I'm thinking again about the oddities thrown up by crew rating. The impression I get from RAW is crew rating is supposed to be the number used for all crew rolls. But with even a competent crew, that's a 30. That's for the helmsman, the head astropath, the navigator prime. It seems odd, especially since there is so much gear that can boost rolls (e.g. MIU).

So I'm toying with the idea of letting certain select NPCs have a bonus to their rolls above the crew rating. Particularly the navigator.

Current notion is a +20 above crew rating to the navigator, pilot, and enginseer prime.

And/or allowing a fixed number of rerolls between all of the crew per warp trip/combat/other encounter.

Any thoughts?

As I use it/read it, the Crew rating is the highest "skill score" you can find for every skill among the crew. So somewhere on the ship, there's someone with 30 Navigate (Steller) or a 30 in Gambling . (As though they have an attribute of 30 and are trained, or an attribute of 20 and have +10 training) This is because of the dramatic difference in quality between heroic PC characters and the normal scum of humanity. Most grunt humans have stats in the 20's and never get past trained in something.

However, this still means if you've bought equipment that makes a check easier or grants a bonus, that would be come in after, just like it does for a PC. A mundane, regular pilot using the MIU you had installed in him is going to fly better than the mundane, regular pilot without one, though they'll still be outflown by a true Void Master.

In addition to upgrading crew, I've allowed my Rogue Trader to buy specialists for the ship, basically buying up one particular skill, rather than the entire crews. (Rarity is based on what skill it is, no size bonus.)

I wouldn't mess with it to much more than that - the crew really shouldn't be attempting anything that isn't Easy anyways, that's what heroes are for.

I can see that. I suppose my main concern stems from even a supposedly competent crew can fail disasterously very often outside of completely safe environments. Piloting even semi-safely through asteroid fields outside combat should not require a one in a million helmsman (i.e. PC grade). And by RAW, navigation is ridiculously deadly without either a PC navigator or a seriously buffed up veteran/elite crew.

I can see that. I suppose my main concern stems from even a supposedly competent crew can fail disastrously very often outside of completely safe environments. Piloting even semi-safely through asteroid fields outside combat should not require a one in a million helmsman (i.e. PC grade). And by RAW, navigation is ridiculously deadly without either a PC navigator or a seriously buffed up veteran/elite crew.

Yes. That's why they only let Rogue Traders do this kind of stuff. Because they get 1 in a million people. Your regular void crew wouldn't fly within 100,000 km of an asteroid field, and any navigation outside of very well established lanes is supposed to be exceptionally difficult. In many cases freighters are described as dropping out of the Warp every 5 days (just short enough not to have a warp encounter on the table, cunningly) to reorient and remap their location even when traveling a known route.

I'm going to chip in to second most of what Quicksilver said.

A 30 is for a competent crew. That's basic competency, nothing fancy. However, that's crew rather than officers.

Another thing to remember is that a failed roll isn't always utter disaster or a an actual failed attempt at something. Getting through the asteroid field is something you can still do with a failed roll, you'll just probably take some damage along the way.

With NPC ships I'll have a captain obviously, and probably 2-3 other important officers who have statistics of their own above the crew rating (usually a voidmaster, navigator, and an enginseer of some sort but it depends on the ship and it's importance to the game/story). So for most every day actions they have a little higher than the basic crew competency, but for anything that isn't covered by the higher up officers, or if the officers are indisposed or don't have the skill, they default to the basic crew rating.

On the PC ship the PC's are the important officers. If they want some other skilled officers for a specific purpose they need to go out and acquire them. My PC's currently have a squat master of whispers named Tattoo, a former IG general heading their commando unit called Mr. Christianson, and an Eldar Voidmistress and troublemaker named Halies. They also picked up a Veteran gunnery crew on Zayeth, but I think that crew went with their transport with Tattoo when he went into Calixis to do some political stuff (background endeavour).

Right. But there are others besides rogue traders who survive outside of the safe Imperial routes. Imperial Navy. Explorators. Pirates. Judging by FFG's stats, most of their crews are competent or crack, with a very few in the other categories. I'm fine with those numbers. What I'm not fine with is the difference between background (these factions can and do act in the Koronus Expanse) and the reality in rules (rolling off *just* crew rating will get the lot of them killed). What I'm looking for is a way to make these sync up.

Oh, I agree, and you'll also find it in a lot of other rules issues across the forum, the way spacecraft are set up, they're far too dependent on the skill ranks of a couple of people, making them horribly skewed as soon as someone is actually good as something. I think you'll find for 90% of the starship rolls, they start breaking once you have rolls in the 60+ range. (Warp Nav. being the notable exception)

For the majority of ships that are actually going out into the expanse, I assume they have 1 to 4 "heroic" characters on them. For the PCs, its them. For everyone else, its picking a couple of skills/talents that make sense for their position and running with that.

For the Navy, I actually use a rule that lets them count as having a 'PC' in every ship position (Into the Storm) and make unlimited special orders, to represent their much better trained and more extensive officer corp. I find this does amazing things to their effectiveness, even if it does practically take an Excel spreadsheet to roll out each turn.

Right. But there are others besides rogue traders who survive outside of the safe Imperial routes. Imperial Navy. Explorators. Pirates. Judging by FFG's stats, most of their crews are competent or crack, with a very few in the other categories. I'm fine with those numbers. What I'm not fine with is the difference between background (these factions can and do act in the Koronus Expanse) and the reality in rules (rolling off *just* crew rating will get the lot of them killed). What I'm looking for is a way to make these sync up.

You are not supposed to run them using JUST crew ratings. Ships need officers as well as crew.

And I can think of nowhere in the Rogue Trader books where it points out that you have to stat up "officers" for every ship. It's quite an oversight.

Thanks for the feedback folks. You've given me food for thought.

Edited for typo.

I totally agree with you Decessor, that the average stat of your crew is the base line for every role on a ship when you don't have a PC. However, after some debate between myself and several players, I started running it like what Spatulaodoom and Quicksilver mentioned; by giving NPC ship's Officers that were a cut above the rest. On pages 372 and 373 of the RT Core book, you have Navy Officers and Void Pirate Captains, and in LotE pg 129, you have Companion's. In HA you even have Nemesis's and other notable NPC's. So the pre-made NPC profiles are already there for you, with just a little tweaking. You could also keep it simple and say that the Officers are +10 above the rest of the crew.

The problem I've noticed with the PC ships crew rating though, is that it's not used for much (mostly noticed this with less than 4 PCs). Other than the box on page 214, they don't do much. Common sense applied, the rating corresponds to their base stats when in combat with enemy forces, but really not much else. I guess this is an debate for another thread though.

The +20 idea isn't bad though Decessor. I would save that for special NPC's that the PC's go out of their way to hire/acquire/train. Other than that, your on the right track. Happy gaming.

I was going to point out the Free Trader Captain on page 371, the Naval Officer on page 372, and the Void Pirate Captain on page 373. In addition there's dozens of specific named or generic types of Captains, Rogue Traders, and Leaders all sorts, all of whom have skills and abilities over the standard “competent” crew rating and usually over crack or even veteran.

The book doesn't explicitly tell you to only use the basic crew rating for everything on an NPC ship either. I believe that the crew rating is the catchall for “everything else” that isn't already statted up exactly the same way it works with a PC ship. If the GM running the game can't be bothered to stat up a few NPC's and decides to simply use the crew rating for literally everything then I guess the ship can't really do much very well, nor apparently does anyone on the ship have any talents or abilities beyond basic skills.

I'm sure you've noticed that Rogue Trader doesn't do a lot of hand holding in general. You see lots of times it says “you can/could” rather then “do this.” so you're expected to make the call and do things the way you think they should be done.

Nameless2all, nice to see another example. Thanks.

Spatula, that is one interpretation and a sensible one. However, a *lot* of gamers I know reached others conclusions from reading the rules. There's a difference between "hand holding" and disguising work that needs to be done to make NPC ships as able as they should be.

Don't forget Men of Quality - I think from the Battlefleet Koronus PAGE 126...

I make my players go hunt for them - once available - they are acquirable

I do what you guys do. I give enemy NPC ships a few officers with okay stats depending on who they are, and how easy or tough I want the fight to be(this pirate ship has the greatest void master to ever live!). I use the crew rating, for extra actions, but most command and pilot rolls are going to be NPCs with 35-45 rolls going for it. With the occasional mega badass depending on who they're fighting, cause really, once you get to 50 and over, you're dealing with the cream of the crop generally speaking(AKA all PCs).

For my PCs themselves, I've stated out a few NPCs for roles they don't have among the party. They got pretty nice stats, but they're not as good as an experienced PC.

Yeah, i know that at one time, I sat down with Lure of the Expanse, and started looking at the competitors, making notes of what each might add to their entries, from other materials, as compared to where a PC group might be. Examples:

• If possible, give Fel Ash back. It might just be assumed she's there, but she's never mentioned, and a powerful Psyker can do some interesting things in RT, even from a ship.
• Might enhance Chalrabelle's Kroot compliment, as later books fleshed them out.
• My first thought, upon getting through most of the good stuff in BFK was "let's show off Bastille's money!". He'd get some fighter craft, definitely some torpedoes, or much less likely, a Nova Cannon. He's a war character with a warship, and he's got a lot of the personality, plus spendable resources to use.

Of course, the bigger thing, I'd use the very materials they provided, to get an idea of their theme and mood, and then make their crews have several "leveled" NPCs to push their related values up to a player-approximate point. Certainly, the players should benefit from their experience, and get awesome, but these NPCs are successful, too, in their various ways, and so must be doing something. Maybe they won't each have 6+ PC-level folks, and each will lag behind on something, but making them on par, at least some of them, in their respective ways, regardless of the party's level seems critical.

I've let the players use their starting acquisition to get competent specialists. In one campaign the main players wanted to play the RT, the Explorator, and a Priest, meaning they'd have no decent Navigator or Astropath, let alone someone who could pilot the ship decently. They all wanted to use their initial acquisition to obtain these people and I let them.

But I always use the Crew Rating for everyone else, though I do split the crews up into sections (flight crew, gunnery crew, small craft crew, etc.)