So me and my fellow players got ourselves a Crack Crew upon creating our starship, so they have a Skills and Characteristics rating of 40 (according to Table 8-9 on page 214). Now does that mean that they all have 40 in all characteristics or just the characteristics related to the skill their job on the ship would entail? (ie the pilot would have an Agility score of 40 but, say, 30 in all others, and the Tech-user would have an Intelligence score of 40 but, again say, 30 in all others.)

Our GM seems to think the latter, and he doesn't think it would extend to the soldiers (or whatever you'd call the ones who would fight off an enemy boarding party) in the crew we brought with us as defence down onto the planet we were supposed to explore. He gave them a characteristic score of 30 in everything instead, including the very important BS. And he also thought they would be about as loyal to me (as I am the Rouge Trader) as a common merc; wouldn't think twice about saving their own skin instead of fighting a losing battle, even if I was standing in battle with them. I was under the impression that a Rouge Trader would command a bit more respect and loyalty than that.

So more or less, I'd just like to hear other views on our situation here. Would you agree with our GM's choices?

For the characteristic/skill stuff... sure, it makes sense really that they'd be skilled in their chosen fields, rather than in everything.

And chances are that they got 30 in there choose stat and + 10 skill since its a good crew, and then 15-25 in all other stats.

Dam just startet also and we got a unskilled (20skill) npc crew. Gotta teach em all how it works.

In the rules for NPC actions it says "appropriate characteristic" if one of your NPC's was a pilot and needed to make a pilot check it would be at agility 40
As to your GM and the soldiers that is something you have to work out with your GM - are they simply hired guns or are they a loyal force the RT has built up ? or something in between - there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to crew and loyalty

Unless you sought out soldiers specifically, making acquisition-rolls or similar, your away team is probably a few spare mechanics holding lasguns. Trained soldiers are not fitted as standard.

As for loyalty, they'd probably be a little more than just mercs. If it looks like they want to do their own thing, the Rogue Trader just has to remind them who owns their ride home. Abandoning a suicide mission a few miles from a town is one thing, but when the jungle around you is filled with xeno nasties you think twice before annoying the guy with the map.

As for the 40-stat issue, I agree with your GM. A crew with 40s in everything is on the top-end of believable, but when you get a super-elite 60-skill crew, it's just silly to imagine that's a 60 in every stat. The crew focus on their area of expertise, gunners have BS40, mechanics have INT40, or 30 and the skill at +10, and so on.

But if we have gunners with 40 BS, shouldn't we be able to have soldiers with 40 BS? They should be part of the crew just like everyone else, right? In a crew of over 20 000, in a obviously leathal universe, and in a part of space with little imperial influence, shouldn't there be at least enough trained soldiers, or something similar, aboard to be able to defend the ship that sails those waters (metaphorically speaking of course)? And to quote page 188:

"The void-faring vessels of the Imperium are far more than simple vehicles. With the smallest more than a kilometer in lenght, a void-ship bears a striking resemblance to an Imperial hive in miniature, with a population to match. There are the low-decks pressmen and servitors responsible for brute labor, the gunnery teams who man the ship's weaponry and the armsmn who keep order amongst the crew. However, there are also galley-masters, artisans of all types, chirurgeons, and mech-wrights, for a void-ship must be self-sufficient in all respects."

And as a side note: it does say that the crew rating determins both Skills and Characteristics, so it would seem they do not have +10 in any skill.

xenobiotica said:

Essentially, crew rating is what you test against and nothing more. Given the number of variable factors involved in the modifiers for any given test, the crew's characteristics could essentially be any combination of characteristics, skills, talents, conditions and equipment. It's a quick and easy way to not have to provide stats and skills for every possible type of crewman aboard a ship, which would take up pages and pages of space. Reading into it too much will only cause a range of bizarre results.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

It all works well enough in space battles, but can still cause the same problems when bringing crew along outside the ship, or just playing more in-depth on board. I don't think my GM would agree that no matter what the circumstances or situation, any tests any of our crew ever makes should be against a skill or characteristic rating of 40. For that would be the quick and easy way, no?

xenobiotica said:

If you simply assume, as others have noted, that the crew as a whole have sufficient skill (and good conditions, equipment, etc) in their chosen fields that tasks are performed against a value equal to their collective Crew Rating, it works fine. That isn't to say that every single crewman has every stat at, say, 40, though... it's more likely an average, covering skilled specialists directing unskilled labourers, natural variation in ability, etc.

Think of it this way - a single turn in starship combat is half an hour long. Within that time, a lot is happening to perform any given action - equivalent to 360 Full-Round Actions per person. Within that time and that abundance of actions, there will be a lot of (hypothetical) tests being taken to do things quickly and efficiently in such a manner that the ship does as its captain desires. The overall results of those tests is what matters - Command Tests to get the work-crews moving, strength tests to haul shells around quickly, tech-use tests to operate machinery, Trade (Technomat) or Common Lore (Tech) tests to speak the correct litanies, climb tests to move around scaffolds and rigging, and so on - which all then average out into a single value tested against to determine the success of the action: the Crew Rating.

The hundreds of men whose only jobs are to load macrocannon shells and clean the guns won't be all that tech-savvy. They're unskilled manual labour. They'll have a decent strength and toughness, and an acceptable agility, but they won't be anything special. Their boss will be a particularly mean example of their number, more intimidating than commanding. They'll all work at the behest of a gunner, whose job is then to ensure that his guns are working and that they fire properly when commanded to by the Master of Gunnery or equivalent on the bridge, setting the correct firing patterns, figuring out the details to ensure that the shots hit where they're needed, and a Tech-Priest of some sort whose job is to deal with the technical issues with his crew of lesser Tech-Adepts and servitors. Of that group, the only one likely to even need a BS of 40 is the Gunner; the rest have other things to be worrying about and jobs that don't require Ballistic Skill. His BS will probably be a little above that of the Crew Rating number, in fact; the average needs to account for the failures of less-skilled subordinates as well as his own skill at his particular job (which will probably contain a fair few Tech-Use and Logic tests as well).

When it comes to interacting with the crew in any detail beyond their existence as a general mass of faceless subordinates, they should have appropriate characteristics written up or at least estimated by the GM. The Crew Rating value should be used as a guideline to determine their ability at the task they're called upon to perform, but everything else is up for grabs.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

See you're kinda proving a part of my point here: too much of this comes fom assumption (however plausible), and not enough is explained in the book; I didn't mean for it to come across that I thought all my crew should have 40 in absolutely everything they do, it's just that it could easily be taken to mean just that because of the lack of information. RPG's depend heavily on rules, and if they're not laid out clearly enough, stuff like this is bound to happen.

Still I would argue that it definitely should be within the realm of possibility that the armsmen (that were mentioned in the quote from page 188)aboard the ship could have a BS or WS (or both) of 40 if they're part of a crack crew. Comparing this to "The Masses of Humanity" on page 370, we can see that a Hired Gun is described as: "of moderate skill and expendable nature can be found across the Koronus Expanse", and they have a BS of 35. "Moderate skill" certainly doesn't sounds better than "Crack Crew", as the Merriam-Webster dictionary would define "crack" as: of superior excellence or ability.

Of course it's all just words, I'm just saying you should think carefully about what words you use.

Personally i ruled that a general crew would have a base of 30 in all stats, and the Rogue Trader and his retinue can seek out specialists to increase particular stats. My players currently have a predominately regular crew, for example, but through acquisition of a mercenary outfit, have a group of gunnery specialists that increase the shipboard BS by 10. It adds to paperwork a little bit, particularly when it comes to tallying losses and deciding whether the mercenaries were KIA, but they seem to enjoy it.

That sounds like a nice add-on, upgrading a bit of the crew at a time. I might steal that. How have you ruled it?

Could lead to an interesting sub-set of crew add-ons, instead of space and power they cost morale and population (As they weird out the human crews and take up more space) but give you extra ship actions or bonuses to certain ones.

So far I haven't taken any particular action with them, just treating them as standard acquisitions, they only recruited the one group at this point so it didn't seem prudent to make any particular rules for them, aside from ruling that if the relevant component took a critical hit, they had to make an upkeep check to see if they were able to keep the crew.

I,m probaly be ing think but i cant fine the rules for your anioal crew reatings

Sorry trying to say start rating