Activating hero limits

[siebharinn]

As the Watcher, if I want to activate a hero's limit, I have to offer a PP first, otherwise spend a die from the doom pool. That seems reasonable enough. But if the limit gives the player a PP (looking at Iron Man's Power Surge - Shut down highest rated power to gain 1 PP), do they get an additional point? Or Colossus' Heavy Metal limit. If I hit him with a big magnetic attack, the player has the option of invoking the limit? Or does it happen automatically? And if so, does that give 1PP for the Watcher invoking, and 1PP for the limit itself?

On an unrelated-to-mechanics vein, do many of you Watcher types invoke player limits? It seems like a quick way to put the fear of the doom pool into some players. Obviously, it has to make sense narratively, but I can think of all sorts of scenarios that start screwing with powers by invoking limits, rather than tacking on complications. The nice thing (from my perspective) is that a limit can't be bought off as the result of a great roll bought up with PPs. They are stuck until the Watcher rolls an opportunity.

[KnightErrantJR]

The way I read it, because the whole issue of limits mentions giving the player the right of first refusal, they wouldn't get an extra plot point.

You tell the player that you are planning on activating a limit. Then you offer to let them activate it instead of you. If they do that, they get the plot point from the limit.

If they don't activate it themselves, then you spend the die from the Doom Pool to do it.

So you don't actually offer them a Plot Point, you offer them the chance to activate it themselves for the Plot Point, or you activate it with a Doom Pool die if they don't want to activate it themselves.

Unless my logic is off.

[Doc Hydrogen]

I agree. The limt grants a plot point when the player activates it. The Watcher is simply saying, "I'm going to activate this limit by spending a doom die unless you want the plot point for activating it yourself." That's it, there's no second plot point to gain there.

[Cam]

The above is correct. The player gets the option to gain a PP, otherwise the Watcher spends doom and the player gets nothing but an activated Limit.

Cheers,
Cam

[mtheurer]

Activating them has been something I've struggled with as the Watcher. I think that it's mainly because I don't have them all in front of me in a convenient manner. For our next game I'm thinking of making a cheat sheet with all of the hero limits listed on it for easy reference. Other than just knowing or memorizing them all is there something else that other Watchers out there are doing?

Thanks,

Mark

[Roman Virtue]

I have a PDF copy of my players datafiles up on my laptop when we play.

[blaster219]

I've got all the datafiles in individual google spreadsheets. But I think the cheatsheet idea is a good one as it gives all the PCs limits at a glance rather than having them spread over separate documents or tabs.

[Uatu]

On an unrelated-to-mechanics vein, do many of you Watcher types invoke player limits? It seems like a quick way to put the fear of the doom pool into some players. Obviously, it has to make sense narratively, but I can think of all sorts of scenarios that start screwing with powers by invoking limits, rather than tacking on complications. The nice thing (from my perspective) is that a limit can't be bought off as the result of a great roll bought up with PPs. They are stuck until the Watcher rolls an opportunity.

I tend to activate my players limits when (1) the narrative just screams for it, or (2) when a villain really needs a little help to make the scene interesting.

Example of (1): The Captain America in my party rolled four 1's on a shield throw, adding massively to the doom pool and totally failing his action. I activated his gear limit (he declined the PP, making me spend a doom dice to undo one of his 1's) to have the shield smacked to the floor. It ended up great, as the person playing Echo ended up with Cap's shield and copied a bunch of his moves before returning it to him.

Example of (2): In an attempt to make Electro a little more challenging while outnumbered 6 to 1, he gave Iron Man a POWER FLUCTUATIONS complication. To drive home the point, I activated Iron Man's limits to shut down some powers at the same time. It made narrative sense and gave Electro a little respect from the players before they took him down.

[blaster219]

I really need to do this more often. In 14 sessions I think I've done it twice.

[Johnny Awesome]

I haven't done it much, but Iron Man tried to ram Electro in the first Breakout session I ran and I activated Iron Man's limit and shutdown his Flight, plunging him into the East River briefly.