I'm considering running a Rogue trader campaign, but I'm a little disappointed in the lack of alien support. I want to use the necrons in the campaign however I've never ran/ played rogue trader before (or any non d20 system for that matter).

Anyways I was wondering if anyone has made any necron stuff already or if not could give me some ideas.

Necrons are up there with Greater Daemons in things that a Rogue Trader would have little chance against (unless shelling it from orbit). They are, after all, unkillable metal monstrosities who can one shot a space marine. Tau are out due to being at the other end of the Galaxy, if I remember right. However, we do have nids, orks, eldar, and other, lesser alien threats.

BaronIveagh said:

This might be true if you are taking on a Tomb World or a fully fledged raiding force, but the odd Necron Lord on a solo mission, or a Warith dispatched to sabotage a vital location might make a tough, but do-able challenge (of course in the case of the Lord expect a PC death or two!).

Flamepheonix182 - If you look around the boards there are some good fan stats for Necrons, and I think there is a whole supplement for them over on the Dark Reign board.

DW

BaronIveagh said:

Me and my group managed to "kill" a bunch of necrons even in Dark Heresy, and they had nast stats and traits that suited them perfectly. Of course we were well armed at the time (Assault Cannon, Power Fist, these were a few of the weapons we used).

Necrons aren't on par with Greater Daemons, the C'Tan might be, but not the units in the Necron army per se. However, they are still dangerous as hell and shouldn't be underestimated. And also there's no "killing" them, only damaging them so bad that they can't self repair and thus phase out (WITH their Gauss weapons, no one is supposed to be able to "loot" dead necrons)

If you are running your campaign in the timeline suggested in the main book you don't have to worry, the necrons are still a couple hundread years away from start awakening.

Lucius Valerius said:

Or the Necrons are still a couple of hundred years from being officially reported as a new sighted enemy of the Imperium of man. Even if no battlefleet or army has yet heard of them it doesn't mean that some obscure Rogue Trader or expedition party hasn't encountered them well before the official events. In fact, this could have occured many times but there simply were no survivors to tell the tale.

And even if a party of player characters were to run into a bunch of necrons and report their findings, the official authorities might simply believe that the Rogue Trader and his PC's are telling tall tales and leave the PC's warnings at that.

So in essence you can encounter Necrons in your campaign if you want to. Just remember that your warning about them get lost somewhere in the vaults of the administorum or get stamped by an inquisatorial seal of "do not open".

Anyone done the work of converting Necrons to the RT system yet?

Sister Callidia said:

Uhm, you mean the Necron units or.. *gulp* Necron starships?

Speaking as someone who play with a Necron fleet in Battlefleet Gothic, I will wholeheartedly say that I would NOT want to encounter ANY Necron vessels in Rogue Trader. I've seen what sick things they can pull off and how much punishment they can take without even flinching (my Scythe class cruiser once took the full bombardment of both two Tau cruisers and a few Imperial cruisers at once for several turns and barely got scratched by the experience, and we're not just talking lance shots here, but torpedos, bombers and even the odd shot from a Nova cannon).

I've proposed a standing order to my group that if we ever encounter an unknown vessel in the void and it has little pyramids on the hull, we should just turn back and run 'til our engines glow white.

Thanks for the input, I wasnt thinking necron lords or ships. I'm not even planning on using them right away. I just love them in the table game and I thought it would be cool to encounter sometimes. not necessarily the lords or elite I was more thinking just the warriors or maybe a tomb swarm.

I dont want anything crazy like C'tan (assuming they are similar in power to the table top and can wipe the floor even with greater daemons)

are these dark reign stats in the rogue trader system? I'm new to the game so I wouldn't want to covert them since i'm unsure of balance as of yet

Also I've been browsing the dark reign site and I cant find necrons. Can anyone link me?

I think people were refering to peace keepers old pdf that was linked from there.

http://www.geocities.com/peacekeeper_b/

there are already clear hints about the presense of at least one tomb world within the kroronus expanse so to be honist there is no reason why necrons can't turn up. low end necron vessels would make a chalenging and interesting battle, and most rouge trader partys should be able to take out small groups of necrons (translateing from the 40k stats and aplying fluff mods)

i am currently working son some stats for both, i will post them later when i have finished them

Varnias Tybalt said:

If I was the RT in question then yes, running away with redlined engines would indeed be the smartest thing to do. If I recall correctly in BFG the necron player only got half the number of points to build his fleet and even then almost won every engagement.

@Dalnor Surloc

Thanks for putting a link to that document. It might come in handy when and if I unleash the Necrontyr upon my RT.

Sister Callidia said:

Not quite, but it's as good as. I never lost a game with my Tau, but crikey were the Necrons fierce beggars. Three thousand points a side is an horrific battle to actually think about. Imagine...six scythes, a cairn, a shroud or two and a handful of escorts versus a five Heroes, Protectors, a fine Tau and Demiurg. Only barely held out. turned out a victory in the end thanks to the points, but deary me...exciting stuff!

The real trick is on reading about how the efforts of five of their Shrouds, their 'light cruisers' managed to penetrate the entire Martian defences and start landing troops on Mars...

I'd very much like to see the Necrons in some campaigns. They are, I think, something to truly inspire fear into the heart of explorers. Stories like Deus Ex Mechanicus are lovely looks at giving your folks the shivers. I always find it in the 40k RPs, I'm constantly thinking "Will it be the Necrons?", "Is this it?", "Oh crap!", "Oh, just another daemon/slaughth".

I think they're something that really does require something 'a bit special'. Still, Halo devices and all that. Opportunities abound for canny GMs. Need to relook at Peacekeeper_b's rules though, it's been a while.

Dalnor Surloc said:

Minor point, but Geocities closed down at the end of October. Any sites that were hosted there are now long gone; I don't know if or where Peacekeeper_b moved his site, though.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

That link still leads to a directory listing which includes the necron pdf file.

Bilateralrope said:

Well, Yahoo closed the Geocities service in October, and while they might not have cleared out all the files yet, that information won't be around forever...

Thanks for the help guys. I downloaded it just in case it gets deleted later on.

http://darkheresy.wikia.com/wiki/Necrons

Varnias Tybalt said:

Were you using Servitor's version or the one's from Unearthed Arcana? Servitor's stats can be really nasty. 5 of them in DH led to TPK from the same group that survived me throwing 12 genestealers at them.

Or where the other, unnamed, weapons a plasma cannon and a vortex grenade? LOL

BaronIveagh said:

I don't remember exactly which stats I used. Being a big Necron buff myself, I wanted to portray them as accurately as possible, so I dug up like three or four different fan-made versions of Necron stats from the internet and used them as a guideline together with my Necron codex to make up some stats which I was satisfied with.

But suffice to say that they were scary enough. Our characters were able to keep their nerve up against the warriors and the flayed ones... But when the Pariahs came out to play, the PC's just ran away.

Varnias Tybalt said:

Being a very big Necron fan myself, it warms my cold dark heart to hear that . While the stats for the ground worriers and other nasties may come at some pont I an personally toying with the idea of creating Necron Ships, I do not think that i get to use them as they will likely slaughter anything set aganist them. but never the less. i plan on making them as true to the fluff and BFG as possible.

Generally, I'm not a huge fan of the race because of their being an uber-threat in a galaxy of uber-threats, though. It's a little Dragonball Z "wait, his power level...is over X! Impossible!" And their fluff doesn't actually back it very well- somehow, the combination of a race that was behind the Old Ones in technology and some beings who barely knew the material universe existed = uber tech that trounces that of two races that are over 30,000 years old? At least one of which was designed specifically to defeat the Necrons themselves? As I said, stacking hyberbole over existing hyperbole can actually diminish something's impact. Being a credible threat to the Imperium's existence is impressive enough.

That's my only problem with them, though. A lot of their fluff is cool, and I wouldn't mind some of their basic units being stated out in DH/RT. I like that FFG is concentrating on developing other races and threats (some of which seem on par with the Necrons, such as the Harrowing), but the appearance of a Necron unit or two would fit the theme of unearthing dangerous mysteries of the ancient past quite well. I might use those fan made stats sometime...

Hodgepodge said:

The C'Tan knew that the material universe existed. They are creatures of the materium after all and have little influece in the warp. Also, I see nothing strange about the fact that their combination with the Necrontyr gave birth to some seriously wicked technology. Think of watchmen and how the "birth" of Dr Manhattan influenced technology on earth. He was a superbeing that could see, calculate and manipulate the particles of several different dimensions. The difference between earth in watchmen and the Necrontyr was that the Necrontyr discovered SEVERAL "Dr Manhattan's" and gave them a physical form which they could use to instruct them to improve their technology beyond anyones wildest dreams.

After all, if you're trying to build something that hasn't been built before, the trial and error phase tend to become really simple when you have this near omnipotent advisor nearby who can instruct you and quite possibly even synthesize rare materials that you might need (after all, the Living Metal of the Necrontyr was rather base and primitive as far as nanites go, just imagine how many uses those nanites could have once a C'Tan was housed within a Necrodermis body made up of the same nanites and have total control over their replication and manipulation of other atoms).

Another vital difference between earth in Watchmen and the Necrontyr was the fact that Dr Manhattan was somewhat benelovent towards humans and life in general (although certain convincing was needed during a critical time), the C'Tan however were prretty evil and relished the opportunity to enslave the Necrontyr and destroy the Old Ones (something which they clearly succeeded in doing).

I don't see any logic gap in this particular scenario. The Necrontyr and the C'Tan were a match made in heaven (or "hell" perhaps).

I'd say the C'tan were more Lovecraftian than Evil (if you accept that distinction). Simply: more primal, more basic, more...stupid.

The Necrontyr weren't 'behind' the Old Ones in technology, they were pretty much ahead. The Old Ones however had infrastructure, magic and established dominance. The Old Ones, though, did have magic. Bah! Humbug!

A few of the ideas I'm considering for Call oCthulhu-ports into the 40k RPGs is the idea of the acolytes getting hints of dimensions 'beyond the warp'. (If you've read Liber Chaotica , think of the author's 'dream quests' across galaxies in which he sees things like...The Horus Heresy, Magnus the Red, Abaddon's (and others') Crusades etc)

With that in mind, I like the idea of the explorers stepping through an arcane portal and out into a mysterious, pyramid-dominated landscape. Lizardman looking structures, but described with Necron-like sigils and such. Perhaps there's some cyber-Kroxigor-like folks defending the portals? A step out into a Lizardman city underneath an obviously alien sky (an acolyte recognises some Exodite reptiloids?)

The beauty with such adventures that with even single, off-hand hints you can really throw the players a bit of bone. Perhaps they've found a portal with which they can step through to the very midst of the War in Heaven? Another alternate universe? Their own past? The distant future? Something completely unconnected? Depending on how adventurous, how well-read and how excitable your players (and their characters) are, there's a ton of room to really play about with the Necrons in Rogue Trader .

And, as others have said, having good 'reference' stats is nice for setting players off on genuinely compelling yet madcap ideas. "Right, so we'd just have to line-up one of the Titanforge turrets? How do we get it off the ship and onto that wall..."