Let's Beef Up Bodyguard!

[House]

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

To which I counter: you misspelled judgment in your name!

[callforjudgement]

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

[House]

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

Irrelevant. You also spell color, flavor, and neighbor with a "u", taking after the pretentious French, as the British originally spelled it properly.

[Antihero]

Or they're just an outed PR.

If that outed PR has been a worthless lump, it's stupid to die for them when the Bodyguard is getting more results.

in that case the bodyguard can weigh whether or not the PR having another shot at an action is worth taking a bullet for them and choose to not protect them if they deem it's not.

[House]

Or they're just an outed PR.

If that outed PR has been a worthless lump, it's stupid to die for them when the Bodyguard is getting more results.

in that case the bodyguard can weigh whether or not the PR having another shot at an action is worth taking a bullet for them and choose to not protect them if they deem it's not.

Making the role worthless.

[Accountant]

I think house is saying that town players should be egoistical and trust themselves most

[House]

I think house is saying that town players should be egoistical and trust themselves most

No, I'm saying there's little incentive to use the role.

[Gamma Emerald]

I believe whether House believe what Accountant is saying it is true.

[Antihero]

Or they're just an outed PR.

If that outed PR has been a worthless lump, it's stupid to die for them when the Bodyguard is getting more results.

in that case the bodyguard can weigh whether or not the PR having another shot at an action is worth taking a bullet for them and choose to not protect them if they deem it's not.

Making the role worthless.

if i were a bg i would gladly take a bullet for an investigative and it would be a net positive.

the same is true for most players, whether they think so or not (people in general are not as good of players as they think they are)

[Gamma Emerald]

BG creates a lower strength Follow the Cop. I'm intending to run a Micro where the investigative is weakened but the protective is untouched.

[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.

[Gamma Emerald]

It is Open.

[Antihero]

if i were a bg i would gladly take a bullet for an investigative and it would be a net positive.

the same is true for most players, whether they think so or not (people in general are not as good of players as they think they are)

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

if you are indeed more of a threat than the outed PR, scum will just shoot you and there's nothing you can do about it. if scum take aim at the PR, that in and of itself proves your reads/dayplay are not as threatening as the PR's ability.

[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.

[House]

All your self-justification isn't going to change the fact that there's just extremely little incentive for a player to use the role.

[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.

[House]

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.

Which is reason to reevaluate reads, not commit suicide.

[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.

[Antihero]

All your self-justification isn't going to change the fact that there's just extremely little incentive for a player to use the role.

i have NO investment in any of this. i didn't come up with the bodyguard role. i am not emotionally attached to the bodyguard role in any way. i'm not even particularly fond of the role, i think i've used it once in all my games. but it's not null or negative utility. i am explaining, as matter-of-factly as i can, that not letting scum kill who they want to kill is in fact good for town.

if you disagree with that then fine but don't think for a second that i'm trying to discredit you or that i have a need to "justify" anything.

[House]

All of this is moot at any rate, I've already been advised to suggest a new role, and have done so.

That just doesn't make me think Bodyguard magically has value.

[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.)

[House]

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 unless it's an open setup, you don't know there ISN'T a vig.

I see no reason i should sacrifice myself instead of simply take the dead town's reads into account and readjust my own.

After all, sometimes town isn't killed for their reads, but to frame another townie to set up the next day's mislynch!

[GreyICE]

If you bodyguard the person the vig shoots then there was the sort of severe error on someone's part that means that the town deserves to lose. Normally if I flip open a thread and see two kills there isn't even a question who the vig killed.

But basically this boils down to the fallacy of trying to preserve townies. It doesn't work. Bodyguard lets you preserve a townie. It lets a power role survive an extra day phase, it confirms a townie in the process. That's all fine.

[zMuffinMan]

House is half-right and half-wrong.

On the one hand, there are plenty of scenarios in which suiciding for the sake of town is a good idea. You

want

to suicide to protect a claimed cop, as an obvious example. As Antihero alluded to in #4, most setups that employ a bodyguard do so because there's some sort of powerful role or roles where having a plain protective role instead of a bodyguard might imbalance or even break the setup in some way, so usually in those setups bodyguard has some use and it's not just suiciding for the sake of suiciding.

I'm also of the opinion that someone who is generally thought of as lynchbait should ALWAYS use bodyguard on every single night. House (and people in general) need to stop conflating the idea of knowing one's own alignment with being "confirmed town". Yes, you are confirmed to yourself, but what good does that do if you're still in the lynch pool? You should want to sacrifice yourself to protect those who aren't in the lynch pool unless you have absolute confidence you won't be lynched and even then it's sometimes still a good idea.

... But on the other hand, I disagree with pretty much all of CFJ's counter-points in this thread. Bodyguard is not stronger than a doctor and pretty much never is. Flipping and being "confirmed" is not necessarily a good thing for the game (being dead is, in general, a really shit thing to be). People in general do not listen to the reads of dead players (and even if they did, I would strongly recommend against this in the case of a bodyguard, so the point is moot). And, most importantly, the argument that dying and confirming yourself as town is a good thing is ridiculous unless you were in the lynch pool to begin with - you don't need to confirm yourself if you're never going to be lynched anyway (and as much as you can argue that it's conceited to think you'll never be lynched and that everyone is lynchable unless they're confirmed, that's really not the case)...

Really, the only time I think you should be using a bodyguard role is if you're protecting someone who is objectively of more worth to town (e.g. a claimed power role or someone who is actually confirmed/not in the lynch pool) or if you're in the lynch pool yourself (though people's judgment about this in general can be a bit off, so this isn't something I'd trust any random-player-who-rolled-bodyguard to decide, which makes this more idealistic than realistic but whatever). Outside of that, I don't think there's any net gain for town that outweighs the value of clarity (knowing for sure who was targeted for a kill).

If you bodyguard the person the vig shoots then there was the sort of severe error on someone's part that means that the town deserves to lose.

Funny that you should mention that... The only time I've ever been killed by a vig was when PV was a vig in Tales Of You and killed me. It turns out that the bodyguard in that game (Mac) was pretty much tossing a coin between protecting me and someone else and ended up choosing someone else, but it could have very easily ended up with the bodyguard protecting from the vig kill.

I've also seen it happen in other games (e.g. the recently finished Queen of Hearts game), so while it's rare, it does happen. And while it probably does indicate a severe error on someone's part, it still happens.

[Antihero]

(And even if there is a vig, something has gone very wrong if you Bodyguard the vig target.)

if your reads are so balls that you jump in front of a vig kill on scum, your very presence in the game is neg utility and getting rid of you is still a victory for town