<<<Moved from a thread that it didn't belong in...>>>
Armor...never made sense.
I actually ALWAYS hated it being based on Quickness.
I thought it should be based on your (Body + Reaction) / 2, because your reaction incompasses every angle of your agility and speed in combat and your body explains how much you can endure in pure weight.
It would seem to me that the mixture of these two would produce a more accurate number than allowing Quickness to be the master of one more combat element out of it's slew of them.
It would mean that a whimpy fast character would see the penalties in combat for wearing tons of armor, and it would mean that Arnold would see penalties for not having any agility while wearing a tank's worth of armor.
My reasons in the rules for choosing this mixture of Reaction and Body are these:
Body: SR3, p274, Hauling The Load: "A character can carry up to his Strength x 5 in kilograms without appreciable effect. Twice that load (Strength x 10kg) will leave the character in a state equivalent to a Light Wound on the Stun Condition Monitor. The wound occurs when a character carries the load a number of Combat Turns equal to his or her Body Rating."
Ok, first...we almost don't need anything else to determine how much armor you can wear since armor has a weight rating to it. All you really need to do is add that to your total weight and run it against this formula.
On the other hand...we can't really all want to do that much math for all of our Armor and it also doesn't really do anything for your Reactions being slowed down much, so...We will at least take note that SR compares it's ability to carry weight against your Body rating and since we are wanting to know how much armor in weight you can wear on your body before you start seeing problems we'll use the Body rating as part A of the formula.
Reaction: SR3, p41, Reaction: "Reaction determins how quickly and how often a character can act under pressure. A character with good reflexes will have a high Reaction. The Reaction Rating is the average of Quickness and Intelligence, rounded down."
First, before we start saying that Reaction is bad due to it's involvement of Intelligence, remember that your ability to react mentaly quick is always a factor.
If you can't do that, then it doesn't matter how much the armor is slowing you down.
So, Reaction here is extremely important as to how fast you can react to something in SR combat. No secret there. Now throw on some armor and try being athleticly skilled...it's not that easy...many of my buddies in EOD in the Army will tell you that.
So we have two questions really.
1) How much armor can I wear before I fall over because my knees gave out?
Answer: Body
2) How much armor can I wear before I can't turn my torso side to side fast, run fast, or grab my weapon in a hurry?
Answer: Reaction
So we get: (Body + Reaction) / 2 = Armor Encumberance (AE)
Example:
Body: 4
Intelligence: 5
Quickness: 6
Reaction: 5
AE: [(4 + 5) / 2 = ] 4.5
It could be argued that Strength has a roll to play since it was in the listing above on page 274. That version would look like:
Example:
Strength: 5
Body: 4
Intelligence: 5
Quickness: 6
Reaction: 5
AE: [(5 + 4 + 5) / 2 = ] 7
It's really up to for debate in my head as to which of these makes more since and balance, but I'm more weighted to the (Body + Reaction) / 2 = AE than the other one.