Sunnydale, California for Champions 5E

[Mark Rand]

Hi all,

Has anyone ever used Sunnydale, California (where Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the series is set) as a setting for superhero games?

If so, would the heroes join Buffy and her friends in their fight?

I know that Matt's pages have the stats of Buffy & her friends (and foes) for Champions 5E. Unfortunately, due to the server company's policies, I can't get at them until November 1.

Yours,

Mark Rand

[Redmenace]

I've missed out on Buffy from beginning to end but what I've seen mentioned in many posts is the transplanting of the, or maybe another, Hellmouth to a specific campaign city.

 

Both the the Gotham 5E, and Pittsburgh 5E threads mentioned it.

[Mark Rand]

I know. I wrote the posts mentioning them myself.

[zornwil]

No, not using Sunnydale, but thought i should respond because I put Buffy and the Gang in Detroit, where the PC super team is. One of the PCs is friend to Buffy and Willow and the gang at large. They have helped each other out a bit. Buffy first ran across the gang as their paths crossed coincidentally. They slew some vampires together. Later their paths again crossed accidentally, but this time more directly as it turned out the detective PC was working on a case for a vampire she was stalking. They worked together on that one. Then another, different, PC opened up a vortex to a nasty Lovecraftian dimension; Buffy and the Scooby Gang defended the opening against unwanted intruders while the PCs eventually took care of the vortex.

 

EDIT - forgot the most important thing - recently the Scooby Gang/Giles took up offices in Sihn-Tek, the base/business of one of the PCs, hence their vortex involvement as it happened right near them.

[Mark Rand]

I planned to use either Buffy characters or just the concepts in my campaign. Having Vampire, Vampire Slayer and Vengence Demon writeups on Matt's page makes such things easy. I'm just wondering if its possible to use Sunnydale itself as a superhero campaign setting.

[zornwil]

Why wouldn't it be possible? What are your concerns? I can't think of a reason not to, if that's where you want it to be. You just have to deal with, like the BtVS series, explaining (or ignoring) how a relatively smaller city has so many things going on, but the series itself provides clues into that (including the city's self-denial pattern).

[Chuckg]

Well, there's also the problem of how Buffyvamps are so relatively weak that any 350-point superhero could rip through them faster than a Slayer on crack, thus kinda blowing the series premise about how special Slayers are supposed to be...

[Mark Rand]

Compared to a normal human, a Slayer is special.

A Buffyverse vamp wouldn't give a four-color superhero any trouble, but they might give a street-level one some problems. A city like Sunnydale might attract only that kind of hero.

Imagine Batman's surprise if he encountered one or more vampires, or a Slayer in action. Who would win a fight between Batman and either a Slayer or a vampire? I don't think it would be Batman.

[Trebuchet]

Originally posted by Mark Rand

Imagine Batman's surprise if he encountered one or more vampires, or a Slayer in action. Who would win a fight between Batman and either a Slayer or a vampire? I don't think it would be Batman.

Oh please!

 

Zander has killed vampires on Buffy. Cordelia has killed vampires on Buffy. Batman would wade through Buffy-class vampires just as well as Buffy. Once he figured out they're not human the Code vs Killing would click off and he'd kick vampire tuchus.

 

Between Bats and Buffy; we already know this one: They'd fight to a draw, then join forces to defeat the latest vampire plot. That's genre.

 

BTW, does anyone have a link for the 5e Buffy writeups? I just finished watching Season Three on DVD. (I never saw the show when it was running.) I'd like to see how a Slayer stacks up to a Hero ninja.

[Chuckg]

> Imagine Batman's surprise if he encountered one or more

> vampires, or a Slayer in action.

 

Sorry, I can't imagine it, I'm crippled by logic. Batman has seen more metahumans of more variety than most of us have had hot dinners.

 

> Who would win a fight between Batman and either a Slayer

> or a vampire? I don't think it would be Batman.

 

Seeing as how the average Buffyvamp shifts into game face whenever balked, it's not as if Batman won't figure out quite soon that he's facing a vampire, and that's assuming its lack of reflection or some other clue -- you did remember that he's one of the most observant people alive, right? -- hasn't already told him.

 

At which point, Batman's kicking its ass to the curb. In addition to the aforementioned Xander and Cordelia examples, Riley Finn can take vampires in hand-to-hand combat... and as all Buffy fans know, Riley's pretty much the Platonic Ideal of idiocy.

 

As for Batman vs. a Slayer -- she has metahuman strength and resilience.

 

And he's got skill.

 

I see Buffy vs. Batman as a fight where Buffy swings fifteen times and punches air fifteen times, getting increasingly more and more frustrated, only to completely blow her head gasket when Batman calmly informs her 'You really need to learn how not to telegraph so obviously.'

 

Cue rage-filled head-down-and-swinging charge from Buffy. (I mean, sheesh, about the only person with *less* temper control than Buffy is Akane Tendo.)

 

Cue Batman using a bit of aikido to turn her own strength against her, watching her bounce head-first off the wall, and zapping her with a taser shot before she can recover. (Remember, Slayers have been downed in one shot by normal cattle prods.)

[Mark Rand]

Hi all,

Good points from two of our learned panel.

Yeah, I can see Batman and Buffy teaming up against the latest plot. He's the greatest detective in comics and she's the vampire expert. However, assuming Gotham's on the (or a) Hellmouth, would the Darknight Detective accept another hero on HIS turf? After all, he feels that Gotham is HIS to protect.

As far as the stats go, I don't have links to them. Mike Surbrook has his own writeup of Buffy on his page and Mathew R. Ignash has writeups for all the characters on his pages. However, Matt's service provider has a limit on how much can be downloaded from each heroes page each month and the Buffy/Angel ones are at the limit. They should be available on 11/1. Matt also has a general Slayer writeup on his page.

Yours,

Mark Rand

[Mark Rand]

Hi all.

It just occurred to me how much Buffy and Black Scorpion have in common. Both live in cities with inept police officers and crooked politicians, both work at night and both are hunted, or, at least, watched, by the police.

If they met, I think they'd get along.

Yours,

Mark Rand

[Sketchpad]

The Batman vs. Buffy thing? Batman hands down ... This is the guy who takes down people like Killer Croc & The Joker ... not to mention the JLA at one point. As far as the vampires, dig up Action Comics Annual #1 (post-crisis, mid-80s) for my answer to that one ... Red Rain is another example

[Mark Rand]

Assuming Slayers exist in the CU, or another universe with PRIMUS and the DOSPA, would the Slayers work with them? If so, which one(s)?

[Chuckg]

Much as it might pain some fans to hear it stated in such bald terms, in any world with four-color metahumans Slayers are inconsequential chump change.

 

 

Buffy's powers...

 

* DEX and SPD up around Normal Characteristic Maxima or slightly above (even powerful vampires like Angelus aren't *that* much faster or agile than the most well-trained of humans -- remember, Buffyverse vampires are much low-powered than most other vampire conceptions in fiction, and Angel's fight vs. Riley Finn gives us a good benchmark for relative SPDs between Angel/Angelus and a Buffyverse human in peak physical condition with minor augmentations -- and Buffy only matches them SPD and DEX wise, she doesn't significantly exceed them)

 

* STR in the 30-35 range

 

* A very high nonresistant PD... but /no/ resistant PD (Slayers have been given life-threatening wounds with ordinary knives and bullets), and no ED worth mentioning (Slayers have dropped from single hits by normal cattle prods).

 

* The 'Rapid Healing' Talent from Fantasy HERO 5e, all 5 points of it

 

* A No Conscious Control dream-based Precognition, and it's been mostly ignored for the past 3-4 seasons anyway

 

... well, heck, we're not even past 250 points here. We might not be past 200. There are Ravenswood Academy students who can blow right past this power curve, let alone any 350-point starting character. *Foxbat* is a greater HTH combat machine than Buffy can ever dream of being. Hell, *Bulldozer* is a more fearsome force than Buffy. (Although granted, even Xander could fast-talk Bulldozer into punching the nearest electrical junction box and KO'ing himself.)

 

 

So how do I think Slayers fit into the default CU? Going off the canon material and the power levels displayed, as a barely-remarkable bit of background noise.(*)

 

AAMOF, the only entities I can recall from Buffy that would actually be significant Champions villains were Adam (and a team of 350-pointers would consider him a low-to-medium threat), Glory, the Judge (if allowed to reach full apotheosis... he's a *solo* 350-point adventure villain at reduced level), and Dark Willow.

 

 

 

 

(*) The 'Super-Slayer' from the end of season 4 is being ignored here because that was a literally once-in-a-lifetime plot device.

[Andrew Cermak]

I agree with you about the discrepancy in relative power scales between a Slayer and your standard issue 350 point four-color superhero.

 

Still, you could easily *make* a "Slayer" that fit just fine into a 350 point campaign by building on their existing abilities.

 

Kick the DEX and SPD up to metahuman levels, add some ED and some resistant defenses (maybe in the form of "armored clothing" or some other super-spandex substitute), replace Rapid Healing with "real" Regeneration, add a unique martial art package with some extra DCs and combat skill levels, throw in equipment and skills...

 

Of course, you'd have to make the vampires correspondingly tougher, but that'd be just as easy.

[lemming]

Originally posted by Chuckg

* DEX and SPD up around Normal Characteristic Maxima or slightly above (even powerful vampires like Angelus aren't *that* much faster or agile than the most well-trained of humans -- remember, Buffyverse vampires are much low-powered than most other vampire conceptions in fiction, and Angel's fight vs. Riley Finn gives us a good benchmark for relative SPDs between Angel/Angelus and a Buffyverse human in peak physical condition with minor augmentations -- and Buffy only matches them SPD and DEX wise, she doesn't significantly exceed them)

I think the SPD & DEX are a bit higher. I think it was shown that Buffy outclasses Riley by a high degree and was holding back.

I think there's also a very high amount of PC protectiveness in the Buffyverse. Maybe the non-supers have large amounts of Luck?

I'm not doubting she's in a lower league if dropped into DC or Marvel without a change. I just think if there were actual supers to a significant degree, we'd find the slayers suddenly tougher as well at least for "story telling" sake.

[Chuckg]

> I think the SPD & DEX are a bit higher. I think it was shown

> that Buffy outclasses Riley by a high degree and was holding

> back.

 

Problem is, Riley and Angel weren't holding *anything* back against each other ("Yoko Factor"), and they were moving at equal SPDs. Likewise, Angelus (and Angelus shares Angel's character sheet save the Psych Lims) and Buffy are evenly matched in SPD. (Ditto Faith and Angelus, as we saw last season on "Angel")

 

Buffy does have a clear DEX, STR, and PD edge on Riley, true -- but then again, so did Angel, as witness the *resuilts* of their little tussle in Yoko Factor. Riley's about STR 20-25 and DEX 18-20, and Buffy's STR 30-35 and DEX 20-23. (Not to mention that Buffy's nonresistant PD can soak Riley's best punch, whereas Riley's PD isn't above NCM.)

 

But when it comes to SPD, Buffy doesn't get that many more actions than Giles does... or Willow, or Xander. Neither, for that matter, do Angel, Faith, etc. And, of course, Buffy and Angel... and therefore Buffy and Riley... have the same SPD.

 

[snip]

> I just think if there were actual supers to a significant

> degree, we'd find the slayers suddenly tougher as well at

> least for "story telling" sake.

 

The problem with the story of the Slayer is that it's not even consistent with its *own* stated premises, let alone real-world logic. How can one girl be the scourge of vampirism when Buffyverse canon establishes that vampires reproduce as easily as they have been shown, and are spread out everywhere in every city? Buffy could kill twenty a night -- and that's well in excess of her average night -- 365 days a year and not even *begin* to cut into the vampire "birth" rate. Any well-trained and well-equipped gang of normals can make vampires and demons die faster than the Slayer can. (Examples -- Gunn's old gang and how they scourged their 'hood, and Holtz's original crew and how they made Angelus and Darla run for their lives across the length of Europe... when the Scooby Gang can barely make Angelus run for his life across *town*.)

 

Edit -- for that matter, the only way that season 4 BtVS could *avoid* showing that any well-trained group of agents should be far more effective in vampire-mulching than a single very minor metahuman was to curse every single military character on their show with an absolutely unrealistic -- indeed, positively absurd -- amount of blithering stupidity, and then bald-facedly make the claim that these were "the best of the best", when what they actually acted like were the guys who couldn't make the cut for 3rd Edition VIPER trainees.

 

(AAMOF, for DMs who want to bring back the old "green-suited circus clown" standard of competence for VIPER, look no further for your inspiration than the Initiative.)

 

Makes you wonder what makes the original Shadow Men and the Council of Watchers think that they're so important.

 

Granted, the knowledge base of the Watchers is nigh-indispensable... but it'd be equally as useful, or even more useful, if it were handed out to multiple gangs of vampire-hunters armed and organized like Holtz's crew than it would be doled out in dribs and drabs to one girl at a time. (For that matter, Wesley's best career move after getting canned from the Watchers would not have been to go to LA as a rogue demon hunter, but to go to Washington DC and look up the group that succeeded the Initiative and hire on as their only available *really* expert consultant.)

 

Of course, if you want to import the Watchers into the CU, they're /already there/... who do you think the Trismegistus Council /are/, anyway?

 

BtVS has had many enjoyable character-driven arcs, some of them so extremely well-written as to compare with or outshine the original literary inspirations, but the *plots* have never really held up, and the setting doesn't even begin to come close to the same standards of internal consistency as, oh, the 5e Champions U.

 

Hence the poor fit.

[Mark Rand]

Good points from members of our learned group.

According to Buffy's character sheet, as written by James Gillen and posted on Mike Surbrook's site, she is a heroic-level character. He also created a special martial arts form for Slayers. The maneuvers listed are, to quote him, "...based on Tae Kwon Do, the style actually used by Sarah Michelle Gellar".

In order for a Slayer to work in a superhero universe, they need to be rewritten as a low-powered superhero. How would we do this?

I also agree that there should be more than one. How many should there be and how does the Trismegistus Council decide where they go?

Does each Slayer have her own Watcher?

Who trains the Slayers?

How do other supers and law enforcement agencies react to them?

If there's a Slayer in the Gotham area, how would Batman react to her?

[Chuckg]

/gag/

 

If what SMG uses on the show is actually Tae Kwon Do, then I'm actually Queen Victoria. (Sarah Michelle Gellar might practice TKD off-screen, but the Buffy stunt crew is using God knows what.)

 

 

As for integrating the Slayers into the world... what makes the most sense to me is that 'Slayer' isn't a title that passes on only at death, but that it's a natural response of the 'magical ecosystem' to too many vampires being present in a given locality at a given time... i.e., sort of like Captain Universe. It bamfs around to where it's most needed, and the Council has to keep whipping out the scrying pools to follow it.

 

(Granted, it's still staying in one place for a minimum of several months at a time. and for truly epic infestations or master vampires, it's stayed around for several years...)

 

As for how powerful a Slayer needs to be in Champions -- remember Viktor, from the movie "Underworld"?

 

I'd say, something about 2/3rds as buff as that.

[zornwil]

Originally posted by Chuckg

> I think the SPD & DEX are a bit higher. I think it was shown

> that Buffy outclasses Riley by a high degree and was holding

> back.

 

Problem is, Riley and Angel weren't holding *anything* back against each other ("Yoko Factor"), and they were moving at equal SPDs. Likewise, Angelus (and Angelus shares Angel's character sheet save the Psych Lims) and Buffy are evenly matched in SPD. (Ditto Faith and Angelus, as we saw last season on "Angel")

 

Buffy does have a clear DEX, STR, and PD edge on Riley, true -- but then again, so did Angel, as witness the *resuilts* of their little tussle in Yoko Factor. Riley's about STR 20-25 and DEX 18-20, and Buffy's STR 30-35 and DEX 20-23. (Not to mention that Buffy's nonresistant PD can soak Riley's best punch, whereas Riley's PD isn't above NCM.)

 

But when it comes to SPD, Buffy doesn't get that many more actions than Giles does... or Willow, or Xander. Neither, for that matter, do Angel, Faith, etc. And, of course, Buffy and Angel... and therefore Buffy and Riley... have the same SPD.

 

[snip]

> I just think if there were actual supers to a significant

> degree, we'd find the slayers suddenly tougher as well at

> least for "story telling" sake.

 

The problem with the story of the Slayer is that it's not even consistent with its *own* stated premises, let alone real-world logic. How can one girl be the scourge of vampirism when Buffyverse canon establishes that vampires reproduce as easily as they have been shown, and are spread out everywhere in every city? Buffy could kill twenty a night -- and that's well in excess of her average night -- 365 days a year and not even *begin* to cut into the vampire "birth" rate. Any well-trained and well-equipped gang of normals can make vampires and demons die faster than the Slayer can. (Examples -- Gunn's old gang and how they scourged their 'hood, and Holtz's original crew and how they made Angelus and Darla run for their lives across the length of Europe... when the Scooby Gang can barely make Angelus run for his life across *town*.)

 

Edit -- for that matter, the only way that season 4 BtVS could *avoid* showing that any well-trained group of agents should be far more effective in vampire-mulching than a single very minor metahuman was to curse every single military character on their show with an absolutely unrealistic -- indeed, positively absurd -- amount of blithering stupidity, and then bald-facedly make the claim that these were "the best of the best", when what they actually acted like were the guys who couldn't make the cut for 3rd Edition VIPER trainees.

 

(AAMOF, for DMs who want to bring back the old "green-suited circus clown" standard of competence for VIPER, look no further for your inspiration than the Initiative.)

 

Makes you wonder what makes the original Shadow Men and the Council of Watchers think that they're so important.

 

Granted, the knowledge base of the Watchers is nigh-indispensable... but it'd be equally as useful, or even more useful, if it were handed out to multiple gangs of vampire-hunters armed and organized like Holtz's crew than it would be doled out in dribs and drabs to one girl at a time. (For that matter, Wesley's best career move after getting canned from the Watchers would not have been to go to LA as a rogue demon hunter, but to go to Washington DC and look up the group that succeeded the Initiative and hire on as their only available *really* expert consultant.)

 

Of course, if you want to import the Watchers into the CU, they're /already there/... who do you think the Trismegistus Council /are/, anyway?

 

BtVS has had many enjoyable character-driven arcs, some of them so extremely well-written as to compare with or outshine the original literary inspirations, but the *plots* have never really held up, and the setting doesn't even begin to come close to the same standards of internal consistency as, oh, the 5e Champions U.

 

Hence the poor fit.

 

The point isn't that the Slayer can kill all the vamps, it's that she faces those grave challenges requiring nearly or actually super-human resistance. You'll note she's saved the world several times, and usually through crafty rather than brute force methods (although I'd admit that the season finales more often than not fell falt).

 

The Initiative was okay, it was partly goofy but worked okay I thought in the context of a Buffyverse.

 

Anyway, I just think you're deconstructing too literally.

[Chuckg]

[snip -- ah, heck with it, this ain't the 'Buffy' forum anyway]

 

Edit -- but everything I said about the Initiative still stands.

[zakueins]

IMHO, the Initiatve would have slaughtered everything non-human in Sunnydale in under a month, without them being made into wusses.

 

There's a big Hollyweird cultural meme that says this- "Soldiers are fools and idiots that can't get a real job, and generals are facists-in-training." (No joke, heard this spoken by two Hollywood types). So, the Initiatve had to be made into morons.

 

For fun, a LOONG time ago (about season 5ish), I got the players to create a bunch of Vampires, then I threw them up against an OLYMPUS team made up of Aries combat ops, Athena ESPers, and sevearl other talents. Ops were armed with a mixture of heavy-duty tazers, flamethowers, and grenades, except for the ESPers and mage. The Vampires were running at 450+ plus points, the Ops at 250 with one 350 mage. Sixteen ops to seven vampires. And these were smart, "it's the freaking 20th Century, why don't we have guns" Vampires (one was toting around a M60 machine gun as his "sidearm").

 

The battle ended in the third turn when the (three surviving) Vampires cut and ran. They took down six of the Ops with them, but the Ops tore them apart. Tazered them to the ground, then set them on fire. At the third turn, one of the players tossed another (on fire) into a river, pulled him out his next action, and ran like hell.

 

The thing is-competently run "normals" or "agents" can take down just about anything-within reason(guys with M16s are not going to take Superman down, but the rest of the JLA might want to find cover). But seeing that monsters were taking apart the "best of the best" Initiative and it was only Uber-Buffy that could save them made her all the more "heroic". You want to be really nasty to your players-run a purely VIPER agents team, knowing tactical sublties like "cover" and "fire sack" and "aim for the head". Unless your players have uber PD/ED, they will go down, and pretty quick.

 

Until they learn to fight smart, too.

[Chuckg]

Re: vampires with guns...

 

The only Vampire: The Masquerade campaign that I played in that I ever liked was the one where the DM thought the same way you did...

 

... so the Methuselah that was our group's patron was an unusually intelligent one, who fully grasped the potential of modern weapons.

 

You haven't lived until you've wiped the sneering smile off an Antedeluvian's face with an anti-rank rocket, while being backed up by fifteen ghouls with Special Forces training and full kit.

 

(How did we avoid violating the Masquerade, you ask? Simple. We painted the vehicles green, wore fatigues, and said we were fighting terrorists. And had bought enough dots of Influence that the genuine authorities would back us up on that.

 

Then again, this was the campaign that ended with our Methsuelah patron going up against a Great Bane in epic battle, while we were busy re-staging Helm's Deep with automatic weapons, holding off more Baali than I want to think about from interfering with our patron)

 

Re: well-trained agents in general -- again, I enthusiastically agree, and recommend doing the same to all DMs.

 

You don't even need to study real military tactics -- just pick up some of the simplest concepts from your miniatures wargaming friends, and then watch your 'Black Hawk Down', 'Tears of the Sun', and 'We Were Soldiers' DVDs over and over again, trying to pick up the sense of how and why they're moving like that.

 

 

OTOH, one point of disagreement...

 

Re: the rest of the JLA -- considering just the classic 'Big 7 +1' lineup...

 

... two of them (Flash, Wonder Woman) can disengage pretty much at will from any conventional military force that they can't outfight, and they can outfight entire regiments. One of them is potentially more powerful than Superman (Green Lantern), so you'd have to find and hit where he sleeps. (Possible, yes... but if he has any reason to be on the alert and moves his stuff from his apartment up to the Watchtower, good luck!) One of them has a single obvious weakness... but flamethrowers are very short-ranged, and napalm delivery's too slow, and outside of that one weakness he's worse to deal with than the Big S. (Martian Manhunter). One of them is -- or at least was -- the head of state of one of the world's superpowers (DCU Atlantis was nowhere near as irrelevant to the world as MU Atlantis is), and as such is somebody that you really have to think twice before sending military force after. And one of them is virtually unkillable with bullets or bombs (Plastic Man).

 

... and as for the last one?

 

 

Let us kindly draw a veil over what happens when even the most highly-trained agents with guns try to tackle the Batman... 'cause that kind of scene is what he was *made* for. Especially since however smart and dirty you can fight, he fights smarter and dirtier.

[Chuckg]

Oh yes, and re: your Initiative comments...

 

One of my fellow Buffy-watching friends is an ex-Marine who used to be with FAST (Fleet Anti-Terrorist Strike Team), after doing a hitch in the 1st Security Force Battalion.

 

His comments -- well, forget the month. According to him.. give him a company from Force Security, arm 'em up appropriately, and they'd flush the Sunnydale sewers in three days to a week.