Debate on Turn The Tables

A player in my Starter Kit with OCs used Turn The Tables on Persistent Bat mod exactly what happens there's been a lot of debating on it between us...

Here's the player in question.

To clarify the scene.

Environment "summoned" a bat swarm that attacked all heroes and also hindered them. The penalty persists until someone drives the bats away with an Overcome (so no Boost with a higher bonus to neutralize the penalty).

Now my line of reasoning (and other players/GMs may well chime in, maybe I am just seeing somthing wrong):

1. Turn the Tide changes a bonus to a penalty (or vice versa). Since nothing is said about persistence I assume nothing changes there (otherwise there would have been any mention of "only non-persistent mods can be changed" or "a persistent penalty is changed into a non-persistent bonus" or things like that.

Therefore it shouldn't matter if this mod was persistent or not that shouldn't change. So a persistent Bonus turns into a persistent Penalty and vice versa.

2. Does every affected hero have to Overcome their own bat swarm or is it one big swarm?

If every hero needs a seperate Overcome one action from the environment has effectively cost the group an entire turn to get rid of the penalty (which imho is pretty heavy for a minor twist)

If one Overcome is sufficient there is actually just one penalty "-X hindering bats" (wich is persistent) that affects the whole group. So if you can affect it with one single Overcome Turn the Tide should also be able to turn that single source (penalty) to another single source (bonus)

I admit I might go wrong in my interpretation in 2, but since the group is quite close together in some egyptian tomb it would be strange if the effect that can cause one group of bats in the vicinity of one player to go away won't also affect the rest of the bat swarm.

I'm imagining a dialogue between two bats in the swarm that got Overcome be a cleverly built gadget from Wraith (keeping only her safe if everyone needs his own Overcome):
"Let's not fly near this angry looking masked woman with the strange sound device on her belt."
"Ok, we will fly around here and just bother the rest of her group"

Turn the Tables would only impact one instance on a hero and not the whole hero team as the hinder from the bats is applied individually.   Based off its rules only one overcome action from one player would need to be done to get rid of the persistent penalty from the bats for all players.  If it requires multiple overcome checks it would say so and would also make it akin to major twist.  

I find fact it says any bonus broken so effectively it makes bosses and envoriments hindering party with WC completely pointless

We don’t have full rules yet.  There could be villain abilities that completely negate this.   It looks to be a good yellow ability but I don’t see it as broken.  

Personally, I would rule that it loses the persistent/exclusive part, but otherwise that seems legit.

Hmm it says Any Bonus or Penalty to oppisite doesn’t exactly mention it just turns them into a one use effect.

I’d say, “depends upon how it was turned.”

An attack resulting in dead bats everywhere? Sure.

Chased away the bats? The stunned look on the opponent’s face isn’t going to last.

Controlled the bats minds? Persistent for you until the overcome…

I feel TT is broken 

What makes it broken?   I don’t see any examples really provided on that.   If you do provide one please don’t use abbreviations.

Well Turn The Tables isn’t specific in how it works so a Envoriment with a hinder all heroes can be turned into a bonus to all heroes and a boss with a Persistent Bonus can be turned into a penalty I find Turn Tables is just really too powerful with fact hinders and bad guy bonuses literally mean nothing thus destroying the challenge of any fight…

If all of the heroes were hindered, regardless of source, Turn the Tables would only affect one hero.  So only hero A has a bonus while Hero B, C, and D are still impacted by that hinder.  That’s what I explained in my first reply. 

Well doesn’t exactly point that out so we been assuming it just stays as is just oppisite so a robot god from SK has a prsistent bonus from the rule sheet on scene now a persistent -2 which just defeats it entirely…

The issue states that the penalty is individual to each hero.   As to what seems to be a different point about persistent bonuses, the villain has options to overcome it if they wish just like any other persistent hinder put on them.   As GM either you need to plan for that, just roll with it, make it clear to a player choosing that ability you won’t allow them to use that ability on persistent hinders/bonuses, or you just tell them when you review their final character sheet that they have to choose something else if you don’t want to deal with it at all.  Regardless of what you choose this isn’t game breaking by any means by what has been suggested. 

If it helps, keep in mind the difference between boosts/hinders and bonuses/penalties. A boost or hinder is an action that places a bonus or penalty on one or more targets. So while a villain may be able hinder multiple heroes at once, each hero gets their own individual penalty applied to them, and Turn the Tables explicitely states that it can turn penalties into bonuses, not hinders into boosts.

The other thing to consider is that Turn the Tables is an action- you have to burn an entire turn to change a hinder into a boost or vice versa.  It does work with persistant/exclusive boosts (in that it makes them persistant/exlusive hinders), which is one of the reasons why it is terrifying in the hands of a villain- it can be used to completely negate something that a hero might be relying on.  The same could be said in the hands of a hero- there are villains that specialize in loading players down with debuffs, and Turn the Tables can provide a much needed advantage to a friend... provided you are willing to (and I can't stress this enough) burn your ENTIRE turn to change it. It also (as has been eloquently said by Powerhound), only works on one target at a time. 

It's not broken in any way, shape, or form.  GM's know that the players have this ability- its not like it is a secret- and there are a LOT of easy counters to it.  The most obvious one is to disrupt their turn order- Turn the Tables is only really effective if the players can maximize the advantage that they are getting out of it, and since the player who Turns the Tables has to burn their entire turn to do so, they need their teammates to take advantage of it.  I'm not a particularly adversarial GM, so I always applaud my players doing this kind of thing.  It rewards teamwork and lateral thinking, and that tends to lead to a better story.  In the hands of a villain, its the same principle- they have to burn their entire turn to Turn the Tables, so work around it. If they keep doing it, then you'll need to work around it, but they can't attack you if all they are doing is changing around buffs/debuffs.