Template:Story Doctor
Mechanics
Healing your target
You can heal all attacks on your target caused by Bodyguards, Crusaders, Trappers, Vampire Hunters, the Veteran, Vigilantes, a Mafia Killing role, Serial Killers, Vampires, the Werewolf, Pestilence, the Potion Master, the Coven Leader (with the Necronomicon, the Necromancer's ghoul, the Poisoner without the Necronomicon, or a Pirate.
- You can heal a Bodyguard who died protecting someone. This makes it so only the attacker dies. This also applies if the attacker is healed and the Bodyguard is not.
- If you heal someone who is visited by a Werewolf, you will die but your target will remain alive.
- Although healing someone gives them temporary Powerful defense, the attacker does not receive an immunity message.
- You can use your self-heal to cure yourself of poison as long as the Poisoner did not possess the Necronomicon at the time you were poisoned. You will get the message, “You were cured of poison!”
You cannot heal:
- Anyone who has been poisoned the previous night by the Poisoner if they have the Necronomicon.
- Anyone that has been delivered an Unstoppable Attack.
- Any suicide methods (A Vigilante killing themselves from guilt, a Jester haunt, or someone who has left the game).
- The Mayor once they reveal themselves.
Notifications
You will be notified if your target was attacked, including a Vampire's bite.
- You will receive only one notification, no matter how many times your target was attacked.
- When a Werewolf and Mafioso attack you, it is possible to receive two messages if you self-heal. This is a bug.
- Your target will receive a message about being healed (only if they were attacked). They will not receive additional messages if they were healed by multiple Doctors.
- If your target is attacked by multiple sources simultaneously, such as a Serial Killer and a Mafioso, they will receive two messages regarding their healing.
- You will still receive the message that your target was attacked even if they were protected by a Bodyguard or have Night Immunity. Your target will not be notified that they were healed by a Doctor if the Bodyguard saved them unless they were attacked by more than one attacker.
- You can heal an Escort, Consort, Jailor, and a Pirate who role blocked a Serial Killer or Werewolf (On Full Moon nights). Prior to Version 2.3.1.9069, there was a bug where the Doctor would not be informed if they healed any of the above. However, this bug is now fixed, and the Doctor will now be informed.
- You will also not see that your target was attacked if they were attacked by a Bodyguard. This may be a bug.
- If someone is successfully healed, their attacker will not get a message of any kind.
- However, if their target had Basic Defence, the attacker will still get the message saying their target's defence was too strong to kill.
Strategy
- Lay low, and avoid revealing your role unless completely necessary. You can use your ability to secretly protect someone from death, while staying under the Mafia's radar. Don't say anything if you healed someone the previous night, or if they say something along the lines of, "Thanks Doc!" Even whispering to your target, while it might be tempting, can be dangerous, since the Mafia is usually smart enough to kill whoever whispered to someone who is being killed; generally, you should only whisper to your target if you believe they are a Doctor or Bodyguard and are trying to pair up with them.
- Keep your self-heal for later in the game. There is little chance of the Mafia attacking you early in the game, especially if you haven't revealed your role. However, as the game goes on, it gradually becomes more necessary to reveal your role. If you have to reveal your role, it is recommended to use your self-heal that night, as the Doctor is a nuisance to the Mafia, as well as the Serial Killer.
- As a last resort, you can try and bait killers into attacking you, and self-heal. It could potentially buy the Town an extra night to win.
- The most important basic strategy for a Doctor is to identify confirmed Townies so you can heal them, since a Doctor can also accidentally heal an an evildoer. As an added bonus, anyone who can be publicly identified as a Townie is more likely to be targeted by the Mafia. When you lack other ideas, people to heal include:
- Anyone who has voted a member of the Mafia up to the stand, or who provided decisive evidence to hang a member of the Mafia.
- Anyone who has been confirmed via their abilities, such as a Veteran that was visited on an alert night (though evils will typically refrain from attacking a known Veteran), or anyone brought back to life by a Retributionist.
- Healing a Jailor allows them to jail any target without fear of the target being the Serial Killer or Werewolf. (However, if the Werewolf attacks the Jailor directly, you will be attacked as well).
- Two Doctors healing each other are very difficult to kill. This combo can only be stopped by a Witch/Coven Leader (redirecting one Doctor's heal elsewhere), a Consort or Pirate (stopping one Doctor from healing the other), or attacking one with an Unstoppable Attack.
- If your target was healed, and someone was killed by a Bodyguard the next morning, but no Bodyguard died, then you almost certainly healed the Bodyguard. Most of the time, you should immediately whisper to them, claim to be a Doctor, explain what happened, and ask them to cover you for the rest of the game while you heal them. This creates a nearly unstoppable team.
- Healing a Bodyguard allows them to kill anyone who attacks their target, without them dying, until you are killed. This also allows you to indirectly provide indefinite protection to a Mayor, who you cannot heal directly, as long as you yourself are not attacked.
- A Doctor/Bodyguard pair that are constantly healing/protecting each other is almost impossible to destroy. This is similar to a Doctor/Doctor pair, with the difference that the Bodyguard can kill whoever tries to stop the Doctor. A killer will have a 50-50 chance of either failing to kill or being killed themselves. As long as the Doctor is healing the Bodyguard, the Bodyguard will recover from every successful defense.
- If a Jailor jails either the Doctor or Bodyguard, the person not jailed will likely be exposed to any attacks. If you self-heal, you can still survive the night unless you are attacked by an ustoppable attack.
- A Witch/Coven Leader, Escort, Consort, or Pirate can also break this defense by redirecting or role blocking one of the pair.
- If multiple targets attack the Doctor, the Bodyguard will kill one but the remaining killer will kill the Doctor.
- Transporters can usually confirm by posting a record of who they transported, but healing them after they're confirmed doesn't make as much sense as other confirmed Townies, since they'll usually be using their ability to protect themselves afterward.
- A common misconception of a good strategy is waiting before you heal anyone right away (on the first night). The argument goes that you could accidentally save an evil role or run into an unexpected Veteran. However, this looks very suspicious and you miss the opportunity to get a Lookout to confirm you (if they visited the same person), as well as the fact you are more likely to heal a Townie.
- You will know if your target is attacked. This can indicate their innocence in a number of ways:
- If there were no attacks from the Mafia that night, it means your target may have been attacked by the Mafia; aside from rare shenanigans of a Transporter or Witch, that would mean they're not a member of the Mafia, since the Mafia can't normally attack themselves.
- If the attack looks like it was from the Werewolf or a Serial Killer, it can indicate that your target wasn't that role (but, of course, they could still be part of the Mafia.) It can be hard to figure out if you've saved your target from becoming a Vampire, but that's also another potential cause for the message. (and the messages are indistinguishable.)
- If you seem to have healed your target from a Werewolf's attack, yet survived yourself, this means that they weren't the Werewolf's primary target; in other words, it means they're a visiting role and visited the Werewolf's target. If the Werewolf's target died to the Mafia or Serial Killer in this situation, and no member of the Mafia or Serial Killer came up dead, then it's extremely likely you've actually saved an evil role!
- Of course, if you save the Werewolf's primary target, you will die, but the person you healed will survive.
- If you know who the Veteran is (for example, if a Veteran goes on alert Night 1 and someone who died from the Veteran was able to record it in their Last Will) it's a good idea to team up with them. You can tell them you're a Doctor and that you'll heal them until you die, while in the meantime the Veteran saves their alerts for later in the game.
- If there aren't any confirmed Townies (most commonly in early game), it might be useful to heal the most talkative players. These players are typically targeted by the Mafia, as they usually are an important role that is trying to figure out who the Mafia are.
- However, if they are an alerted Veteran, and you healed them because they were baiting, you will die.
- If someone you were healing dies anyway (and the cause is something you could have healed, not suicide or an Arsonist), it means one of two things has happened:
- First, your target may have been transported. This means that your heal was redirected on to someone else, and the attack was redirected onto your target. Note that this means that your target wasn't the one who the attacker intended to kill. You can try to confirm this by asking if anyone was transported; if anyone speaks up, they were probably the real target of the attack.
- And second, if you selected/changed your target just as the night ended, it may not have reached the server in time. This is especially true for low end computers.
- You could also have been controlled by a Witch and redirected onto another target, but it would be fairly obvious as you would have gotten a message. There is a very rare bug that the control message does not show up, though.
- If you're being controlled by a Witch every night, take note if your target is healed (and write what night it happened in your Last Will). After the first night, a Witch is probably making you target them, so you may be able to identify them if they're later called out by an attacker as having a defense higher than said killer's attack value.
- If you are aware of a Witch in-game, be careful when stating you are the Doctor, as doing so gives the Witch powerful defense every night. Under no circumstances should you reveal that you are the Doctor unless you ask a Transporter to transport you or a Lookout to watch you in order to bust the Witch.
- These same things can apply ot the Coven Leader.
