Chris Goodwin

Any gaming tie-in fiction gets a Special Mention O' Badness. I've never read a piece of gaming tie-in fiction that was worth the time I spent on it, much less money.

I practically launched Sword of Shanarra across the room when I first read it. That was a sack of tripe. Tolkien pastiche, and not even Tolkien pastiche done well.

The Dungeonmaster. Starring Richard Moll (aka Bull from "Night Court") as a dark lord. It was bad and not in a "so bad it's funny" way. The Shanarra books.

Put the Power on an END Reserve. Let the END Reserve only recover when the character is playing his instrument. Make the REC a little higher than what the Power uses during the course of a Turn. Set the Power up so that as long as there is END in the Reserve it must continue (-1/2, just like Always On). When the character stops playing, there will be some amount of END left in the Reserve, and the Power will continue to draw from it until it's gone.

I've always thought of Foxbat as sounding something like a cross between Wolverine and the Evil Midnite Bomber What Bombs At Midnite.

Question: Are the PCs people who drive the robots, or are they the robots themselves?

That's not the way they used to work under 4E, and that's the source of my pet peeve. There was in fact a max on Adjustment Powers whether they brought the adjusted ability to starting level or not. Common misconception that annoyed the hell out of me.

You reach a point of diminishing returns. No Adjustment Power is efficient enough to infinitely increase both its own maximum and whatever it is adjusting.

By the rules, yes. Any Adjustment Power built Only To Starting Value still has the cap. (This used to be a pet peeve of mine in 4th Edition.) There's a ruling in the FAQ on interleaving Adjusted STUN/END/BODY with recovered same. Yes. I'm thinking the only way you're going to get exactly what you're looking for is to house rule it.

Absorption to REC? That's not every time he's punched, I know.... Use Regeneration as a precedent. Build a STUN Regeneration that happens every time he gets punched, using Trigger. Buy lots of PD and/or Damage Reduction vs. STUN. That's about the only way I can see doing it.

I think it is an ingeniously cool idea that I have neither seen nor independently created in nearly 20 years of playing Hero. Kudos.

I have a theory.... You don't live in Sunnydale for any length of time without realizing that there really is something going on. It is the cops' business to know what's going on in Sunnydale, and cops don't get too far by living in denial about their town. They are most emphatically not stupid. They're not-stupid enough to know that when something supernatural is going on, they'd best not poke too closely into it or they'll get killed. So they don't. They also know that as long as this "Slayer" chick isn't killing any humans, that she'll probably take care of whatever is, because hey, the rate of mysterious deaths has gone down since she came to town, for the first time in Sunnydale's recorded history. And besides, who in their right mind would believe a police report stating that, in the professional opinion of a law enforcement agent in the employ of the City of Sunnydale, this young woman was killed by a vampire?

Yes, that's the one.

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

Do you have some kind of Dex-O-Meter that tells you everyone's DEX and SPD? Okay, sarcasm aside: (a) She is superhuman which means she could have superhuman DEX and SPD; ( She has massive amounts of both training and experience in hand-to-hand combat, not just actual fighting but having to react quickly, make split-second life or death decisions, and so forth; © How much DEX and SPD should a person have in order to neutralize an Initiative patrol (themselves highly combat trained) in 28 seconds?

For most games, if you use lift strength as your only criterion, you don't get an accurate conversion. If you'll note, in Unisystem, human stats max out at 6. Plugging that into the formula gives us 450 pounds = ~200 kilograms = STR 15. Better, when converting, to go with relative numbers. Buffy, at Unisystem Strength 8, is effectively one Success Level higher than human maximum, which would probably convert to Hero STR 25. I would probably go with 30, just because to me she seems about that strong. I'll note that Mathew Ignash gave her that level of STR. [geek] Note that in episode 6.05, she lifted an I-beam weighing "quite a few hundred pounds." She toted it around with what appears to have been Casual Strength. Assuming "quite a few" means "slightly greater than four", we can call it 200 kilograms, STR 15. Casual Strength is half full Strength, so we're again looking at 30. [/geek] Edit: I have to admit, I don't understand the apparent aversion to giving her superhuman stats. She has demonstrated superhuman Strength, at the very minimum, both in her actions (as one example, lifting an I-beam as though it were nothing) and in other people's reactions to her (calling her a superhero, remarking on her obviously superhuman strength, etc.).

Re: Healing Changes Suggestions I wouldn't. I've posted on the 600d6 per hour problem. Makes BODY damage essentially irrelevant unless the target dies instantly. If you really want it, the FAQ tells how to get the "reset time" down to per turn. I'd go not more than +1/2. Just make it a number of BODY per turn equal to the character's SPD. I'd probably even let that go as a special effect.

Then do the Clairsentience/Images/Telekinesis thing. Do something like MegaScale on the range for all of those.

I came up with a Perk called Best in the West. To quote:

Perhaps Summon a slavishly loyal character with Mind Link back to the base.

You're stuck with the mental assumption that there is a canon, that Joss and co. have a character sheet for Buffy somewhere that determines everything. As regards continuity of events, BtVS is one of the best shows out there, but as I said several times already, what happens to Buffy is whatever the writers think will make a good story. One episode she kicks the ass of three big vamps, another she gets hers kicked by a normal. Same thing happens to just about any character in comics, movies, TV, or any other fiction medium. As far as your continuing to try.... you've discovered the perils of arguing on the Internet.

Buffy was shot because the story required her to be shot. Whenever Buffy or Batman wins or loses, it's for that reason and that reason alone.

Does the Long way make it more fun? I'd rather just put "X levels of Growth" and be done with it, because I know that makes me Y height and Z mass. I don't have to work all of that crap out and then figure out how much of a Physical Limitation it's worth. (What's "8 meters tall, 50 tons" worth as a Physical Limitation? How about "16 meters tall, 400 tons?") I was also annoyed because the handy dandy List O' Sizes wasn't in the core book, but it apparently is in just about every other Hero System book that has come out.

Is there a Buffy comic book? I think there is, but I've never read one. I know about "Fray". Anyway.... Batman, having fought opponents tougher than Buffy for decades, would surely beat comic book Buffy. Consider that he's got hundreds of issues of his various comic titles. Then again, in crossoverland... didn't Spider-Man once beat Superman? Bottom line is, the winner is whoever the writers want to win. If you take TV Buffy vs. TV Batman, Buffy walks all over Adam West, even if it's first season Buffy vs. final season Batman. If there were a hypothetical new Batman TV series, taking season 1 Batman against season 7 Buffy, Buffy would probably walk all over him. Consider that Buffy has seven seasons of kicking ass against opponents tougher than hypothetical TV Batman. Movie Batman (Michael Keaton) vs. Movie Buffy? My money's on Bats. Kristie Swanson might kick Val Kilmer's ass, much as I hate to admit it; I have no idea about George Clooney as I haven't seen his flick, but I assume he'd walk all over her. Any other comparison is apples and oranges in the worst way.

You've run into another Long-ism. I'm not quite exactly clear on how it's done either. You can pick up the Bestiary, Star Hero, or (I think) Fantasy Hero. Essentially you can do it with a Physical Limitation, though you supposedly can do the DCV penalty with negative skill levels as well (-1 DCV for -5 points). Personally, I'd just house rule it that you can do Growth Always On.