Plague Doctor

Information

Type	Outsider
Artist	Aidan Roberts

“Pleauze shtay shtill. Thinks nid tiime for hillink. Myrhh-myrhh.”

Summary

"If you die, the Storyteller gains a not-in-play Minion ability.”

The Plague Doctor brings an extra Minion ability into play.

• The Storyteller chooses which Minion ability is gained.
• This ability is in effect for the rest of the game.
• Nothing else changes for the Storyteller – they don’t become evil, they don’t become a player, they are not a legitimate player to be targeted by other abilities, and they cannot vote or nominate.
• If all Minions are in play, the Storyteller can gain an in-play Minion ability.
• If the Plague Doctor is drunk or poisoned when they die, the Storyteller doesn’t gain a Minion ability, even when the Plague Doctor becomes sober and healthy.

How to Run

When the Plague Doctor dies, place a not-in-play Minion character token in the centre of the left side of Grimoire. Mark this with the Plague Doctor’s “Storyteller Ability” reminder. If applicable, add a night token to the night sheet.

When this Minion would normally act, the relevant choices are made by the Storyteller.

Examples

The Plague Doctor dies. The Storyteller gains the Poisoner ability and chooses a player to poison each night for the rest of the game.

The Plague Doctor is executed and the Storyteller gains the Cerenovus ability. That night, the Pit-Hag turns the Witch into the Cerenovus. There are now two Cerenovus abilities in play – the Storyteller’s and the new Cerenovus’.

The Plague Doctor has died and the Storyteller has had the Organ Grinder ability for two days. The Plague Doctor is made drunk by the Minstrel. The Storyteller still has the Organ Grinder ability as they gained it when the Plague Doctor died and the Plague Doctor now being drunk does not affect that.

Tips & Tricks

• Don’t let yourself get executed! You don’t want to give the evil team an extra ability, so the longer you last, the less that ability is going to affect the game.

• When you do die, look for the Minion ability that came into play as a result. This will prove you’re good if you can either point out a publicly visible ability or show evidence of a more subtle one to the other good players, which reinforces your alignment and proves your identity as an Outsider.

• When you die, look for the Minion ability that came into play as a result – the ability that came into play was previously not in play, so by elimination it indicates what Minions could have been in play throughout the game.

• Meta your storyteller – if there’s an ability you think your Storyteller will want you can use that to deduce which Minions are likely to have been in play from the start in order to leave space for your Storyteller to gain the Minion ability they’re likely to be most interested in gaining.

• If you’re in a starting three Minion game, you know for a fact that every Minion ability is going to be in play when you die, so you can strategise accordingly.

• You can generally assume that a Minion ability wielded by the Storyteller is going to be used more effectively that it might be by a Minion, since the Storyteller has perfect knowledge of the game, so be wary of how the game balance might swing when you die.

Bluffing as the Plague Doctor

• Plague Doctors are almost never happy to die – they know they have a major negative impact on the good team’s chances. Use this as an argument to survive for as long as possible. It’s one of the few characters, much like the Saint, who will almost always fight hard to survive and therefore you can use this to keep your Minion ability active for as long as possible or to survive to the endgame as the Demon.

• Consider hiding a Minion ability if possible, so that when you die it looks like a Minion ability has been added. This can be tricky, depending what Minion abilities you have to work with, but with the right abilities to “confirm you” as the Plague Doctor this can really help you get trusted and drive the good team narrative as a result. The balance, of course, is that this means using a Minion ability far less effectively for the period of the game up until you die, so you may want to consider the next option instead.

• Have living evil players claim to have been affected by a “Storyteller-used Minion ability” once you die to back up your bluff. This means you don’t have to hide a Minion ability until you die, you can just have evil players pretend to be affected by an additional ability. This, of course, has the downside of linking you directly to your fellow evil players, so the pressure is very much on at that point to be convincingly good yourself!

• Emphasise your deductions around working out which Minion abilities are in play so “you know what you might add when you die”. This is usually the focus of a Plague Doctor anyway, but gives you a gilt-edged opportunity to mislead and misdirect from the get-go as to what seems to currently be in play.

• You are, of course, not the Plague Doctor, so there will be no Minion ability added to the game when you die. Be prepared to change your claim at that point to cater to this or have a plausible story as to why your ability might not have worked. Maybe the Storyteller gained a passive ability? Maybe you were wrong about which Minion abilities were already in play, so the Storyteller actually gained something no-one was expecting. Maybe there’s a Pit-Hag that changed the current Minions just before you died so the Storyteller gained a Minion ability that used to be in play at the start of the game.