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From OM15:

The Watcher may add to the doom pool directly by spending effect dice from a villain’s action, rather than inflicting stress or creating a complication. This represents the villain causing general chaos and mayhem, threatening innocent bystanders, or grandstanding.

I can see general chaos coming from a villain acting against a hero (villain attacks hero, smashes hero into terrain feature, setting things on fire in the process), but if a villain wants to do an action that doesn't target a specific hero, what happens? Heroes can roll against the doom pool, but villains rolling against the doom pool makes no sense.

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The Watcher never rolls against himself.

In cases where the Watcher character is unopposed, such as this, they use their action to apply a die from their datafile (one of the ones that would be in their dice pool) directly as an effect. So, a Watcher character with Godlike Strength d12 could spend their action smashing the heck out of a Scene and add d12 to the doom pool.

I generally suggest to Watchers that they allow one player to volunteer to try and STOP this from happening, and thus have them assemble a reaction dice pool vs the Watcher.

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If a villain wants to do an action that doesn't target a specific hero, what happens?

It works. Either the heroes try to prevent it (and then, they are the ones rolling against), or it happens automatically.

There would be no point in having the villain try to do his 'villaining' unresisted, and fail just by himself, right? So, no rolls. On the other hand, it also means the Watcher can't add dices to the doom pool unless messing with a PC.

If you really need to, he can roll against an NPC characters, such as a mob "Common People" or a minor character "Innocent Woman", but that is a bit against the spirit of the game in my opinion (where the heroes are supposed to be the center of attention).

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Isn't one of the examples in the villians trying to destroy a mob of common people, and the heros have to stop them before the mob is wiped out? \$\endgroup\$
    – Cthos
    Oct 30, 2012 at 4:31
  • \$\begingroup\$ Does this mean that the villain declares his action, builds and rolls a dice pool and then the heroes get a chance to react against it? It seems a bit odd that a villain could add a D12 to the doom pool just because he has a D12 trait in a power set. \$\endgroup\$
    – Jack Kelly
    Oct 30, 2012 at 7:04
  • \$\begingroup\$ Well, the villain says "I'm going to blast Chicago off the map". Either the characters try to do something to prevent it (and then, they are the ones he rolls against), or they just sit and do nothing, and goodbye Chicago. The villain is not rolling unless there is an opposition. As always with MHR, it's a different mechanism than traditional RPGs that's difficult to get used to :) \$\endgroup\$
    – Cristol.GdM
    Oct 30, 2012 at 16:35

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