are less important than in a two-faction game because stray kills are more likely. (I should note, however, that 1:1:1 is often considered a town win – at least, there's no known strategy for scum that even guarantees a draw – whereas 2:1:1 is a three-faction draw when played optimally. So parity considerations still exist, but in a rather different form.)

Bodyguard is a trash PR because the player is sacrificing CONFIRMED town for MAYBE town PR.

Bodyguard is an excellent PR because the town is sacrificing an unconfirmed player (the bodyguard themself) for a player that scum wanted to kill (who is therefore unlikely to be mislynched). Why are you assuming that the bodyguard is confirmed? (If the bodyguard

is

confirmed, then I agree it's probably best for them to not use their ability. But that usually isn't the case.)

[callforjudgement]

You're going to have to tell me what a "bodyguard result" is. It's not an investigative role, nor can I see a way to use it as one: the only information you get is that someone wasn't nightkilled, and that is information that is nearly always utterly obvious anyway.

PEDIT: What you're missing here is: a townie's life is not important, except inasmuch as it prevents scum from winning the game. If, as town, you have an opportunity to die and flip in a game without bringing scum closer to their win condition, you should normally take it; it gives town more information (the fact that you were town), which both helps them trust your reads and reduces the chance that you get mislynched, and the only downside is that you can't give public opinions on what happens in the rest of the game. (This reasoning doesn't apply if you're confirmed or if you have a power role which has better uses.)

You can't reason from the point of view that the Bodyguard is always the best player in the game, confirmed, and has perfect reads. That's not usually going to be the case. If roles could be balanced like that, Innocent Child would be useless.

re-PEDIT: You're saying that the Bodyguard should be selfish, and increase the chances that they personally can solve the game via denying the rest of town information they could use to solve the game? That's just bad strategy. (Besides, the reasoning isn't even necessarily correct: flipping town is a good way to prove that you aren't scum, and thus makes your reads more trustworthy, increasing the chance that town listen to your reads.)

[callforjudgement]

Put it this way. Suppose you're a VT, you post a few fairly accurate reads in thread, and then you get nightkilled. Would you consider that a failure on your part?

[callforjudgement]

Why are you assuming that the Bodyguard is widely townread and sheeped?

I can't see any reason why you'd assume that to be the case. It's definitely not going to be the case for every player, and there's a decent chance that it'll be one of the weaker players who rolls the Bodyguard?

Even if this is an indirect way of boasting "I'm always widely townread and always sheeped, therefore mods shouldn't use Bodyguard because I have no use for it", you'd certainly find it useful if it went to someone else on your faction who could use it to confirm themself while saving you from a nightkill.

[callforjudgement]

That bodyguard KNOWS they'll flip green. He/she can't say the same about their target.

It's very unlikely that the target will both a) be scum, and b) actually be targeted for a kill. So if you protect scum by mistake, it's unlikely to make a difference. The mere fact that someone is a) looking widely like town, and at the same time b) targeted for a nightkill, makes it very very likely that they actually are town. A vig isn't going to shoot someone who's a likely Doctor protection unless they're hugely misplaying things (and when reviewing setups, I normally ignore the possibility that a Vig and Doctor pick the same target, or that a Vig and scumteam pick the same kill target, because if that happens one player has massively screwed up and their faction will get appropriately punished as a result).

Your reasoning makes a little more sense in multiball, but the vast majority of games aren't multiball.

I think doctor is better when it can save twice, in the case of a claimed PR and when the game starts in evens. Otherwise I agree with cfj that a random townie dying is good for the town.

I broadly agree with this statement. (I'd make it a little more precise: "when two kills can be prevented" as different players can stop the kills, and "when a PR is claimed and would benefit from more than one night of protection". Also, you need to clarify that it's the death of a random townie

in place of

the player that scum were trying to kill that's useful!)

[callforjudgement]

Hmm, House, what do you think of this role?

Town Confuser

Each night, you may choose a player. If that player is Mafia-aligned and submits a nightkill on a town-aligned player, the nightkill will be redirected onto a random town-aligned player (and can still be prevented as normal). Once this ability has successfully redirected a kill, all future uses of it will automatically fail.

I'd argue that this role is a) clearly a net positive for the town (scum could have chosen to shoot any townie anyway, thus it can't produce an outcome that scum couldn't produce anyway, but makes it harder for the scum to choose a target), and b) clearly weaker than a Town Bodyguard, because it can redirect onto any townie, whereas the Bodyguard redirects onto the Bodyguard themself (who's effectively vanilla after their one successful redirection).

[callforjudgement]

I don't think Nexus (EDIT: a variant that works on kills too; the default Nexus doesn't) sucks for the person who has it. (It does somewhat suck from a setup design point of view, but mostly because it screws with other players who might want to target it.)

My point, though, is that it clearly shows that Bodyguard is a useful role.

[callforjudgement]

(Also, you misspelled my name in your sig.)

[callforjudgement]

I'm British. This is the correct spelling over here :-P

[callforjudgement]

I'd gladly use a Bodyguard ability to take a bullet for a VT, if I were being scumread and they weren't. However, using it on a confirmed townie or a player who likely has a useful role would be better still.

Also, @Gamma Emerald, you probably shouldn't say that unless the setup's going to be Open.

[callforjudgement]

^also this kind of analysis is being done by scum anyway

Too true. If you're refusing to use an unlimited Bodyguard ability, that basically says that you know more than the scum do about which kill would be most useful for them. Given that the scum have so much more information than you do, you probably aren't in a better place to make that call than they are, even if you're a better player.

[callforjudgement]

Forcing the scum to make a decision that isn't one they wanted isn't justification enough?

Bear in mind that the scum could choose to simply shoot the bodyguard! If they don't, then there's presumably a reason for that.

[callforjudgement]

It's not commiting suicide because it's not in

addition

to the scum kill. It

replaces

the scum kill.

You're not using a town action to do something destructive to town.
You're using a scum action to do something that the scum don't want it to do. In many cases, you can even get it to benefit town. Even when it doesn't, though, it's still going to do something less destructive than what scum wanted it to do.

[callforjudgement]

The thing that bemuses me so much here is that I can see someone arguing that Doctor is better than Bodyguard (and it is in some setups), but I just can't see how anyone would consider the Bodyguard night action to be a negative utility one that shouldn't/wouldn't be used. Unless there's a vig or a second scum faction, using it is basically always going to be at worst harmless, and normally beneficial if it hits. (And even if there is a vig, something has gone very wrong if you Bodyguard the vig target.)

[callforjudgement]

My main disagreement with zMuffinMan is that I assume that the lynch pool is normally fairly large and contains most of the players in the game. This may be because I normally play smaller games. Apart from that, I agree with most of his points.

Also, the optimal way to play vig is to predict who will be lynched the next day and vig them. A protective role should basically never aim at a likely lynch the next day (because they aren't a likely nightkill, barring situations in which the player looks scummy as the result of a very unlikely claim which would be devastating to scum if it were true). Thus protecting a vig kill is a clear indicator that somebody screwed up. Admittedly, it's probably the vig rather than the protective.