Board Thread:Debate of The Week/@comment-28112409-20171025060017/@comment-32881402-20171025102524

The Bodyguard
The Bodyguard is an incredibly powerful protective. It's an 'okay' role, but it has huge flaws:


 * (very irrelevant but still an issue) Healing a Bodyguard when they should die is a HUGE issue. It can pierce immunity and doesn't have a consequence when healed. This is a basic fix that needs to be fixed. Retributionist and bodyguard isn't the biggest deal, but it's still out there. Since Doctor can heal multiple times, it's a much bigger problem. Retri's ability is one-time, so that justifies it slightly.


 * Its interaction with NK is extremely one-sided. If Bodyguard kills the NK, it ends the game for NK. There's no comeback. The game ends here. This is a problem with both NK and BG, but we've tried countless times to buff NK and no solution has been found (yet). What can you give that doesn't apply specifically to Bodyguard? A 1 for 1 involving a majority is always going to be negative for the minority's side.


 * (Slightly irrelevant) The skill required for this role is low. After you do your 1 successful (incredibly powerful) protect, your effort becomes 0. You can then stop reading and everything which is a problem. This, however, does not stop the role from being overpowered. I've mentioned it before - it has unbalanced interaction with other Factions, even if only once.

Doctor
Doctor is so much less powerful than Bodyguard:


 * BG can interact with all NKs. BG can kill the Arsonist, while the Doctor is powerless against it. BG can kill the WW and the WW only takes the BG's life. Doctor will get killed and protect the Doctor's target. Pretty similar to WW's attack anyway. Doctor causes less harm to the opposing factions in general. In a desperate attempt to make Doctor on par with BG (and reduce swing in the Town (Protective) alignment), they have made Doctor very confirmable with the notification. However, in order for Doctor to be as useful as Bodyguard, it'd have to heal at least 2 kills - BG has a much easier time finding only 1 target to protect.

Conclusion:

BG has an overpowered interaction with NKs and Mafia, causing extreme harm to NKs. Doctor has medium interaction with NKs and Mafia as well as confirmability, but can heal multiple times. However, in order for Doctor to really be on par with BG, it has to heal at least twice - BG has a much easier job.

(I did this on mobile to I'll have spelling errors and stuff.