My Geek Life

The question of 1/day or 1/encounter powers that most heroes in the comics seem to have is one that's never translated well to any of the superhero game systems I've played. In Champions you could kind of do it with the Cyclops effect - x2 or more END costs on extra dice, so you could pull off a mammoth attack at an END cost that would drive you to your knees. (Well, I imagine you could also limit a power to 1/day, but nobody ever did). There really should be a way to effectively do this in games, though, because it does happen all the time in comic books. Instead of requiring the player to spend extra points on a separate power he's only going to use rarely - which never goes over well, see "nobody ever did" above - maybe make it a standard advantage: Once per encounter/day/whatever, you can do a super-attack, 1.5x or 2x damage but you take an automatic dazed or stunned result afterward. (Later M&M editions might have this, I haven't played since first edition). Or maybe you have to pay a Hero Point to activate it, so you'd better be sure to do some good deeds so you can defeat the Big Bad in the final battle of this issue.