Energy Blast Firearms?

Looks like a major design error. Powers (and some equipment/weapons) use Ranged skill. Cyberous doesn’t HAVE Ranged skill…
Exactly. I was guessing one of 3 scenarios: 1) the maker messed up 2) it was a rule to allow it to use firearms in an early draft and this character was made then but missed it in the update as the rule changed 3) It was the rule or intended rule to allow some circumstances but the text for it got cut (similar to references to the Mettle skill)

My initial concerns were to keep up 2 skills at levels that could hit, but looking over the Super Zs in the book and some of the enemies i guess you don’t have to keep the secondary skill that high to be useful.

As defences are purely based upon passive Attributes (unlike the tier advancement options in Arcanis), a +5 or so attack bonus will hit nearly anything 59% of the time. The only reason to go higher is for the attack Maneouvres.

Av 20: http://anydice.com/program/bfd7
Yeah even the highest I’ve been able to make a starting character, that focused on defenses, was 22. The toughest of the Super Zs in the book only have a 24, and those were ultra and omega level. I don’t think I’ve seen a cosmic level yet, and while it would be a great thought experiment I don’t think it will turn out much different.

Plus defenses are layered. Just hitting AV does no good if you can’t get much through their AR and then you still have stamina and wounds to wear down. So I’m guessing the character I’m working on right now with +8 when using their unique weapon is a bit excessive.

So I saw Cyberous was remade in the Survivors Guide and had firearms instead of ranged again. I was going to submit as a probable error, but wanted to check again. There is one clue as to why the character has firearms. Under the firearms skill there is a focus for energy weapons. This leads to a conflict with removable item power flaw. There is another hero in the book that has a blaster and they use ranged as we expect too.

So does the energy weapons focus only really mean things like flamethrower and flare gun? If so what is the distinction. Hopefully after we go through the guide we can get eratta on both

So I saw Cyberous was remade in the Survivors Guide and had firearms instead of ranged again. I was going to submit a probable error but wanted to check again. There is one clue as to why the character has firearms. Under the firearms skill, there is a focus on energy weapons. This leads to a conflict with removable item power flaw. There is another hero in the book that has a blaster and they use ranged as we expect too.

So does the energy weapons focus only really mean things like a flamethrower and flare gun? If so what is the distinction? Hopefully, after we go through the guide we can get eratta on both

It’s a choice when you create the weapon itself. If I recall Arch-Lighting’s bow uses his skill even when firing energy arrows.
I think either I’m missing something or there is an issue with wording somewhere. If I’m understanding correctly you are saying we would normally use the power ranks for the attack roll, but under powers it says that if it targets AV then it uses ranged. So if we were targeting a different defense it would use the power but none of the energy weapons I’ve seen use a power targeting anything than AV.

I’m rereading the equipment section looking for where I saw that flare gun and others under modern weapons use firearms.

I could actually see ranged attack powers with removable item using firearms instead or ranged, but certainly understand not wanting to make it that easy to have a high attack roll. That being very easy to get a high starting firearms through skill packages.

Edit: I also wanted to note that in the final copy of survivors guide Cyberous uses ranged. It was pointed out recently that I was working from an early copy and hadn’t downloaded the final copy when it was sent to backers.

Perhaps this is a case where we should think in terms of stacking (“take the better of the two bonuses”) which would mean we use the better of Ranged or the Power, OR.

Ohhh I like this!!!!

it really helps skill heroes shine