"Sorry folks, the Navigator killed the PF...again. This session is over. I'll come up with another adventure." Do this 3 times and see if things don't change.

Ehh, personally I'd regard this to be on the same level as "rocks fall, everyone dies"

Oh this reminds me of my first times GMing "Werewolf: The Apocalypse"

- you didn't show up last 4 games, you died

- how???

- a truck hit you

- but a werewolf could absorb that and at least not die D:

- it had a silver-coated bumper

It was that or "silver meteor shower".

Silver rocks fall! everyone dies!

You know what I kinda dislike?

I know warp travel is supposed to be unpredictable and dangerous, but it's downright DEADLY early on for a navigator!

I mean jesus! Last night it all started off well, it was 2 days to travel, and the navigator got a nice decent roll on figuring that out... then it all goes to hell.

They roll at 2 degrees of failure for finding the astronomicon (so it's going to take 8 days of warp travel), then they screw up their chart a course roll, so they totally miss the fact that they're going to run into a goddamn WARP STORM (again, randomly rolled).

I know this'll get less awful early on, and I don't plan on killing them off, but it was really a bad thing to end the session on, which is more my fault I guess.

It's always been my opinion that there's nothing that says you have to go to warp after looking for the Astronomicon. I don't see any reason why a Navigator can't come out of the tower and say "Nope, can't find him. Lets see if this warp cloud dissipates in a week or two."

Unless you under time pressure, of course.

It's always been my opinion that there's nothing that says you have to go to warp after looking for the Astronomicon. I don't see any reason why a Navigator can't come out of the tower and say "Nope, can't find him. Lets see if this warp cloud dissipates in a week or two."

Unless you under time pressure, of course.

I'm pretty sure you have to have already translated to the warp to be able to locate it. my last few sessions have been more warp travel than campaign so I've read the rules quite a few times (plying the warp from Navis Primer, but no book in front of me so IIRC)

you can tell if the astronomicon is ABLE to be found before translating but cant actually find it til you take the dive.

on that note. YES warp travel is a *****! its fun exciting dangerous and all that but in five jumps my party's ship was almost exterminated of life once and nearly crippled twice. Albeit I do take a good portion of the blame because I didnt know how short the jumps were supposed to be. LotE stated 30 days to quppa psi I think it said, so made every jump after about the same before reading in NP that footfall to zayth is only like 9 days. so my poor crew ended up with estimating 24 warp encounter rolls between leaving and returning to footfal and only got alls well result once. ONCE. these guys dealt with so many warp rifts I started to feel so bad I started bargaining fate point costs to lower the rift time lengths.

It's always been my opinion that there's nothing that says you have to go to warp after looking for the Astronomicon. I don't see any reason why a Navigator can't come out of the tower and say "Nope, can't find him. Lets see if this warp cloud dissipates in a week or two."

Unless you under time pressure, of course.

I'm pretty sure you have to have already translated to the warp to be able to locate it. my last few sessions have been more warp travel than campaign so I've read the rules quite a few times (plying the warp from Navis Primer, but no book in front of me so IIRC)

you can tell if the astronomicon is ABLE to be found before translating but cant actually find it til you take the dive.

on that note. YES warp travel is a *****! its fun exciting dangerous and all that but in five jumps my party's ship was almost exterminated of life once and nearly crippled twice. Albeit I do take a good portion of the blame because I didnt know how short the jumps were supposed to be. LotE stated 30 days to quppa psi I think it said, so made every jump after about the same before reading in NP that footfall to zayth is only like 9 days. so my poor crew ended up with estimating 24 warp encounter rolls between leaving and returning to footfal and only got alls well result once. ONCE. these guys dealt with so many warp rifts I started to feel so bad I started bargaining fate point costs to lower the rift time lengths.

Are you using the "Avoid encounters" rolls for physical and psychic encounters? (e.g. you get 2 chances to save yourself in case of physical encounters, one from navigator and one from pilot)

You know what I kinda dislike?

I know warp travel is supposed to be unpredictable and dangerous, but it's downright DEADLY early on for a navigator!

I mean jesus! Last night it all started off well, it was 2 days to travel, and the navigator got a nice decent roll on figuring that out... then it all goes to hell.

They roll at 2 degrees of failure for finding the astronomicon (so it's going to take 8 days of warp travel), then they screw up their chart a course roll, so they totally miss the fact that they're going to run into a goddamn WARP STORM (again, randomly rolled).

I know this'll get less awful early on, and I don't plan on killing them off, but it was really a bad thing to end the session on, which is more my fault I guess.

I can only assume you were using Navis Primer. That thing is untold deadly, and it isn't tiered. One bad roll and your Dynasty goes Poof! The very first time I used it (and I used it with my players' permission who thought the core rules were wimpy) I rolled one of the Warp plague encounters. They got held up in the Warp...it was one of those 150+ day voyages to Damaris (again the Navis Primer) and by the time they broke into voidspace their light cruiser had taken 75% crew casualties.

I've got my own rules for navigation now. I can post them for you if you like, or give you my google drive link. They save on die rolls while still having that chance of a debilitating encounter, but only if you let it happen by piling up negative modifiers.

Yes I was using the avoid encounter rolls, but its not two chances to pass and avoid, its two chances to fail and die. rules state if either roll fails they encounter it.

Knight I feel you. it was 75% for me too, followed by starvation from how long all the trips have been on top. so after reaching vaporius, and about 2 weeks from jump to planet, we were running on skeleton crew with no options

You know what I kinda dislike?

I know warp travel is supposed to be unpredictable and dangerous, but it's downright DEADLY early on for a navigator!

I mean jesus! Last night it all started off well, it was 2 days to travel, and the navigator got a nice decent roll on figuring that out... then it all goes to hell.

They roll at 2 degrees of failure for finding the astronomicon (so it's going to take 8 days of warp travel), then they screw up their chart a course roll, so they totally miss the fact that they're going to run into a goddamn WARP STORM (again, randomly rolled).

I know this'll get less awful early on, and I don't plan on killing them off, but it was really a bad thing to end the session on, which is more my fault I guess.

I can only assume you were using Navis Primer. That thing is untold deadly, and it isn't tiered. One bad roll and your Dynasty goes Poof! The very first time I used it (and I used it with my players' permission who thought the core rules were wimpy) I rolled one of the Warp plague encounters. They got held up in the Warp...it was one of those 150+ day voyages to Damaris (again the Navis Primer) and by the time they broke into voidspace their light cruiser had taken 75% crew casualties.

I've got my own rules for navigation now. I can post them for you if you like, or give you my google drive link. They save on die rolls while still having that chance of a debilitating encounter, but only if you let it happen by piling up negative modifiers.

Core book rules. And sure, please post them.

Here are my navigation home brews.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-MtWrnHF5DK8DwQ2pT9S1LMBlEK7N5FywZT3DarpwPI/edit?usp=sharing

Here are my navigation home brews.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-MtWrnHF5DK8DwQ2pT9S1LMBlEK7N5FywZT3DarpwPI/edit?usp=sharing

I like this a lot, but one question. How do you decide what date class you're working in? Seems like the shipboard astropath would either have some source of time, probably a class 5, or he doesn't. Since you're never gonna have a class 2 time measure, this just seems like a permanent extra penalty.

Or am I just confused about what that refers to? That seems more likely.

Heh. We've had some animated discussions about the time factor in navigation here before. Feel free to ignore it entirely, of course. Being a past navigator, I had to have a time factor. I figured if it were so important to 2-D navigation it would be even more important to 3-D navigation, and I'll leave it at that. You can go look up entire threads on it if you want.

Mind you, it doesn't affect Navigation except indirectly, but the making of Navigational Charts. I was simply providing an in-game reason to buy more advanced levels of the skill. And, it gave the Astropath another important ship function besides radio operator. Bonus.

Last dark heresy game, I gave the party one primary task and two secondary tasks.

One of the players didn't trust that the informant was working for their inquisitor, so they ignored their primary objective.

Fast forward and the subject of their primary objective declares them enemy's of the state. Theyp party hears this second hand from a kill team sent after them, so to see if its true, two members of the group walk into the arbitrats HQ and asks if their wanted or not.

Game over.

That was kinda funny though.

The last D&D 4e game I was doing, essentials had just added a change to the way rogues deal extra damage. My group was well aware that I disliked essentials and had banned the vast majority of their stuff in the past with no complaints.

But one of my players wants to play a rogue and wants this new Change to damage. So he asks and I politely decline.all is fine. Except, for the next three weeks, every time I see him and mmultiple times while he's around, he says things like 'so your giving me that buff right?'

Fun and games at first but he asked constantly regardless of how many times I explained no, that I lost all will to DM.

That was my last 4e game =(

Negotiations between my players and the Fel Dynasty's PCs took a turn for the worse when some Eldar Warp Spiders showed up, assassinated Fel, and then vanished again framing our Rogue Trader. A fight between the PCs and the Fel crew members who were built up to their levels ensued, and was going quite well until the Fel Navigator beat the PC Navigator in a duel and took him hostage, demanding his freedom and safe passage out of there, and was using the PC Navigator as a human shield.

At which point the Astropath's player publically stated he was just going to open fire on the pair of them because, and I am quoting, "[The PC Navigator] has fate points, so he can't die from this. It's fine". He then refused to back down from any possibility that this is a horrifying plan, and when some of the other players moved to stop him got more and more insistent that meta-gaming the concept of Fate Points as it relates to survival should be allowed.

any sort of negotiations between rogue traders or similarly rich persons is just impossible for me to figure out. most everything costs an immeasurable about of money that I cant just have the seller slap on a price tag when they ask how much it costs, and the party always offers some single object to trade, or like the last time this happened, try to sell locations of past eldar ship battles they had, as if the eldar ships cant leave a system, or small tidbits of information like theres assassins in a certain area coming for you. I appreciate their trying but these people ALL probably have a bounty on their head somewhere. the closest straight 'pricetag' I can ever come up with is achievement points, but that seems to make everything seem like its costing straight PF which tends to make the group just say F that anyway

Negotiations between my players and the Fel Dynasty's PCs took a turn for the worse when some Eldar Warp Spiders showed up, assassinated Fel, and then vanished again framing our Rogue Trader. A fight between the PCs and the Fel crew members who were built up to their levels ensued, and was going quite well until the Fel Navigator beat the PC Navigator in a duel and took him hostage, demanding his freedom and safe passage out of there, and was using the PC Navigator as a human shield.

At which point the Astropath's player publically stated he was just going to open fire on the pair of them because, and I am quoting, "[The PC Navigator] has fate points, so he can't die from this. It's fine.". He then refused to back down from any possibility that this is a horrifying plan, and when some of the other players moved to stop him got more and more insistent that met-gaming the concept of Fate Points as it relates to survival should be allowed.

LOL funny.

I stipulated back in DH that when my players used a fate point to survive something that would have killed him/her, the PC was still maimed from it as per the critical chart / experience. The PC won't still be bleeding to death or anything like that, but still lost an eye, leg, nose various burn scars, etc (with temporary Fel/Ag/Str/T/Per penalty until plastic surgery, cybernetic replacement was conducted). But that is just my interpretation of the rules. GM discretion is advised.

I'm with Nameless on that. Fate means you didn't die. It doesn't mean you didn't lose the leg. That has other gameplay effects, though, as many people want a new leg anyway.

BUT, if someone openly metagames in an OOC fashion at my table, in my face, they earned themselves at least 1d10 corruption. In the aforementioned case, if they went through with it I'd go 1d10+10 simply because that peson deserves at least one mutation.

any sort of negotiations between rogue traders or similarly rich persons is just impossible for me to figure out. most everything costs an immeasurable about of money that I cant just have the seller slap on a price tag when they ask how much it costs, and the party always offers some single object to trade, or like the last time this happened, try to sell locations of past eldar ship battles they had, as if the eldar ships cant leave a system, or small tidbits of information like theres assassins in a certain area coming for you. I appreciate their trying but these people ALL probably have a bounty on their head somewhere. the closest straight 'pricetag' I can ever come up with is achievement points, but that seems to make everything seem like its costing straight PF which tends to make the group just say F that anyway

This is one of those things I liked better in D&D, or other games (assuming I'm understanding you right). When you want something, you steal it. If you are a decent sort, instead, you buy it. You ask them for a figure, they tell you it's worth xxxxx gold pieces, or maybe a trade for the King's eldest daughter, and you decide what to do. If you don't have the money, you don't get what you wanted. RT though, is a game with astronomical sums (pun intended ), conducted by characters who don't carry much, if any, real money around with them, and not possibly enough for the stuff we're talking about. While I certainly don't mind some parts of the hand wave, when (it would work like this in MY games) the Rogue Trader, or his/her duly appointed representative pulls the Inquisitorial rosette analogue out, that gives them actual access to their super-wealth, and does the paper work trail to make the sorts of contracts the Rogues do start, sometimes I just miss the imagined sound of a heavy bag of gold coins hitting the table, in exchange for the old, dusty tome, or the ancient sword ensorcelled with power. The fact that PF doesn't even correlate to a figure, as parts of it are non-monetary, like favors, or future-maybes, and that it sort of grows exponentially (Winterscale doesn't have JUST twice the wealth of Bastille), it just sort of hurts my bit for immersion. You fly into the Breaking Yards, hoping to salvage some priceless bit of some old ship for your next upgrade, and not once will either of you discuss how much that Nova Cannon, torpedo system, or teleportarium costs, because the number will be silly, and you'll just "arrange for payment to be made" anyway. Hell, between potential imposters, and others who simply want to harm the reputation of their peers, the lack of interstellar data transmission, and the "lag time" of long-range astropathic rapport, it's actually rather amazing that any Rogue Traders can actually do any real business; they neither have the Scrooge McDuck money bin on them, nor will most entrepreneurs accept the I.O.U. that "I will gladly pay you on Tuesday, two weeks from now for a teleportarium, today" negotiations effectively seem to me to be. Even my "Dynastic rosette" idea actually requires communication and data passing technology that doesn't exist in 40k, at least for most of it.

Negotiations between my players and the Fel Dynasty's PCs took a turn for the worse when some Eldar Warp Spiders showed up, assassinated Fel, and then vanished again framing our Rogue Trader. A fight between the PCs and the Fel crew members who were built up to their levels ensued, and was going quite well until the Fel Navigator beat the PC Navigator in a duel and took him hostage, demanding his freedom and safe passage out of there, and was using the PC Navigator as a human shield.

At which point the Astropath's player publically stated he was just going to open fire on the pair of them because, and I am quoting, "[The PC Navigator] has fate points, so he can't die from this. It's fine.". He then refused to back down from any possibility that this is a horrifying plan, and when some of the other players moved to stop him got more and more insistent that met-gaming the concept of Fate Points as it relates to survival should be allowed.

LOL funny.

I stipulated back in DH that when my players used a fate point to survive something that would have killed him/her, the PC was still maimed from it as per the critical chart / experience. The PC won't still be bleeding to death or anything like that, but still lost an eye, leg, nose various burn scars, etc (with temporary Fel/Ag/Str/T/Per penalty until plastic surgery, cybernetic replacement was conducted). But that is just my interpretation of the rules. GM discretion is advised.

Pretty sure that's not even a houserule, just RAW. Well, the temp penalty until medical treatment/recovery might (or might not) be an add-on.

You're still incapacitated/out of the fight, just not a corpse. And if your broken body happens to be lying in the blast area of something as the fight continues without you as an active participant, you're screwed (again/still).

To spend a Fate point and have it be like nothing happened is, IIRC, a moderately high-level faith power.

any sort of negotiations between rogue traders or similarly rich persons is just impossible for me to figure out. most everything costs an immeasurable about of money that I cant just have the seller slap on a price tag when they ask how much it costs, and the party always offers some single object to trade, or like the last time this happened, try to sell locations of past eldar ship battles they had, as if the eldar ships cant leave a system, or small tidbits of information like theres assassins in a certain area coming for you. I appreciate their trying but these people ALL probably have a bounty on their head somewhere. the closest straight 'pricetag' I can ever come up with is achievement points, but that seems to make everything seem like its costing straight PF which tends to make the group just say F that anyway

This is one of those things I liked better in D&D, or other games (assuming I'm understanding you right). When you want something, you steal it. If you are a decent sort, instead, you buy it. You ask them for a figure, they tell you it's worth xxxxx gold pieces, or maybe a trade for the King's eldest daughter, and you decide what to do. If you don't have the money, you don't get what you wanted. RT though, is a game with astronomical sums (pun intended ), conducted by characters who don't carry much, if any, real money around with them, and not possibly enough for the stuff we're talking about. While I certainly don't mind some parts of the hand wave, when (it would work like this in MY games) the Rogue Trader, or his/her duly appointed representative pulls the Inquisitorial rosette analogue out, that gives them actual access to their super-wealth, and does the paper work trail to make the sorts of contracts the Rogues do start, sometimes I just miss the imagined sound of a heavy bag of gold coins hitting the table, in exchange for the old, dusty tome, or the ancient sword ensorcelled with power. The fact that PF doesn't even correlate to a figure, as parts of it are non-monetary, like favors, or future-maybes, and that it sort of grows exponentially (Winterscale doesn't have JUST twice the wealth of Bastille), it just sort of hurts my bit for immersion. You fly into the Breaking Yards, hoping to salvage some priceless bit of some old ship for your next upgrade, and not once will either of you discuss how much that Nova Cannon, torpedo system, or teleportarium costs, because the number will be silly, and you'll just "arrange for payment to be made" anyway. Hell, between potential imposters, and others who simply want to harm the reputation of their peers, the lack of interstellar data transmission, and the "lag time" of long-range astropathic rapport, it's actually rather amazing that any Rogue Traders can actually do any real business; they neither have the Scrooge McDuck money bin on them, nor will most entrepreneurs accept the I.O.U. that "I will gladly pay you on Tuesday, two weeks from now for a teleportarium, today" negotiations effectively seem to me to be. Even my "Dynastic rosette" idea actually requires communication and data passing technology that doesn't exist in 40k, at least for most of it.

Some of it is letters of credit from trustworthy third parties (usually banking houses and the like). If you're a trusted and repeat client, the seller may well extend their own credit to you.

Also, a ship is going to have a treasury or several onboard. Now, a great deal of the wealth you carry around with you is not likely to be paper money or the like, but relatively high-value, relatively low-bulk/mass things like say, gemstones, ingots of refined and (usually) precious metals, awesomely fancy jewelry, works of art, valuable information, etc. Some things can be traded, and treated as obscenely high denomination bills (gems, ingots, etc), while more unique items (art, jewelry, etc) can be traded to the seller to be redeemed by X within a certain period of time.

Also, at least for things like ship components, and higher end things, negotiations are likely to be extended, in part to verify you can provide what you're offering, unless you're willing to pay through the nose and up front.

Fraud is going to be treated very harshly - these are people with warships and private armies. And if you're known to have committed fraud, you're getting hunted by everyone as soon as the word spreads.

And, for that matter, it's quite likely that the banking houses, and trade outposts, and those who would be offering to provide local letters of credit in exchange for offworld letters of credit, would have code phrases and identifiers and encryptions to verify letters of credit as genuinely issued to the name on it.

I'm with Nameless on that. Fate means you didn't die. It doesn't mean you didn't lose the leg. That has other gameplay effects, though, as many people want a new leg anyway.

BUT, if someone openly metagames in an OOC fashion at my table, in my face, they earned themselves at least 1d10 corruption, in the aforementioned case, if they went through with it I'd go 1d10+10 simply because that peson deserves at least one mutation.

My players stopped pulling this **** when I said straight up "You burn a fatepoint any time you metagame about the existence of fatepoints." Since they're all decent roleplayers anyway, it stopped this crap.

I'm with Nameless on that. Fate means you didn't die. It doesn't mean you didn't lose the leg. That has other gameplay effects, though, as many people want a new leg anyway.

BUT, if someone openly metagames in an OOC fashion at my table, in my face, they earned themselves at least 1d10 corruption, in the aforementioned case, if they went through with it I'd go 1d10+10 simply because that peson deserves at least one mutation.

My players stopped pulling this **** when I said straight up "You burn a fatepoint any time you metagame about the existence of fatepoints." Since they're all decent roleplayers anyway, it stopped this crap.

Hmm depends, If i was playing a tzeentchian character i could possibly come up with a reason totalk about fatepoints.

Me: "Lo my brethren! Tzeentch, the changer of ways, the master of fate appeared before m in a dream saying each mortal has these "points", like little specks of light in the darkness by witch is know their fate. By dousing these "fate points" in the fire of the great god's will one can influence reality itself and change his fate! So mighty gods of chaos! Behold as i burn my fate point! send me a destiny where I may better serve thee! Twist my damned fate towards VICTORY!"

Gm: "so you burnt a fatepoint to dodge the thunderhammer swinging towards your skull."

Me: "that's what i said, right?"

GM: *facepalms* Fine.

See, the first time one of my players did that I would award them a Fate Point for really throwing themselves into it.

It's not even the fact that they're throwing themselves into danger because they think they have the blessing of the Emperor, it's that they're willing to embark on suicidal (or party-cidal) activities because the existence of Fate Points means they're never in any danger.

That story ended with the Fel Navigator forcing the Astropath rolling Perils of the Warp, and I got the "You explode and damage everyone around you", which was 90% of his own allies. This led to a lot of him talking about how convenient my Perils roll was and sulking.

See, the first time one of my players did that I would award them a Fate Point for really throwing themselves into it.

It's not even the fact that they're throwing themselves into danger because they think they have the blessing of the Emperor, it's that they're willing to embark on suicidal (or party-cidal) activities because the existence of Fate Points means they're never in any danger.

That story ended with the Fel Navigator forcing the Astropath rolling Perils of the Warp, and I got the "You explode and damage everyone around you", which was 90% of his own allies. This led to a lot of him talking about how convenient my Perils roll was and sulking.

See, I'm okay with players doing suicidal things, provided it's something they're character would actually do! I don't want them doing it because the PLAYER knows their dude won't die.

My biggest rants would be that sometimes, you as a GM, have to do things that are boring, such as giving an report, meeting an official person, being the NPC that asks them to wait, roleplay the servant etc. It is of course necessary, just not very rewarding.

and the ******* cannon of the system! Omg can we not have a stereotypical expectation about something for once?

and the ******* cannon of the system! Omg can we not have a stereotypical expectation about something for once?

it wouldn't be 40k without a suitable amount of camp!