So how hard should you make it for your RT and his top crew to get some suits of Power Amour. I personly love the idea of power armour, and look forward to any game were I can have my charater put on a set. However should this be something difficult for people to get, or could a normal RT be expected to know were to get a set or two realitivly easily.

Also even though I love power armour, is there any cause you could argue were someone would be better off NOT using it?

Well to be perfectly technical in the answer, to get Best Quality Power Armor for your RT PCs would be a -30 to the Acquisition Roll (-20 for Very Rare, +20 for Trivial Scale, -30 for Best Quality). Though in practice I would make it an endeavor of some sort. Sure the power armor is limited by the short powered lifespan, I would assume the argument for having best quality giving it more powered life would come up quickly.

As for when you shouldn't wear power armor. Anytime you aren't planning combat, unless your RT group likes to roll around and do nothing but intimidate or dealing with nothing but Xenos scum, leave the power armor for the big raids and assaults on enemy ships/bases. You can't be subtle with Power armor, both due to the automatic stealth penalty imposed and because it literally can't be hidden without making yourself more obvious for the effort. I have a friend who has a real attraction to armor as well and even he realized that the Carapaces were the way to go when we weren't planning heavy action. Will that mean it sees less overall action than some of the lighter armor? Yes. Our games tend to be less kick down doors and ship battles, so we need it less, so that is the lens that I see this whole thing through.

I think if you love power armor you totally should get some. And the scale of RT makes it very do-able. DH had some rules for power armor that made it almost impossible to get and even then almost not worth using, but then again, the scale of that game was very different and power armor didn't fit so well.

If your character wants to have engraved power armor plated in preciouse metals (Thiink the Inquisitor Cortez figure) then that's cool. It is totally not game breaking at all. (Stat wise, it doesn't seem to overly powerful)

Getting it shouldn't be that hard. The acuisition rules are pretty straight forward as described in the previouse post. Butthe again you could have a cool adventure.

Saying you want power armor in Rt is like saying you want a magic sword in D&D. (though I think power amor if anything is cooler.)

My only recomendation is that you keep it rare enough that it stays cool. I remember in my DH game every character had a mono-blade by like the third adventure. They just turned into standard equipment. That's not such a problem for mono-blade, you can still look forward to having a chainsword or a powersword. But you don't want power armor to feel like standard equipment.

Hrathen said:

I don't think there's much risk for it to ever feel like standard equipment. Mainly because there's a plethora of situations where wearing power armour is completely inappropriate or inefficient, and that's excluding the fact that wearing it would probably be pretty uncomfortable after awhile (even best quality power armour still won't be like lying in a luxurious bed with massage features). So it's not something that normal humans would wear all the time "just in case" they run into trouble.

I say, power armour isn´t rare enough in the book. The same rarity as carapace?

Well, so it is.

Anyway, there is one thing you should think about before giving out suits of power-armour to your group: they will use it in combat.
That means, they will gladly soak up the first 10 or 12 points of damage unless you open up fire with pen:3 weapons. In short, anything attacking with "standard modern arment" (autoguns without stoppers; regular las weapons) will frankly be ignored since really lucky shots would be needed to do some harm.

This does not have to be a bad thing (t his ! is ! ROGUE!TRADER! ! !! , after all!), but it does mean that you can "fast-forward" combat to the point where someone with a bolter or something similiar shows up.

If a GM is unhappy with the RAW for acquiring power armor one easy way to make it more difficult (but not as involved as a side quest) would be to remove the "only one" bonus for quantity.

I'm currently a GM and as of yet only been a player in DH, not RT, but I would definitely try and get power armor for my character (assuming it was appropriate to their career). I recently ran a character who received power armor towards the very end of a Dark Heresy campaign, but that was in preparation for the arrival of a full on chaos invasion. The scale of the game got to be such that it was time to retire the character (though once ascension comes out he might be resurrected).

On the topic of Power Armor, any thoughts on the limitations of the random power supply? I can see having a limited power supply, but it seems pretty short (especially if you roll poorly) and in both the RT and DH descriptions it says "civilian" suits have that limitation but says nothing about a military version. Obviously Astartes armor is in a whole other sphere, but what about non-astartes military grade power armor?

The other huge bonus for power armor is it's void ready and armored to boot, since I imagine it would suck (literally) to have a hole blown in your void suit by an enemy's gun while you were in hard vacuum. Obviously not the gear for day to day wear, but for space combat? Why not, and with half hour long turns you might even be able to put your armor on before the battle is finished!

There's always upkeep to help offset it too. It the power armour takes too much damage, get the owner/wearer to make an upkeep roll. If they fail, the suit is too trashed to be used again. That'll stop players using them every chance they can get. At least, that's probably how i'm going to play the use of power armour.

What I find odd is that prior fluff descriptions of power armour basically allowed only two ways of using it; one, via the Astartes black carapace MIU implant, or through years of training the user to control the pressure-plate systems that the Adepta Sororitas use in their power armour. Yet your humble RT can simply requisition one from out of the ether and use it without an issue.

Errant said:

There seemed to be no such issues with the one Amberly wore in the Cain novels. It also did not seem to have the time limit either, it was mentioned having a fusion bottle or some such not a battery. So it may have been a "best quality" suit or similar.

As for control mechanisms I can imagine a variety of them, and have never heard that there was only 2 ways to use them. Was it stated that there were only 2 ways or did they only detail 2 different ways (thus leaving the way open for other ways that just were not talked about)?

The way I understand power armor is that the tech to make them is very much alive within the imperium (or at least the admech), that they are rare because they are expensive to make and lives are cheap. As an example the fluff is very consistent that power armor technology has actually improved since the horus heresy (the Astartes armor is supposed to actually be better than it used to be).

Still I would not be opposed to some sort of "break in" period for power armor where the person is still learning to use it. Unless they get a good or best quality version or have MIU interface or whatnot.

Though honestly I don't know why everyone would not get a good quality MIU. Everyone in my group did.

Because depending on how you look at the fluff in your world the full blown MIU is considered Holy Communion by many Adeptus Mechanicus members, and they take that stuff rather seriously, so I can see a DM saying you can't just obtain one because you want it. The Tech Priests take it all rather seriously, the weapon interface doesn't seem to have that stigma, but the standard MIU seems to, so I can see many groups not getting easy or any access to it for them all, unless they jump through a bunch of hoops for the Adeptus Mechanicus.

Dyckman86 said:

I see what you are saying but I am not sure I am buying.

They could just as easily be delighted to share the wonders of the ommisiah with the unenlightened and bring another member of humanity closer to his perfection. While the knowledge of how his wonders work might be limited to the cult mechanicus his wonders/works are not.

There is also the more practical aspect of the whole situation, the AdMech gets its power from monopolizing certain services in the imperium such as high tech manufacture. Their power comes directly from PROVIDING those services, not withholding them. It can be a fine line but an important one.

You also have to remember just how important and rare RT are. Your average RT is more important and powerful than your average planetary governor. Indeed by the time a RT can be considered "average" he could very well be governor militant of several colony worlds (depending on how he made his fortunes).

Strictly speaking the AdMech maintains its power via the implied threat of withholding maintainance of the technologies they provide, in addition to keeping the best goodies for themselves. It's all well and good to have a powerplant the size of your room that powers an entire planet, but it won't do you any good if you refuse the Adeptus Mechanicus something that they want and they declare your world Technica Excommunicatus.

From my understanding the Adeptus Mechanicus doesn't care how important you think you are, they always will be more important, they seem to ignore most of the power struggles and just kinda do their own thing. I dunno, it all comes down to fluff more than anything, and while many things I would agree they give out and then hold repair rights (Hell I just actually read Ravenor for the first time yesterday and they had plant managers leasing out the blueprints and stuff, so I can't argue your point as a whole.) I do though on this specific piece of equipment because it seems like they are very choosy of who is enlightened, but like I said, personal preference between players and DMs trump any thing I think, and hey if the DM is willing to let anyone get a Good Quality MIU I will not snub the lovely benefits it gives.

Dyckman86 said:

You could simply view the rarity rating for the Good Quality MIU as a symbol for the unwillingness of the AdMech to part with and install one of these particular implants. Remember that rarity rating doesn't always mean that the item or service in question numbers in very few, but other factors are also taken into account. Religious "unworthyness" would certainly belong to one of these factors.

Hereticool said:

I agree completely. Finding a source for more than one suit should be an Endeavor all of its own. If you can only buy one at a time no matter what, then you wouldn't allow the bonus for only buying one, just like with a ship. If you've earned the right to purchase a number of suits, then feel free to equip your high-rankers with suits, but even then, I'd probably apply a -10 or -20 to the quantity bonuses, so that the bonus for buying one maxes out at +10 or +20, depending on the quality of the source. It should never, ever, ever be possible to buy 10,000+ suits.

My tuppence: There's Power Armour and there is Power Armour . Are we talking some powered armour or are we talking a full on ancient pattern Tactical Dreadnought Armour suit? The latter isn't, in my opinion, what we have statistics for in the Rogue Trader book, in fact I am not necessarily convinced that the statistics given even apply to Adeptus Astartes Armour, Mark VII pattern.

Rule of cool, with GM veto, really. Who, if they're at all martially inclined, wouldn't want a suit of sealed, powered, heavy armour on board a spacecraft headed for destinations and situations where high lethality personal combat is a likelihood not a remote possibility? All the stuff about not wanting to wear it unless combat is imminent, (or more likely, unless combat is occuring and you could swear that was a plasma pistol discharge!) stands, though, along with the upkeep and recharge complications and the time taken to don armour (which is heavily glossed over, along with the amount of assistance needed, in just about every RPG).

Some very good points by you, Gailhead!

My outlook on PA is roughly the same. For the 08/15 power armour in the RT book, there is nothing more to do for my group than a hard "aqui test". And that they are somewhere with an acceptable tech level.

If we talk about Armorum Impetor or a Tactical Dreadnought Armor, which have stats in an other league, you can get them (1,2 handful at best), but only with a specific mission done well or you have some presents, bribes, etc. handy and roleplay it. And i require from my players that they train with the armor, no matter what they got, even an MIU. Even if you have the best tech available, you need to train to use it correctly.