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Originally Posted by Figleaf23
In other words what good is the ability to think or move fast, if you can't do the other too?
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The game lets anybody defend against anything he's aware of, and doesn't factor speed into the equation. This is just the way the game system works. Anybody can try 10 Dodge rolls against 10 stabs in a turn, and it's no harder to roll Block vs. an arrow than vs. a thrown horse turd. Ergo, if you're aware of bullets -- and most people aren't -- you can react to them. This is what ETS does.
Altered Time Rate is for actions, not reactions. Actions follow a different set of rules from reactions. For instance, you get a finite number of them.
The asymmetry between actions and reactions is intentional and considered a feature, not a bug. By allowing lots of defenses at few penalties for haste, PC survival is increased somewhat. By restricting the number of offensive moves per second, you avoid the "Mr. Speedy fights the war while we all sit here and wait" problem from which many impulse- and AP-based games suffer. Thus, a single 45-point advantage (ETS) breaks an arbitrary "you can dodge or block arrows but can't parry bullets" barrier on the reactive side, while it takes a 100 points/level trait (ATR) merely to improve your number of actions incrementally.