We've been playing the RT for half a year now, and we're having trouble with PF-system. For us it is broken. I see there are lot of people with that view, and would like to see if you have something to contribute.

The problem is that even though I cut out the Endeavours Achievment PF-bonus out from the start, the system still provides far too many points far too quickly (as many of you know). Yet they are needed for players to have some feeling of growing their dynasty (and I dont want to touch the Endeavour system any further).

I've now been searching for different house rules that might suite our play.

So far I've decided to up the scale of Houses (snipped from someone, modified a bit, sorry for not quoting..)

PR Description

1 The largest and strongest of major world hive gangs, Outcast Sects etc.
1-5 Labour Guild, Struggling Merchant House.
1-10 Manufactory Combine, Weak Hive Guild.
5-15 Minor Ministorum Sect, Hab Collective.
10-20 Hive Guild, Minor Merchant House, Planetary Level Noble House, Disgraced/fallen Subsector Noble House.
15-25 Powerful Hive Guild, Rich Planetary Level Noble House, Impoverished Subsector spanning Noble House, Poor Rogue Trader.
20-35 Lesser Rogue Trader, Weak Imperial Governor.
40-60 Greater Planetary Noble of a wealthy world, Lesser Inquisitor, Cartel of Free Traders, Typical Imperial Governor.
60-80 Average Inquisitor, Average Subsector spanning Noble House, Impoverished Major House (Sector Spanning).

80-120 Middle Rogue Trader

110-150 Successful Rogue Trader
160-210 Wealthy Rogue Trader, Wealthy Subsector spanning Noble House, Average Major House (Sector Spanning), Impoverished Navigator House
200-300 Legendary Rogue Trader, Average Navigator House, Wealthy Major House (Sector Spanning), Lord Inquisitor.
400-600 Noted Major Houses (Krin, Machenko, etc), Wealthy Navigator House, Lord-Sector Hax, Impoverished Great House (Segmentum Spanning).
800-1000 Average Great House, Impoverished Imperial House (Imperium Spanning), Illustrious Navigator House.
1000+ Imperial Level Noble Houses, High Lords of Terra, Segmentum Rulers etc

Note: Simply put, all Legendary / Wealthy Houses in RT books need to, at least, double their Profit rating.

Then I've decided to make players pay for acquiring ships and components. (Snipped and modified more harsh from someone)

1. Ship Points and Profit Factor: 30% of total Ship Points value is burnt/deducted from Profit Factor.

2. Components. 1:1 SP value to burnt Profit Factor.

Yet, I'm still not totally happy with the scale. I mean, Winterscale is Legendary Rogue Trader and it is in the books that they hold not only A Fleet, but Fleets of ships through generations of wielding power in Koronus Expanse.

The problem I see now is that nothing stops from players to reach very high numbers over time with Single ship and still hold the Influence of a Wealthy or maybe even Legendary Rogue Trader.

So we finally come to the topic. I'm thinking of setting fleet size entry bars to the upper "House classes". What they represent is Power to hold the Capital that brings you the Profit Factor. These are battle ready ships, that work elsewhere in the Koronus Expanse, than the players do. Although in case of a major war, they of course are counted for.

With huge PF-sinks the players dynasty will stay at certain levels for a while. Instead of jumping classes like hoops.

I can also start to introduce (or rather the players, as they are an inventive bunch) Massive Endeavours, Enormous Endeavours etc. that would reflect business plans considering major dynasty size strategies when I feel comfortable with it.

I'm thinking of maybe 60-80PF to have the first bar with 1 Fleet (Namely the players with couple or more ships) and go up from there.

Ideas?

I keep the acquisition cost at 10% of SP to acquire a ship, but also that players can't just design a ship from the ground up and go out and buy one for sale that's exactly like that. Ships they "acquire" are either won through combat, or else would take so long to build that they'll probably never see it over the course of the campaign since they're not the kind to take "time out".

I also put in place a system where no matter what, there is a set deduction from Profit Factor to keep ships operational. The Ship Maintenance Fees are a constant drain on Profit Factor, so you can either be a super powerful Rogue Trader owed favours everywhere with lots of Profit Factor but no ships, and no ships is a great way of having your holdings be unexpectedly attacked.

I have seen this problem in my own game, and taken some steps to keep it reasonable:

1) I have never used the bonus PF (substituting favors, unusual bonuses and rewards, etc..).

2) I reduce their PF by 1 per warp capable ship (2 for Cruisers and above) to account for upkeep. They also have a few major facilities that cost upkeep (a schola on Fenksworld that they use for recruiting troops, a couple of research stations, and a tithe they provide in the form of supplies for Imperial Navy ships in the Expanse).

3) I have generally raise the bar for the PF of various agencies in the Imperium, but only about 25-50%.

4) Some particularly extreme acquisitions require the investment of PF (burned PF). The Knight Manufactorum for the Explorator's new Forge World required a Greater Endeavor with a 2 PF investment at the start. The Grand Cruiser cost 1 PF (and the players burned 6 more to raise their PF for the purchase).

Note that even with these change my group has a huge PF and can afford some extremely rare items. They are far more limited by availability than PF. Of course they are Rank 7 and are trying to stave off an Ork Waaaghh and deal with the Rak'Gol too.

Yet, I'm still not totally happy with the scale. I mean, Winterscale is Legendary Rogue Trader and it is in the books that they hold not only A Fleet, but Fleets of ships through generations of wielding power in Koronus Expanse.

The question that comes to mind here, is what do you clasify as a fleet?

Searching for common fleets sizes, I get ranges of 8 to 400+ . Going by Wikipedia you can infer it to be a minimum of 8 (more like 16 though IMO), to hundreds of ships in a fleet.

So we finally come to the topic. I'm thinking of setting fleet size entry bars to the upper "House classes". What they represent is Power to hold the Capital that brings you the Profit Factor. These are battle ready ships, that work elsewhere in the Koronus Expanse, than the players do. Although in case of a major war, they of course are counted for.

I'm thinking of maybe 60-80PF to have the first bar with 1 Fleet (Namely the players with couple or more ships) and go up from there.

Ideas?

I like it. Though obviously all parties need to be on the same side as to how many ships are in a fleet.

I'm guessing you already took a gander at the "Fleet Management System" described below the PF scheme you referenced. And I do say, that I like your PF scheme better.

Yet, I'm still not totally happy with the scale. I mean, Winterscale is Legendary Rogue Trader and it is in the books that they hold not only A Fleet, but Fleets of ships through generations of wielding power in Koronus Expanse.

The question that comes to mind here, is what do you clasify as a fleet?

Searching for common fleets sizes, I get ranges of 8 to 400+ . Going by Wikipedia you can infer it to be a minimum of 8 (more like 16 though IMO), to hundreds of ships in a fleet.

So we finally come to the topic. I'm thinking of setting fleet size entry bars to the upper "House classes". What they represent is Power to hold the Capital that brings you the Profit Factor. These are battle ready ships, that work elsewhere in the Koronus Expanse, than the players do. Although in case of a major war, they of course are counted for.

I'm thinking of maybe 60-80PF to have the first bar with 1 Fleet (Namely the players with couple or more ships) and go up from there.

Ideas?

I like it. Though obviously all parties need to be on the same side as to how many ships are in a fleet.

I'm guessing you already took a gander at the "Fleet Management System" described below the PF scheme you referenced. And I do say, that I like your PF scheme better.

I've missed the Fleet Managment System. What is it? My snippets are from different topics in FFG-forums.

I'm coming to idea of setting the bars with Ship Points. For example, the first entry bar could be 100 or even 200 SP. This would leave room for players to be creative. Also it leaves less room for metagaming ("Ah, 10 ships for next entry bar, let's find a lot of cheap Scout-ships!)

The idea of the system is to keep the control in GM hands, but at the same time let the players feel they are progressing.

Now I just need some idea for the amounts of SP on different levels.

Copied from it

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Fleet Management System

A Dynasty can sustain up to the ten’s digit in it’s Profit Rating in permanent line ships before their normal upkeep costs
start impacting the Dynasties Profit Rating. Line ships are ships acting in a capacity that are not directly supporting trade
endeavors to increase/sustain the Dynasties current Profit rating. Battlecruiser Hull designs and larger count as 2 ships,
while Raider Hull designs or smaller count as ½ of a ship.

Dynasty ships conducting trade endeavors without affecting Profit Factor are near infinite to sustain (because they are paying for themselves and their upkeep by doing endeavors), but are generally no more than twice the number of line ships a RT can sustain in a line capacity.

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There is more info going into ship purchasing, but to make it short i just copied the above. You can view it all in detail with the link provided in my signature. Mind you, there is other info in there as well, so to quickly find it you can go here .

Reasoning behind the "line ships" is the escort ships that RT's have that tag along with them, or that they use for escort duties for other ships. Like in LotE with Lady Sun Lee and her 4 ships, Lord-Admiral Bastille and his flotilla of vessels, etc etc. If all they are doing is escort, guarding, tagging along, etc etc., then I classified them as "line ships."

This might work more simply for you, but the SP tree does add a certain different element to the system. Maybe the SP is twice the PF? I like it though. G2g, so I will ponder over it and hopefully come up with some good ideas to assist you.

Idea. Maybe the tiers could be the multipliers for the SP. Like tier one is equal to the PF. Tier two is two times the PF for SP. Tier 3 is three times. Tier 4 is 5 times. Tier 5 is 10 times being the top tier.

Tier 1 being 50 PF.

Tier 2 being 75 PF.

Tier 3 being 100 PF.

Tier 4 being 150 PF.

Tier 5 being 250 PF.

Of course, for simplicity sake, you could just have it be a set number.

1 = 100 SP 2 = 250 3 = 500 4 = 1000 5 = 2000

Idea. Maybe the tiers could be the multipliers for the SP. Like tier one is equal to the PF. Tier two is two times the PF for SP. Tier 3 is three times. Tier 4 is 5 times. Tier 5 is 10 times being the top tier.

Tier 1 being 50 PF.

Tier 2 being 75 PF.

Tier 3 being 100 PF.

Tier 4 being 150 PF.

Tier 5 being 250 PF.

Of course, for simplicity sake, you could just have it be a set number.

1 = 100 SP 2 = 250 3 = 500 4 = 1000 5 = 2000

Just the kind of simplistic idea I'm looking for. Thank you. I like the multiplier, it's easy to remember so I don't need another chart for it.

On the ship prices I'm thinking of returning to the original posters 10%. Reason being, the 30% might bite me back sometime, when players start to sell hulls that they have possibly found and salvaged.

The sweet spot could also be somewhere between.

What I want is that ships are not too cheap to aquire. For 10% you can get (if available) a 60 SP ship for 6 PF.

ATM players are much more motivated to get their character equipment up to good standard, but once they reach their "happy place" they will start to see PF as ways to improve their Power otherwise (and they should, being RTs after all).

Maybe go with 20% instead?

I havent counted how much the components will add up to that though, average of 10PF/ship maybe?

I like the idea of PF tens digits representing what they can support for ships the best.

For our ships, we started with a clipper and later captured a damaged vessel once and used a naval favor to repair and re-arm it. We bought a naval reserve fleet Grand Cruiser at auction and recently "acquired" a transport and a raider (from a pirate who was trying to come clean/suffered a mutiny and needed protection).

10% is pretty much what I went with. Copied below is what is from my post

Purchasing a ship with ship points upon PC creation is different when purchasing a ship later in the game. The SP cost of the ship plus any components with SP points added, cause a negative acquisition test modifier when you roll to acquire that ship. In addition to this, the ten’s digit of the ships total SP costs permanently lower the RT Profit Rating, with every 2 degrees of success negating 1 point to a max of half the cost of the ship (rounding up).

10% is pretty much what I went with. Copied below is what is from my post

Purchasing a ship with ship points upon PC creation is different when purchasing a ship later in the game. The SP cost of the ship plus any components with SP points added, cause a negative acquisition test modifier when you roll to acquire that ship. In addition to this, the ten’s digit of the ships total SP costs permanently lower the RT Profit Rating, with every 2 degrees of success negating 1 point to a max of half the cost of the ship (rounding up).

That sounds good. Thanks for help.

While writing things clean, it came to me, that players that can't reach the next entry bar yet might still want to do things that raise their PF. It would be stupid not to allow them. So I'm going to introduce a follow up on that.

They can go over the maximum PF of their "Level", but it will inflict a big chance of Misfortune roll on thet. If they go over a lot, the chance is of course bigger.

This represents the lack of Power the players have for protecting their holdings. Someone will take advantage of their weakness.

RAW do little do explain the RT's continuing wealth and published material tends to further that. Exactly how does the Righteous Path generate so much PF (3 + 4-8 for extra objectives + ??? for ship components)? I find it stretches the imagination to think the recovered cargo of a single ship is worth so much in perpetuity (and PF is in perpetuity). And how do our intrepid heroes load all that onto their (most likely) smaller vessel when the captain of the Righteous Path had to strip out his gun batteries to fit on his (most likely) much larger ship?

This is a job for a mining colony. As with all other published materials, we had to significantly house rule Stars of Inequity (and simplify them). Still, do our heroes want to spend the rest of their campaign days making trips between Magoros and a ready market? That sounds a bit dull. So they need another vessel. Good thing our heroes captured and salvaged a few on their way here.

Like many GMs, I find I have to charge the party PF to buy ships, and they never get exactly what they want. The dynasty requires many ships to operate the logistics tail of their empire. Every established colony needs a ship dedicated to it, and they need more than one as the colony grows. I make that a function of their cargo capacity and extra ship components. This allows the party to continue searching for that next big endeavor. Of course, there's no telling what will happen to those ships when they are out of the party's sight, plying the space lanes. There are losses and they need replaced. Too many losses might generate a need to investigate.

I find that PF should have a point of diminishing returns. When you are at RAW 90 PF adding another world to your empire will hardly raise your wealth by an awesome amount.

Where said point of diminishing returns should be, and how it would work is another matter though. Havent given it much thought, mostly since my group just started RT again recently after not playing it for quite a while.

RAW do little do explain the RT's continuing wealth and published material tends to further that. Exactly how does the Righteous Path generate so much PF (3 + 4-8 for extra objectives + ??? for ship components)? I find it stretches the imagination to think the recovered cargo of a single ship is worth so much in perpetuity (and PF is in perpetuity). And how do our intrepid heroes load all that onto their (most likely) smaller vessel when the captain of the Righteous Path had to strip out his gun batteries to fit on his (most likely) much larger ship?

(...)

PF is also influance and social statuts. Always considered that finding a legen (wait for it) dary wreck can do something about this.

I keep the acquisition cost at 10% of SP to acquire a ship, but also that players can't just design a ship from the ground up and go out and buy one for sale that's exactly like that. Ships they "acquire" are either won through combat, or else would take so long to build that they'll probably never see it over the course of the campaign since they're not the kind to take "time out".

I also put in place a system where no matter what, there is a set deduction from Profit Factor to keep ships operational. The Ship Maintenance Fees are a constant drain on Profit Factor, so you can either be a super powerful Rogue Trader owed favours everywhere with lots of Profit Factor but no ships, and no ships is a great way of having your holdings be unexpectedly attacked.

I love the idea of Ship Maintenance and Crew fees, but how often do you deduct them?

I deduct maintenance and upgrade fees yearly, but that happens more often than you might think. Our intrepid heroes have established a couple colonies in the Foundling Worlds and travel time to them often entails months in the Warp. Keep in mind that one month in the Warp means that a year has passed in Voidspace.

Interesting. Personally, I never used endeavours in the first place, exactly because I didn't want the crew to make 50 PF per mission. I'll try not to rant too much, but I've done the following:

By the book, a simple hive gang has PF 5. The Administratum has what, 130? Assuming PFs are of equal worth to one another, that means 26 average hive gangs together are as wealthy as the Administratum itself. This is preposterous, so I've run with the assumption that as you become wealthier, each PF represents increasingly larger amounts of wealth. While simply stealing a voidship's hold full of goods might get you from 5 to 6, you'd have to establish a new archeotech mine to get from 95 to 96. This encourages players to go after increasingly ambitious projects instead of chasing easy targets.

After that, I just set the PF value of various achievements as we go, ignoring the endeavour system entirely. Makes a few talents and more than a few ship components largely useless, but it's been totally worth it so far.

Interesting. Personally, I never used endeavours in the first place, exactly because I didn't want the crew to make 50 PF per mission. I'll try not to rant too much, but I've done the following:

By the book, a simple hive gang has PF 5. The Administratum has what, 130? Assuming PFs are of equal worth to one another, that means 26 average hive gangs together are as wealthy as the Administratum itself. This is preposterous, so I've run with the assumption that as you become wealthier, each PF represents increasingly larger amounts of wealth. While simply stealing a voidship's hold full of goods might get you from 5 to 6, you'd have to establish a new archeotech mine to get from 95 to 96. This encourages players to go after increasingly ambitious projects instead of chasing easy targets.

After that, I just set the PF value of various achievements as we go, ignoring the endeavour system entirely. Makes a few talents and more than a few ship components largely useless, but it's been totally worth it so far.

I like it. And I thought something similar a while back. I'm really glad it works for you and your group too. I just prefer more hard set rules, rather than a concept in my head. When you get into misfortunes that cause a neg to PF, or situations that cause a neg to PF, it's hard to eye ball what it should be and what it truly is with this concept. But hey, this is a game and if everyone is having fun, then you made the right choice.

Oh, I pretty much don't use misfortunes - in theory, the climb is so slow that they're not needed.

I don't go by the numbers you've quoted. The Administratum has whatever PF it decides to let its agents access, maybe with an upper limit of 130, not because that's the Ad's limit, but a limit it sets upon its agents. No number of Hive Gangs is going to conquer the Ad, but they might challenge their power on a single planet.

You can rant about the PF system. It has some serious flaws. My party built its original ship so that they got 2800 extra achievement points in trade, creed, and criminal enterprises. They've since improved it. Instead of penalizing them for intellligent ship design, I had to find ways to make them permanently spend that stuff. I started charging for the new ships they needed for their newly founded or forcibly acquired colonies. I let them acquire ships the RAW written way, too, but if they can't find what they need that way, they can spend PF. That is particularly important when they acquire an already-establshed colony or decent size and need half a dozen merchant ships to reasonably keep it in their empire.

Stars of Inequity helped further in getting them to spend PF. They still have no problem ramping their PF back above 100, but they always find more ways to spend it, so it works for us.