BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER
XANDER
Val CHA Cost Roll Notes 13 STR 3 12- Lift 150 kg; 2 1/2d6 HTH Damage 14 DEX 12 12- OCV: 5/DCV: 5 15 CON 10 12- 12 BODY 4 11- 10 INT 0 11- PER Roll 11- 15 EGO 10 12- ECV: 5 13 PRE 3 12- PRE Attack: 2 1/2d6 16 COM 3 12- 6 PD 3 Total: 9 PD (3 rPD) 4 ED 1 Total: 7 ED (3 rED) 3 SPD 6 Phases: 4, 8, 12 6 REC 0 30 END 0 30 STUN 3 Total Characteristics Cost: 58 Movement: Running: 6"/12" Swimming: 2"/4" Cost Powers & Skills Martial Arts: Commando Training Maneuver OCV DCV Damage 3 Aikido Throw +0 +1 STR+v/5, Target Falls 4 Boxing Cross +0 +2 STR+2d6 4 Kung Fu Block +2 +2 Block, Abort 10 Luck 2d6 Talents 6 Combat Luck (3 PD/3 ED) Skills 10 DonŐt Get Hit: +2 DCV 3 Concealment 11- 3 Conversation 12- 1 Electronics 8- 1 Mechanics 8- 3 Paramedics 11- 3 Persuasion 12- 2 PS: Construction Worker 11- 2 PS: Snappy Bantering 11- 1 PS: Soldier 8- 3 Stealth 12- 3 Streetwise 12- 8 WF: Common Melee Weapons, Common Missile Weapons, Small Arms, Grenade Launchers, Shoulder-Fired Weapons 70 Total Powers & Skills Cost 128 Total Character Cost 50+ Disadvantages 15 Hunted: Random Villains (MoPow) 8- 10 Psychological Limitation: Jester (C, M) 15 Psychological Limitation: Protective of Women, especiallyBuffy (C, S) 10 Unluck: 2d6 28 Experience 128 Total Disadvantage Points
Background/History: At the start of the BUFFY series, Alexander Harris was a student at Sunnydale High, along with his childhood pals Willow and Jesse. The three of them were unpopular types, frequently ridiculed by trendsetter students like Cordelia Chase. The social dynamic changed when a hot new girl, Buffy Summers, enrolled at Sunnydale High and rejected Cordelia's group in order to befriend Willow. But while Buffy seemed to like Xander well enough, she didn't feel the same attraction that he had for her. However, Xander overheard Buffy talking to Giles, the new librarian, and found that she was a Vampire Slayer and Giles was her "Watcher." When vampires kidnapped Jesse and Willow, Xander helped Buffy rescue Willow and then insisted on going underground with Buffy to help her find Jesse. Unfortunately, the vampires had made Jesse one of them, and Buffy and Xander had to flee for their lives. Still later, when the vampires took the Bronze nightclub hostage, Xander ended up confronting Jesse with a stake, and accidentally "dusted" him.
It was thus that Xander and Willow, along with Giles, became the nucleus of Buffy's "Scooby Gang." The first few episodes of BtVS centered on the contrast between the heroes' monster-hunting activities, and their "secret I.D.s" in which they continued to be mocked by Cordelia. Worse for Xander, Buffy not only rejected his advances, she'd fallen for a mysterious older guy named Angel- who turned out to be a vampire. Needless to say, Xander didn't like Angel very much, but the two characters ended up taking a very important role on Buffy's life. When Buffy went to confront The Master, the ringleader of the local vampires, Xander again insisted on helping Buffy, and forced Angel (at cross-point) to tell him where The Master was. But when the two got to The Master's underground lair they saw that The Master had defeated Buffy and left her to drown in a pond. And since Angel didn't breathe naturally, Xander had to perform CPR to revive Buffy, after which she gained the power to destroy The Master and save Sunnydale.
In Season 2, things proceeded much as they had in the previous year, with Xander and the others tackling various monsters and getting involved with Cordelia, often saving her from attack, which didn't prevent her from making fun of Xander in particular. Soon, in true romantic-comedy fashion, Cordelia and Xander got into a particularly intense argument and suddenly started kissing. After this, the two of them started making out on the sly, but were eventually discovered by Willow. Not realizing that Willow was still in love with him (despite her own relationship with 'Oz'), Xander couldn't understand why his dating Cordy was such a big problem for her. For her part, Cordelia had to deal with her own fears of being ostracized for dating a 'loser.' But once Xander realized that Cordelia really did care for him, the two of them started dating more openly and were accepted as a couple by Willow and Buffy's friends.
However, it was also during this time that Buffy's boyfriend Angel turned evil and started stalking Buffy and her friends, something that made Xander feel completely justified about him. When Willow found the ritual that would restore Angel's conscience, Xander and Cordelia agreed to help Giles guard Willow as she cast the spell in the school library. However, Angel's henchvamps kidnapped Giles, broke Xander's arm and put Willow into a coma- a brush with death that caused Xander to realize his own feelings for Willow. Meantime, Buffy had to both rescue Giles from Angel and stop the vampire's world-ending plot and she called on Xander to get Giles while she killed Angel. Just after Buffy left Xander to make preparations, though, Willow woke up and told her friends that she wanted to try the ritual again to see if Angel could still be saved. Xander realized that Buffy might not be as inclined to fight Angel if there was still a chance of bringing his "good" side back, so when he met Buffy outside Angel's lair, he mentioned that Willow had a message for her about Angel- then said it was to "kick his ass."
As it turned out, Angel was both saved by Willow AND slain by Buffy, and when the vampire was mysteriously resurrected, Buffy took care of him and tried to hide him from the Gang. When Xander went on solo patrol one night, he saw Angel and Buffy kissing and was shocked. The fact that Angel's conscience had indeed been restored didn't change Xander's feelings about him much. Angel managed to get back into the Scooby Gang's good graces, but this wasn't the only problem Xander had. During Xander's senior year, he and Cordelia were closer than ever (and Cordy was friendlier with Buffy and Willow than ever), but Xander finally started to admit his own romantic feelings toward Willow. The two of them started making out secretly, but Willow in particular felt guilty over Oz. She was even willing to resort to magic to subject her and Xander to a 'de-lusting,' but at that point she was captured by the vampire Spike, who'd lost his girlfriend Drusilla and thought that Willow could use her love charms to bring Dru back. Xander tried to fight to stop Spike from kidnapping Willow, and took a severe head injury for his trouble. Spike first held Xander hostage so Willow would cooperate, then abandoned the two of them in an old factory. During this time, Xander realized he might die from his injuries, with Willow left to starve, and thinking it might be their last time together, the two of them started kissing, at which point Cordelia and Oz showed up to rescue them. Cordelia, horrified, ran back up the old factory stairs, which collapsed and left her severely injured. Afterwards, Xander tried to talk to Cordy in the hospital, but her injury, and the pain of his betrayal was too much for her, and she told him to stay away for good. Meantime, a chastened Willow tried to do all she could to make things up to Oz.
Thus, Xander had managed to ruin his romantic prospects in all regards. Furthermore, he knew that his mediocre grades meant that he wouldn't be able to attend college like his friends. He started making grandiose plans to "discover America" like Jack Kerouac by traveling on the road after graduation. Ironically, Xander started attracting the attention of Anya, an ex-Vengeance Demon who'd lost her powers in an unsuccessful attempt to get Cordelia to take revenge on Xander. Anya, rediscovering human emotion, became fascinated with Xander and went to the prom with him, but then left town fearing that she'd get killed when the evil Mayor of Sunnydale finally achieved his 'ascension' to True Demon status. Anya did stay around long enough to tell Xander and the others what she knew about the Mayor's plans, and forewarned, Buffy enlisted Xander to help direct their fellow Sunnydale High students in the final battle against the Mayor and his vampire henchmen.
Once that battle was won, Xander started the summer by going out on the road, only to lose his wheels fairly quickly. After a series of humiliating incidents, he came back to Sunnydale only to find that his parents had rented out his room, forcing Xander to sleep in the basement with the washing machine. In Season 4, while Buffy fell in love with a guy named Riley- who turned out to be an agent for the military's "Initiative" agency- Xander stayed with the Scooby Gang at night while having to take a series of embarrassing day jobs. At this point, Anya came back to town and offered to sleep with Xander in order to get over her strange attraction to him. Naturally, the two of them ended up staying together. In order to support himself and go on dates with Anya, Xander wound up working in a local construction firm, and found that he was actually good at the work. With both a job and a relationship to work on, Xander now had other priorities besides his pals in the Scooby Gang.
In fact, during this time, the whole gang had been drifting apart, as Buffy became more involved with Riley, Giles became increasingly homesick, and Willow lost Oz only to fall in love with a young Witch named Tara. The Initiative's escaped "project" Adam hired Spike to sow further dissension among the group, but once Xander and the others realized what Spike was doing, they got together and started planning how to take out Adam for good. Giles had found a spell that would take out Adam's internal power source, but he lacked the skill to cast it. Willow had the power to cast it, but the spell was in ancient Sumerian, which Giles spoke and she didn't. And neither one of them would survive contact with Adam any longer than Buffy. It was at this point that Xander joked about combining Buffy's strength with Willow's powers and Giles' brains so that Buffy could cast the spell on Adam herself. To Xander's surprise, Giles thought that was a good idea.
Giles knew of a special ritual that would accomplish that very effect, and when the group broke into the Initiative base, Xander, Giles and Willow hid in a storage area while Buffy confronted Adam and his cyber-demons. Adding their strength and minds to Buffy's, Xander, Giles and Willow cast the spell and Buffy arose from battle, finally possessed of the strength to defeat Adam hand-to-hand, as well as the magical power to neutralize his weapons. The four-in-one entity then pushed Adam into a wall and pulled out his power source, finally casting the spell that would destroy it and end the villain's life.
Some time after the team defeated Adam, the world-famous Count Dracula arrived in town to seduce Buffy, and hypnotized Xander into becoming his servant toward that end. Once Buffy drove off the Count, the mind control wore off, and Xander sought revenge against the vampire who turned him into his "spider-eating man-bitch." Of course, nothing came of that since Dracula never returned, but Xander's rage over being so humiliated made him resolve to quit being the butt of everybody's jokes. He applied for a permanent position with his construction company, and got it. With a rise in income, he was able to shop around for an apartment where he and Anya could move, finally winning independence from his parents. Thus, by early Season 5, Xander had patched things up with his friends. He'd found a lucrative career in a field he enjoyed. He finally got his own home, and he was living with a beautiful girl who loved him. For once, everything seemed to be going Xander's way.
If only he could avoid screwing it up...
Personality/Motivation: The most obvious aspect of Xander's personality is his sense of humor. It's as if whatever genius he has was all channeled into the ability to deliver snappy dialogue. But much like Hawkeye on M.A.S.H. Xander is prone to joke in order to mask his own pain, or to make cheesy comments even when inappropriate. The other problem with this attitude is that Xander has been playing the buffoon for so long that not even he takes himself seriously. While the incident with Jesse was never discussed afterward, it still seems to be a major influence on Xander's personality, having shown him that vampires exist, that they are evil and that they must be stopped. Indeed, this is one of the few subjects that can make Xander dead serious. It certainly didn't help that Xander was in love with Buffy and she'd fallen in love with "good" vampire Angel. While Xander now realizes that Buffy was never in love with him, he remains very loyal to her, since he knows the kind of stress she is under. It is because of that personal loyalty, and the importance of the Slayer's mission, that Xander has remained in the gang so long.
Because of his own feelings, and because he knows what's out there, Xander also tries to be protective of the women in his life, especially Buffy. In his case, this is a real Psychological Disadvantage because most of the women in his life are better at self-defense than he is (especially Buffy). And while Xander is hardly macho or chauvinist, he often feels resentful that he isn't able to do more than the women around him. He actually serves best as a source of emotional support, but he often tries to get more directly involved in the action, with mixed results. And in the serious relationships he has had with women (namely, Cordelia and Anya) his protectiveness tends to become patronizing, and he often gets into belittling arguments with the girlfriend.
On the other hand, he WAS dealing with Cordelia and Anya.
Quote: "Can we go back to the haunted house? Cause this is creeping me out."
Powers/Tactics: Xander would have started out as a Skilled Normal (at best) but one Halloween he and his friends were wearing costumes that had been enchanted to turn the wearer into the costumed identity. Since Xander was dressed as a soldier, he became an actual soldier with a live firearm. While the spell wore off, for some time afterward, Xander retained some knowledge of military procedure and practical knowledge of how to operate most types of military-grade weapons, as well as self-defense training. Unfortunately, the knowledge was rather spotty and faded over time (represented by the 8 or less roll to Soldier skill). At the GM's option, the 8- can be applied as an Activation Roll to Xander's Commando Training maneuvers once at the start of a combat scene, which represents the fact that the writers made him combat-effective only about one third of the time.
In any case, Xander will try to help where he can in a crisis, but if it seems like a good idea (or if Buffy orders him) he will try to move innocent bystanders out of the combat zone.
NOTE: Given that Xander is the comic relief of BtVS, the one who draws the attention of female monsters, the one who gets the funny syphilis, it stands to reason that he has dice in Unluck. Why does he also have Combat Luck and dice in Luck? I have three reasons:
- He has survived for seven years in a monster-hunting group with no magical powers, occult training or super-soldier treatments;
- He has survived beatings that could kill superheroes;
- He has made out with both Cordelia and Willow, had sex with Faith and gotten engaged to Anya. Which, in my opinion, oughtta count for something.
Appearance: Xander has black hair and eyes, with an expressive face and voice. Despite his wuss reputation, Xander is actually in pretty good shape, tall and trim, becoming tanner and filled out as he takes on his construction job. Xander usually wears nondescript casual clothing.
(BUFFY characters created by Joss Whedon, character write-up by James Gillen [jfats@lv.rmci.net])
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