I’m taking a week off ‘Mech design to talk about something I both love and hate. Quirks in BattleTech are amazing. They’re the secret sauce for me that makes a ‘Mech feel like a real thing and not just an assorted block of statistics. And I love playing with Quirks… most of the time.

Narrow/Low Profile sucks. The Quirk adds the Glancing Blow optional rule to a ‘Mech even when you aren’t playing with glancing blows, it’s complicated, and it adds an extra step to combat that, if you weren’t playing with glancing blows, you did not want. When introducing newer players to playing with quirks, my experience has been enthusiastic… until they play a game with N/L P. And I get it.

If all you want are the rules, you can skip all this scroll to the VERY BOTTOM!

Players get into BattleTech because they love the crunch and the personality the game provides. I like to call it the DwarfFortress of war games because it has so many systems interacting with each other that a table-top battle of Classic BattleTech often produces cinematic stories that emerge out of these interactions.

But that complexity has a steady progression. When I was first taught the game, we didn’t even track Heat between turns. As players master the basic systems, they look for the next ones. That’s part of why BattleTech has so many optional rules. The next step up on this in terms of rules complexity, after mastering the basics, is playing with Quirks.

Quirks are the first level of optional rules many new players are going to select when looking to up the complexity of their game.

Hopefully, everywhere. But most likely? Quirks are getting used when you meet up with your BattleTech group in a friendly local game store (support your game stores!). For many people, this is when they get to play, often once a week or every other week. They’re under pressure to get in a good game before the store closes, so rules that slow down play aren’t really the best.

Quirks get used at game stores where time to play is limited. They can get used anywhere, but this is somewhere we want them to happen!

A good Quirk in BattleTech is something that communicates a feature of the ‘Mech’s design to you through a very simple modifier. Many Quirks don’t even have an effect on the table during the average game. Others are as simple as “suffer 1 less point of to-hit modifier when shooting this while running”. But what all Quirks do, or should do, is make ‘Mechs feel distinct so that not every 55 ton unit feels indistinguishable from every other one. It’s to give you some personality without slowing down the game.

Quirks exist to give ‘Mechs an identity and personality all their own.

They’re pretty good, thank you for asking! But, really, this is following up on what was said previously: they’re small statistical modifiers that can be applied in-game with minimal effort. To that end, Quirk effects typically take place either before you roll dice or after. That’s important timing, because placing the effect somewhere else can disrupt the flow of the game that players have learned up until this point.

Quirks function before or after dice rolls to avoid interfering with the flow of the game.

Narrow/Low Profile is mechanically identical to the glancing blow optional rule. Glancing blow, if you play with it, is probably the last optional rule you added to your game. I’ve played BattleTech with veterans who have hit location AND cluster tables memorized who don’t play with glancing blow.

Quirks are supposed to be one of the first optional rules you add, not one of the last.

N/L P slows down games because glancing blows slow down games. Just mechanically, it reduces damage in a sort of unpredictable but substantial way. So it slows down play by making ‘Mechs more survivable. Then it also slows down play because of how the mechanic operates. You want to play games quickly when you’re at a game store so you and your opponent can actually finish the game before the store closes.

Quirks are supposed to be useable in pick-up games at your local game store.

Quirks are mechanical fluff whose mechanics tell you about what the ‘Mech is like. But N/L P doesn’t accurately depict anything about the ‘Mechs who use it, and I can prove it.

Do you think it looks any harder to shoot a Bushwacker or Dragon in the legs than it is to shoot an Uziel or Thug? Not really. What about shooting their arms? That also looks to be about the same to me. What’s ACTUALLY different is the torsos have sloped armor. So why does N/L P protect everything if it doesn’t represent everything? Because N/L P isn’t a good Quirk, it’s recycling a survivability mechanic designed to make games last longer. N/L P doesn’t reflect ‘Mechs with low profiles because N/L P is just glancing blows.

Quirks are supposed to be mechanical fluff that represents the unique qualities of a ‘Mech, not general use rules that apply to everything.

Narrow/Low Profile is the only Quirk whose mechanical effect occurs DURING a dice roll. There are 72 Quirks, and they can be put into 4 categories:

Quirks that take effect before dice are rolled (34 total): Accurate Weapon, Anti-Aircraft Targeting, Barrel Fist, Battle Computer, Battlefists, Command ‘Mech, Distracting, Easy to Maintain, Easy to Pilot, Improved Targeting, Multi-Trac, Nimble Jumper, Overhead Arms, Protected Actuators, Stabilized Weapon, Stable, Ubiquitous, Variable Range Targeting, Cramped Cockpit, Difficult to Maintain, Exposed Actuators, Hard to Pilot, Inaccurate Weapon, Low-Mounted Arms, No/Minimal Arms, Non-Standard Parts, Obsolete, Oversized, Poor Sealing, Poor Targeting, Poor Workmanship, Prototype, Sensor Ghosts, Unbalanced

Quirks that take effect after dice are rolled (7): Reinforced Legs, Searchlight, Ammunition Feed Problem, Cooling System Flaws, Difficult Ejection, Exposed Weapon Linkage, Weak Legs

Quirks that aren’t related to dice rolls (30): Combat Computer, Compact ‘Mech, Cowl, Directional Torso Mount, Extended Torso Twist, Fast Reload, Fine Manipulators, Good Reputation, Hyper-Extending Actuators, Improved Communications, Improved Cooling Jacket, Improved Life Support, Improved Sensors, Jettison-Capable Weapon, Modular Weapons, Rugged, Vestigial Hands, Bad Reputation, EM Interference, Illegal Design, No Cooling Jacket, No Ejection System, Non-Functional Item, Poor Cooling Jacket, Poor Life Support, Poor Performance, Ramshackle, Slow Traverse, Static Ammo Feed, Weak Head Armor

Quirks that take effect DURING a dice roll (1): Narrow/Low Profile

Here’s how a normal combat turn works without Narrow Low/Profile: I plan out my shots and write down my TNs on my sheet so I can do all the attacks at once and keep the game going. I’m running a Hunchback and want to shoot 6x Medium Lasers at my opponent’s ‘Mech. I roll six pairs of matching dice to keep the game moving, and I count up the number of hits before rolling that many locations. The TN was calculated ahead of time, and if my opponent has something like Cooling System Flaws, that effect gets calculated after locations are reported. My job is to know my ‘Mechs and my opponent’s is to know theirs.

Except what if one of the ‘Mechs I attacked has Narrow/Low Profile? Now it’s my job to know my ‘Mechs and my opponent’s ‘Mechs. After I roll attacks but before I can count hits I have to double check to see how many hits are glancing blows. Then I have to roll those locations separate from the other locations. The resolution of N/L P on someone else’s ‘Mech happens on my time in the middle of my action. And if one of us forgets? Either you do the entire attack over or you just shrug your shoulders and keep going. After all, no one plays a perfect game of BattleTech. But that feels like shit for everybody.

I framed this as me being the active player because the weight of Narrow/Low Profile falls on the opponent, not the person who brings the N/L P ‘Mech. But as a player? This makes me not want to field ‘Mechs with that Quirk because I don’t want to assign extra responsibility to my opponent.

Quirks are supposed to happen before or after a roll, not during, and your Quirks should be your bookkeeping, not your opponents.

Narrow/Low Profile is the most mechanically complex system in what should be the mechanically least complex optional rules in BattleTech. It’s the equivalent of biting into a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup and finding a metal bolt. That complexity is needlessly obfuscating and adds time and pressure to games that are already under a time pressure issue when those game take place in a narrow window of availability at your Friendly Local Game Store. It unfairly assigns the responsibility of managing your ‘Mechs to your opponent. And what’s worse is that you make all these trade-offs and get nothing for it.

I should rephrase that. Narrow/Low Profile is one of the single most powerful in-game effects for increasing the survivability of a ‘Mech. But it doesn’t do what Quirks ought to do: it doesn’t give you the feel or flavor of a ‘Mech that has that ability.

Narrow/Low Profile is the reason people don’t want to play games with Quirks. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can rebuild it. We have the technology…

You’ll never guess, but Narrow/Low Profile has angered me for as long as I’ve played the game. I’ve put a lot of thought into this, and a lot of math, too. So, first off, there are two questions that we have to answer in order to solve this problem.

Looking at the examples I gave from before, or most infamously the Marauder, it’s clear right away what’s different about N/L P ‘Mechs: sloped torso armor. N/L P is being used to represent ‘Mechs that deflect some of the shots coming in at their forward-facing torso segments.

That means, mechanically, a replacement Narrow/Low Profile Quirk should be something that respects the Left, Right, and Center Torso segments. But, critically, it should ignore (or have negligible effects) on the arms, legs, head, and rear torso locations.

This is a bit hard to quantify, but I have a very incestuous table in Google Sheets where half of the table is constantly referencing and summing the other half of the table and everything else before it. It’s confusing, ugly, and messy, and realistically none of you want to know. The math I came back with estimates Narrow/Low Profile reduces the damage you receive by about 10%. However, the very RNG way it does that is very swingy. This is the Spiders Georg of defense systems, because half the game it might do nothing and the next turn it can negate 30 damage.

This shows us a few other problems with how N/L P functions: with it being so wildly swingy, it stops being a reliable battlefield condition and starts being a Lucky Saving Throw. I don’t want that. I want my ‘Mechs to be vaguely predictable so I can make informed decisions and take risks with them.

This tells us that the protection offered by Narrow/Low Profile should be roughly equivalent to a 10% damage reduction effect across the entire ‘Mech, and that our version should try to be more predictable from turn-to-turn.

We want a reliable 10% damage reduction effect that’s handled by the player receiving the damage, not the player dealing it, and that effect should be mechanical fluff that represents the sloped-forward facing torso sections. But hold on, that 10% was across the entire ‘Mech and we said we wanted to ignore arms, legs, the head, and the rear torso segments. That means we can make our damage reduction a higher percentage since it’s applying to a smaller amount of coverage.

So, step one, how do we depict sloped armor? In the real world, impacts against sloped armor react as if the armor is thicker than it actually is. So we can simulate that by ignoring some incoming damage.

This gives us just under 16% damage reduction, but the reduction biases against larger munitions as the ones that are more likely to be deflected rather than penetrate. This limit is very much a balancing issue, since you can’t just be handing out Quirk-based Ferro-Lamellar armor, since that would be a bit brutal to ignore single points of damage or to halve SRM damage.

That said… aren’t we here to be thematic? Why don’t we do something else to protect against huge walls of incoming low-damage munitions like LRMs, SRMs, and LB-X pellets? Not to mention, a 16% damage reduction effect that only triggers less than 47% of the time (the chance of hitting Left, Right, & Center Torso) means we’re only getting 7.6% compared to the original N/L P’s 10%. So let’s add something fun!

Now you have predictable damage reduction across all types of weapons, a bit of thematic flair, and you’re the one managing your own ‘Mechs. Better yet, because of the things we’ve done here? Narrow/Low Profile ‘Mechs now have strategic counters. Running up and kicking them works!* So does flanking now that their protections don’t apply to rear torso locations. We’ve replaced an RNG luck save with a reliable mechanical benefit that adds to the tactical decision-making you and your opponent. What’s not to like?

*EDIT: Yes, the standard Narrow/Low Profile excludes Physical Attacks by default as well as having no effect on Streak tech. My version doesn’t include those limitations because less rules text is better. This example is pointing out how kicking and physical attacks interact under the new rules. The -1 to Cluster Tables does apply to Streak weapons, but has no real effect unless it’s stacking with other Cluster Table penalties since 11 and 12 are both max results.

This is the sort of thing I love about BattleTech. If I had the power to, I would just throw this at CGL and be like “HEY! Put this in the next book!” because it’s such a huge improvement over the old way, and it doesn’t require changing any record sheets.

If you scrolled to the end to find the rules, I got you. They’re right here!

Narrow/Low Profile (alternate rules)