Cop/Doc pair too powerful?

[BrianMcQueso]

When playing Mafia in real life using the standard newbie setup (2 mafia, 1 doc, 1 cop, 3 town), I've found that having both the cop and doctor in the game has made the town too powerful, if relatively inexperienced players are playing.

Undisputed claims (from either cop or doc) lead to the guaranteed cop investigation Night 1. In order to have a shot, a mafia would need to counterclaim immediately and convincingly to have a chance to stay alive, and games degenerate to "who do we believe is cop Day 1?". I'd rather not play WIFOM all day, so I've been mixing up our basic setup.

The problem is that the cop and doc roles work so well together that the players who have those positions won't hesitate to claim. If the mafia doesn't counterclaim, two innocents are confirmed, the doctor protects the cop, and the town automatically believes what the cop's investigation turns up the next day, either automatically finding a scum, or confirming another innocent.

To remedy the problem, I've been switching the power roles to break up the problem-causing pair. I've tried Vig-Doc as the power roles, but I find that players overuse the Vig kill without thinking of the consequences, hurting the town even further.

Roleblocker is too good in a basic setup because they're essentially cop and doctor in one. That is, if they make a successful block, they've spared a life plus identified a scum. It might be better if you could only block one scum to stop a kill; I haven't tried that yet.

What recommendations would you have for a 7-person setup that would be fair to both town and mafia while keeping claims dangerous enough to be held back?

[Save The Dragons]

The point of newbies is actually to teach new people how to play, and those are the building blocks of many a great town. I admit it probably works better online than IRL. And a Vig in a newbie must've been fun

I think having an extra townie and a roleblocker that stops only the person who's killing might be fair, as well as maybe just scrapping the doc in the first place. The cop has to decide if he should come out night 2 with only one investigation or go double or nothing into night 3. I think one of those strategies are better than the other but I'm too lazy to figure out which. And now that you've got my answer, below are some real answers.

[Yggdrasil]

2 mafia, 3 town, a cop and doc/roleblocker (a doctor who both protects and roleblocks at the same time) could lead to an interesting setup, although the ideas and strategies behind how a doc/roleblocker works might be too complex for a newbie game.

[Norinel]

Offline, 8 players (Or 7 and CopHeadStart) with two mafia, four/five townies, and a cop xor a doc (Even if it's known before the game) is pretty common. The times I've played with both were when someone else was introducing it and either said town loses when both power roles die or roles aren't revealed on death, neither of which would go over very well on MafiaScum.

But don't we have another active thread to discuss the Newbie setup in?

[CoolBot]

In RL, I've never played with a doc, or any sort of special role. Just 2, 3, or 4 mafia, and 1 or 2 cops, depending on the size of the game. Also, roles weren't revealed on death. This works great since so much of the RL game is based on reading people, which doesn't really work on message boards.