Error in the SCRPG Q&A. Easier to quote from the show notes, which are accurate to the 'cast:
- The robot/cyborg RPG ability “living arsenal” says “Attack using [power] with a bonus equal to the number of bonuses you currently have”; how does this interact with the bonuses acquired via Hero Points? Hero Point bonuses are not “active” - they’re just floating there unconnected to anything in the scene until you use them. To think about it in SotM terms, they’re cards in your hand rather than cards in play. The analogous situation to living arsenal would then be some effect that keyed off of the number of Ongoings or Items/Equipment that you had in play. What you could do is “activate” all of your Hero Point bonuses by linking them to elements in the scene prior to your use of living arsenal.
Bolded part contradicts the rules on p.31. All Hero Point bonuses are exclusive but non-persistent, and (as reinforced by the 'cast answer) unlike a bonus produced by a Boost action they don’t exist until you create them for use in a specific action. There’s no way to “link” HP bonuses to a scene elements the way you can assign regular bonuses to characters, their lack of persistence means they vanish as soon as the action they were created for is resolved, and exclusivity means only one can be employed for any given roll, even with tricks like the Red Social ability Inspiring Totem.
RAW you can at most get an extra +1 (plus the value of the single HP bonus itself, which you’ll have until the action resolves) with Living Arsenal. You want a larger bonus from the ability then accumulate the bonuses from multiple Boost actions and camp on them rather than using them up as fast as they come in. You still “have” them for purposes of the ability’s free extra bonus even when they’re just hanging around, although if any are persistent & exclusive you might as well use one each time so you get its value without reducing you accumulated numbers.
Your GM may respond to bonus hoarding by scrubbing them off with Hinders or even Overcomes, but if they don’t and you manage to amass a real bonus pile your can easily use all the non-excusive ones at once for a pretty good ersatz “Poor Man’s Charged Up Blast” without needing to reach Red to do it. I saw a fellow player land a 26 point hit not too long back, and that was after only three rounds of getting bonuses from the team Tech Upgrade guy and some friendly NPC minions. Not too shabby for a Mid die Green Attack. 