Our current ship is has a "skittish" machine spirit and is xenophilious so we bought a runecaster. One halves warp travel times, the other reduces the time by 1d5 weeks.

How would these combine? And what is the effect of -1d5 weeks on a journey taking merely days?

In our first trip through the warp, the navigator quartered the time, then it was halved again by the runecaster, then reduced by the ships machine spirit. A journey of 60 days was reduced to less than a aday. Can that be right?

Skittish reduces travel times by 1d5 weeks, to a minimum of one week.

In our first trip through the warp, the navigator quartered the time, then it was halved again by the runecaster, then reduced by the ships machine spirit. A journey of 60 days was reduced to less than a aday. Can that be right?

That's the warp for you. Remember that and treasure the moment, for there will be a time in the next adventures when you'll be happy to arrive somewhere (anywhere!) at all...

The way I see it happening is applying the skittish first (since it deals in actual time units) then applying the effects of a good navigator, runecaster etc.

But yes skittish, plus runecaster, plus a good navigator means you can get there in a hurry.

And hope you dont roll a fail, end up arriving before you leave...

Velvetears said:

Why would that be bad?

Because then there would be two of you - one clean-shaven and good, the other with a sinister goatee and plotting your downfall!

Another good advice from math and many rpg-systems is that if several modifiers are to be applied to the same nuber, start with multiplicative and divisory modifiers. Then after all those are done, you apply any add or subtract modifiers.

Mellon said:

Good point. I also think I'm going to suggest we interpret the "halves travel time" as "reduces by one step, so half becomes third, third becomes a quarter, etc."

Has anyone had to deal with time travel yet? I don't know how our GM is going to handle this, but I was thinking of deliberating exploiting this time travel hax.

Not had to deal with time travel yet, well, not in RT, anyway, we've dealt with it in a number of other RPGs. In all honesty, it shouldn't turn up at all in Rogue Trader, save as part of a GM's evil schemes. Yes, the warp can deposit you back before you left, but the RAW state that the more likely outcome (centuries late) is noted as being so rare it should never "randomly" happen. That being the case, it should be impossible to exploit time travel via warp travel without the GM's active collusion.

Of course, that isn't the only way to go back in time; there are certain points in the webway where time stands still, and some where it flows backwards (if memory serves they rejoice in the rather poetic name of "crossroads of eternity". It's somewhere in the Inquisition War trilogy: either Harlequin or Chaos Child IIRC). Of course, using that presupposes that your Dynasty has secured access to the Webway, and either a map (and someone who can read eldar runes) or a guide, and in all honesty, the odds of that are probably slightly less than the currents of the warp conspiring to throw you back: in the ten millennia since Horus Lupercal's tantrum left the big I on his psychic toilet, the number of inquisitors who have managed to secure a guide is less than a dozen, and I believe only one Inquisitor (Jaq Draco) and his retinue have managed to find their way through the webway without an eldar guide, and even they were only able to do it by torturing and effectively blinding a Navigator to the Astronomican...

Um, is Inquisition War still canon?

I think Ascension had a mention of a Ordo Chronos who was tasked to deal with future time travellers until they all suddenly disappeared.

The Webway feels like a major plot hole to me. How difficult is it to capture 1 Eldar and Mindprobe the secret out of him?

All official releases are canon, according to GW, which means that yes, Inquisition War is still canon.

guest469 said:

Because not all Eldar know how to access the webway, and fewer know more than the bare minimum of its routes and pathways. I've also seen suggestions that, in many cases, it takes more than simply knowing the gate is there in order to step through it.

Also remember that it isn't common knowledge, even amongst those knowledgeable about Xenos cultures; you'd have to know what you're looking for, before you go looking for it, and that isn't guaranteed.

You also assume that a given human psyker will be able to find the right information within the mind of a centuries-old psychic xenos... nobody said that reading the mind of an alien, particularly one with an extremely long lifespan, would be easy. Lots of information to sift through, and it's all arranged differently than in humans.

Plus the webway is not exactly the well maintained interstellar highway it once was: much of it has fallen into disrepair and may be prone to warp interference, daemonic incursions etc.

Given that there's no real centralised authority to Eldar society any more (other than cultural similarities between different craftworlds which are, in effect, different nation states as prone to internecine conflict as human states) it's quite possible that no Eldar has a particularly strong handle on the layout of the Webway either. Gosh that was a long sentence.

And of course it seems that the Dark Eldar have constructed Comorragh within the bounds of a section of the webway, too, making joy rides through the webway even more interestingly hazardous. There's a fantastically evocative painting of Comorragh in the new 40k rulebook that makes this point, with human cruisers speared atop vast Dark Eldar towers.

Also the webway is still in the warp, and still obeys the essental physics of the warp. This means it may not be able to even be mapped or navigated conventinaly. It's not a simple as "Third right, go for 6 more intersections then turn left." Even Aruman, lead by divination and guideance from not just 1 of the big 4, but Lord of the Twisting Path still couldn't navigate it successfuly, having to take the brute force approch of sending in half his legion to scower it for the Black Library.

The only ones who seem to be able to truely navigate it at will are the Haliquin. And there so esotaric and odd to make normal eldar look like a regular imperial citizen by comparison.