The Career discription for the archmilitant is that they are weapon masters and leaders of soldiers. But at the first rank they don't get the command skill. Sure they can use almost any weapon under the sun, but their is a lot in RT about leading your troops and it all uses the command skill. I actually love how command skill is used in hit and run raids and boarding actions and it could be extrapolated to all sorts of great situations, but the one character who is supposed to be leading the men can't do it.

In most games not starting out as an officer really makes sense, but in RT you do start out as really important people. This comes out in all the other classes, but the archmilitant just comes off as a thug. Maybe that is what he is supposed to be, but if that is the case he just got a bit less interesting.

The easy fix is to just let him have the skill at first level in my game, but I am getting ready to run my first campain, and I am hesitant to mess with game rules until I have seen how they play out.

Personally I think tat you should insure that every player has at least one skill to use in ship to ship combat. These are basically command, tech use, and scrutinize.....

I agree Arch-Militant's getting to command troops is important, but I think the balance of waiting until Rank 3 makes sense. As you said, they are the shootiest shooters that ever shot stuff, so that has to be balanced with making them wait a bit for the commanding others. It's less driven by fluff and more driven by balance needs.

The Arch Militant is probably going to be the best at shooting the guns on the ship so I would prefer him/her focusing on the BS tests of the weapons. Is it as glamorous as leading a Boarding Party? Probably not, but it does mean none of us are sucking on Void anytime soon and that the other guys are. Also the Intimidate of a full decked out Arch-Militant for the Hail the Enemy Action or Put your backs into it are both nice uses of the skill.

I guess if you want to Command people out of the box you should look at the RT, also I think this makes fluff sense, since when you start off as Rank 1 characters the boss of the ship is the RT, as you all come into the role more fully in other career paths they develop that same idea, but narrower for their role on the ship, but that fluff part is much more opinion based.

Archmilitants are pretty shooty, but not really for free. They can buy their BS up cheaply, but other being able to fire anything you put in their hands they really don't have too much shootiness past most other players before they spend any of their points. If a Archmilitant had the command skill his (fel) stat would be much lower than a RT with command.

I just would rather if the ARchmilitant was more than just a combat monster. Of course it might not matter what I think, if thye were built to be combat monsters than that is what they were built for.

Hrathen said:

The career description say a lot of things. Many of them concerning mid to high level characters of that career path, and not members at rank 1. If we're going to consider it fluffwise, then it stands to reason that most Archmilitants start out as ex-mercenaries, bounty hunters and elite soldiers who have left their service (either through desertion or discharge), amnd mostly will serve as the Rogue Trader's personal bodyguard/bounty hunter during the beginning of their careers. Later on however they'll see promotions and gain the respect of the crew and so forth, manifesting in them being able to learn the Command skill a bit later than getting it from the start.

Though if you really want to have an Archmilitant start out with the Command skill but still want to adhere to the rules, then I'd suggest using the "Press-ganged" aspect of the Origin Path, and pick the Command skill for the character.

if someone from your group wants to play an officer then archmilitant is maybe not the best choice. he is described as a combat machine and yes latter you can modify him to pick some new skills but it is not like you are an imperial guard officer. you could probably kill an imperial guard officer in a 1000 creative ways but you are not the officer type yourself. more marv from sin city then fedmahn kassad from hyperion. i had similar problem with one of my players and after two sessions he asked me if he could switch to guardsman. we agreed that he could keep his origin path and stats and spend 2000 xp on various guardsman staff (including taking alternative rank 3 - commissar look-a-like ). he is more happy now. he could kill ogryns with his bare hands but now he is leader of men. he leads boarding parties and hit and runs and intimidates crew to put their back into it. everybody else gets their chance to shine too and everything is dandy. just last night we had a blast. 6 hour long session passed in a nick of time.

You could give the archmilitant the command skill, and balance its gift out with some dark stain on the characters past, like having been an officer once, when he/she caused a massacre of troops, or witnessed an atrocity, whatever, that would explain why the character had the command skill at such a low level. Perhaps a failed roll causes horrific flashbacks to that event, or some other zaniness.

I personally don't mind that the command skill comes at rank 3. A lot bigger problem with the Arch- Militant career is that they get swift attack talent in rank 8, and they do not get the lightning attack talent at all. Although I surely hope the errata will fix this.