Hey all,

We were adding a Dark Heresy character to a Rogue Trader game - the RT guys and gals had 5,000 XP, so we gave the DH guy 10,000 (as recommended). Between the extra XP boost and the increased availability of books for DH, he seems waaay more powerful than the others (and has been in play).

Does anyone have house rules for the XP bonus?

Also, we liked the attribute rules for RT best and we let the DH guy use them... was that a mistake, i.e. are they supposed to be a balancing factor? I'm not a huge fan of rolling for attributes.

dnjscott said:

I think I see your problem. The RT characters have half the xp that the DH one does. The RT characters start at 5,000xp (that is, a starting RT character has 5,000xp as standard), so a roughly-equivalent Dark Heresy character should be at about 5,000xp as well.

The other thing to look out for is that many of the more powerful talents in the game are often available to DH characters sooner than they are for RT characters - the Rogue Trader advance schemes are longer (they cover about 30,000xp in total, twice that of a DH one), and carriy on a lot further than the DH ones do (a rank 8 DH character is about equivalent to a rank 4 RT character), so the advances for Rogue Trader characters are often a lot more spread out than they are for DH characters - this is best demonstrated by the differences between the Tech-Priest in DH and the Explorator in RT.

For the most part, though, the XP values between the two games remain roughly worth the same, so a RT character with 6,000 xp is essentially on even terms with a DH character with 6,000xp. The DH one is likely to have a better array of skills, possibly more talents as well, but the RT one has higher characteristics across the board (because he starts with higher characteristics).

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I may have phrased that poorly. Just to be sure we're on the same page, the Rogue Traders had 5,000 (4,500 kit + 500 free) + an additional 5,000 points for customization. To balance that out, the DH Character has 10,000 XP.

I think letting the DH guy have the 25 base attribute was a big mistake. To be honest, we didn't really notice the difference... just thought you got to add the 100 as needed and didn't notice the base was 5 points lower in the first book.

If I understood correctly. A 1st level Rogue trader character equals a Dark heresy character with 5000XP.

dnjscott said:

Right, so you're on the right track there, at least.

dnjscott said:

That will contribute, certainly - for a Dark Heresy character, +5 on every characteristic is worth about 2,550xp by itself. That difference alone covers about half of the 5,000xp that a Rogue Trader character starts with (the rest of it being covered by the origin path, career-specific special ability and the starting abilities in each class).

As I mentioned before, DH characters of equivalent xp to RT characters will have access to a number of powerful talents earlier than their RT counterparts, due to the way the career paths were written, and the fact that all the xp a DH character gets can be spent freely does allow them to be customised to a much greater degree at that point. There isn't any inherent discrepancy between the two, but it's something that can creep up on you if you're not expecting it.

Boneguard said:

Boneguard said:

Well, they're supposed to be, but the 10K DH ended up having 3-4x as much stuff (skills+talents) as the RT guys.

My current thought is to skip the bonus XP and just give the DH guy a Lifepath and the extra +5 to each attribute. It could work...

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Ahhh, that helps. Hey, what do you think of my DH + Lifepaths + higher attributes but no bonus XP idea?

dnjscott said:

Looks good, but I'd give the DH character an appropriate special ability as well (in line with those that RT characters get; if he's a psyker or a tech-priest, he's already covered, but the other careers may be a little lacking by comparison). Either the most appropriate one from amongst the ones for RT characters, or come up with something equivalent yourself. I'd suggest something myself, but I don't actually know what career path your player has for his character.

I wouldn't necessarily give no bonus xp, though. After the origin path, higher characteristics, and an appropriate special ability, I'd suggest 500-1000xp on top for tweaking and customisation, much as RT characters already get; this is partially because the RT career paths have much better starting skills and talents than DH career paths (compare the Guardsman to the Arch-Militant - the Guardsman essentially gets two skills and a handful of basic weapon proficiencies... the Arch-Militant gets a Lore, a Secret Tongue, Dodge and Intimidate, plus almost all Universal weapon proficiencies and a free extra starting wound - quite a difference, really). It's a bit of a fiddly balancing act, really.

The first 4500 XP a RT character supposedly has comes from their starting stats and lifepath advances. After all that is done, they have 500XP to spend on whatever they want.

You could give the DH character 4600 XP instead as he should have already spent 400 XP at character creation.

I assume you've also made sure that each rank must be attained before advances can be taken from them? You haven't just said 'you have 5000 XP to spend in rank 5 and down'. That should curtail what Xp is available to get more powerful abilities.

Hellebore

Why not allow the DH character to take the origin path but substitute the RT career for a DH career at the end?

Graspar said:

That sounds reasonable. I have already added races to my origin path. Ogyrns are in Death world (ferel works as well), squats are in Forge wold, ratlings are in Iperial (agri wrolds) I also put the Schola Progenium in the same window as " Child of the Creed" for birthright. I have allowed on character to make a "mind-cleansed" choice and I put it in "Calamity" for Trials and Travails".

I am still thinking on where I would put some of the DH classes on the chart: "Scum" in "void-master", guardsman in Arch-militant ( with tweeking), unless you wanted to build a char from the Imperial Navy, then "void-master", "assassin" in "senechal" because it takes talent and skill to make a quality kill (and the motivations of renown, pride, and prestige also color it well), "Adept" in "Explorator", "cleric" in "missionary", and "arbiter" in "Navigator" (the comitment involved being as bad as Navigator).

In the end, it all boils down to a tool to help PC's tell a more believable and three-dimentional character.

Anyway I would love to get some feed back on this and anymore loose classes that are not self-evident.