Role: Infected

[Luna]

Just a small idea that I'm throwing out there.

Role name: Infected

Description: A hospital patient abandoned during this time of crisis in the town, decides to get his own back on the world that has abandoned him by exploiting his illness.

Alignment: Neutral

Abilities:

- Has the ability to visit and infect one person.
- Once that person is infected, anyone that they visit (or visits them) in the night also gets infected, and so on.
- The Infected may choose to unleash a toxin in the air, which will kill everyone currently carrying the illness (the idea being that this certain substance has a lethal effect only on victims of this disease).

Win Condition: To be the last one left alive.

Host Options:
1) Only the first victim of the infection can spread the disease to others - Default: Off
2) Anyone speaking with the diseased at night is infected (Mafia meetings, Jailed captives, etc.) - Default: Off

Pros:

- Would fit into the game - similar to the arsonist
- Can potentially be a game-changer if used tactically; the infected will need to judge who might have the most visitors, and decide when to strike.

Cons:

- Chance to run too rampant - might need some tweaking to avoid situations where everyone can get infected too easily.
- Victory conditions need to be looked at - with only 1 shot, I thought it more prudent for him to have abnormal win conditions, since if he had to be the last man standing he'd really need to be able to infect more people, which would make him a much more OP version of the arsonist.

Overall effect on the metagame if implemented: It would depend on what messages we can come up with in-game. Will people know they're infected? What will the inv/sheriff see? I can see some potential for unique meta-game opportunities ("Guys I'm infected, stay away from me" - Says the Mafioso, or "Crap I just got infected off -xxx-, lynch him quick so he can't spread it" - Says the Executioner).

Additional comments: I was toying around with certain ideas, such as making him turn into a townie if a Doc healed him, but I figured many people (me included) can sometimes over-complicate things. I know we may not need another neutral role, but I personally love it if I'm a neutral killing role like the SK and I figure this is an interesting idea. There's *some* luck in it, but it's not a percentage-based affair and I think there's definitely tactical thinking that needs to go into it. Without some testing though I'm not sure whether the infection would run rampant too easily - If your target visits someone every night and/or gets investigated then there's the chance it'll go overboard. Changing how people get infected is an option, and I included the host option to scale back the role a bit.

I mean, would one role be able to see if people were infected? Like the lookout sees that someone is coughing as they leave a house? I think the Doctor should be immune (good hygiene!) and can cleanse other people of it when they heal. In the same way that Cultist vs. Mason setups have sprung up, there's opportunities for unique setups here (including ones which are more doctor-centric).

I'm not sure if anyone's suggested anything like this, someone has probably written a viral role somewhere but I don't remember reading it.

[Inca_Killa]

this is basically cult, no thanks.

[ethelion]

Nice op

[Luna]

Whilst I'm pretty much completely open to criticism Inca_Killa, being very insecure about my own ideas, I feel like that particular observation kinda missed the point. Cult is a recruiting-based faction; it tries to get one person per night, dealing with different immunities, and wins by getting enough votes to lynch. You could easily have said that this is too much like an arsonist instead.

Forgot to mention a couple of other notions; namely, if someone kills the Infected should that person possibly get diseased too, not able to spread to anyone else but a delayed death (they die the next night, so during the day they can ask for a heal - a new meta game where the mafia or SK needs to pretend to be a vigi or something to escape death, though a new death message would have to apply to Infected in that case, adding more complications)

[NorthStar]

As with many other roles supported on the forum, I do NOT support this.

[notfagsrepor]

It's a nice try but its pretty much just an arson with a different win condition.

[Portaloo]

Description: A hospital patient abandoned during this time of crisis in the town, decides to get his own back on the world that has abandoned him by exploiting his illness.

a bit redundant, can be cleaned up a bit (not very important)

Win Condition: Must kill at least 5 people (any Doctors killed count as two for the purposes of the victory condition).

i have seen this before, im not a fan of having to kill a certain amount of people and many people agree, this can be cleaned up a little bit though.

similar to the arsonist

this is basically cult, no thanks.

i just posted this on another thread, i'd like to see new, unique roles out there instead of roles that seem like a slur of a few roles just slammed together, it states in the standard for making roles this exact concept. i think the idea of stealing uses of stuff is great, the role just needs alot of tinkering if it is going to appear ingame.

[Luna]

I think it's similar to the Arsonist in the same way that you can say the the Detective is similar to the Lookout, or the Veteran shares features with the Bodyguard. I don't think it's a redundant role (aside from the fact that the Infected and the Arsonist both choose a moment to unleash their death, the way they spread their killing is completely different and requires a separate form of tactical thinking.

I think I'd prefer the win condition to be something simpler as well, I suppose letting the disease spread a bit more rampantly would allow for a 'Be the last left alive' condition (if you spread the infection early, by the time there's only 3 or 4 people left you gotta be thinking "Hmm... do I dare pull the trigger now? Is one of them a sheriff that's might have been spreading it around to the rest?").

Ah well, I guess it takes someone else to point out the flaws in your plan.

[Citiknits]

I don't like roles which require to "Kill X people to win" It's just lame.

Also, DR wants to keep this game as realistic as possible. Witch is pretty much as far as he can go, but anything to do with Zombies, Zerg or Protoss will very likely be shut down.

[Luna]

Maybe the title 'Infected' was a bit misleading, especially given the Left4Dead franchise. I'm pretty certain a deadly disease is realistic enough (I just didn't want to call the role 'Ebola-spreader' or anything like that).

[S.A.S.Cnl.Alpha]

Switch ability from infect a person once at night to a one-time ability of infecting one person.

After one person is infected, each person they visit/are visited by becomes infected. The newly infected also spreads it.
After three days, the toxin is released killing all who are infected including the original infector.
Win condition should be similar to "Jester Wins" screen where there is no one left.

More than one infect is overly powerful.

I don't think more than one person would let you spit in their mouth anyway, if at all.

[Luna]

Ah, it was supposed to read as a one-time use ability. I thought that giving the player the ability to trigger the disease via a catalyst would be more interesting, as otherwise you become a bit passive.

On the day after the toxin is triggered I'd originally considered the drawback that the Infected couldn't leave his house for fear of killing himself, thereby rendering him unable to speak during the day (so after lots of players die any survivors can have a shot at finding out who the Infected is, and if a Blackmailer silenced someone that night as well it could get interesting).

Editing OP to better reflect the 1-shot nature.

[SnipingHobo]

Seems like an extremely overpowered Arsonist.