I’m not certain whether I understand Burnout move correctly.
Let’s say Arrowhead(Sample character in the book) lost his bow and arrow. He wants to knock down a shooter on the roof for saving his friend, but only he has a pencil now.
Let’s look at his power :
POWERS SUMMARY: Olympic-level athletics, pinpoint accuracy.
Powers that are Advantages: quiver of trick arrows – something for everything.
Simple: bypass simple security or electronics.
Difficult: take out far away targets.
Borderline: take out a whole room (hit multiple targets at once) with a trick arrow.
Possible: use anything as a deadly projectile.
Impossible: hit someone from more than two blocks away.
He can’t use his power normally because he doesn’t have his bow, but he has “use anything as a deadly projectile” in Possible category.
So, If Arrowhead shoot a pencil at the shooter, does he trigger Burnout move? And if Arrowhead rolled 10+ or 7-9, does he add “Using pencil as an arrow” in his power profile? (Probably Easy or Difficult).
And if Arrowhead do same thing not for saving person, but for other reason, does he still trigger Burnout move?
A move is only triggered if it’s well…triggered. So let’s take a look for the trigger for Burnout:
“When the situation is desperate and you put all you have into one last attempt to save
another when they are about to die and let your powers loose because of it, roll+Bond
with that person”
That’s the only time when you need to stop the fiction and roll the dice and then see how the move affects the fiction before moving forward. So if they’re not in a desperate situation, trying to save someone else, they can’t trigger the Burnout move and can’t use a Possible power.
The only time a player can use a Possible Power however, is when they use the Burnout move. That said, the Possible category is usually reserved for something a whole lot more powerful, like moving through time or other crazy things like that so it was probably not the best example to use for Arrowhead there, but I was thinking of really crazy stuff – like Ultimate Hawkeye killing guards by using his fingernails and that kind of thing (and he’s so ultimate that it’d probably be on an easier level than Possible, but you get the idea).
Kyle Simons In the Burnout move example(WiP p.63~64), GM considered Zip’s attempt as Borderline. So I thought Possible category is not “between Borderline and Impossible” but “you can stretch your power’s fictional positioning that never was”.
If Zip roll 10+ and survived, does he add the power to “Borderline” or “Possible”? And If he does same attempt again, is it still Burnout move?
With the Burnout move you can do anything new, at any level, or that’s already on your Powers Profile already (as long as it’s not Impossible). If it gets added to Borderline, then he could still access it regularly; if it gets added to Possible, then the only way to do it again would be in another Burnout situation.
Ah,
I misunderstood Burnout move as “You have to use your Possible category”.
But your emphasis is “last attempt to save people in desperate situation, and you can do it even if you roll 6-, but the price will be very tough”. Right?
Yeah, that’s right, It doesn’t have to be a Possible category, but it usually is in my experience – players want to do something really powerful and then roll the dice to see just how high the price will be.
Kyle Simons
OK. last question!
What if a hero can endure 4 critical Conditions through Advancement, Does he get 4 critical Conditions after Burnout?
And what about the other(Minor, Moderate) Conditions? fade away? or remain?
Yeah, they’d get 4 critical Conditions after a Burnout, and the the other Conditions would stick with them until they’re resolved naturally in the fiction.