And here is the response from Shep the designer:

‘hi, I’m the designer of the system and the person that collated all the feedback and play testing aspects to refine the version you now have.

First thing is first, the numbers do work. The system works as intended. it might not be entirely to your liking, the ‘flaws’ being highlighted here at not flaws – they are the flavour of S5S.

SLA is a world where things are not fair – a Stormer is stronger and faster and tougher and a better shot and a better fighter and does more damage than a human. Life ain’t fair and neither is the WoP.

As such, a Stormer with maxed out stats and strength absolutely should be able to auto hit and kill in one smack. You’re considering the absolute peak of a Stormer’s capability – the top of the species. These individuals should make short work of a Carrien and other average targets all day long… that’s what they were made to do.

The system makes it particularly taxing to achieve a rank 4 in any skill – it requires time, money and XP, and the first two are often rarely available, as a result the GM can allow rank 4 skill sonly when it suits the group/game/process. Additionally, ‘power building’ to achieve success in one area at the cost of most others is present in every game system that does not force an ‘average Joe’ approach to character building (certainly not a very SLA thing to do). If your group decides to build STR5, Melee3 type characters all round, stick them in a white BPN with lots of puzzle solving 😉

During general game play, lots of options are present to tip the balance to those characters on the edge of of both high stats and skills – difficulty levels (up to 16) for non-combat situations and in combat, the effects of Fear, targets using defensive manoeuvres, cover, moving targets etc. This all tips the balance, but sill makes it highly likely that the strongest possible stormer, skilled to the peak of capability can hit a target who stands still in the open and doesn’t put up a fight – nothing about that seems unreasonable to me. If you have STR 6 and a relevant skill at 3 I’d expect you to own anything that doesn’t put up a fight/use cover/run etc. That is entirely intended.

With regards to obtaining that mega skill, let’s again assume a Stormer, who chooses to start the game with max STR 6 at the detriment of everything else and a skill of 3. They only need to increase the skill by 1 rank to obtain that mega skill. Going from rank 3 to rank 4 costs 11 XP plus 500c (500!!!!) plus a downtime period of at least 2 weeks for training. 11 XP could be earned in 6 game sessions (less if the GM wants to do silly things like giving away extra points), though as most long running games don’t consider a time scale of as much of 2 weeks between BPNs etc, the character could not do that upgrade (plus, 500c!!!!)… if they want to, sure, but then as an SCL10ish character who is power built to do one thing, you can sure bet that the GM will make life hard for them by putting them up against intellect-based tasks.

If you have a one dimensional character who can finally spend some good XP and they choose to do it in a way that makes them even more one-dimensional, I’d say it’s time to punish that character in the way that SLA does best 😉

Overall, what I’m trying to say is that while your maths are not wrong regarding highly skilled and stat’ed characters, the system provides multiple points of guidance on dealing with these builds and makes it painfully hard and expensive to get to those levels. This was all well road tested prior to being released by multiple groups who all felt the experience system balanced nicely with the general capabilities of well rounded character builds and that there were sufficient ways to deal with power builds.’