I could use some ideas here.

So last night my players were facing a rather tough fight (12 small but heavily armed trans-stellar raiders versus one light cruiser and 10 transport ships) which they wound up running from and declared they would perform an Emergency Warp Jump. Having previously had an NPC perform this manouver I declared it was possible and would take a full turn to power down non-essential components and spin up the warp drive.

A full turn later they had the gellar fields up and the warp drive ready, their (NPC) Navigator formally recommended against the action, nonetheless the Rogue Trader hit the "Go to warp now" button (seriously, the player drew one on the battle mat and repeatedly hit it to make a point).

Their light cruiser plunged into the warp and I closed the session (and then had a short argument over whether I'd over-statted that encounter or not).

Now their ship was about half way through a protoplanetary disc and thus happily inside the gravity well of the star, there were no other ships within 20 VU of their ship and the last guy they saw pull off this stunt was a Tzeench cultist.

I am a little stuck for ideas.

I do know they're all getting corruption from warp shock, as is the entire crew. I also know they're probably going to get out of this alive in one way or another (I'd like to put them back on track at some point and get them to the hidden pirate base but there will consequences in the meantime).

I've been pondering this idea myself, as I see the limit on how close to a star a ship can enter/exit the Warp as a minimum safe distance, not an absolute limit.

I'm currently inclining toward using the rules for Gravity Tides in the main rulebook, but substituting Navigation: Warp for the skill used. Also, the difficulty would start at +0 and then get progressively harder the further into the system the transition is made. Battlefleet Gothic divided a system into a series of six zones, each closer to the star than the last, and I'm thinking of having the difficulty increase by ten points for each step, up to -50 (suicide, essentially) if someone tries to engage the Warp drive around the orbit of Mercury or an equivalent planet.

I'd also rule that as with the Flank Speed action, any roll that fails by more than two degrees will burn out the Warp drive and strand the ship on whatever side it's just traveled to.

This makes using the Warp drive inside the safe limit possible, but sufficiently dangerous that nobody will do it unless there's a VERY good reason.

Edith The Hutt said:

Well, all they've done is enter the Warp, really - they've only made the first translation. They still need to emerge, or rather, the Navigator needs to plot a course for them, guide them through it, and find a place to emerge. If there was a player Navigator, I'd penalise various rolls to represent the hasty and sudden jump into the Warp, and design the end result around that.

However, an NPC navigator gives you both more freedom and a greater burden to define what's happening.

A few options that spring to mind:

• The ship was damaged by the process, and needs time either for repairs or will simply have to continue on regardless.
• When the ship emerged from the warp, the time that had passed in realspace bore little resemblance to the (hours, days, weeks?) spent in the Warp... they may have been gone for months, or the battle they fled from may not have happened yet.
• They might have gotten caught on a particularly strong warp tide that threw them off-course - it'd have been easy to avoid had they entered the Warp properly rather than rushing it - and don't know where they are. Alternatively, their rush to translate into the Warp may have seen them becalmed, so that when they emerge, they're only a relatively short distance from where they entered, no matter how long it took them to get there.
• The rush to raise the Gellar Field led to it becoming unstable during transit, and something got in... it's hiding for now, but who knows what could happen later.

Hmm... first of all I would 'give' the ship some serious damage from the jump... actually I wound not have allowed for such a jump at all, since I don't think that warp drives are prepared for instant jumps like that. As far as I see it, warp drives need to be fully charged before they are able to tear open the fabric of space and time to enter the warp, nothing you can handle with a hasty push on that big red button (your players arn't playing orcs btw?) ... but well, you are the GM here and the ship is allready in the warp.

Ok, back to the options you got. Once in the warp a ship is allready effected by it's currents and drifts, so start plotting a course NOW might be a bit late for any kind of controlled travel. So if (big IF) the crew manages to repair the allready mentioned damage to leave the warp finally, they would end up ... well somewhere they definitly never wanted to go. Since it's a whole fleet of vessels, I would also rule, that the fleet got completely scattered with several ships definitly lost/crippled and many stranded. Whatever the original plan might have been for that fleet... forget it.

Repairing the ship, leaving the warp and actually finding out where they are should be a whole adventure of it's own. Finding atleast some of the ships of the fleet, defending them from raids again and the like, finding out about about other lost ships and so on, could pose the content for some more evenings of fun.

All in all, a loss in profit factor depending on how well your explorers do with dealing with such an catastrophic outcome, would be inevitable. On the other side, there are lots of new fortunes to earn, systems to explore while trying to find those lost ships, so you got lots of ways to compensate your players for their losses.

Broad strokes here but:

Trash the warp drive

Oops... that 'ere "Gellar Field" don' look roight, master Enginseer...

Crew wasn't prepared, some of them were even in zero/low gravity environments when the ship translated... messy.

The Navigator's head hurts... really hurts... in fact, he just collapsed on the floor - that can't be good...

Sir! We made it into the Empyrean! Huzzah!... oh... *ahem* It looks like some of them made it too.... huzzah?

As I see it the majority of the time this should simply destroy a ship. This is backed by the fluff. The few times it has been done it was considered an insane gamble. Even most Chaos types, and Orks won't do this. I would question why the captain's of the other ships would ever follow such a command. Unless the raiders are crewed by Chaos types, or Dark Eldar. Most crews are going to view capture and possible slavery as preferable to what people in the 40k setting view as certain death or worse. Certainly the PCs shouldn't expect more than a few transports to survive.

Personally I'd view this as a gift from your players. They have basically just handed you an excuse to do nearly anything you want to do to them. Below are just a few ways to deal with this, or combine your favorites:

1)Have all the PCs burn a fate point to survive. Roll 5 crits with a d5 and 5d10 structural damage*, and be done with it.

2)Have the NPC navigator roll at -30 to pilot into the warp. Each degree of failure is a 1d10 structural damage* and a 1d5 crit.

3)Take this as an opportunity fling the PC back/forward in time, send them to the otherside of the galaxy, or beyond the reach of the Astronomica.

4)Have their warp drive damaged beyond repair. Now they must find a Warp rift, survive transiting the rift then get a new drive or salvage to repair it.

5)Daemons, enslavers, or what ever get on board their ship.

6)The jump to warp may not work. It might damage their drive and them back to real space.

7)If any of the above damages their ship beyond it's hull points then turn their ship into hulk drifting in the warp. They spend a few month desperately trying to keep the gellar field and life support going. Daemon, enslavers, and other warp thing are of course going to slip through. Maybe the void spits them out in a few months. Maybe they glom on to another hulk 1st.

8)Maybe they find themselves on a feral/deathworld after having been force to abandon ship. Now they must survive an over land trek on foot to the only space port on the planet.

*no armor

There's also consequences outside of the PC ship. Some ideas I've had for results are:

1. Gravity distorts the warp portal. It sill works, but it distorts the ship the same way.

2. Nearby ships didn't have theie gellar fields up, they find themselves influenced by the warp energies.

3. Nearby planets don't have gellar fields to raise. See above.

Jumping into the warp is never really that big of an issue in dead space, even within systems, the warp is a shadow reality of the material world, made of of living emotions and energies, and the entities they create. You players shouldn't really suffer that much unless they were near a large source of life, like an inhabited world. The only large danger to that would be that they would instantly be placing themselves within heavily turbulent 'waters' which could throw them off course, strain the gellar fields, and maybe get them all killed if worst comes to worst, but that is a double botch and a half for that last one.

Mostly, the ill effects of sudden warp jumps are to the living beings nearby within real space, acting something like radioactive fallout that might not be instantly detected, but 'something' could have gotten through into a nearby ship to close for comfort, one weak mind becoming host to something, But there is always the matter of cowardice for fleeing from the people they were probably contracted to protect before they even stood their ground and attempted to save their charges.

Still, if the raiders have a very, very good navigator... or more likely, a demon host of any level of sentience, they could easily follow the PC's into the warp... mind, there would be no fighting, but the moment the players out of warp, so would the enemy fleet, almost right next to the PC's if the enemy fleet is good. Seeing that the raiders want whats in the transport, they might let the PC's get away, and a distress message from the transport leader's Astropath might come back to haunt the PC's in the future. Or... as well, have a few Raiders break off to dog the PC's ship through the warp, till they ether get inventive, or stand and take their chances in head to head combat.

As far as I've been able to conclude you can warp jump pretty near to system without suffering any harmfull effects from the actual proximity to planet. However, this is rarely done for several reasons:

1) Pretty much every modern inhabited world along known spacelines has at least some form of orbital and system defence which is pretty much pre-conditioned to react to ships jumping inside safe distance with maximum force. This is because jumping right near target is preferred modus operandi of Dark Eldar pirates, Eldar strike-teams and Ork raiders. So, if you do it on normal world you will have to take the imperial Navy on. And no, once you've done it they won't ask for identification anymore. Thus the civilized and safe way is to jump far away of orbit, close up, get spotted by Imperial Navy blockade and be identified and given the right of passage.

2) If the world is not modern and along known spacelines its positioning in stellar maps might not be that accurate and you can be pretty sure there are no beacons so no matter how enar you try to jump you'll probably end up way off anyway.

3) In-system "micro-jumps" of using warp drives to get from one end of the solar system to another are extremely hard. Warp is not actually corresponding with materium in any predictable way and thus unless you try to warp from one beacon to another you'll probably end up overshooting your target by several SU (or even lightyears) in space and by several hours, days or weeks in time.

Also, remember that time in Warp is not tied to time in Materium. Thus any mistakes in navigation means you'll not only come out of warp in the wrong place in space, but you'll also exit the warp in wrong moment in time. The first thing you need to ask after a badly-planned jump isn't just where we are now, but also when is now.

I agree this is a great opportunity. But be careful - I'd recommend against doing anything too outrageous as your players clearly feel like you forced them into the situation by overmatching them in combat. Still, I'd have something interesting happen.

How about the navigator dies. But slowly, in the moments he surfaces from his coma he can just about be persuaded to guide the ship out of warpspace... but has little control over where they end up. Throw them into the middle of an adventure to gain another navigator somewhere in unfamiliar space. Make them work for it but give them something good in the end as well as the navigator, that way they may forgive you for the overmatching thing.

When the crew perceive their emergence from the warp they come to realize their ship is now a part of a space hulk and has been for several decades. They must now proceed to free the ship from the hulk and whatever inhabitants are now living on board.

If they complain they were over matched by what you sent at them ask them if they considered running in the first place. Why didn't they consider running? They are a rogue trader fleet not a crusade fleet.

ItsUncertainWho said:

That idea is wicked, im so nicking it for an adventure

Hello,

I would take the opportunity to make a mission aboard their ship in the warp itself. They ge a emergency message that their Gellerfield is about shutting down due to the last minute activation. Give them a certain amount of time (real) and they have to go back to the engine room trying to get the field up. The Machine Spirit is not happy with that, and should give them a hard time to access to special rooms by blocking some doors, etc. The servitors are acting crazy and they might have to put some down. The crew in the engine room might have got enough corruption that they are growing mutations and some might have already gotten berzerk. How about a final fight with a lesser daemon if they get there in time or maybe some virtual fight, a few tech-use rolls to get the fields back up. Or both ! At the end I would make them emerge back in reality (pretty much where you want) and they would have to make repairs and roll in secret another Machine Spirit odities (p. 197) and maybe giving it Temperemental Warp Engine (P. 198).

- The Navigator, if PC, should suffer levels of fatigue.

- The PCs as well ( 1 lvl of fatigue or 2 maybe)since they don't have to do the ritual of the warp process.