So Reaction is the attribute I most often associate with initiative and defense pools, but only recently have I noticed that Intuition is probably the more valuable attribute.

Intuition is the attribute used in all initiative calculations, including physical.

Intuition and Reaction are also combined for the basic defense dice pool.

Reaction is only linked to vehicle piloting related skills, while Intuition is linked to the valuable Perception skill, along with Artisan, Assensing, Disguise, Interests Knowledge skills, Language, Navigation, Street Knowledge Skills, and Tracking.

There is no inherent advantage to applying Wired Reflexes, or similar Reaction enhancement, on a character with average Reaction vs one with High Reaction.

In short, unless I'm building a Rigger (and even then I need Intuition for Matrix initiative perhaps more than I need reflex for driving pools), I don't see a lot of reasons to favor Reaction over Intuition when assigning Attributes. I of course still need to boost Initiative on physical combat characters through magical or technological means, and that typically boost Reaction and Initiative Dice, but in terms of assigning attribute points or spending karma it looks like I'm better off maxing out Intuition and then putting the Reaction to as high as need/want instead of the reverse as I had been assuming.

Am I missing something about Reaction?

EDIT:
And of course I misspell Intuition in the post title, which I can't change with an edit. *sigh*

That's Okay - Inuits likely use Inuition, so your good.

somewhat situational, but reaction boosts your physical limit. this is potentially important if you're going to be doing lots of tests that use said limit (for example, if you're doing a lot of unarmed combat, and especially if you expect to use dodge, block, and parry). that said, it's not a *huge* contribution to your limit (3 points of reaction = 1 point of limit) so not exactly crucial for many builds.

This is mostly a case of old habits dying hard.

In SR4, your Defense rolls only benefit from Reaction - hence why there was a trend of investing far more heavily in it than in Intuition. Most players would rather have extra dice to avoid taking damage than extra dice towards Disguise or Knowledge Skills - even Perception, the Holy Grail of Intuition, could be cheaply augmented to compensate.

In SR5, they seem to have purposefully tried to undo this tendency by making Intuition a part of Defense rolls as well. But people still build the way they did in 4E, so it may be a while before the new increased value of Intuition and the decreased value of Reaction really sinks in.

~Umi

Quick draw rolls are still reaction, so that's something.

I'm playing a Rigger, so I'm biased. I know that a popular mage buff spell is increased intuition, as it's easier to succeed at than increased reaction (since the gun bunnies tend to have a huge reaction already).

In most of my fake-fight posts, I tended to favor intuition as well; I imagine most successful future-bare knuckle boxers have a sense of when to dodge, as well as the physical reflexes to be able to do so.

-DrZ

It's a small benefit, but Reaction helps you defend against Suppressive Fire, and Intuition does not (REA + EDG)

Reaction is also important against Paralyzing Howl, Petrification, paralysis inducing toxin, Ice Sheet (and thus presumably normal sheets of ice), and Ignite.

There's another factor to having the two be equally important in defense and initiative, though - other than Mages, every archetype listed on page 63 has one of the two as one of it's minimum investment attributes.