Killing Vamps

Hay,

I have been reading a lot of the write ups here about vampires and all and most of them mention that a red roll with a stake will dust a vamp instantly. In the BTVS RPG they give you extra damage for hitting a vamp with a stake and tell you that it is best to wear it down a little before you stake them. I think it is x5 stake damage in other words. So if your stake damage is 40 and the vamps hit points are 50 they dont die. Well here I think that if you get a yellow roll to hit you should do more than normal damage of the stake. That way you are wearing them down. I just think that requiring a red roll to kill the vamp is a little rough. Maybe once they are down to 0 health the roll should be less. I mean an unconcious vamp cant dodge and you have time to aim.

What does anyone think?

Peace,
Sid



Live Fast, Live Hard and Play it Loud

Stake 'em, decap' 'em, then burn 'em with either sunlight or fire.

Note: This is only for the Dracula type of vamp'.

Don't like it. I have a PDF of the BTVS:RPG core rules and I am a huge Buffyverse fan, but the extra damage rule doesn't make sense. Wood piercing the heart insta-kills in the TV shows while stabbing them anywhere BUT does nothing special. Almost all the arrows and bolts in the shows were wood, but Angel and Spike never showed any "special" reaction to being shot by them. Angel even took that 4X4 to the torso from Kate with no reaction other than having a large object rammed through his body. The traditional post-Dracula vampire needs it in the heart. Period. Never in any episode is it mentioned that wood does anything extra besides the heart rule. MSHRPG has something called a "Kill Shot" and I can't think of a better example of one than a vamp takin' a stake to the heart. In the Daddy of all vamp RPGs, White Wolf addresses staking as a very difficult called shot that bascially auto-wins the fight if you land it and does nothing special if you miss it. IOW, I have no idea why the creators of the BTVS:RPG put that rule in there, other than playtesting revealed that staking was too hard using there system or some such.

I won't say I could have made a better RPG, but just because something wears the moniker of "officially licensed" doesn't mean they are worthy. That particular rule is off, the "vampire radar" that comes with the Slayer package was mentioned in the series but used VERY infrequently and inconsistently, lots of people disagree with the stats of the main characters (Angel is stated stronger than Buffy? even though he himself states the contrary?), etc.

It's not just the game either. I have some Buffy books, including "Bite Me!: The Unofficial Guide...etc." I'm glad I have it, and I like reading it, but the writer includes "Nitpicks" and "Highlights" for every episode from Season 1 through Season 6, and frankly some of them are pretty weak. I've read forum posts on various websites that were better than a lot this writer's points. I've heard similar complaints about "The Watcher's ... etc."

IOW, IMHO, the official RPG shouldn't carry much sway. It is a good source, but anyone who is intelligent, has played a lot of RPGs for a lot of years, and has watched the episodes a gazillion times doesn't need to refer to any outside info.



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Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a night. Set a man on fire, and he will be warm the rest of his life

im not so sure about this one. in some comics this has happened, the extrea damage the wearing down and so on. i mean in d&d you can take a vampire down to 0 hp but you dont kill it.and we must remember this is the marvel super heroes game based on marvel comics, not buffy the vampire slayer(gag) (hack) . as to at o hit points should they be easier to hit? i would say no why do you think they would be unconcious they are undead after all.



Post Edited (03-07-05 09:06)

think? whatta you mean think? i dont think, i beat people up. now pay me

having many games with vampires in them i have to say that the current Marvel Vampires is my favorite.

Buffy Vampires while powerful deadly and appearently master martial artists after death, never quite struck me as the world devouring plague the history and show represented.

Palladium Vampires, on the other hand, take the world devouring threat to the extreme. Invulnerable to all but the basic approaches, even nukes fail to stop these monsters. Yet a simple Supersoaker is their worst nightmare. Then the fact that the Alien Intelligence is the true master.... they had me right up until that point. so yes these dead guys get my second favorite rating.

Then you have White Wolf. After playing the game for nigh on 13 years now i can honestly say i've seen just about everything you can do with them. Also that angst gets old really fast. "i'm a superpowerful blood sucking night fiend that will live forever... woe is me. *sob*" Clans/Bloodlines are IMHO a good idea when taken in moderation. But they seem to have lost something along the way. Perhaps it's the trend in their games to make the monsters more like humans with powers rather than monsters. i don't know but as of this moment they sit at the bottom of my favorite vampire list. Familiarity breeding contempt and all.

so on the subject of killing them. i don't see why a wooden stake piercing anywhere but the heart should do any kind of extra damage. If it's the RED result thing you are having problems with, i would say certain characters (blade, frank drake, any trained Slayer, etc) would have that raised to a yellow.

pretty much any character that has spent that much time training to hit such a small target like the heart should gain some sort of bonus.

as it stands if a person realises that what they are fighting IS a vampire then chances are that they can come up with everyday house hold items to dispatch then with. (super soakers don't work, but loaded with holy water...)

if you need interesting ways of killing them let me know i have a bunch from my days in the world of darkness.

Ok, I see everyones point here and I did not mean to say that a stake should do extra damage anywhere but the heart. I guess what I was saying is pretty much what Lord Sidious said at the end of his post. I think for people that are trained it should be a little easier to get the kill. I guess I can see where the wearing them down thing is not such a good idea.

Maybe I need correction on this but I thought that even once a vamp (or any character for that matter) hit 0 health it was unconcious. It doesnt matter that they are undead. Anyone who has watched the show or anything like that has seen vamps get knocked out. I have seen where they have been rendered unconcious so I assumed as much. I think it is much easier to hit a target that can not move. If they are unconcious, they cant dodge. How much aiming does it take? If they are just laying there the person could just stand over them and make the mark. Im not saying it should be automatic hit, but cant be much more than a yellow roll for anyone.

Im not trying to say that it should be easy for a normal person or a person with no training or that killing them should be so easy. Just think that the red roll to stake is IMHO a little out there. If you go by that it could take someone forever if they did not spend karma on the roll. I dont know about anyone else but my dice just dont allow me to pop out red rolls all the time. Maybe I need new dice.

I also have seen where some write ups have decap'ing a vamp is a Remarkable intensity strength feat. Can anyone explain this to me? Is it based on the fact that most vamps are given Ex endurance? Ok enough for now.

Peace,
Sid



Post Edited (03-07-05 19:40)

Live Fast, Live Hard and Play it Loud

Lord Sidious.

I would like to hear more about your ways of killing them too. Any help is greatly appreciated.

Peace,
Sid



Live Fast, Live Hard and Play it Loud

well let's see.. we decapitated one wuing an up turned lawn mower, not the riding kind.

The Super Soaker filler with holy water was actually insipred from the Lost Boys.

A typical weapon in wod at least is to arm yourself with road flares. still setting a marvel vamp on fire is good until their clothes burn off. Hard to see with flames in your face.

pretty much most wood furniture legs can be turned into stakes.

then you have the standard break the wooden spoon and have a wooden stake shiv. Same thing with pencils, great anti-vamp weapons.

have to say that hair spry or arosal deoderant and a zippo are one of my favorite weapons in the home. hard to see or do much of anything with a face full of fire.

Have to say one of the best fake outs i've ever seen was in a Buffy Ep. The Harvest. where she talks about the sun comming up, smashes a window letting light stream in and it's a lamp post. Brillant piece of improvised thinking.

now as an aside, i can see where you say about wearing them down but really, they have Class 1000 resistance to physical and energy attacks. kinda hard to soften them up. Buffy & WoD Vamps dont have that kind of resistance, thank god.

these are just a few things off the top of my head.

since when did vampires all have class 1000 resistance to physical attacks?
I don't remember that being published anywhere. If so where do i find it?



think? whatta you mean think? i dont think, i beat people up. now pay me

Gamers guide #4 pg 171.

"Resistance: Vampires ignore most physical attacks but not stuns and slams, they have excellent Regenerative abilities"

Pretty much an inference from that. if you can ignore something so completly i'd say it was cl 1000.

Also explains why there are some pretty simple and common ways to destroy them (wood stake, silver, sunlight, Etc) gotta have a balance somewhere.

I kind of agree with Sidious. In BTVS series, vampires tend to need to be knocked around a little bit before a stake to the heart works. Sometimes, there are flukes but for any major Vamp character, they need to fight for a while. Perhaps a solution would be that a stake to the heart "red feat" must be done at a -2cs penalty to fighting if the Vampire is at full health. Once it loses 1/2 or more of it's health points, the penalty disappears.



Someday there will be no racism.
Thats the day aliens will attack.
Then we will all hate green people.

Lord_Sidious wrote:

> Also that angst gets old really fast.
> "i'm a superpowerful blood sucking night fiend that will live
> forever... woe is me. *sob*"
>
> if you need interesting ways of killing them let me know i have
> a bunch from my days in the world of darkness.

Hallelujah brother! I love WW but they missed the mark on that character motivation. If you have any novel Final Death techniques I'd love to hear them. My buddy runs a game and we could always use more creative ways of making dust.



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Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a night. Set a man on fire, and he will be warm the rest of his life

The_Threat wrote:

> I kind of agree with Sidious. In BTVS series, vampires tend to
> need to be knocked around a little bit before a stake to the
> heart works. Sometimes, there are flukes but for any major
> Vamp character, they need to fight for a while.

Or else it would be a sucky episode. Many no-name extras get dusted pretty fast. It would be dumb if the fight with the Master or Angelus was over in four seconds.

The way I see it, Buffy has either IN(40) or AM(50) Fighting and Weapon Specialist: Stake. That gives her a 15% chance of a staking on each swing. Since 3 attacks per round is an AM Feat, she'll probably get all 3 every round. So, excluding defensive maneuvers, she will get a staking nine times out of ten within 2 rounds. That's pretty good, and accurate IMHO.

And that maneuvers point is big. We can assume the Big Bads deserve the title, so there are plenty of Evasions, Dodges and plain smart decisions on their part in their fights.


Maybe this should be a more general rule. It makes sense that cumulative damage would degrade someone in a fight. It doesn't matter the nature of the damage or who is receiving it. So, as long as a rule isn't particular to stakes, I say it's a decent rule. Maybe, since the die rolls are percentile, if you lose 1% of your Health you also lose 1% off your physical die rolls?



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Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a night. Set a man on fire, and he will be warm the rest of his life

This has become very interesting with a lot of good ideas. I still think that with being trained as a vamp killer it should not be a red roll and that I am going to go with. I have to honestly say I have not been using the marvel vampires with the CL1000 res. to anything. The rules and characters are all made for modification. I see where marvel could do such a thing with the limitations that they impose but I don't like that. I think that the vamps I use are much weaker than that and weaker than the ones listed on this site as general vamps. To me they are just to powerful.

To be honest the game that I run is a game where Buffy herself has been transported to the marvel universe. I still use all of the marvel rules and dont use any of the Buffy game ones. My vamps look like this:

Fighting: 20
Agility: 10
Strength: 10
Endurance: 20
Reason: 6
Intuition: 20
Psyche: 4

I guess the int. could be lower but I see no reason that a vamp can lift more than 400 lbs. as a normal vamp. The older ones should have better stats but I see no reason that any vamp should ever have more than Rm str. If I am correct the ones listed on this site have Rm str and that is just to high. I know this is not Buffy but I never saw any vampire ever lift 1 ton.

Thanks,
Sid



Post Edited (03-10-05 13:27)

Live Fast, Live Hard and Play it Loud

might want to check out the Buffy angel thread thats up in here. It's fairly comprehensive.

Thanks. I have been there many times. Got a lot of good stuff from there too.



Live Fast, Live Hard and Play it Loud

I have to ask you guys, Sidious and Lord_Sidious, are you related?

Anyway, you might want to use the stats for Werewolf, the one who hung out with Moon Knight, for comparison. From the Gamer's Handbook Vol. 4: "Silver Vulnerability: Each hit by a silver weapon requires Russell to make an Endurance FEAT roll. A Red or Yellow result is treated as a 'kill'." That is pretty rough, except that they SHOULD have witten White or Green result. It makes little sense to penalize the character with the better Endurance, but it wouldn't be the first MSHRPG goof. The balance is just as potent:"Invulnerability: ...If injured, Russell cannot have his Endurance reduced below Feeble except by silver weapons." Yeah, the Hulk can pound away all day and get nowhere.

I think you are definitely justified in writing vamps from scratch if you want Buffyverse vamps. The MSHRPG vampire template is for quasi-mindless monsters, more akin to pre-Dracula folklore. No Anne Rice or White Wolf type stuff in Marvel's template. Since Buffyverse vamps have no weakness to silver, but MSHRPG ones do, I think kicking up the staking rules and dropping the silver rule is fine. Maybe you get an "automatic" stake on a Red and a "possible" stake on a Yellow. If you score a Yellow, the vamp gets an Endurance FEAT to resist. If you get a Red it's over, just dust.



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Build a man a fire and he will be warm for a night. Set a man on fire, and he will be warm the rest of his life

I am teaching him powers that he could never learn from a ... jedi.

Yes i've always looked at Jack Russel's weakness as a misprint. in later issues of the Gamers Guide he has am/50 invulnerability and i use the white results instead of the red for all werewolves. I do however throw in the additional may only be killed by silver, their own hand or another werewolf bit as well.

LOL, no we arent related but we do have good taste in names. I usually go by another name but my wife stole it from me so I stuck with Sidious. I appreciate all the good feedback from everyone. I have gone with the yellow is a stake with failed vamp end and red is dust. Thanks to everyone for your input. Lord Sidious, I have been a padawan before, now I am a Master. Sith Lord to be correct. You seen the EP 2 trailer yet? Looks ok, but I dont like how yoda gets tossed around by Sidious.

Later,
Sid



Live Fast, Live Hard and Play it Loud

dude, it looks awesome. jedi dying left and right. I can't wait.