Investigatives and Protectives in setups

## Introduction

An Investigative role is one that receives information privately during the night. A Protective role is a role that can save another player from death. These basic archetypes for roles create much interesting gameplay from small and simple parts. They create new strategies and counterstrategies, new behaviors, and are the bread and butter to creating an interesting setup on mafia.gg

This guide will be covering, for the most part, Town roles. The mafia team has both investigatives (such as Tagger) and protectives (Such as Jekyll), but they serve a very different purpose to what Town investigatives and protectives do. As such, these will only be brought up when relevant to the town versions.

## Investigatives Abstract

Investigatives are the most effective ways to change what information is available in a setup. They allow for claiming strategies, counterclaims, gambits, softing, and more behavior derived from their function. An investigative can dictate the flow of the game by when they out information, and as such they passively exist to keep the flow of the game steady.

A small-medium sized game should not have more than one strong investigative. Having too much information in the hands of the town reduces scum options to the point where they either can’t win or can be outed socially through associatives and incorrect reads. If all 3 of the people you are pushing as scum get cleared as town through investigatives, then you now have few pushing options and 3 conftown on you. This is not a good situation. This rule changes from setup to setup, as does any rule, but it is good as a baseline.

### Claims

As with all Town Power Roles, Investigatives can claim their role. When being condemned, or if enough information has been gathered to improve the gamestate, the Investigative will claim their role to become confirmed unless counterclaimed.

The most interesting part of claiming isn’t itself, but it’s fakeclaims and the gambits that come from them. Fakeclaims allow a mafia member to propose a view on the game, and argue that their view on the game is more factually correct than that of the true claim. This provides interesting gameplay for both the fakeclaimer and the onlookers deciding whose gamestate is correct.

However, mafia are not the only faction who can fakeclaim. A common thing to do as a town member is to claim an investigative role, that is not your own, with the hopes of your reads being factually correct enough that people will follow them and benefit from them. This is a gambit because getting anything wrong while doing this can cause MLs on one or more town members and out PRs for mafia to easily kill.

Certain roles are harder to fakeclaim than others. An investigative role that shares its gained knowledge with knowledge the mafia team passively has will be much easier to fakeclaim than one that has knowledge all of its own. If a role has unique and provable information, fakeclaiming them is simply impossible. These roles are known as Unccables. The best way to make an investigative fakeclaimable by the mafia team is to add a similar mafia investigative.

### Softing

A precursor to claims is softing. This is the act of subtly hinting that you have a specific role, with the intent of town members picking up on it. It allows for more credibility when claiming your role, and for more information to be gleaned if you die before that happens.

An extreme example of softing is the HYPO strategy, where every town member gives notes as if they were (HYPOthetically) an investigative. The investigatives give their real notes, and the town members can know what their notes were if they die before claiming. This strategy is rare because it requires complete co-operation and gives information to the mafia about who can’t be the investigative, if townies ever get anything wrong.

## Protectives Abstract

Protectives are the most effective roles at changing the dynamic of the mafia’s night kill. They make PRs consistently live a night or two longer after outing (thereby reducing swing), they force the mafia to rethink who they want to kill each night, they allow the best town members to live without any WIFOM from the mafia team. All of this is done passively; the biggest strength of a protective is the possibility of a save rather than the reality of one.

A small-medium sized game should only have 1 strong protective. Even large games shouldn’t have more than one without knowing what they’re doing. Having too many protectives allows them to protect each other in a circle, which mafia needs specific tools to be able to deal with. Protectives are almost always used with some sort of investigative, which we will discuss later, but just know that too many protectives with too many other PRs is hard for mafia to deal with.

### Claims

Protective claims, conversely to Investigative claims, are usually not beneficial to town. They provide little to no information on anyone except for the claimer, they are really easy for mafia to fake, and they get rid of the passive effect on the other PRs of getting to survive a little longer.

This combined makes claiming a protective role one of the most easy and beneficial things a mafia can fakeclaim. It’s the go-to when being pushed, because town both has no way to prove the claim wrong and doesn't always particularly want their protective to out to prove them incorrect.

This leads nicely into the gambits a protective role can use and rely on, since simply not counterclaiming is an option. A protective claim left alive by the mafia team will grow more suspicious over time, since the mafia teams needs them dead eventually to effectively deal with town power roles. Often, a protective will even protect the player who claimed their role, since a town member who claims a protective will get attacked by the mafia, which the true protective can save.

None of this is entirely recommended, though, since many towns will treat an uncc’d protective as confirmed. The life of a protective is also often worth risking to confirm the death of a mafia, so most protectives will cc in the scenario where their role is being claimed.

### Softing

Protectives don’t particularly like to soft their role. As JEEP says in his 2004 guide, “Players want to tell you their role on some level -except when they are playing doctors-... docs want to tell you they aren't docs.” We’ll talk about this more in “Mafia Counterplay”.

## Mafia Counterplay

Investigatives and Protectives alike open up many options for the mafia team to counter their abilities. Investigatives encourage fakeclaims and PR hunts, while protectives incentivize this behavior by adding more weight to the investigative, while being another thing to fakeclaim or hunt. Additionally, you can add several different mafia roles to a setup to change the way that they can deal with these town PRs.

Fakeclaims we’ve already gone over to some extent in the previous sections. They are when a player falsely claims a role that is not their own. The mafia do this most often to avoid a condemnation. This will usually draw out the town power role to counterclaim, in which case the town must determine who has the highest chance of being town. The mafia fakeclaim may also be the counterclaim, optimally 50% of the time, which forces town to think instead of relying on the order of claims.

### PR Hunting

Every PR has tells that can be used by the mafia to decide who the PRs are, and direct their night kill. Investigatives and Protectives are no different. Investigatives have some of the strongest tells of any town role, since they have more information to form reads with than any other town role. Protectives have strong tells since they don’t want you to know that they are protectives.

Investigative roles can be found through the extra information they carry. One might have to suddenly switch their opinion on a player they have learned about, they might ask for extra evidence on players that they know are good, and aggressively push those that they know are bad, all while softing their role if they are to die. Mafia members can look for this, and kill those who appear inconsistent with their reads yet confident in their switches.

Protective roles can be found through trying to appear as not-protective as possible. Protectives like to play coasty to avoid suspicion, and they like to tunnel those claiming their role to somehow coax town into condemning them, without ever having to counterclaim. Strategies against this as mafia include pushing the protective for their lack of gameplay, asking questions relating to protections, and just fakeclaiming.

## Together

Investigatives and protectives rarely exist in isolation. Multiple different effects come to play when the types of roles are together, some of which we have already discussed. Protectives encourage investigatives to out and be safe, for the time period where the protective is alive. This discourages investigative greed and allows for less swing, as investigatives will die before outing their information less often. Investigatives provide a reason for protectives to stay hidden, and for the tells and gambits effecting them to become apparent.

Protectives encourage multiple investigative behaviors. Investigatives like to out earlier when an protective is alive. This allows for information from the investigative to be more consistently shared, since the investigative won’t have to be greedy to gain a good amount of information. Protectives force the mafia team to engage with the fakeclaiming aspect of investigatives, and allow more time for the town to decide between them.

One especially prevalent strategy that occurs when protectives and investigatives are combined is Follow The Cop. Simply put, investigative outs, protective babysits them, mafia is helpless. This is a problem with unrestricted roles, and as such as a setup designer you should be thinking of how to nullify this issue and make it fun for the mafia to play around the protective being on the investigative.

This is most often accomplished through the various roles that mafia.gg has to offer.

# Roles

In this section, I will not only go over the investigatives and protectives, but also a number of related roles. Just going over the Cops and Docs by themselves would be lying about the nature of roles and, quite frankly, unhelpful. Roles and archetypes don't exist in isolation, each role is part of an interlocking web of relationships that tie roles together and force roles apart. It’s very important to know how your role interacts with other roles and how to shape it to be what you want in the setup.

That’s the ultimate goal, anyway. Create the desired interactions. Create a good setup.

This rest of this guide is going to be more opinionated than the sections above. This is to allow myself to give personal insight into their usage, and to prevent myself from making up false information to try to give X role an equal chance to Y much more niche role.

### Cop

Cop is the most basic investigative. It takes something unknown, alignment, and makes it known. Each night, it simply learns the alignment of another player. This is quite simple, and hilariously strong. Why would you ever want a role that just… knows this?? Surely there’s some better role that makes you put more effort into your scumreads. Heck, this role has its name in Follow The Cop, and that strategy is clearly bad. Mister waterfall3, why should I use this?

It’s simple. Cop is the single most flexible investigative role, and the most impactful role to fakeclaim.

Cop’s flexibility comes from all the roles that it interacts with. Want blues to not be confirmed? You can do that. Want reds to not be confirmed scum? You can do that. Want it to stop working when it outs? Want it to not know its sanity until it finds a red? Want it to only find half of the scumteam? Want it to see a mafia-chosen player as red? Want it to have a specific player as blue, and have that player also be able to claim specific town PRs without CC? Want it to be a hecking neapolitan? It can do those, and more. The Cop is so flexible that the difference in its usage in VIP versus its usage in Uncertainty is one of the biggest gaps you can have with a role in the game, and that’s just with two setups!

The meaning behind Cop fakeclaims is not to be forgotten either. Cop, in most setups, will share 100% of its extra knowledge with knowledge the scumteam has from the beginning. This means that, at any point, a mafia member may claim Cop and have town unable to deduce which claim is real without condemning something. This also allows the mafia to still have Cop as a viable fakeclaim, even though the ramifications of the claims are so strong. This sort of simplicity yet impact in claims is hard to find in any other role.

### Doctor

Doctor is the simplest protective role. It takes someone the mafia would have killed, and denies it. It allows for all of the stuff talked about in the protective section. It can have investigatives live forever! Wait… That’s a problem.

Doctor is a dangerous role to have without extra thought, since it can make the Follow The Cop strategy a reality easily. This isn’t to say Doctor is a bad role, Doctor is a very good role, it’s just one you have to implement countermeasures for. The amount of town power generated from unleashed Follow The Cop isn’t enough to break every setup, Classic handles it just fine with an even winrate, but nobody wants to play Classic because of the forced CC wars.

### Hooker

One of those such countermeasures is Hooker. Hooker takes Cop and says “no, you don’t get to do that.” It exists to add a second layer to nullifying Cop, where FTC is only ever possible if Hooker dies and Doctor and Cop are still alive. This is put to great use in the setup Pie E7, which is basically Classic but with an added Hooker to solve every problem it ever had. Hooker is, in general, the strongest way to make an investigative not want to out again, while still having the benefits Doctor roles provide to strong townies and such.

### Godfather

Godfather is a must-have in the vast majority of Cop setups. It’s job is simply to make blue-checked townies no longer cleared. This means that a Godfather who is good enough to survive to lategame can push on townies who would otherwise be cleared and have it actually mean something. This makes Godfather into quite the important role, that much of the scumteam relies upon to not have 7 confirmeds halfway through the game.

### Medic

By forcing the Doctor to not choose the same target repeatedly, the problem of staying on the investigative is solved quite nicely while keeping most of the benefits a protective role has. However, passive town PRs or confirmed townies that would otherwise be unaffected by the Hooker solution are rendered just as vulnerable as investigatives are with Medic

### Nurse

Nurse is basically Hooker and Doctor combined. There are two major differences between that and Nurse, though. Nurse’s roleblock being town-aligned allows for Nurse to be harder to cc than other protectives, and gives it immense power once only one mafia remains. Nurse removes the dynamic where a specific mafia’s death re-enables FTC. otherwise it exists as a consistent way to make an outed investigative have to stop investigating.

### Miller, Suspect, Patsy

Miller, Suspect, and Patsy exist to make a random villager appear as Sided to the Cop. This can lead to town having to sort the red-checked player, but most of the time the Miller-like will still get policy-condemned. This sometimes does not occur in XYLO. Miller’s added bonus is to have confusion between “Mafia” flips, where often one of the two is actually the Mafia/Busboy. This is a positive change in setups such as Janitorial. Suspect is like Miller but without that aspect, and it just has the random red check. Pasty is like Suspect, but better. Patsy removes the randomness by making it actually a mafia manipulation whenever a specific villager is checked by Cop. Patsy allows for interesting gameplay around who pushes them and who interacts with them, especially with nonmeetings. Patsy allows for interesting setups where mafia knowledge of the villagers is a focal point of the gameplay. I could write an entire essay about how great Patsy is! All praise Alanim, the great creator and Mr.Crispy, the creator of the predecessor!

...I couldn’t actually write that essay, but I do want to say that I could.

### Parity Cop

Parity Cop has many of the strengths of Cop while having information that often, especially in the earlygame, allows for interpretation and solving beyond that which Cop usually provides. If none of the Parity Cop's checks have been otherwise cleared, then town only knows A and B alignments, not which is which. This becomes mostly null once any of the Parity Cop's checks die. As such, Parity Cop is often used in setups where determining Cop-report alignments on death is difficult, such as with Hide Roles Upon Death or Consigliere.

Parity Cop is also one of few investigative roles capable of finding third-parties. Actually figuring out that one has checked a third-party is often difficult and may result in multiple MLs. As such, I don't recommend putting it in setups with third-parties even if it can find them. The exception is Traitor, which appears as Town to the Parity Cop.

All of this is done while keeping the purity of Cop where any information gained is information the mafia team likely already had, allowing for any mafia to CC cop convincingly.

There are more roles that interact with Cop. Many more. I’ve covered maybe a third of the relevant ones here. There are just the most notable ones.

### Polygraph

Polygraph is an investigative that sees “Liar” on roles that:

* Appear incorrectly to Cop
* Make others appear incorrectly to Cop
* Flip incorrectly on death
* Make others flip incorrectly on death

Note that “incorrectly” and “hidden” are not the same. Janitor isn’t a liar, Tailor is.

Polygraph is a relatively simple role that is often used in tandem with Cop to create areas of knowledge that are exclusive to each role. It’s most often included in setups where getting a Liar result means that the target is either a specific mafia role, or a specific town role, and further investigation must be done to determine which. It can also be used alone to act as a Cop but with Guilty/Not-guilty results more tailored to the other roles in the setup. The role is most famously used in the setup Bootcamp to have one mafia be visible to the Cop, and one visible to the Polygraph.

### Busboy

It would be weird to go past this point without first explaining mafia.gg visiting mechanics, and the ways that Busboy specifically counteracts them. While Busboy is not alive, every mafia member will visit the night kill. This means that any role that sees visits, or kills, will very easily be able to tell who the mafia are on any night where the Busboy is not present. Busboy prevents this by being the only mafia member who visits the night kill. If Busboy is alive, then the visit and action based effects can be ambiguous once more.

Furthermore, when only the Busboy visits, reactionary effects are no longer random. When a role like Announcer gets a result, or when Bodyguard gets a kill, it is usually random which mafia member is affected by this. It could be anything from mafia’s strongest PR to their most sus member to the one who was planning to go for an endgame win. With Busboy, this effect will always target what is often mafia’s weakest PR. This was the main reason for the creation of Busboy in the first place, and Busboy is very good at it’s job here. It even appears as Mafia on death, so no interactions have to be lost with Miller!

### Tracker

Tracker is the simplest visit-based investigative. It sees who a target visits each night. This can be used to find mafia, but also to solve through deduction whether or not their visits make sense for whatever role they want to claim. It is important to include Busboy in tracker setups to allow mafia PRs to claim town PRs when called out for visits. Tracker is at its strongest when Busboy is dead, as any night with a kill confirms whoever Tracker was visiting as town.

Tracker is used best when the players it visits do have that flexibility to claim roles whenever their visits are called out by the Tracker (and the Tracker has to think of whether or not it wants to out the visits in the first place). It is often used with visiting mafia roles such as Jekyll or Tagger that have reasons to visit even under the threat of Tracker, and will have different enough visits from any town role to cause reasonable suspicion.

The most well-known usage of Tracker is in the setup Chibi’s Fever Dream, in which the Tracker can find the Jekyll, who can protect Busboy from Bomb.

### Announcer

Much like Tracker, Announcer causes town and mafia roles to have to face suspicion for their visits. That’s about where the similarities end. Unlike Tracker, Announcer passively outs these visits, and it sees itself as Villager. This means that whenever a Villager role is visited for the first time, it’s essentially random whether or not they are the Announcer. This can be a pain, especially if the mafia are unlucky enough to kill it at night. No amount of ambiguity will save a Busboy from that condemnation.

While Announcer sees self as Villager, and balances as such for massclaiming, think of it as a full-strength PR for town power, as it is quite likely to cause a mafia death at some point.

### Sleepwalker

Sleepwalker is most often used to allow visitors to claim Villager in Announcer setups. They exist not necessarily to frame themselves, but to allow PRs to act as if they were framed. This likely wont save every town PR from being night-killed after visiting Announcer, but it will buy some time between a mafia PR hitting Anno and them being forced to claim a role.

Sleepwalker is also sometimes used in Tracker setups to provide ambiguity there, but in any setups with Busboy setups usually don’t want a PR caught by Tracker to simply claim SW, or an SW to be framed by being tracked, because it’s significantly more disruptive to give fake results to an active Tracker than the passive Announcer

Additionally, Sleepwalkers should be used in groups, and with a good amount of visiting mafia PRs. Group usage is so that a singular self-aware Sleepwalker cannot act as a ccable PR, and mafia PRs are so that a Sleepwalker will never be confirmed simply through randomly visiting Announcer.

### Paranoiac

Paranoiac is a similar case to Announcer in how it is a passive role that works well with PRs of both alignments and Sleepwalkers for ambiguity. It is an unccable investigative, which means that counterclaiming and fakeclaiming gameplay simply is not a thing with Paranoiac. It would be hard to claim anyway, given that all of its information is visit-based and reliant on small town PR choices.

One of the main problems with Paranoiac is its tendency to hardclaim early and have as many PRs visit it as possible, for maximum firepower. Roleblocking the Paranoiac does nothing, as Paranoiac is a passive role, so some method of taking out the Paranoiac early should be given to the mafia.

Paranoiac is usually not alone as a strong investigative in a setup, and as such is usually included in larger setups where there are both more visiting roles and more chances for mafia to disrupt any ideas the Paranoiac might be having about hardclaiming for firepower.

### Bishop

Bishop is a weird investigative, often used in large public games without a pre-designed setup and with conversion roles. It finds the following three things:
Wrath - Did your target kill / Was your target killed?

Heresy - Did your target convert / Was your target converted?

Sloth - Did your target roleblock / Was your target roleblocked?

Wrath and Sloth are best at finding mafia, while Cult is vulnerable to Heresy.

Bishop is similar to Tracker in power in a normal setup but can be harder to design around due to the extra effects it has. It should be used with Busboy to prevent it from clearing anyone it checks as Free Of Sin. Bishop’s power against the Cult is one of few ways to find Cult in the game, so Bishop is a very common role to include in those setups. Not that I recommend creating Cult setups, those tend to be messy.

### Patroller

Patroller is an interesting case, since while it is an investigative by definition, much of its power and gameplay is shared with that of protectives. It stays on whoever is most likely to be killed, and learns the killer if they die. It also shares aspects with Tracker, since non-guilties can still give promising information on players who visit at a specific time. Patroller needs to out to give its information to the town, but its information is less on those who it chooses and more on whoever happens to be visiting. Since visits can do a variety of things, it's hard to gain consistent information on people and have it feel fair as a Patroller. Generally, patroller is a hard role to use well. I wouldn’t recommend using Patroller with other protective roles, since they can stay on each other and be boring and sad.

### Seer

Seer generates random results that town then must solve in. For small setups and in earlygame, it can provide interesting gameplay where given one or two lists mafia should push those who aren’t their own member in a group while town try to identify who it is. After a while, though, names start appearing on lists twice and the process to scumhunt becomes harder to use over just condemning whoever appears more than once or waiting for the necessary deaths to occur. When Seer gets a lot of checks, it can be stronger than a Cop with few ways to limit its power. One of the more common ways is the addition of Sleepwalkers, who can reduce its power without being town PRs, but Sleepwalkers are random inherently. Seer being visited to withhold results means that the chaotic flow of visiting PRs and sleepwalkers will leave Seer with varying levels of strength.

### Hypnotist

Hypnotist as an investigative is interesting for its CC potential, mostly. It can be counterclaimed, but only if the real Hypnotist goes on a mafia member. I’ve seen it used in rr off to allow for something strong but not overly swingy, and cc’d in an interesting way. Unlike most investigatives, Hypnotist only gets one usage of their power before death, making it mostly consistent and low-pressure for the mafia team to deal with.

Mesmer is often used as a mafia counter to Hypnotist, but it really shouldn’t always be used in this way. Just because Mesmer can counterclaim Hypnotist easily doesn’t mean they should use their power up to do so. Mesmer is an interesting enough mafia investigative on its own to be used, without needing Hypnotist.

### Photographer

Photographer is similar to Hypnotist in that it learns a single role. It may not need to out to give this information, since a non-outing Photo is assumed to have hit a town member. It is often used either in rr off, or with roles that mess with what photo would see (see One-Shot Cops). It’s another somewhat consistent investigative that can only use once.

### Oracle

Oracle in some ways is an investigative but is much closer to Bulletproof in gameplay than it is to Cop. It tries to get shot by the mafia at night to be able to use its power. Its ability to reveal the role of one player is consistently strong. Oracles who claim often are alive for the rest of the game, as Mafia doesn’t particularly want to kill them most of the time. Roles like Saboteur or Brainwasher can be used to counter this, if it’s not desired. Oracles might sometimes try to get themselves condemned, but that is a very unhelpful strategy and anyone trying it should feel bad.

### Trapper

Trapper is another reactionary role, and again is somewhat of a protective but not quite. Trapper cannot protect directly but instead kills whoever visits a player. The main usage for this is to kill a mafia member, but it has a high chance to backfire because, again, visits do a number of different things and people visit with different motivations. It’s very hard to predict both ends. Trapper is best used when visits can be consistently predicted on a target, such as with Dog. It also makes a good, albeit swingy, counter to Interceptor, the mafia variant of the same role.

### Lookout

Lookout is a very, very strong investigative role. It can find not only the killing mafia members, but also find the mafia by being on who was killed. Additionally, it can find mafia members shooting weapons during the day. It combines strong parts of Tracker, Patroller, and… Secret Service? To be one of the most swingy and hard to combat roles the town can have. It can’t even be roleblocked! Don’t use this role unless people smarter than me have told you that you know what you’re doing.

### Wiretapper

Wiretapper isn’t nearly as strong as Lookout, but it is just as dangerous to use. It might be tempting to put it in your local Mason/Cult/Templar/Mafia extravaganza, but there’s one inherent problem with the role that makes it hard to use in serious play. If the mafia members simply do not speak at night, Wiretapper does not see them. This means that optimal play versus Wiretapper is to not speak at night. This makes for unfun mafia experiences. Additionally, while ccs for the Wiretapper can be cool, they are often broken by Wiretappers cheating and copy + pasting night chats, as most players do not know that doing so is against the rules.

### Bodyguard

Bodyguard is, in many ways, a buffed version of Doctor. It retains the ability to continuously protect a player while also being able to kill players who attempt to kill. It’s most often used in large setups to maintain the amount that the mafia team wants to avoid obvious kills, and have more risky gameplay when it comes to claiming protective. It can only use its killing power once, so it is significantly weakened once it gets a single kill. This is put to good use in ABC, where the mafia are immune to the kill so the Bodyguard ends up as a half-doctor half-guardian

Bodyguard is another role that is good to use with Busboy so that no random mafia PRs are sniped by the Bodyguard save

### Guardian

Guardian is like Bodyguard after its power has been used up. It exists to protect an important PR in a pinch, and can be very useful in groups, but otherwise shouldn’t use as the life of a lone Guardian is usually more important than the life of a Villager who is about to be night-killed.

### Jack

Jack fulfils an interesting niche as both an Investigative and a Protective. Since it has a 1-use Doctor ability, it can extend the life of another PR for one night. This is often combined with Medic to extend to 3 nights, while both Jack and that PR are alive. Jack’s one-use Cop power is weak on its own but strong with its Vigilante power to kill any sided checks they may get. Setups with Jack and Cop may include any number of Cop-modifying roles, but setups with a sole Jack are more likely to have just a Miller-like, to make the Jack think before firing at a red check. False blues are not as necessary with Jack, as it only gets one check and as such can’t confirm enough blues to be a major threat.

# Conclusion

That should about cover the relevant investigative and protective roles. There are more, and many roles of other types can be used in creative ways to become investigative or protective (Fruit Vendor, for example), but this is all that’s really necessary to make a good setup. It’s also a decent start to thinking about roles in this way, as tools for a setup, to achieve a desired effect.

Unless your plan is to use Lookout. Don’t do that.