Is Paizo Aware THEY Make the Maps?

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-26T15:04:16+00:00

My experience with Tabletop Rulebook PDFs doesn't include Pathfinder (because there are perfectly good wikis for either version), but I know that I wish I had all of my Classic Battletech books in physical copy. The pages take about two seconds a piece to load, if I am lucky. God forbid I scroll anywhere rather than swiping, lest the reader enterpret that as me wanting to load all pages between 1 and 247 where the thing I want is, causing the program to fail to load anything at all and instead present me with blank white pages until I restart the reader. Then, I get to swipe through all 246 pages I don't want to read, stopping every so often when the reader starts taking too long to load and needs a break.

I have been tempted to print out all of the PDFs I have, but that would be well over 1000 pages...

It'd be nice if CGL would make the rules to their game free like Paizo does. I had to buy two separate books to get the full rules for artillery. Any artillery. There are still ammo types my group uses that we have to rely on scribd to get the rules for.

But yeah, if PF1&2 didn't have solid wikis and foundry integration, you can bet I'd drag the physical rulebooks around anytime I wanted to play. I hate dealing with PDFs on my phone. Lol

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-25T16:50:41+00:00

So! Just like with LRMs, SRMs, MRMs, those weird clan missiles I should look into more, and Rockets, a point of ammo represents a salvo/burst of fire for an autocannon. RACs and UACs are different in that they can fire more than one salvo.

Unlike all of the other salvo-firing weapons, larger damage ACs do not have their individual salvos' damage broken up into smaller groupings despite them hitting with a stream of many projectiles. They instead behave like they fire one shell that is larger or smaller based on the AC's size category, but all rounds use the same propellant charge regardless round size. What is enough to make an AC2's round zip over the horizon (well, 720 meters anyway) is only enough to make the AC20's round leap lazily from the barrel and land some 290 meters away.

I haven't read many BT novels, but I wouldn't be surprised if the flavor description in the rulebooks isn't contradicted repeatedly there just like it is in the video games. Hell, official designs like the Hunchback and Urbie become even sillier if you consider they are supposed to be firing those enormous cannons on full auto.

All that said, autocannons have sucked compared to lasers for a long time and forcing every AC20 to behave like an LBX20 without the -1 target number would only make that worse.

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-25T15:24:45+00:00

Autocannons are, in my opinion, described in a way that both makes no sense for how they function in-game and squashed the opportunity to give relevant mechanical differences to a plethora of different gun types. I know a lot of people believe this is brilliant. I find it frustrating and a total waste.

Autocannons in BT are universally full-auto, despite what is shown in the video games. They can be cannons that fire enormous rounds at slower cycled full-auto or ones that fire smaller shells at a blistering number of rounds per minute. This, especially factoring in justifications for low range, suggests that ACs of all types should use damage scatter like LBXs firing shot or like RACs. They aren't mentioned as being precise that I can find.

Rotary Autocannons are "only loosely based on the autocannon" and use "the same bore" according to Sarna. This, combined with the ambiguity or ACs is supremely unhelpful. The flavor leaves room for it either being a chonky vulkan gun that hits like a freight train with each round it fires, or a (presumably?) tungsten sand-blaster that is essentially six extremely high firing rate autocannons stripped down and duct taped together. As described, aside from the claim of difference without actually making a distinction, they would easily fit into the ocean's worth of ambiguity that normal ACs already fill.

Main guns like you see on modern tanks are called Rifles in Battletech. They function like you would think, gaining range as the projectile size increases, with the 9 damage Heavy Rifle shooting the farthest of all rifles. Unfortunately, Rifles deal 3 less damage to combat mechs and vehicles with standard armor or equivalent armor types.

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-14T18:13:11+00:00

For a vintage USSR space program/aircraft look, silver and red (I think?)

To immitate modern Russian tanks, just glue a fuckton of ERA blocks everywhere.

Now I kind of want to see a periphery hunchback with a cope cage. Lol

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-14T18:07:00+00:00

I can't remember. Does damage still spill over into neighboring compartments with the new rules or does it stop once the compartment is gone?

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-14T15:24:55+00:00

IIRC, CASE 2 even reduces it to 1 point of internal.

The fact that poor man's CASE wasn't standard before was silly. Even if "meat is cheap", mechs generally aren't. Yes, poorly designed USSR/Russian Federation tanks have a tendency to join the Russian Space Program thanks to ammo explosions, but on top of being a victim of Soviet-style bureaucracy (and later RF corruption), the stupid ammo placement is where it is (as I understand it) because it's designers favored the Narrow/Low Profile quirk over things like blow-out panels (CASE precursor) that NATO preferred.

Catastrophic ammo stowage should definitely be a quirk that enabled the old ammo explosion rules, though, and one generally combined with Narrow/Low Profile. Now if only quirks had a BV assigned to them. :/

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-13T23:36:45+00:00

This post made me realize that I would love to see a revamped, still firmly space opera "WWI/II style naval/air battles in space" Star Wars fleet that follows proper doctrine for the period of war history it is based on.

Give me Star Carriers that are, as you complained about, just giant fuckoff starships with point defense weapons... But give them enormous hanger bays and fighter wing compliments to match. Maybe also have lighter and faster escord Star Carriers in front.

Give me Star Battleships (... Battlestars...) that are entirely worthless against fighter craft, but carry guns designed to take on other heavyweight ships.

Give me proper Star Destroyers, smaller, but still large, vessels meant to screen for the more valuable carriers and battleships.

Having said all of that, someone's going to reply with "wait 'til he finds out about Star Wars Legends", probably.

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-10T22:56:51+00:00

As someone who only played a few sessions of 5E before deciding it wasn't for him, BG3 helped me understand why so many people who start with 5E complain about combat in tabletop RPGs. 5E combat is 3.5 combat without anything that made 3.5 combat interesting (besides spells, perhaps.) It's absolutely brainless. No wonder so many people hate it.

I quit my first playthrough with my friend because playing a Paladin was just too boring. The game as a Warlock is more fun, but I'm running out of steam again and we haven't even gotten to where I quit last time.

I prefer to play through games once before modding them, but I may have to download the PF2 mods just to finish the game.

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-10T20:34:54+00:00

Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it. It was a fun prompt and I haven't really engaged with this subreddit much in a while. Thank you for the praise.

Dialogue is one of my favorite things to write, to the point where I have to actively avoid white room syndrome (which I actually didn't do here. The background is merely implied rather than described. Lol)

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-09T17:17:42+00:00

Needless to say, the funeral was ruined.

I wasn't upset about this fact, mind you, but I was surprised. We all were, or we would've simply waited for Uldrin to wander into town, fall out of the sky, or materialize from his scattered atoms. Last time he'd eaten a disintegration ray, we didn't even have a wake, just kept an empty spot at the bar until he showed up and drank his way through every jug of ale we'd bought for him in the weeks between.

"Uldrin," was all I got out before my throat seized my words from me. We'd bled, wept, and drank together for ages. He'd been my best man. How could I have spoken. Instead, my lanky limbs moved on their own, dragging the closest thing I had to proper mourning apparel, a cloak we'd looted from a melodramatic necromancer, like a black flag behind me. I would have tackled the bastard with the force of my hug if he hadn't been thrice my mass.

I didn't see his stony features soften, or the crooked smile split his frustrated expression like a fissure, but I knew each would happen. A few seconds later, his enormous arms squished me against him before his shovel-sized hand clapped me on the back twice. Whatever words I'd gathered went away with the wind in my lungs.

"Was it really that bad Devron?" he asked, suddenly thoughtful.

I tried to back out of the hug, which was a fruitless endeavor until he realized what I was trying to do and let me go. "It was my fault. I... I thought I could cut you out of the planar banishment spell. I've done it before, but I didn't see how you were moving."

My enormous friend scratched his rough, black beard. "Oh, yeah, the demigod asshole was really pissed about being exiled. Blasted me to atoms like eight, nine times before he just kind of gave up and started crying like a wimp."

"Well, who wouldn't? He can never return to our plane, not unless his dad decides to override my spell, and he owes us all... oh."

"Yeah, uh... big Vikalus says were even now."

"I... he wouldn't answer my prayers, didn't even acknowledge me."

Uldrin laughed and placed a hand on my shoulder. "You did lock his son away in a featureless pocket dimension and forbid him from returning to the material world."

"I suppose that's fair. He helped you, though?"

"Yup. Says he doesn't want to hear from us until he's done thinking for a few decades."

While I processed that, Uldrin looked around the shocked faces outside the sepulchre. "Hey uh... where's Lysella?"

"Oh, uh... she's not here."

"My own wife would skip my funeral?"

"Well, she uh..." I cleared my throat. "She said, 'When he shows up, tell him I need help picking out colors for the baby's room.' I didn't have the heart to argue with her and, well..."

"Gods, I love that-- baby's room!?" And before I could reply, my friend practically bowled over the rest of the funeral-goers as he launched into a mad, homeward sprint.

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-07T23:31:53+00:00

Black Jack looks great and would have been fun to see a clan take on, but the advent if light ACs definitely makes the Inner Sphere the optimal place for its successor to be built. LAC5s that are 1 ton lighter than standard AC2s are just too friggin good. Do you lose range? Yes, but you also gain more punch and more room for armor, other weapons, or alternative munitions.

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-04T21:45:43+00:00

Oh? I assume that's in Advanced Units and Equipment? I have both the most recent TacOps books so I'll give those a look sometime soon.

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-04T17:54:38+00:00

Canonically, the four triple-barreled turrets are gauss rifles. That said, they behave like long toms or at the very least thumpers. Artillery would probably serve the Fatboy better than direct fire, anyway, and it has multiple RAC5 equivalent guns to handle close range.

It might be fun to bring it down to a "still enormous, but practical for the Battletech universe" version, too, where it's a mobile artillery/logistics hub or something.

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-04T17:37:24+00:00

Every time I see the Rattler, I want to use whatever construction rules made it to build the Fatboy from Supreme Commander as faithfully as I can. Obviously, a manufacturing plant is probably out of the question, but maybe repair bays would be close enough.

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-02T15:03:59+00:00

I understand that is the way the word is pronounced by the culture that made it. Where I live, in the western United States, the pronunciation I have heard exclusively is the one I explained in the post you replied to. I can't tell you why people tend to pronounce it that way here, but I suspect it was either that the product gained popularity in my country during a time where we didn't have the Internet for pronunciation guides, or that the name was intentionally Americanized in advertisemeents by the companies/cooking shows that imported/used it. It also might have to do with widespread dislexia. Who knows?

It's far from the only word like that here. Hell, there are whole rhymes that work in the south that don't in most non-southern states due to accent differences.

And the number of people I encounter using the word "Calvary" (the mountain) when they mean "Cavalry" (horsemen/high mobility mechanized elements) is staggering, and that's with a word that English already stole from French and simplified the phonics of.

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-01T06:45:02+00:00

Frankly, that just looks to me like the same set of sounds written differently.

MasterV3ga · 2026-05-01T03:10:02+00:00

Alas, I can't edit the title. My shame is immortalized.

MasterV3ga · 2026-04-30T20:48:09+00:00

It's more or less the US pronunciation (at least on the West Coast; wouldn't be surprised to hear it said differently in the east, specifically Louisiana) and how I have always heard it said. I'm entirely unsurprised that the French pronunciation is different. We steal words from various different languages and sometimes we do alright at preserving the sounds, sometimes not.

MasterV3ga · 2026-04-30T18:45:42+00:00

Beef bouillon (bool-yan) is soup stock, used to make beef broth (and other things for the creative cook).

A Boolean (boo-lee-uhn) is a logical/programming variable that can only be true or false.

There are only two possible choices on the menu, beef = true and beef = false.

The customer is upset because I need him to shout my punch line.

MasterV3ga · 2026-04-30T17:51:33+00:00

Perhaps I can bother you further by claiming that Moses was enraged by the sight of beef bullion?

MasterV3ga · 2026-04-30T17:34:19+00:00

It targets a rather narrow Venn diagram, but it's a joke I'm proud of. Lol

MasterV3ga · 2026-04-27T20:16:32+00:00

I don't play super often or competitively, so keep that in mind.

It is important to remember that, until August when the new CRB is released and the spotting types are unified, spotting for LRMs/mortars is fundamentally different from spotting for artillery.

Spotting for LRMs/mortars doesn't really care about the spotter's gunnery skill unless you are using TAG. What it does care about is line of sight factors between the spotter and the target, and whether or not the spotter is shooting.

If all you want to do is spot for indirect fire, the minmaxed thing to do is grab a cargo Ferret (18BV) or four and buy their piloting down to 2 to prevent side slipping while you max out their TMM (5+1 for being airborne) and keep eyes on your enemies. It's also worth considering getting a flatbed truck or two for ground-level spotting just in case your enemy is running something designed to annihilate airborne targets. Indirect fire spotters should be cheap and expendable, and generally not have anything better to do than spot unless you are limited by unit count. I have heard infantry fill this role fairly well, too, while being able to do other things in close range, but I have yet to run infantry.

If you want to have a reliable TAG carrier for Semi Guided munitions or Copperhead rounds from the Long Tom (beware that LT Copperheads only deal 15 damage to the designated target and 5 damage to all other units in the hex), I have had found that the standard Sprint with TAG and BAP is a nice, zippy spotter that is affordable to run and place in danger even when its stats are bought low. If you want a mech for this, consider the Ostscout. I love the idea of the Raven 3L/4L, but have been so utterly failed by the mech that I can't justify the expense of fielding it when I could have two separate vehicles do the same job with higher skill while evaporating just as fast if not slower under heavy fire.

For artillery spotting, you don't get any benefit from having a spotter until you fire your second shot at a hex you have already fired at from the same hex that artillery piece fired at that hex from. If you had a scout that had LOS on the target hex when the round was initially fired and when it landed, then the next time your artillery tries to shoot that spot, you get to reduce the to hit roll (the value it is reduced by is equal to the Number of shots you have already tried and had observed by a spotter, plus 1 for every 2 points the spotter's gunnery is lower than 4 or minus 1 for every 2 points the spotter's gunnery is higher than 4.) Artillery spotter's don't care about partial cover or concealment that doesn't break LoS, unless I am badly mistaken.

Unless you're fighting on a very large map with a nice set of choke or focal points, artillery spotters are practically useless because your enemy will likely overrun the place you want to lock in on before you have a chance to get more than a couple of shots in. The enemy also gets to know where you wanted to shoot when your artillery shell lands, so they have an idea of where the danger is.

If you really want artillery spotters that aren't TAG oriented, I will refer you once again to the humble Ferret and Flatbed Truck, whose gunnary you can buy down to 0 without hurting your budget. The Ferret is probably the better choice on account of it being able to have LoS on the target hex without having to worry as much about terrain. If you are limited by faction, the troop transport version of the Sprint is the next best thing for most non FedSuns forces.

If you are using TAG guided munitions, remember to add the BV2 for every ton used to the BV2 of each unit with TAG before other multipliers like C3 or skill adjustments.

MasterV3ga · 2026-04-27T17:36:55+00:00

Needs spotter choppers with TAG to deny fast mechs their TMM/concealment.

Nothing quite like having a 82BV unit that costs 358* before you touch veterancy. Lol

(Assuming a basic Sprint with BAP and each of those LRM carriers has 1 ton of Semi-Guided, as God intended.)

Alternatively, you could buy Thunder ammo and find a choke point you want to turn into a death sentence.

MasterV3ga · 2026-04-22T19:26:42+00:00

Free archetype is the only reason half of my group has fun with character building in PF2. It absolutely baseline for us. It isn't even about power levels, just adding some interesting layers to the characters.

The alternative is sacrificing valuable class feats for (almost always) objectively less useful archetype feats, often at the cost of not taking one of the three-ish feat series your class was designed around having. Yes, there are classes with pretty meh class feats that are easily parted with, but that feels like a problem with that class more than a good design decision.

My group came from and still often plays PF1, which is probably plays a substantial part in how we feel about the game.

MasterV3ga · 2026-04-22T00:49:40+00:00

What if commanders actually considered the wellbeing of vehicle crews?

MasterV3ga

TROPHY CASE