Chuckg

Originally posted by zornwil

Why are you pissed?

I hope you don't mind if I don't answer that one... 'cause if I got started on that, we'd be here all week.

Seriously.

I will, however, mention that I was a die-hard Soulless-Spike Redemptionist, and a big Cordelia fan, and a sentimental old Angel/Cordy 'shipper... and you can probably figure it out from there.

Edit -- oh yeah. Redeemed!Faith fan as well.

zornwil -- re: guns... well, Buffy might be personally contemptuous of them, but Wesley thinks they're a really dandy accessory to go along with his swords and axes. And has been using them fairly recently for the past several years. (And gotten at least one fairly significant demon kill with them.)

Then again, Wes is the same guy who once solved the problem of a wave of attacking vampires by breaking out a flamethrower, and figured out how to kill a demon by dropping liquid nitrogen on it...

Wes is cool.

> So, I guess it was regular Army that knew how to remove

> Spike's chip?

That surgeon didn't know how to remove Spike's chip. He'd come to town to to remove Riley's implants, for which the original specs were presumably still in his medical records.

They closed down the project. They didn't kill everyone who used to be in it.

Re: fandom... well, I *used* to be a fan. Ever since season 6, and season 4 of Angel, I have been really, really pissed with the show.

> Honestly, I woulda bet my balls that Riley remained with the

> Initiative after leaving Buffy (in the scene where she chased

> after him, but missed his chopper).

That *was* the "re-enlistment" scene I referred to, from mid-season 5... the episode "Into The Woods".

When Riley bailed from the Initiative mid-season 4, he was a deserter. Between season 4 and 5, he was quietly discharged without a court-martial as part of the cover-up (after all, if the unit you were in never existed, it's kinda hard to publicly prosecute you for deserting from it). In the episode referred to above, the military -- apparently **EXTREMELY* hard up for people -- actually let Riley Finn back in, largely because his buddy Graham (and one of the Initiative's few other survivors) begged his CO to give Riley Finn another chance.

> I still would bet all the tea in China that Sam & Riley stated

> that they were in the Initiative.

I just did a text-search of an online transcript for the episode 'As You Were'... the word "Initiative" is not used once.

PS -- if you go Googling, you'll find that transcripts for pretty much all the Buffy episodes are available online.

*ahem*

That was the 'other unit' I referred to. Did they eventually rename it 'The Initiative'?

And remember, Riley only came to Sunnydale because he was following an international arms dealer in demon eggs, and this was the drop point. They obviously didn't give a damn about purely domestic vampire activity, because Riley Finn's already known for years that Sunnydale's up to its ass in purely domestic vampire activity, and yet never bothered to lead any troops there save for this one episode.

BTW, when I quote the actual script from the show, the least you could do is believe it.

> Riley Finn (as portrayed by Marc Blucas) was a member of

> The Initiative [the Official Military branch / agency

> dedicated to demon fighting].

Actually, Riley Finn deserted from the Initiative in the middle of season 4, was discharged without charges being filed between seasons 4 and 5 as part of the cover-up (see below), and was re-enlisted into another unit in the middle of season 5 (largely to get him off the show, as Joss was dumping him as a full-time Scooby).

As for the Initiative, it was actually a 'black' government project to *capture* demons for experimentation as possible military weapons, and the project was judged a failure at the very end of season 4 and closed down.

"It was an experiment. The Initiative represented the Government's interests in not only controlling the otherworldly menace, but harnessing its power for our own military purposes. The considered opinion of this counsel is that this experiment has failed. Once the prototype took control of the complex, our soldiers suffered a 40 percent casualty rate. Only through the actions of the deserter and a group of civilian insurrectionists that our losses were not total. I trust the irony of that is not lost on any of us. Maggie Walsh's vision was brilliant, but ultimately unsupportable. The demons cannot be harnessed. The end result cannot be controlled. It is therefore our recommendation that this project be terminated and all records concerning it expunged. Our soldiers'll be debriefed. Standard confidentiality clause. We will monitor the civillians and usual measures prepared should they try to go public. I don't think they will. The Initiative itself will be filled in with concrete. Burn it down, gentlemen. Burn it down, and salt the Earth."

 

-- from 'Primeval', episode 21, season 4, BtVS

Later on in season 5, an unnamed new unit was started up, a military project to put toe-tags on demons without bothering about sorting or classification. It didn't seem to be deployed within the borders of the US, though.

> Chuckg, (noticing no mention of inherent Healing for either

> Robin or The Bat),

That's 'cause I said they didn't have that power.

> why specifically do you care so much what Primus knows?

> In my gaming univerese, they keep to their mission -

Last I checked, PRIMUS' mission is to serve and protect the public from hostile metahumans... which category would include vampires and demons.

One of the things I always found most offensive about the Buffyverse is about how the average vampire would kill 200-300 people each year, and yet the law enforcement and/or national security response could be summed up in *only* one of two categories -- the ineffectual or the apathetic.

Your own custum Buffyverse might be doing it differently, of course, but the one Joss Whedon wrote sucked in that regard.

[snip]

> while Buffy's mission is carried on (in the year 2377) by the

> Initiative (Military Demon Hunters),

1) This was the first I heard that you /had/ Military Demon Hunters, 2) or that you were int he year 2377, and 3) I was talking to Mark about his campaign anyway.

[snip]

> P.S. Angel (this season) mentioned Buffy & Giles' last known

> 20 as "somewhere in Europe"

I.e. -- 'somewhere far enough off-stage that we don't have to pay those actors until their sweeps guest-shot, if we can ever get them to agree to do one'.

To touch on a point I mentioned before briefly -- if you're going to use Buffyverse cosmology in the CU, then either PRIMUS and suchlike have to know about vampires, or else vampires have to be a /lot/ rarer and feed a /lot/ less often than they do in the Buffyverse.

> You make some good points,... and unless I'm still missing

> the point its Slayer Speed you most contest!?

Ayup. And any DEX in the Nightwing range... she's lower than that. I'd say 20, 23 at most.

> Do Batman / Nightwing also possess magical (albiet mild)

> Rapid Healing?

No, if they break a bone, they have to spend time with a cast. They just don't get bones broken in the first place..

[snip]

> I swear Joss' reason for the lack of guns was the noise.

I am not doubting your word -- I'm sure that you are accurately passing on Joss' remarks.

What I am disagreeing with is Joss Whedon's reasoning... the problem of "guns make noise" has long since been solved by the Navy SEALs and other suchlike people, who happily sneak around in the night and kill lots and lots of people without waking up the local cops.

Edit -- as to the question of 'Where would Buffy get such weapons?', my answer is 'From Giles -- who knows people who have actually shown the ability to purchase not only private mercenaries with high-end milspec gear, but private mercenaries /with attack helicopters/' (The crew that was chasing Faith all over LA, in the AtS episode right before she goes to jail)

Then again, it has long since been established beyond any possible doubt that Joss Whedon don't know beans about the military, guns, or anything similar... the mere existence of the Initiative shows that.

> And cops would respond to a 911 call, especially if it's in

> regards to gunfire (they wouldn't know its about Vamps

> until they got there).

Over the course of the seasons, the nigh-legendary ineptitude, laziness, and outright corruption of the Sunnydale PD has impressed me to the point where I don't think those donut-munching turds would step outside their front doors if there was a running gun battle up and down main street.

The thing you have to remember is that any line of reasoning that assumes that the Sunnydale PD is either a) competent, motivated, or c) actually gives a shit about serving and protecting is dead wrong, 'cause they made it an explicit plot point in season 3 that Mayor Wilkins had deliberately staffed his police force with apathetic morons who wouldn't care if half the town got eaten overnight, so as to better conceal his own nefarious activities. And the attitude persisted even after Mayor Wilkins' death, 'cause the new mayor didn't sweep clean.

> He also admitted it had something to do with budget &

> violence (ratings; TV-MA etc).

This explanation, however, I will believe.

I'll also agree with STR 25 or so.. heck, that's what I was pushing for all along.

> The show, nor Joss, are politically anti-gun (quite the

> opposite), but it is a show about prowling graveyards in the

> dark of night.  Joss has said gunfire would surely wake

> up the straights, porch lights would kick on,

First off, Sunnydale has the population most determined *not* to notice anything in the entire US -- it's been a core premise of the series.

Second off, has Joss never heard of something called the silencer?

> authorities would be called... sorta defeats her whole

> mission.

*heh*

Now I /know/ Joss is putting us on. When the hell have the authorities in Sunnydale ever noticed *ANYTHING*?

I mean, cripes, in season 5 Riley Finn blew up a vampire lair in the cemetery with a goddamn hand grenade, and nobody ever showed. Vampires killed people every night, and the cops just closed their eyes. The entire graduating high school was using *flamethrowers* and *dynamite* in broad daylight, and the cops just called it a gas leak.

When the cops in Sunnydale ever notice anything, it's the exception -- not the rule. And they had to be called in specifically by one of the Mayor's stooges (Principal Snyder) to do even that little.

(Edit -- I'm referring to Buffy's being a murder suspect for the death of Kendra in 'Becoming', season 2... and heck, Buffy didn't even need a weapon to be suspected of it. All she had to do was be the person who found the body, and have Snyder leap to a conclusion.)

> Also most Jossverse Vamps don't go in for technological

> devices for combat, they prefer the thrill of HTH (instead of

> RKAs)

"Why do they always gotta be using swords? It's called an Uzi, ya chump! Could have saved your ass right about now." -- Mr. Trick

But yes, you are correct in that most vampires have this atavistic instinct overriding their common sense. I think maybe three, four vampires in the entire history of both shows (Mr. Trick, the Gorch brothers, and Angelus) had the brains to actually pick up and use boomsticks.

OTOH, I've often wondered what the heck kept the *humans* from wanting an equalizer. If I had to go up against vampires for a living and I didn't have Slayer strength, I'd be carrying anything I could get my hands on that I could fit a sound suppressor onto.

Edit -- for that matter, if I had to go up against vampires for a living and I *did* have Slayer strength, I'd still get one. Screw that 'glory of battle' shit, all I'd want to do is watch the enemy die, me not die, and go home.

> Buffy's magical Slayer healing is Constant, not an infrequent

> occurance.

I was referring to 1) her resurrection and 2) Dark Willow's jump-starting her again in the hospital after she got shot. In both cases, outside magical assistance was needed to deal with major trauma and/or outright death that her own mild Slayer healing powers were insufficient unto the day with... in the same way that outside healing powers were needed to give Bruce a functional spinal cord back.

> By my understanding her Healing is mostly regenerative

> (though not to the point of regenerating whole limbs).

Actually, the best model for it in HERO is the Rapid Healing talent from Fantasy HERO -- you gain back 1 BODY per hour of rest, which allows you to go from 'had the holy living crap knocked out of you' to 'fully fresh' in just a day, instead of needing several weeks to heal the fractures and bone bruises.

> In the Buffyverse it's been confirmed (discussed but never

> shown) that Vamps regrow / regenerate lost limbs

One powerful argument /against/ quick vampire regeneration is Spike's injury in season 2 -- it took him several *months* in the wheelchair to recover from a broken back. So while vamps do regenerate major damage, they obviously don't do it at all quickly.

> Any casual observer of the series realizes (quite plainly) that

> high Speed & Stamina, [snip]

Any *detailed* observer of the series realizes that while the stamina is obviously metahuman, and the dexterity is up there with high-end human gymnasts, the speed isn't that much faster than the mooks. And I mean the *human* mooks.

Mildly superhuman STR is obvious, of course.

> Which of the above do you dispute?

I've only told you six times by now, why are you still asking?

< Also, wasn't Robin (or Nightwing) a comic book Hero? Do

< you assert that Buffy can't even match up to he?

I've seen Nightwing do acrobatic maneuvers without even looking that would Buffy in a back brace. I've seen Robin start from the prone position, with the bad guy's foot on his wrist and an Uzi aimed at his head from six inches away, and one second later the bad guy was busy kissing the floor. I've seen Nightwing flip around gunfire from /Deathstroke/ at point-blank range. I've seen Robin ride a motorcycle down the *top* of a chain-link fence. Etc, etc.

While Buffy can obviously outmatch any of these guys in arm-wrestling -- she has metahuman strength, they don't -- I'd bet on Robin to equal her in agility, and Nightwing to blow her doors off.

> Different genres.

Then either Buffy has to get her stats altered to jump genres from 'BtVS' to 'Champions Universe', *OR* she gets benchmarked at being at a significantly lower level than comic-book characters...

... which is, and has been, my point throughout this entire exercise.

> Face it, Batman is for the most part a hell of a lot less

> realistic than Buffy, at least if you overlook the vampires

> and other monsters. Buffy and the characters in the show

> get hurt badly all the time, and have to heal. Batman is still

> four-color;

Actually, by now he's solidly Iron Age -- when Bruce is wounded, he's got to put on the bandages and heal up. Heck, that's been true ever since "Knightfall', when they put him in a bleeping wheelchair and then had to invent a character with magical healing powers to get him out of it again, and even then he needed months of rehab to get back in fighting trim. (Then again, Buffy's had her own magical healing episode, several times.)

[snip]

> Josh Whedon said in an interview on the DVDs that they

> deliberately chose to make guns a not-part of the

> Buffyverse.

Well, that's been changing on 'Angel' the past couple of seasons, ever since Wesley discovered the joy of boomsticks.

The DM, to our 'legacy' character -- "You recall Dad telling you, 'Son, if you ever have to fight [bulldozer], try to go a bit easy. It's not really fair to beat up too bad on the retarded.' "

(just found the transript log)

Context: the team martial artist is talking to the team's backup brick -- who can take anti-rank rockets without being scratched -- about whether or not she's going into a place where the local Triad boss has some thugs.

"I don't want you in danger......what am I saying?"

(edited for punctuation)

From last week's game session:

"Sorry. I keep getting superpowers kicking in at random moments, and it looks like one of them is X-ray vision."

(No, not /that/ kind of situation, you pervs. *g*)

> Gotta disagree there, Chuckg. You're getting way too much

> into game mechanics rather than the storytelling. Batman

> doesn't ignore shotgun blasts, he simply arranges to be

> elsewhere when the mook pulls the trigger. He's not

> thinking "I've got a really good DCV, and my Combat Luck will

> protect me if the goon rolls good."; he's thinking "Uh oh, a

> shotgun! I'll move around behind this crate to avoid it,

Aka "Abort To Dodge" or "Dive For Cover" -- which is what Batman specifically does *not* do most of the time.

> then take him down with a batarang."

No, in the past decade or so of Batman comics, there's been a lot of "I'll bum-rush the guy blasting away at me, and he'll never connect as I close and put a fist right into his eye." Same way Captain America, Daredevil, and Nightwing do it.

I've seen Batman charge straight towards a man with a gun.... something that Buffy or Faith can't do without taking severe risk.

> Why is it so offensive for you to concede that Willow &

> Xander were Competents and Buffy is a low-powered

> Heroic... not even Legendary (i.e., Superheroic)???

Why is it so hard for you to realize that I'm not arguing that Buffy shouldn't have any Superheroic stats, I'm arguing that she shouldn't have *that many* Superheroic stats?

[snip]

> Obviously, most people would concede that Batman is a

> borderline Heroic / Superheroic (i.e., upper level Heroic /

> lower level Superheroic.

Obviously not, 'cause he's obviously at least a 700-point character.

For example -- even Slayers have to Abort to Dodge to deal with shotgun fire at point-blank range. Batman doesn't even bother, his DCV and Combat Luck alone are enough to ignore the incoming.

> Anyone who really wants to judge Buffy should consider her

> beating a bonafide (albiet somewhat disabled) Hell God,

Buffy took on Glory mano-a-mano twice that I can recall... and Glory casually slapped the snot out of her each time.

The one matchup that Buffy won required:

a) Glory to be suffering a big weakening effect from the Orb

Glory to be suffering an even bigger weakening effect from Willow's spell

c) Glory to already have used up a lot of her large but finite END reserve fighting the Buffybot

d) Glory to get whacked with a wrecking ball

*and*

e) Glory to take about twenty hits from Buffy's shiny new Super-Troll-Hammer artifact weapon.

Left to her own devices, Buffy vs. Glory = Buffy gets curbstomped.

> and of course Caleb.

Granted, I can't explain Caleb, except to gripe that the writers were in a hurry and completely forgot that the SOB was supposed to be a lot more invulnerable than that. Or I can blame the Magical-Super-Slayer-Booster-Axe.

See VIPER 5e sourcebook, they saw the same GI Joe episode too.

Originally posted by archer

I once read a fanfic about Buffy, Princess of Amber, that I thought was pretty cute.

"The Unicorn and the Slayer", by M Scott Eiland?

http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=213842

I thought it was excellent as well. Especially since it used Bleys, one of my fave Princes of Amber.

> Do you have some kind of Dex-O-Meter that tells you

> everyone's DEX and SPD?

Didn't I already have this argument? Scroll to the beginning of the thread...

Or for the short version, try the sentence "I know which cast members are still normal humans or mostly so, and how well Buffy looks next to them."

Archer -- my 'aversion' is to giving her highly superhuman DEX and SPD, as her performance just doesn't bear it out. I'm more than willing to give her superhuman nonresistant PD and STR.

In the current campaign I'm in...

Well, we're not really 'clones', we're just 'inspired by archetype'.

But I'll list the differences...

The 'Superman' clone -- Horus-Re -- is now an immortal warrior/champion of the Turakian/Valdorian sun god, who has slept down the centuries and arisen over and over again to face great evils, and has millennia of experience and wisdom to draw upon. However, he's also grown somewhat remote from the concerns of ordinary life, and his eternal opposition to the forces of Nama have rendered him both extremely skilled at penetrating deception, and slightly obsessed with countering it.

IOW, we mixed in elements of both Batman and Nuada of the Silver Hand.

The 'Batman' clone -- Streethawk -- is now a wisecracking acrobatic type, in addition to being a Millennium City PD officer (assigned to a special sub-branch of the MARS unit known as 'the place we stuck the guy who developed superpowers on the job'). In addition to his detective functions, he's also a talented manga artist in his spare time, and lives happily with his fiance.

Mix . -- we mixed in elements of Spider-Man and Kyle Rayner, and stripped out /all/ of the obsessive and brooding elements and mailed them to Horus-Re's address. (After Green Dragon threatened his fiance recently, though, Streethawk's been getting grimmer...)

The 'Green Lantern' role -- Starguard -- got youthened to age 18, got a gender swap, got an entirely different origin, and a personality that would make Chihiro's from 'Spirited Away' (as of the end of the movie) look like her personality from the /beginning/ of the movie.

Mix -- Well, actually, don't start with Kyle. Start with *Jenny* (Jade), up the versatility all the way to Cosmic Power Pool, shift from green energy to white energy, and stir in elements of Belldandy.

The 'Atom' clone -- MicroMan II -- is actually the android "son"/designated successor of the CU's canonical Atom 'clone', Dr. Daniel Collins (aka 'Microman'). Only the android's player has chosen to make him a cross between the Atom... and Commander Data.

Our last player... well, he's *trying* to clone the Gray Lensman, but to be quite frank, he just ain't getting it.

Originally posted by zornwil

What about "punching strength", i.e., the ability to inflict damage by punching - how does that compare and what would that look like in HERO?

Hand-To-Hand Attack.

Starguard -- be very happy, and then after a short while, realize that the rest of the Milky Way needs somebody to look out for the people who live there, too. And then she'd go to the stars.

Dr. Pain -- retires to the beach house in Malibu. *cue "Louie Louie"*

Baron von Darien -- at long, long, *long* last, his self-imposed duty to humankind is over. The threat of his kindred to man is forever neutralized, as are the threats from the powermongers and killers and bandits who are like unto his kindred morally.

He can finally rest now.

And so after putting everything in order and taking a short while to enjoy the finer pleasures in life, he calmly sits on his terrace and watches the sun come up, one last time.