I've recently picked up Rogue trader. My group has never played these games before, and I'm going to attempt dming a session of Rogue Trader for the first time. I've been doing alot of reading about backgrounds, and interesting information to supplement my game- but I'm still at a lose for generating NPC's. Easily- you can roll of new characters, or use the Creature's anathema (That one of my friends kindly lent me) from Dark heresy. However, never playing Dark Heresy or Rogue trader, I am really at a lose.

How exactly do you create stats for various NPC characters? What exactly changes from an eldar or an ork? Is there a set configuration of bonuses and penalties? It's great that it allows DM's to create their encounter NPC's or roleplay NPC's how they envision them however, I have no concept of how to gauge an NPC's strength at this time. This would either result in any battles being too easy, or battle being too hard which could put a strain on the players motivation.

I was wondering if there was anything like a NPC list, for common enemies- or even a way of quickly generating NPC's on the fly. Say- if I wanted to use a Hormagaunt, and then later use a misfortunate perils' of the warp demon- how exactly would I go about creating these NPC's without putting a hold to the entire campaign?

I understand the need to calibrate encounters to the strength of my party but I think that having these NPC "templates" then tweaking them from the template would fare better than me guessing what stats each race has.

If anyone would be able to offer advice, or share some of their creations, it would be greatly appreciated.

The creatures book from Dark Heresy is a good source of bad guys. Everything in there is compatible with RT.

As far as figuring out the "power level" it's a bit tricky. As it heavily depends on equipment. A rough way is to consider pen+damage vs armor TB. For example

a weapon doing 1d10+4 with a pen of 5 is a 10-19 weapon. A PC with armor 5, and a 5 TB has a 10 soak. So the prior weapon is good threat to the PC, but unlikely to 1 shot the PC. Compare the PCs weapon damage with the other side's soak. Then compare the PCs soak to the enemies weapon damage.

The thing to be careful of is unatural toughness, and daemonic aura. This doubles the TB. So an Ork with armor 3 and a 5 TB (x2). Would appear to soak only 13 and the prior weapon would be an okay weapon against it. But only 3 points of the pent matter as an Ork only has 3 armor. Thus it's really 4-14 vs 10. Given an Ork's large number wounds that could be a tough fight.

Personally I rarely fully stat most foes. I write down the WS/BS, armor, TB, and weapon damage. Everything else is just a single fixed score based on how tough I want the creature to be.

Those are good tips. I was reading over the creatures anathema, and combined with the DH Xeno generator, it wouldn't be too hard to "stat out" prominent Xeno NPC's. Plus the other NPC's in the rogue trader book give a good template for humans, and servitors and the sort.

So when it comes to encounters, essentially focusing on WS, BS, and TB, armor, Weapons, and any pertinent talents is the only thing to really worry about. Maybe Agility for dodge.

Your points on TB/Armor vs Damage/Pen are good, and already give me *some* indication of how to set difficulty. With the anathema and kit it wouldn't be too hard to whip up "common" adversaries, to have referance to.

Thanks for the help