I've asked about this before, but after reading even more of the book, I've noticed that almost all of the fluff mentions starting with armies and flotillas of ships in order to address whatever first mission they send you on. So, do you make roll after roll at chargen to create your armada and its armies? If this was intention then I feel it should've been clearer in the chargen sections.

Most Rogue Traders have only a single ship. At the end of chapter 1 page 33 you roll for profit factor, and ship points. With these ship points you can put together a ship. The groups profit factor means the PCs are as wealthy and influential as a Merchant House to a lesser Inquisitor or some of the weaker planetary governors. So the PCs are by no means poor, and unimportant.

Note: It's pretty rare that a RT is simply given a fleet of ships, and an army. Generally when that happen the RT is granted their warrant of trade with the obligation to under take some task. The PC are more run of the mill Rogue Traders. If they want to lead a massive fleet like that they will need to find a worthy cause, and build up support with various imperial organizations. Certainly a Grand Endeavor.

There is a bit of a divide amongst Rogue Traders. The fluff does appear (to me - and it seems - to at least some others) that the majority of RTs have a cruiser flagship leading a fleet right from the beginning. Then there are those RTs who, for whatever reason, have only a single escort vessel to their name. The game book fluff barely mentions the latter - except when it gets to mechanics and tells you that this is where PC RTs will be starting off. If you want to start with a small fleet, multiply your group's starting SP by 5 (or 1d5+2 if you want a random element) but do not allow unused SP to be transferred to starting PF; it's use it or lose it.

Alternatively, simply assume that you have the fleet, but it's tied up maintaining your PF. After all, most of your profit will ultimately result from the boring milk runs. They possibly stem from an exciting adventure where you founded the colony of Novo Planetia against all odds and they granted you exclusive trading rights, but someone still has to ship their stuff - so you've probably got a few freighters delivering goods somewhere in the galaxy while your flagship is busy pushing back frontiers.

I'll point out that this is talking about Rogue Traders that have only just recieved their Warrant of Trade. A lot of PC Rogue Traders will be from a Rogue Trader family, and their ancestors might well have lost whatever Cruiser their lineage might have started out with.

nick012000 said:

It's also possible that they've made good and currently have dozens of ships. Don't presume only one possible direction for their fortunes - it's not too unlikely for a 'rookie' RT to be granted control over an old dynasty consisting of a score or more of ships. Wanting to play such a RT is not against the setting fluff, but it's not quite what the rules propose. Since IMO the setting fluff > the rules, I'd certainly allow a RT with a quarter-dozen or so escort ships at start along with a cruiser for a flagship. It's not like the rules can't challenge a small fleet adequately enough.

nick012000 said:

Well, the 'Into the Maw' adventure assumes the Rogue Traders great-grandfather already was a Rogue Trader. A point irritating me a little...

This is a similar disconnect to what was first expected by some people of Dark Heresy. Instead of playing mighty Inquisitors they were playing low-totem acolytes. Here, instead of the head of mighty fleets/armies, they've naught but a single ship.

If you want your players to have grand fleets/armies/resources, give it to them! Always remember Rule 0. Have fun paying for repairs, refits and replacements on a whole fleet though, just getting my sole Frigate out of crippled status was a feat (give em a higher PF!).

Personally I prefer the smaller (if still grand) scope.

nick012000 said:

I'll point out that this is talking about Rogue Traders that have only just recieved their Warrant of Trade. A lot of PC Rogue Traders will be from a Rogue Trader family, and their ancestors might well have lost whatever Cruiser their lineage might have started out with.

Well, the 'Into the Maw' adventure assumes the Rogue Traders great-grandfather already was a Rogue Trader. A point irritating me a little...

Well, yeah. Why do you think it talks about Rogue Trader Dynasties so much?

nick012000 said:

Yep. I was just wondering that the rulebook sometimes describes and assumes Rogue Traders that just got their Warrant (and what for...) and sometimes it assumes and describes hereditary lines of Rogue Traders. This leads to some sort of contradictions in my view...

Luthor Harkon said:

Not really. The Warrant still only belongs to one person... where the warrant is hereditary (and there are some that aren't), it will move to the previous owner's heir. A new Rogue Trader may well come from a long line of Rogue Traders... but he won't obtain the Warrant until his predecessor dies, and the Adeptus Terra may well place some conditions upon his inheritance of the Warrant (during the formalities of updating the records to match the Warrant's new bearer, etc).

Hi,

My understanding is that your PCs get one ship, basically, usually the SHIP POINTS. They will either have a high profit factor, or, a high ship point total. If you look at the Sabre example ship (IIRC about 45 points), that would mean each party is probably only going to have enough for one medium-sized ship, or, maybe a transport/raider or two.

From what I can tell, when it comes to starship combat, everyone will have PLENTY to do on one ship alone during starship combat.

-j

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Okay, maybe it was a little ambigous what I wrote (English being not my ative tongue). I understand that the Warrant only belongs to a single person (at a time) even if it is hereditary. Still, sometimes the rulebook describes a dynasty and assumes the RT is of one (ie. 'Into the Maw' adventure) and sometimes (especially in the RT chapter of the rulebook) it decribes how people from certain organizations get a warrant and what kind of conditions are normally coupled to the Warrant.

So, when a scion of a (dead) Rogue Trader inherits a Warrant and the condition coupled to it were fulfilled decades ago, what happens? You describe that new conditions may be placed upon it by the Adeptus Terra. Is this normally the case? I never read about that and was wondering a lot about it (at the moment I was still assuming that the groups RT I am GMing has simply taken the Warrant of his great-grandfather that was not 'used' by the two generations inbetween them (who simply became and established themselves as a 'merchant house' in the Calixis Sector)).

After reading all of your responses (which are kick-ass and helpful, BTW) I've realized something: We're all right. What I mean is that all of the ideas are viable and strongly support the feel of the game. The base rules for chargen point to one ship, but you could say that they can use the points for more than one (pricey and base ships, but I think it could be done) or let them roll away using the PF rules before the game starts. Of course, those upkeep rules can start to get them into a bind...

You can assume that the "starting flotilla" is a loaner and that only the flagship belongs to the RT, or all of them are his. Or he gets one vessel and has to make do. When you look at the average WH40K ship it's not hard to picture just one vessel being a viable thing. They're massive and can house a butt-load of people and materiel and besides, maybe your Vice-Admiral doesn't want to lead a fleet any longer and just want to explore the void in his one, very capable vessel.

If anything, there are so many viable options as to be intimidating.

To quote one of my players:

"I'm going to be assuming this will play out just like Escape Velocity. Build up your little ship, beat up big ship, board big ship and take it."

Er, EDIT for more substance:

My players are pretty thrilled with the scale of one raider so far. They think of it less as "just one ship" and more as "a flying city."

Obviously great minds think alike

Just today I realized that I will treat my players' ship as one vast living pirate city. Like a cross between HMS Oxford (Henry Morgan's flagship) and Port Royal. Or Melee Island from Monkey Island games. With that in mind: what locations would there be in one ship? Some sort of gathering place/mess hall with smoking huge pots cooking some strange alien fauna? What if said fauna (flying monkeys!!) escaped and now thrives all over the ship and no amount of pest control can put the genie back in the bottle? Would there be some place of worship? Gambling den?

Is this off topic? Maybe I should open a new topic in gamemasters section...

I wonder if a player could spend his free acquisition to acquire a starship or starship part? I mean its an Item, of great value true, but still both are acquired by the same mechanic.

UncleArkie said:

I don't see why not. They'd be as likely as not to wind up with nothing, though; spaceships and a lot of spaceship parts are hard to get.

A ship with 20,000 people on it is a city in and of itself. I imagine there are going to be all of the normal amenities, scaled down, as one would find in a Hive. Life on the ship might even be decent compared to an overcrowded city. Each crew member would have an assigned function and living arrangements, and when ships meet at port or in deep space to trade, they might even find mates and bring them back to start families. They could already have families on the ship. However, once players start thinking they are pilots of a flying city, it might be more difficult for them to engage in combat for fear of wiping out a kindergarten or a hospital.

I had emailed FFG about using the free acqusition to purchase starship parts. Their answer, to paraphrase, was that the intent was for the free acquisition to be for personal gear ... but if the GM wants to let a PC buy something else like a starship part that should be fine.

Keep in mind, since the free acquisition must have a modifier of +0, you can pretty much only get essential or supplemental 'hull' components costing 0/1 SP (like cargo bays).

For my game, my assumption is that the PCs' ship is the only one worthy of exploring the Koronus Expanse. I'm assuming he has some other ships (primarily cargo haulers), but they're all tied up maintaining what little is left of the Rogue Trader's Profit Factor. Could he pull them off the line to go with him? Possibly, but then we'd be talking about Misfortunes as that nice cargo of grain that the ship was supposed to be transporting spoils or gets picked up by another Trader.

As for dynasty versus newly minted Rogue Trader, I'd say that's entirely dependent on the Profit Factor/Ship Point roll. Low PF/High SP seems to indicate an older declining dynasty at least from what's said in the table. High PF/Low SP seems to indicate a newly minted warrant who've just managed to acquire a small ship. Of course, as has been said, there's really no right or wrong answer on that. Whatever works for your game goes.