At first I thought it was because starting skills/talents were 'or' options, so you may not have them all. But having looked through multiple times it seems pretty clear that most if not all the starting skills and talents for each career are repeated in the first rank of that career. There are some things that aren't repeated, but it means many of the 1st rank advances are completely redundant.

Have I missed something?

Hellebore

All I know is that it is intentional on FFG's part. They released errata for Dark Heresy to accomplish the same thing.

The advances the PCs start with due to their career are also part of that career, so it is useful to know how much they cost if a PC takes ranks from that career as alternate ranks.

For example, if a player takes the Nascent Psyker elite package from the Inquisitor's Handbook and is taken by the Black Ships, he may return as a Sanctioned Psyker or an Astropath some time later. In that case, it helps to know how much he needs to spend on the basic talents of his new career, especially for stuff like Psy Rating. Or if the dying Rogue Trader leaves his dynasty to his faithful Arch Militant (ie, the Trader's player needs to leave the campaign or wants to play a different class or something), the new Captain may need to acquire the basic skills of his new station.

I'm actually kind of dissapointed that there are no XP costs listed for the special career abilities for much the same reason. But it's easily houseruled depending on the overall power of ability in the context of a given campaign.

I was confused by this as well. As I now understand it, it was done as a courtesy by the game designers so that people attempting to design their own careers from scratch would have a handle on the relative value of unusual skills and talents which otherwise wouldn't appear on the rank charts.

EDIT: and what Hodgepodge said, too!

Well the starting talents aren't exactly unique. I can see the point behind becoming an astropath, but that's the only career in the RT book that you can actually join later. The others are all start to finish.

Hellebore

Hellebore said:

The Navigator talent is unique to Navigators...I'm sure there are others...

I am writing background packages that remove some starting skills, I assume FFG were proofing it for people like me who want to do such a thing.

Kaihlik

Kaihlik said:

You are a kind man who thinks good about his next. A rare breed indeed.

I thought it was there to allow you to increase/improve your skill from the get-go...but it would not be the first time I'd be wrong.

So, yeah. It's future-proofing against kit-classes that remove some skills. DH did it, and had to re-do the rank 1 trees.

We really should get this stickied, I think this is the third time this year it's been asked.

Boneguard said:

Incorrect. To increase your skills, you need to buy the +10 or +20 versions. The reason for this is, as others have stated, for redundancy.

I just wish they'd marked the redundant ones somehow so it was easy to see what you can actually but on the table. It makes it very confusing.

You are correct, the reason was for redundancy and bookkeeping. There are a number of situations where such information can be useful (and many, no doubt, that were not foreseen), and the information was easy to include.

Aww, I was kinda hoping that Ascension would info on 'game hopping' from DH to RT and that's why they were there.

St. Jimmy said:

I know I asked it not long ago. I think the problem is that unless you've been following Dark Heresy , there's no actual way of knowing that this is the reason behind the redundancies; it's not as if it's actually stated as such in the book. If you're starting with Rogue Trader (as I am), it's quite confusing.

So yeah, a stickie would be handy.

kelvingreen said:

Of course, when they're not included in the first rank as is the case with the printed version of Dark Heresy, that also causes confusion as is evident in this recent thread from the DH boards in which someone was a bit confused because a character got starting skills that didn't appear anywhere in their career advancement scheme. Damned if you do and damned if you don't with this issue.

as far as the skill listings go at rank one, I presume that your starting skills start at either basic or trained. not sure which. iether way you get the +10 bonuses to them at rank 2.

Okay, I follow that the appearance of talents and skills both in the starting box and the 1st rank advances is due to redundancy. But what about talents that seem to be granted by the starting box that supersede those in the 1st rank box (and beyond). Take for example the Arch-militant. They are granted universal in basic, thrown, melee, and pistol in their starting box, but then in the 1st rank box is the option to take melee weapon (primitive), which is granted by the universal one. On top of that, the 2nd rank advance chart has the primitive version of basic, pistol, and thrown. This doesn't just seem redundant, but useless. Why wait to the 2nd rank to grab basic weapon (primitive), when you could take basic weapon (universal) in the 1st. I'm so confused...

Zyferon said:

Quite simple, Universal does not include the Primitive group .

Yup, the description of (universal) weapon talents is quite explicit- it includes everything except primitive and exotic. This is somewhat odd in the case of Melee Weapon Training, as logically the first melee weapons you'd be trained to use would be primitive melee weapons (remembering that the classification primitive applies to any melee weapon without a power field, or a shock field, or a chainsaw edge). However, the RAW states that it is nevertheless the case.

Alasseo said:

It is odd. Personally I house ruled Universa Weapon Training out of my games. Instead I replaced it with X Weapon Training (Two of Choice)

This is somewhat odd in the case of Melee Weapon Training, as logically the first melee weapons you'd be trained to use would be primitive melee weapons (remembering that the classification primitive applies to any melee weapon without a power field, or a shock field, or a chainsaw edge).

Considering the RT characters are generally very moneyed individuals, I don't think it's actually that odd that they'd be taught how to use power and other expensive specialist weapons first - it's what they'll use most often.

Alasseo said:

Also, I do believe it doesn't encompass Flame weapons of any class either.