[Varyon]

Playing around with it, I've noticed something odd - most notably from when I decided to see what effect Bolster Undead would have on the armor. Starting with ST 7 armor, if we decide to spend [10] on increasing ST, this decreases our Payload needs from 51 levels to 39, saving [12] points! Things are slightly less pronounced at the next +1 to ST, going from 39 to 31, for a saving of only [8]. Next is 25 (save [6]), then 21 (save [4]), and so on.

Lifting ST is [3], and I'd think that "Only for calculating Payload size" would be appropriate as a -80% Limitation, meaning around +3 for [2]. This is economical up through effective ST 21, so buy it up to this point (or as close as you can without going over) and then buy Payload. For our ST 7 armor, that means we buy PST 19 [8] and Payload 7 [7] (PST 22 would require Payload 6, so would cost [1] extra), spending [15] on the payload instead of a whopping [51]. This drops the armor's point value to only [20] - might as well use some of the extra to boost its HP up to the maximum (36 lb is HP 26.415, so maximum - x1.2 - is 31) for [10]. Nothing else is really within our x1.2 limit to adjust, so we'll just have to cry about the "wasted" [32] - although I could see cause to toss in a Lesser Strengthen Undead effect to be able to get some use out of them (Lesser Strengthen effects can do up to x1.3; as I'm already allowing up to x1.2, it probably wouldn't be out of line to let the two effects combine to x1.5). When we later use Bolster Undead (which uses a Greater Strengthen Undead effect), we can increase things further (going up to x2 total), and if points were previously "wasted" I'd allow them to come back into play at that point.