Hello good people of the fantasy flight forums! I posted a question about the thousands sons sorcerer about 3 years ago and I received a lot of helpful replies, so now I turn to you again with another question.

I'm thinking of running a black crusade campaign in the near future alongside my mates D&D campaign, now I haven't really begun to shape or create the campaign yet as I prefer to build around the party.

One of the players, as you might guessed from the title, would like to play "a chaos rogue trader" and apparently they start with their own ship. Problem is that the only source of this information is the lovely 1d4chan. Taking 1d4chan semi seriously due to the nature of the posts and information, but amongst the heresy, rage, derp, and matt ward, they generally have their **** together, I also couldn't find in the tomb of excess that stated such which makes me think otherwise.

Not that I mind having a player start with a ship, I would just like some legitimate wording or source, and if they do, what kind of ship do they get,

Check the wording for the Creatures of Comfort ability; it's mentioned (somewhat obliquely) in there. As to its capabilities, since Black Crusade is not quite so much about High Adventure Amongst The Stars the voidship is something of a narrative tool left to the GM's discretion. (That's basically an accidental paraphrase.) Of course if you want to go full-on with the voidship then you could concoct something from the subsystems of Rogue Trader.

I read that, but it is extremely vague. I was hoping for something more solid.

Nope, super vague is the order of the day. It's made even worse by the fact that in the RT line, they stopped doing the breakdowns on how NPC ships were constructed and the space/power numbers for components and even hulls built for/used in the NPC ship profiles. That had the side effect of making modifying those ships ... difficult, and it also makes it hard to steal one of them, or parts of one of them.

I'd probably say work with the player to build a ship, but keep it small, likely a raider or smaller transport, rather than a larger vessel. One option, if you want to keep it mostly in the narrative background is to make it one of those funky Q'Sal warpcraft ships that can't hold together in normal space ... but that's quite limiting, and there's not much else in the way of information about those craft available.

Personally, I'd prefer to borrow from Rogue Trader and do a RT-style voidship proper, or put together a set of RT-compatible stats/capabilities for a Q'Sal (or other source) ship that then cannot be modified further, barring extraordinary conditions reliant upon the GM's approval.

We use BFG for ships, for the most part. It tends to work rather well and have enough information to play them by.

Though if you're letting one player start with a ship, I would seriously consider giving everyone else a similar contribution to the party as well, or they'll just end up being the Pirate Prince's lackies, which might not sit well with everyone involved. Depending on the rest of your party composition a free warband needing void transport, an artillery or fighter squadron or even a cabale of dark mechanicus or another ship might even be appropriate. Pirate prince is an insanely strong class that games every broken loophole in the system. It doesn't need a ship to compete, but other players need something of similar worth to be in the new, elevated gear level the class forces upon the compact, or they'll forver be lagging behind.

Ultimately it comes down to how much you'd be needing the details of the ship's systems. If you and the players expect to be heavily involved in space combat, then by all means stat something up from Rogue Trader. (From what I've heard BFG is more intended for the larger scales of fleet-based combat.) But if it's just something to ride around on and occasionally use for certain bonuses, just grant it a few subsystems from RT and otherwise leave it as a plot device.

@DeathByGrotz: Were you referring to the bit about "Pirate Princes gain one additional Degree of Success when attempting to acquire goods or services of Good Craftsmanship or better"? If so, keep in mind that DoS/DoF are largely a consequence of a roll's result, and thus adding one DoS to a successful test to acquire gear via Infamy shouldn't actually change a failure to a success. True, it could offer a bonus to Commerce, but that's a mere +2. The appreciable effects would likely just be in quantity of gear, which all things considered would likely help the party by spreading things around. (Excessive Wealth is nice but isn't hard for anyone with sufficient Infamy to pick up.)

Or were you referring to something else?

Rogue Trader is by no means a System I would recommend anyone to run on the sideline of an actual Black Crusade campaign.

BFG may be considered for larger engagements but its also abstract enough to be included in another system without bringing an entire P&P Rulebook to the table with tons of customization and other stuff that is not needed.

Also encounters of 1vs1 are actually rather rare and keep in mind that this "prince" is not an admiral but a splendid trader and bon vivant. Imho a guncutter like the Inquisition uses them would be the minimum though I would not grant him anything much bigger than a small trade vessel that consists of 50% engines and is specialized into cold trade, not hauling around several thousand tons of grain.

In this role it would be mostly a narrative device that allows your party to travel planets freely (and not being dependent on imperial trade routes with a war band of renegades is extremely important). It is fast enough to outrun most system defense vessels as long as they do not already wait for you and it might shot down some interceptors but be ultimately doomed if it even dares to encounter an actual warship even of the smallest size. If the party wants a fleet of their own they have to work for that and hence it would belong to "everyone" or at last those that put some effort into it, not promoting a character to such a role just because of the creation.

That way the prince would still have an extremely useful toy and some lever against other party members but without putting him into the dreaded role of a rogue trader that might doom the entire campaign if played by someone who cant play such an important role with that kind of authority over the other PCs. Also a reason I do not like the rogue trader system on its own.

But even if you allow a big ship, never forget one thing. That might make the prince rather important to the other ones but might not save him from psychic domination of a psyker or the khorne berserker he pissed off and that is standing right next to him on a bridge where nobody might be able to even try and stop him.

That guy is rich, absurdly rich, but a 10.000 years old veteran would slay him and wait for another rich guy to be his t/fool if such a brat actually goes to far.

@DeathByGrotz: Were you referring to the bit about "Pirate Princes gain one additional Degree of Success when attempting to acquire goods or services of Good Craftsmanship or better"? If so, keep in mind that DoS/DoF are largely a consequence of a roll's result, and thus adding one DoS to a successful test to acquire gear via Infamy shouldn't actually change a failure to a success. True, it could offer a bonus to Commerce, but that's a mere +2. The appreciable effects would likely just be in quantity of gear, which all things considered would likely help the party by spreading things around. (Excessive Wealth is nice but isn't hard for anyone with sufficient Infamy to pick up.)

Or were you referring to something else?

Essentially a pirate prince is a minion-monger who starts aligned (but has solid advancements in necessary minion-monger skills from the khorne-tree anyway, and with cheap fel, needs no more investment than +10 command as is...), and can thusly grab a bunch of powerful, fanatic minions (note: Fanatic means they get hit instead of you; literal meat shields) early, which allows him to min max the **** out of his build and show up with max Fel and WP. The mentioned special quality makes it easier for him to equip these minions with addiontal equipment and supplement things he's lacking, from melee/ranged capability to psychic powers. He's effectively, very quickly, a one-man party that may well end up recruiting fanatically loyal space marines before he hits 3k XP. Basically, a super-apostate with a space ship who starts with, hands down, the best gear any human archtype has access to, period.

Perhaps, but minions still require a significant amount of investment to get good stats.* GM approval, too, of course. Plus Pirate Prince is an Advanced Archetype, and thus is already considered to be at ~5100 XP upon character creation.

*One of my players has a Lesser Minion which we all ignore because it's a joke next to the PCs and anything they're facing. Another of the players expressly wants to go down the minion-mongering route, but as we've found it gets expensive very quickly.

You don't need good stats for minions to be useful or crippling to an enemy. You just need to play them right. As far as the XP number, it's completely arbitrary and has nothing to do with the actual power of the archtypes in the slightest.

It is no question but a simple fact that most advanced archetypes are realy strong in what they do and might be even considered overpowered.

I have no problem with that.

The important thing is to sit down with your players and make sure that everyone has a character he likes, that fits into the group and has its purpose.

In this scenarios overpowered characters work as long as your players are mature enough to accept that some characters will not just be a bit better than them in some field but actually be of an entirely different league.

If you want MMORPG balanced characters just stick with the archetypes discounted for psykers and make an all human or all renegade party.

Is a Prince really strong? Hell yes he is. Is a Thousand Sons Sorcerer really strong? Hell yes he is. Is a Khorne Berserker really strong? Maybe, who cares if I want to play one.

Some of these advanced classes can be directly linked to the tabletop and there is a reason some are considered Troops and others Elite.

Alter Schwede...When the **** did "balanced classes" become synonymous with MMOs and implied "poor RP" instead of good game design?

You cant balance what is imbalanced by the background you want to play in.

You want to play an extremly rich and influental guy? Guess what. He is extremely rich and influental.

It's perfectly possible to balance out extremely good starting equipment inside a system. Most other RPGs people play around here do so (TDE4, Shadowrun, FATE, just to name a few). I do not think "RP, deal with it" is an excuse to not even try.

Starting equipment is only a representation of the stuff the character can get its hand on without much trouble or effort.

The prince is not about good starting equipment but about a guy that constantly gets good things.

So take away all that starting gear and it is just a matter of time until the guy has even better stuff and an army of minions to care for him. These are his talents.

Also do me the favor of comparing the Chaos Marines Starting Equipment with the regular Human ones. This system does not care about balance in that regard and it never will.

If you start to play a rich guy you start a rich guy. If you start to play a low cultist you play a low cultist.

This system just said "RP, deal with it" and not even tried to make it balanced.

To answer the question "What kind of ship should they get?", I would suggest a raider.

Though I feel odd talking about porting things from other games in the BC Rules section, take a look at Rogue Trader: Battlefleet Koronus. Within are quite a lot of ships and info on them.

As the BC system and setting are not made with the ideas of exploration and profit being high priority like RT, or even ship combat for that matter, the details of the ship's components aren't as relevant as in RT. My suggestion would be to go straight to the forces of Chaos section of the book, and grab a small Chaos-aligned vessel, like an Infidel-class raider. Though technically an npc vessel by RT standards, modifying and customizing things about your ship isn't going to be as important in BC. You are a Chaos follower, it is a Chaos ship, and it has stats that make it playable should ship combat ever actually occur in a non-narrative fashion (though you will need the RT Core Rulebook for that)

As your Pirate Prince is just that, a self-appointed Pirate Prince, and no mighty lord or champion of Chaos yet, restrict access to any of the larger, mightier ships until both the PP, and more importantly, his crew (ie, the rest of the party), prove worthy.