Hey all,

I'm just curious as to what other GMs here do to balance profit factor. I've GMd three long-term Rogue Trader campaigns over the past few years and always find that after a certain period, the players inevitably end up that they can all afford things like best quality terminator armor, best force fields, etc. etc. Do you other Gms run into this problem? If so, do you take steps to debuff PF to prevent this or do you prefer to just increase enemy power level accordingly to compensate?

I make them spend it (for expensive things).... for stuff like equipment though, it matters not because they have LOADS OF MONEY.

For stuff such as ship components or archeotech or xenotech etc --- stuff that is very pricey on the Imperial markets --- their acquisition roll is to find one for sale and then they'd have to spend PF to acquire it.

For example -

1,000 Lasguns for their Armsmen is nothing to an RT so only an acquisition roll is needed.

An Archeotech ship component is rare and expensive, so even if they find one with acquisition -- they need to buy it (and they can barter/commerce the price down but still will need to pay something).

I think it's fairly common add-on to require PF for new ships and to maintain ships that aren't engaged in profitable activities. This would include most warships, unless you've negotiated a deal to provide protection to somebody else, or someone has hired your military might for something else, then the warships on those operations would be paying for themselves.

It also means that any ships accompanying the flagship aren't on a money-making endeavor, until/unless they get split off to do trade runs or something that get negotiated mid-adventure.

To be fair, though, Money is widely considered to be the greatest superpower for a reason.

I sort of disagree - it's the second or third greatest superpower, because super-intelligence can get you money, or precognition can make you lots of money (gambling), whereas money can only buy you the services of someone else's super-intelligence or precognition, not give such to you. There are probably some other superpowers that can be used to get lots of money too, when used in the right manner.

In our games, we do as above, docking PF for each ship in the fleet. Ships need to be fueled and maintained, and unless they are off making profit, they will drag down the party's PF considerably.

We also occasionally run into financial pitfalls, acts of god that sometimes hurt business, or challengers trying to run us aground.

Lastly, as GM I often have what I've coined "Temporary Profit Factor", generally flat, one-time rewards which, if not invested into something that could make a potential long-term profit, will eventually disappear after heavy spending.

In these ways, we've kept our PF from capping, and it has fluctuated within the range of 30ish to 50ish, generally sitting in the 40s.

As to challenges, we've stepped up the challenges to match gear and rank, so everything (generally) remains challenging. Right now, we have just fallen under the eye of Karrad Val, where as before, we were nothing but little fish.

One thing i liked to do, was at the beginning of each session ( baring ones were it made no sense) have the senischal ( or rouge trader if there was none) roll a D5, odds PF went down that much, evens it went up to help represent fluctuations in markets and such. The result was only known to the person who rolled it ( was up to them to tell the rest of the crew, or not) Was also a way to introduce plot hooks. Also had a time limit on how long single sources of PF would last( like finding a wreck would get you the plus 2 or 3 PF, but only for a 4-5 sessions) this helped encourage more long term planning.

I also once had a Nemesis steal a colony that was producing something like 10 PF once to slow them down a bit. I believe they blew up his home sun for that.