Damien's rules variations for BtVS

12 Oct 2003
Modified 26 Feb 2006

Vampire Faith -- as an exception to the rule that evil can't attack its own characters, a vampire can attack Bad Faith by playing a Sire a Vampire card. No dice are rolled; the idea is that Faith is voluntarily becoming a vampire to save her 'life'. The usual effects apply: she gains the abilities and weaknesses of a vampire and resets her life count.

Evil stakes -- Good Vampires wouldn't sire humans (Faith) because that's Evil, never mind that they don't have access to the cards. But Evil should have no compunction about trying to stake Good Vampires. Under this rule, Evil can choose to use a "Sire a Vampire" card exactly like a "Stake a Vampire" card. Drawbacks are that this might give too much to Evil, especially with Vamp Xander and Willow still being fragile, and Angelus being resummonable.

More evil -- Evil can move all characters all the time. Or, Evil can choose between Villain + Minion or 3 Minions, giving up Villain + 2 Minions in return for the ability to choose (credit to Steven Sharp). Or Villain + 2 Minions all the time. Or, Evil characters next to a good character get to move or at least fight. Or, Evil holds an extra card or two.

Evil Magik -- usually the Villain's Magik dice are used for spells. Instead, one could having spells be cast during an Evil character's turn, using that character's dice. This makes the 2 dice of some minions more important, and makes the Book of Spells more useful. Surprise Attack cards would still apply to the whole overall Evil turn.

Ghosts -- with 5 players, sometimes a Good character (e.g. Xander and Willow) gets killed or sired early, leaving the player with nothing to do except roll dice. (Woo.) Instead, a killed character can become a ghost, undamageable but unable to do damage. They can draw Research and Help cards, but discard any non-spell Research cards, and can cast spells and use Help. The idea is that they can't hold weapons or artifacts or things like garlic, but can learn spells and go get help.

Of course, when Willow was a ghost she couldn't even do research -- couldn't move pages -- so alternatively, ghosts can only draw Help cards. But they can be given spell cards by another character ("Here, read this"), cast the spells, and "fight" by getting the Help card to do the fighting. ("Go Riley!") Ghosts don't stick in cars, so the movement Help cards don't work for them, and they don't need Joyce, although they can urge her around.

Ghosts can't move during sunlight. Or perhaps during some phases of the moon. Take your pick. Or maybe they can move but not with Help cards. The idea there would be that they can't be seen part of the time.

Help with Healing -- rule consensus seems to be that the Spell of Healing can be used only on an adjacent player, not one across the board, and not on oneself. This sucks if Good is down to one character, or far from other characters to cast it on the wounded character. People say this increases the need for cooperation. Well, okay, but I want an alternative. So, say Buffy is badly wounded and holds a Healing spell and a Tara card. What she can do is have Tara cast the spell on her, rolling not 3 dice (Buffy 1 + Tara 2) but simply 2 (Tara's 2 dice.) This only works with Help cards which have magik dice, of course. I figure this is costly enough (have to spend a Help card, and don't get to use your own Magik) to make cooperation desirable when possible, without dooming solitary characters.

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