There has been a lot of discussion and confusion in general about the rules governing Enhancments across all facets of this game. We need some serious clarification and explanation about how these bonuses are actually intended to work, because strictly, as written, they really don't seem to work at all. The issues are myriad and varied.
The core rules establish the following facts about enhancements.
1) Enhancements stack regardless of source
2) Enhancements cannot exceed the maximum age bonus
3) Enhancements are in-game bonuses that are applied to a die roll or the combat situation, and do not effect target numbers such as MTN, RTN, or Morale
Our first question comes into issues between fact 1 and 2 above
We have a basic human warrior in a first age game (maximum age bonus 4), and he's been attacked by an enemy, the enemy has hit him and he must now make a save. The book tells us that saves are Toughness + Defensive CS + 1d6. Our Human warrior only has a toughness of 3 for this arbitrary example, however our intrepid human warrior also has medium armor which gives our human warrior Armor 2, and if we flip to the back of the book we find it says "Armor X: Grants Enhancment Toughness X. Enhancements stack but are limited by the Maximum Age Bonus" (first age book p. 155 or core rulebook p. 51). Our basic human warrior has a defensive CS of 3 from Hard Cover (Enhancement bonus +2) and Outnumbering (Enhancement bonus +1). So the question is when the player rolls their save, what are they rolling in total?
A) They roll 3 (toughness) + 4 (Max age bonus for all enhancements added together from both Armor and CS) + 1d6 because we believe as the rules say all enhancement bonuses stack regardless of source and cannot exceed the max age bonus as the rules for armor even remind us.
or
B) They roll 3(toughness) + 2 (armor enhancement bonus) + 3 (CS enhancement bonuses for a total of +5 in enhancement bonuses on the roll) + 1d6 because we believe for some reason even though the book says that enhancement bonuses stack regardless of source we're saying that CS enhancement bonuses and other enhancement bonuses don't add together even though nowhere (that I can find in the book) says they don't stack
The Discord group is very split on the answer to the above. Can you please clarify which is correct and why? This seems to cause a lot of conflicts across the game especially with powers that grant enhancement bonuses that would easily hit the max age bonus. Second issue we run into is problems with fact 3 established above. Certain abilities, most notably the zombie virus rules from the second age give enhancement bonuses to things like movement or wounds, however fact 3 establishes that enhancement bonuses only apply to die rolls or CS, so this would imply such enhancement bonuses would only ever apply if you had to make a roll based on your wounds or movement, which is very rare, thus not only would an enhancement bonus to movement not let you move farther, it also wouldn't improve your RTN, nor would it really ever apply to anything outside of a few powers where you save based on movement. This seems to defeat the point of these enhancements. Can you please explain how enhancements like these are intended to actually work?
The third issue we run into is the fact that all abilities granted by traits are stated to be either increases or enhancements. In the October 15 Q&A on the Discord group Gary stated any ability that isn't listed as an increase is considered an enhancement. The rule that states enhancements cannot exceed the max age bonus seems to conflict with the value of many abilities granted by traits that are clearly not increases. Vision abilities, abilities like leap, and many movement abilities are granted at values far exceeding the max age bonus of any age, much less the first age. This seems to directly conflict with the max age bonus limit and stacking rules as they are written. One of the more confusing examples is the below:
In the first age if you have burst of speed 2 from two different branches, since it's not an increase it must be an enhancement, and therefore they'd stack to 4, the max for the age, yes? But you couldn't get higher right? Except there's a first age trait with burst of speed 5, so does the fact that it gives you a higher than legal bonus let you just ignore the max age bonus and have the ability at 5 even though you can't stack it that high? Is that how It'd work or what?
How this actually works is something we couldn't agree on in the discord group. Nor could we agree on stacking rules for abilities like Night Sight or Ethereal Sight which almost always have high x values exceeding the max age limit which is stated to be the limit for enhancements.
The fourth issue we run into is the max age bonus and how it interacts with effects that increase the value of abilities that are enhancements (which as has been established in your October 15th Q&A is any ability that is not an increase). Certain abilities like Inquisitor, class features like the one belonging to the level 2 fey class, or things like abiogenesys origin all let you increase the X value of an ability. How does this interact with the maximum age bonus, If you were to apply inquisitor to Leap for instance, an ability usually already above the maximum age bonus, what would happen? Especially for higher level classes it seems impossible to apply inquisitor to an ability and not have it's value exceed the maximum age bonus, and since abilities are considered enhancements by the rules they shouldn't be allowed to do so rules as written.
The general conclusion we've run into is the term "enhancement" is basically being used for way too many things and that results in a lot of confusion with the rules as written and something needs to change somewhere to really define how this should all interact. As it stands we're quite confused by it all and there's a split on how things feel they are intended to work and how things are actually written to work.
Burst of Speed 5 for monsters is because some classes have the ability to make the max age 1 higher (see Fey Paragon class)