Hi,

Is it me or are there very few skills and talents (save elite advances) a character can buy at rank 1?
Not that it is very bad but it forces the player to buy a LOT of profile advances.

I've made 6 or 7 2.500xp character and they all used at least 1.800xp to increase profile...

I'm inclined to agree. Once you take out the advances that are already given to a character, and the advances that they end up with as part of the creation process, there's not really a lot to do at Rank 1

Try playing a Seneschal

I only have Melee Weapon Training Primitive to look forward to at Rank 2.

You know you're starting your career at 5000 XP (including the 500 option points spent during creation), right? There's no such thing as a RT character with 2,500 XP. You'll be rank 2 after spending 2000 more XP, putting you at 7,000. Looks to me like most careers will have ~800-1000 points worth of stuff to buy after character gen, which leaves you with ~1000-1200 points to on characteristic advances at rank 1. Might be a bit more or less depending on how much your skills/talents from the origin path overlap with your career, but that's a set of choices you made. If you want to spend less on stats, look for a path that has less overlap. Pursuing a path where you can spend some of your "free" 500 starting XP on oddball stuff (like better cybergear or choosing a mutation) will help with that.

^^ I'm well aware of all that and indeed 75% of my first rank xp was probably spent on stat advances. But rank 2 is fail for talents

You could also look into elite skils that your type might not normally get, im sure on your adventure you run into xenos mutants forbidding knowledge of many kind, or esotic weapons training and what not that might add more flavour to your charater.

There is no reason to stay in your box when thinking about what you want your charater should be able to do. Im sure aslong as you have a good reason why you would have/learn a skill your gm would make you take it as a elite skill.

I have to agree - for most careers there is not a lot to choose from at rank 1, yes you can think outside the box and pick up other things but you still have bugger all to pick from your own career

Oh yeah, not much to pick from. But I like that.

I felt that it was designed to allow you to do your job from square one (by giving you a bunch of skills and talents at "no cost"). You use your first 500 to maybe get one skill and to advance some stats or to make your starting stuff better (upgrade implants, your mutation, etc) and then play the game.

It's not D&D, you don't really come to the table with a build, you play the character differently through by their attitude.

I agree they are pick up and play characters but you still have 2000xp before rank 2 to spend on stuff as well

Right, which is a skill or two, a talent or two, and four or five advances plus an elite advance or two to give the character something unusual they can do.

I sink alot of my XP into Advances early on because I want to have the highest base characteristics I can before the cool talents come into play.

This remains one of my biggest complaints with RT. It gets better but it takes a while.

Atheosis said:

Thats my complaint with DH- its even worse for it.

Yeah, I wish there was a more open flow chargen system for Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader. A point build system similar to GURPS or something. Heck even two random talnets/skills like in WFRP 2E would be nice to add diversity to characters.

I also dislike that you have to be at certain "RANKS/LEVELS" to buy certain skills/talents.

The rest of the game I love, its just that part I dislike.

Feel free to explore the use of "elite" advances, guys.

-S!

Rank 1 is too early for Elite Advances in my opinion, unless it's something really important from the character history.

I imagine the reason for the limited selection of skills and talents at Rank 1 is to encourage stat increases, which are incredibly helpful in the long run, and this way you don't feel like you're giving up anything for them.

Evilgm said:

Depends on how they're used. A group of characters in a campaign could be themed by all being granted the same Elite Advance Package (a collection of elite advances; there are examples in The Inquisitor's Handbook for Dark Heresy) at the start of the campaign.

Yes you can buy outside your class (elite advances) and characteristic advances but that can also depend on how you play - not only your character but what your GM expects of your character too

When I go to spend XP I choose to not just buy whatever I want because I am building my character - based on who he is, what he is doing and what he wants to become – for someone who is playing their character strictly within their class/defined role then they would find the first level quite sparse for them

Pretty much everyone in our group chose starting packages from the Inquisitor's Handbook to spend some of their initial 500xp on. This has lessened this problema bit but there's still very little choice at this rank.

I can't believe this didn't come up in playtesting. Surely someone noticed that besides origin path stuff, all starting characters are cookie-cutter copies of one another.

A big complaint with Dark Heresy was that the progression was too lacking in options but once you played the game it became clear that you actually had quite a lot of choice within each rank, generally taking only a quarter to half of the skills and talents there. This meant two characters could follow the same path and be very different. In Rogue Trader this isn't really the case. Shame.

After two sessions of RT, I'd have to agree with most here, rank 1 is extremely lacking. The real skills and talents that start defining the career don't seem to come along until rank 2. However, it's the same thing with DH. The difference is the amount of time spent on the rank 1 table with no other options. In DH, barring some extreme choices, most starting characters were only ever limited to the rank one cart for one game session, two if they got a background package but then, they got a background package. In RT, you're stuck with the rank one choices for 4 or so game sessions.

There's an easy fix, tough. All I did to correct this problem was shift 1,000 xp from Rank 1 to Rank 2 so the progression looks like:

5,000 - 5,999 Rank 1

6,000 - 9,999 Rank 2

Ranks proceed as normal from this point on. The character will still spend the same amount of time and XP on ranks one and two, just more of that time and XP will spent on Rank 1 and 2 as opposed to being restricted to Rank 1. Now, once the starting character spends their initial 500 xp, they will only be restricted to Rank 1 for one session just like DH.

The problem with having to wait until higher ranks to get the skills and tallents you feel like you reallyshould have, is that RT characters are supposed to already be ellite. There are not just starting out, where they need to grow into who they will be.

In truth I am not so worried about tallents as I am about skills. Most of the tallents seem to be pretty nifty abilities, but they dnon't seem essetual to character creation.

I am still planning my first game, but one of the tthings I plan is to offer a single elite advancement to players based on the background, if they wnat one.

this may not be a bad thing, if you run out of skills to buy before you level up. increase your main characteristics in the mean time. still not sure why my rogue trader has pistol and melee universal as buyable talents if he all ready has them.

I am overally not pleased with the RT careers as a whole, the leave me very bland. I think they make great rank 4 or so alternate career ranks for Dark Heresy Characters and would use them as such if I were to use them as a whole.

Based on the progression of DH books, Im sure by the third and fourth books you will have so many open options to spend your XP on that this discussion will seem very moot.

Maethalion said:

Elite advances, IMO, are the cop-out of the system. Basically, the rules are saying "here is a strict class/level progression to develop your character... or you can ignore it and buy anything you want provided your GM says it's ok." It's like the system is trying to be both a class/level system and an open skill based system at the same time without really providing a lot of support of the latter.

The group I run for had a similar issue, ran out of things they wanted to buy before they got to rank two. But I suggested they spend a little on stat advances since once they get higher up into ranks they will start to have too much they want and never have exp to 'spare' on stat upgrades.

alexkilcoyne said:

I've never had that problem with Dark Heresy, and I've been running it since it was first released. You won't even get half your Rank 1 skills/talents down by the time you get to rank 2, and it just branches out further from there. Rogue Trader I can't speak for - we barely got a handful of sessions into it but it looks FAR more restrictive and linear than Dark Heresy :I

For example - I statted out a Rank 4 Arch-militant (8,000/13,000xp) - he has as many characteristic advances as a level 8 Cleric I statted up as a DK antagonist (15,000xp with a few 'free' options, and I was still trying to cram more skills and talents in that I simply had no room for).

And that's not even considering the extra 9 or so 'advances' a 5000xp new RT character is implied to have undergone as part of his generation (25 base characteristic instead of 20). And then , he's technically only about 9,000xp worth of Acolyte, due to the differences in cost/reward of xp between the two.