Combining Strength and Vigor into a single atteibute would make it a god mode state for fantasy games. Both Toughness and melee for a single stat would be an issue. You could address the toughness thing with a Frail hindrance but I think overall that design gets problematic. It’s the D&D dex problem for melee damage base games.
That said because the system is so easy to hack there’s not really a reason you couldn’t do that.
Does it? It's only your melee damage and your toughness. You still need agility for fighting (and parry). Shooting only takes shooting.
What if either Toughness or melee damage were a skill, instead of being a pure attribute? Maybe that isn't any better of a design. It's just odd that Strength has no skills. Vigor has no skills, and all it really does is toughness and soak and a few edge requirements. Isn't it weird to roll Strength as an active roll for damage? It had so little to do in any setting with firearms that they added Strength requirements to a bunch of equipment just so they could say it did something.
It just feels like an inconsistent philosophy of design going on. Both melee damage and toughness feel like weird design enclaves, while everything else that deals damage in the game uses slightly different rules. It feels wrong.
But I admit we've had very few melee characters. It's possible my experience is just misleading me.
In terms of a mid 2000s publication of a Science Fiction Companion
My apologies. This was an unfortunate typo on my part. I meant 2010s and not 2000s. I simply couldn't remember if it had been 10 years or not and just meant to peg it to a rough timeline. Given that it has been 4 years since SWADE came out and around 10 since SFC did... I'm just frustrated with waiting so long because there's a lot in the SFC that needs fixing.
I have to agree on running horror and fantasy. When I run a horror game, I want very dedicated horror system like CoC or Alien. Horror I think is really hard to run, so anything you can do to get and keep the players in the horror mode is great. I've not read the Horror Companion, but given how our table tends to play SW games I don't ever imagine it will feel appropriate.
As for supers... I don't remember how long it's been since I played a superpower campaign. In any system. I just don't enjoy the genre for TTRPGs I guess.
When I'm doing fantasy where swords are still legit weapons where the PCs are heroes, I want them to progress more like D&D. When there's cartridge firearms or better? I want combat to be more immediately dangerous. Not necessarily deadly, but at least getting taking out of a fight very quickly being a distinct possibility. I like SW more for the latter.
The only thing I got from SWADE Pathfinder was the Bestiary. I haven't read the player's book, so I can't comment on the progression of those PCs. Just doesn't really interest me. I don't like SW as a fantasy game at all. Even the Bestiary was just for stuff to reskin and get ideas for for native fauna. There isn't really a lot of guidance for making NPCs in SW, so seeing a range of monsters was really nice. I don't even know if I used any of them. It was just nice to see some monsters! "OMG it's not a bunch of dX mooks with guns and armor! Or wild die killbot #482!"
I also don't care for all the changes to powers in SWADE, especially the modifiers. I allowed all of the power modifiers in my Historical Fantasy campaign, but the Arcane Background PCs played more like low level super heroes than the magic-capable archetypes they were supposed to be. As well, I was a fan of the emphasis on Power Trappings in SWD, but that barely gets mention in SWADE - not that I though PEG did a good enough job with those in SWD, but it was a start. My biggest complaint though is making PCs gaining an advancement after every session the default method - sorry, but I like my campaigns to run for more than half of a year and like some flexibility when advancements occur. Easy enough to just use the XP system from SWD instead, which I have.
I'll admit we avoided powers completely in the only SWADE campaign we've run so far (SWADE + SFC). We just didn't want them in the game we were playing, so I can't really comment on them. I know some of them are less abusive, but I don't really know any details.
Overall, though, I think things improved. I like having more rerolls and fewer flat modifiers, as flat modifiers really break things fast. I think the attribute and skill system is better, although it still feels wrong to me. The changes to skills and adding default skills we liked. The weapons table in SWADE feels a lot better than anything in the SFC.
As for advancement, we really liked it. We didn't do advancement every session. Not always. We just advanced when the GM said we advanced. Basically milestone progression instead of fussing about with XP. XP was just one more thing to track that we didn't really care about.
Most of the changes to edges we liked. The change to double tap was good, and needed.
That said, our SW campaigns stick to about half a year tops. Usually closer to 4 months. It's a good system to use as a breather for us.