Bouncer

> Each night, may visit a player and block all others that would visit them from performing night actions
>
> Does not block night meeting actions from targeting the visited player
>
>

## Bouncer

### Role Tags

Meeting, Night Power, Roleblocker, Visits

**Bouncer** is a Mafia-aligned role that can rolestop another player every night. Bouncer's Town-aligned equivalent is Security Guard.

## Mechanics

Each night, Bouncer can visit a player to rolestop them. Rolestopping is essentially the inverse of roleblocking: anyone who visits a rolestopped player is roleblocked. Bouncer *can* visit other mafia members, but *cannot* visit themself.

Bouncer does not block night meeting actions. This is useful, since it means Bouncer can visit the mafia's night kill without stopping the kill. It also means that Bouncer cannot prevent Cult or Mason conversions.

If Bouncer uses their power, they will appear as guilty of sloth to Bishop. Any player who visits the same player as them will also appear as guilty of sloth since they will get roleblocked.

It is important to note that rolestops do not work the same as roleblocks. Being rolestopped blocks your ability, but not your visit. Tracker, for example, will still see a player as visiting when they are rolestopped. If a player is roleblocked, however, Tracker will see them as nonvisiting.

## Interactions

Bouncer nullifies most protective roles, since Bouncer can rolestop the mafia's night kill. As such, Bouncer prevents Follow the Cop.

Bouncer cannot die to Trapper since they will roleblock the Trapper before they can kill them.

Although Jekyll cannot protect players from Jailer, Bouncer can roleblock the Jailer to essentially protect them.

Any combination of two or more Bouncers and Security Guards visiting the same player cancels all rolestops and allows all other players to visit normally.

## Power

Bouncer has the potential to be a very strong role. Unlike Hooker, who must know that a player is a power role in order to make their power meaningful, Bouncer can play with no information since its roleblock is reactive. Making town protectives useless is incredibly strong. Bouncer also has the potential to act like a Fixer or Jekyll. Bouncer is a very flexible role. Flexible roles, such as Tailor, tend to be strong.

Bouncer is much stronger than Security Guard. Security Guard can often feel like a negative utility role because of the lack of meaningful roles to rolestop. Preventing a Hooker from roleblocking a Cop is useless if you also roleblock the Medic, allowing mafia to just kill the Cop. This makes it worthless for Security Guard to visit. SG has niche usage, but is hardly as versatile as Bouncer.

## In Setups

Due to Bouncer's versatility, it can be placed in most setups. However, Bouncer is fairly strong when not balanced around.

There are several ways to get around the fact that Bouncer nullifies protectives. The first is to use Party Host or Prosecutor in lieu of a traditional protective role. Each can essentially block one nightkill to allow an investigative role to live longer. Armorer is also a solid candidate. Bouncer prevents Armorer from visiting to stack vests, but a player will still keep any vests they previously owned. This encourages proactive protector play, which can be a good playstyle to encourage. Finally, including 2 or more Security Guards in a setup prevents Bouncer from rolestopping obvious targets. If the Security Guards and the Bouncer all visit the same player, their rolestops will cancel each other out, allowing all visitors to use their actions as normal. This prevents Bouncer from blocking a Medic from visiting a Cop, for instance, so long as the Security Guards both visit the Cop. The reason 2 Security Guards is required is to guarantee a cancellation of the Bouncer's power. 1 Security Guard still works, but involves WIFOM:

* If SG and Bouncer both visit, protections still work
* If SG visits but Bouncer doesn't, mafia can freely kill the investigative
* If SG doesn't visit but Bouncer does, mafia can freely kill the investigative
* If SG and Bouncer both don't visit, protections still work

Of course, the mafia don't know whether the SG will visit or not, so they are taking a risk in making the kill. However, the SG still has a 50% chance to be useless. With 2 Security Guards, there is a 100% chance that they will successfully avoid a rolestop since if the Bouncer doesn't visit, they will still cancel each other out, allowing all other players to still visit. Since putting 2 Security Guards in a setup takes up a significant amount of the available town power roles (if you use a balanced power role to Villager ratio), and makes the role very counter-claimable for mafia, it may be better to replace all Villagers in the setup with Security Guards. While this may make the setup look funny, and prevents the usage of other roles that see themselves as Villager, it has the benefit of preventing Bouncer from *ever* being able to nullify protectives, since there is no way for all Security Guards to be dead at any given time (unless the mafia are playing badly, in which case they will lose anyway). Using SG as the vanilla town role requires players to be aware of the purpose of SG within the setup, though: they should not visit randomly, they should only visit investigative roles who have claimed.

## Gameplay

There are many ways to play Bouncer. You can visit the nightkill each night to negate protections, similar to how a Lurker might play. You can visit other mafia members to make them pseudo-immune to investigative roles, like a Fixer. Bouncer also allows mafia members to fakeclaim counterclaim town roles with kill power, which are normally un-ccable: Bouncer can prevent the other player from killing them.

## Trivia

* Bouncer was introduced on October 31, 2022 during "Trick or Treat? Update time!."
* Formerly, Bouncer and Security Guard did not appear as guilty of sloth. This bug was fixed during the "Mafia.gg celebrates four years!" update.
	+ Both roles also did not have the Roleblocker role tag until this update.

## See Also

* Hooker
* Security Guard