Wealth of a noble house?

By Neurorage, in Dark Heresy Rules Questions

Hello!

This is my first post here, since spanish community is almost dead, so i can't ask anybody.

So, because i haven't read all the books of DH (i'm on it!) i have a question. My character is a noble whose house is "sustain of the Imperium" (i don't know the exact translation), so i want to determinate (my character is the head of the family) how much money i can spend.

Also, it would be great if somebody could tell me if there's some way to acquire a starship (Yes, my group is crazy!), either paying it or with my influence by being a noble interrogator.

Thanks and sorry for the bad english ;)

By saying sustain of the Imperium, would mean Peer of the Imperium?

If I understand correctly, you play Ascension?

The wealth of a noble family would pretty much depend on said noble family.

A great family of Malfi could be rich enough to buy some little starship or have private standing armies, while a lower noble familty of Acreage would have a few lands, a bunch of soldiers and not much in the way of equipping them in a modern and efficient standing army. It depends too much.

Same can be said for the ship; a little non-warp-capable ship will cost you a lot but will be possible to handle, but to have an Imperial Navy Retribution Class Battleship will be something else.

In the end, if I was your GM, I wouldn't accept you to be the lord of a great house of Calixis' nobilty because of the extremes of powers this represents, unless you're very late game (even by ascension standards).

Edited by InquisitorAlexel

We don't play ascension (5 rank characters). The GM told me taht i can't use all of the power of my family because the organization that we're investigating could catch us, but we want to have a operative base, which could move and run away from that organization if they discover us.

Is "Provender of Imperium", in the Table 1:4 of the inquisitors handbook, and the GM told me that my family owns some agrarian and miner planets (yes, i also think that is crazy), so i thought, that with my own wealth and the help of the inquisition (we have a real good reputation) we could affort the price.

Thaks for the help

For the fun of it, what is your mother tongue?

A starship proper ... um, not so much. Even a non-warp capable starship (system ship). You can probably acquire and maintain some sort of small craft.

I'd say a small in-system sublight yacht type or modified guncutter/pinnace of ship would probably be doable with support from the Inquisition, since you're not supposed to be drawing on your family's wealth for anything big. On the other hand ... spacecraft are expensive . It would probably be the most efficient (in terms of both resources and time) to refit a seized small craft of a suitable nature if you can't requisition one immediately or shortly available through Inquisitorial channels.

An actual starship would be wildly out of reach for junior acolytes. The smallest warp capable ship in the RT books is just under a kilometer long, and has a crew of ~6,000.

Inquisitor's Handbook page 159 lists some prices for per person per (one-way) trip through/into the void in Table 5-4. Table 5-5 is also relevant for this discussion.

Depending on how much tech-heresy your group is willing and able to embrace, I suppose it's theoretically possible to eventually upgrade/modify one's way into a very short-range warp-capable guncutter if you throw enough time and resources into your tech-heresy.

For the fun of it, what is your mother tongue?

Spanish ^^

Edge Entertainment (the company that owns the rights of warhammer and the mayority of cool games) really sucks and here we only have the corebook, inquisitor's handbook and Purge the Unclean (and of course, the master's kit); so probably i'll buy the other books in english imported

I feel your pain, here in French the books where close 150% their price, so I bought them in english all the way.

Talking with the other players, we tought in all that we have to acquire, we have:

My own wealth from my family, 4 millions of thrones which are a reward for our missions, the money of the wife's other player, who's also noble (from Purgue the Unclean), and also the Adeptus Sororitas owe me a really big favor (the boss of them told me personally it), so maybe we'll can afford it.

Remember, though, you don't have to just buy whatever you get - you also need to maintain it. And, since it's ... unlikely that you'll have the time (or inclination) to spend getting and carrying out jobs with the ship, it's not going to support itself. That means it's going to be an ongoing drain on your resources.

A modified small craft should be entirely doable. Basically, you're probably looking at something that is roughly analogous to the light freighter/gunship range for most other genres. In 40k, that's basically a large shuttle/parasite small craft. If you don't mind being distinctive, the modified Thunderhawk is a classic Inquisitorial guncutter/gunship. I believe that there's a interior layout of a guncutter that's roughly based on the Thunderhawk layout somewhere. Not exactly my preference, though. RT's Into the Storm has the profile for a guncutter and other shuttles/landing craft, DW Rites of Battle has the Thunderhawk and Stormraven. The Thunderhawk is also in the DH fan supplement Vehicles Apocryphy, as are a couple other shuttles.

Depending on how abstracted you want to go, perhaps something roughly along the lines of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Mobile Command Center (aka, "The Bus") from Agents of Shield (at least, in the first season, I sort of fell behind and haven't gotten around to catching up) in terms of onboard facilities, and of course, it would be capable of single stage to orbit and intra-system travel, while still being small enough that it wouldn't be particularly difficult for most ships to carry through the Warp. Not entirely sure what the profile for that would look like in 40k terms, though.

Whatever exactly you wind up getting, it's going to operate on the tactical scale of people and vehicles, not starships, and barring archeotech, xenostech, and/or tech-heresy, it won't be capable of Warp travel without being carried by a starship.

Thanks for the info, it's great can talk with others 40k fans. Today, we'll talk about it

Well, definitely my GM is crazy, because he saide that my family's one of the most powerful noble houses of the sector, so he gave us like 420 ship points (we are using rogue trader), so i'll buy the largest ship i can XD

:blink:

:blink:

:blink:

:o

WHAT?!

420 ship points .... holy moly.

Your GM basically just handed you a fully tricked out grand cruiser or maybe two, or a battleship if using fan-made supplements that have battleship hulls. And a couple escorts.

Rogue Trader starts your ship out with ~70 (give or take a few points) for a maximum. You can of course upgrade it but still ...

Are you sure your GM doesn't want to play Rogue Trader?

On the other hand ... if you're getting 420 ship points, the GM might think you will need them ... so be afraid.

Well, definitely my GM is crazy, because he saide that my family's one of the most powerful noble houses of the sector, so he gave us like 420 ship points (we are using rogue trader), so i'll buy the largest ship i can XD

Your GM isn't crazy, but he definetly likes power play. Nevertheless those 4M thrones You mentioned would give You at least 120SP alone (and quite possibly two times more if precise calculations are to be used).

Still I can tell You from my experience that going for the biggest ship possible is just not the best idea if You are playing Dark Heresy, for a mighty fleet WILL draw attention one way or another.

We had that when I was a player and managed to get 37 Lunar cruiser hulls, then sell them to Navy in exchange for a whole bunch of ships and having greatly succeding in an endeavour our team had a very big fleet consisting of 26 escort, 11 transports and 10 capitals (light cruiser and up) so that our arrival into any system made all of the cultists hide in terror, and mind You, they didn't even know that we were Inquisition!

So all in all My reccomendation for You would be... a single Viper-class Scout Sloop. Pack it with all the shiny bits from all of the books, use only Best Quality Components, crank it up with all suitable upgrades, pay a kings ransom for Elite crew, buy LOTS of atomics and install some type of Macrocannon in the only mount Viper has to be able to destroy even battleships in a single salvo, while having a ship so stealthy that the only way to find it is to literally bump into it, plus if Your GM wants it He'd be able to say that all of Your crew except officers are servitors/robots leaving You with only 75 NPC running the ship that can be used for interactions between missions, if You have access to archeotech type components from Stars of Inequity than use those too thus having a very powerful though small ship, then buy a stealthy lander so that if a target planet has any space traffic at all You can disguise as a person who came from ships that are in orbit without revealing Your ninja-like ship...

...but those are just my 2 cents

Well, definitely my GM is crazy, because he saide that my family's one of the most powerful noble houses of the sector, so he gave us like 420 ship points (we are using rogue trader), so i'll buy the largest ship i can XD

Your GM isn't crazy, but he definetly likes power play. Nevertheless those 4M thrones You mentioned would give You at least 120SP alone (and quite possibly two times more if precise calculations are to be used).

Still I can tell You from my experience that going for the biggest ship possible is just not the best idea if You are playing Dark Heresy, for a mighty fleet WILL draw attention one way or another.

We had that when I was a player and managed to get 37 Lunar cruiser hulls, then sell them to Navy in exchange for a whole bunch of ships and having greatly succeding in an endeavour our team had a very big fleet consisting of 26 escort, 11 transports and 10 capitals (light cruiser and up) so that our arrival into any system made all of the cultists hide in terror, and mind You, they didn't even know that we were Inquisition!

So all in all My reccomendation for You would be... a single Viper-class Scout Sloop. Pack it with all the shiny bits from all of the books, use only Best Quality Components, crank it up with all suitable upgrades, pay a kings ransom for Elite crew, buy LOTS of atomics and install some type of Macrocannon in the only mount Viper has to be able to destroy even battleships in a single salvo, while having a ship so stealthy that the only way to find it is to literally bump into it, plus if Your GM wants it He'd be able to say that all of Your crew except officers are servitors/robots leaving You with only 75 NPC running the ship that can be used for interactions between missions, if You have access to archeotech type components from Stars of Inequity than use those too thus having a very powerful though small ship, then buy a stealthy lander so that if a target planet has any space traffic at all You can disguise as a person who came from ships that are in orbit without revealing Your ninja-like ship...

...but those are just my 2 cents

This man has the right idea, though I'd go one further and say if you have 420 ship points, get as many of these as you can. From the sounds of things you might be able to get around 5 (?) of these, imagine what havoc that could wreak, especially if you end up actually using them, since it seems that you will. Of course each one would have to be highly specialized if you intend to run that sort of campaign. Another thing though, buy as many vitae supplaceors as you can. Ask if you can reduce crew casualties by a decent amount if you implant one into everyone, since these things are literally meant for saving your life when nothing else will.