I am going to GM a group for Rogue Trader soonish. While talking about character creation and such with the player of our Rogue Trader, two questions came up that I wasnt really sure how to deal with, and which have probably been asked a million times already here... but I cant find it.

1.) What is up with the severe lack of Wounds on RT characters? Most DH characters surpass them from the start or early on, and while a Guardsman can get in excess of 20 wounds, a Rogue Trader with a bad roll can be stuck at what, 6 ? Are RT characters this fragile or do I miss something? They dont have that much access to Sound Consitution, and the starting wounds are just low.

2.) Ship Construction: Do the players have to pay Ship Points for the Hull they create their first ship from? This is somewhat unclear in the rules. Or can they just choose, DM discretion nonwithstanding, a Cruiser right from the start?

So basically, if a group has 40 Ship Points, can they purchase upgrades for their chosen hull (a cruiser, for example) for as long as they have Space and Ship Points, or do they have to pay for the hull of, say, a Raider (-35) and then only have 5 left to spend?

also, Space budgets are pretty tight as far as I can see. Is there any reason to NOT fly at least a Light Cruiser to pack enough stuff into it?

thanks a lot

I can't answer the first one, I don't play DH. But at least internaly, (as in compaired to the enemies in the book) it seems fine. It just means battles are over really quick, and protective gear/cover is invaluble.

As for the second, you do need to buy the ship's hull. So the players could only buy a starting cruiser if they have 60 or 70 SP to begin with. If your players want the room to expand as the game progresses, start with a big ship (like mine did), if they want a nice ride off the bat then a frigate is more up their ally. Unless they really rolled low on the Ship Points, I doubt they'd want to take a frighter.

As for internal space - your not suposed to have 'everything' in your ship. That's why most highly successful Rogue Traders run with small flotillas. Even Cruisers, if they have their full weapons compliment, don't have a huge amount of space/power to spare. It's all a balance game.

On average Rogue Trader characters are no more fragile than DH acolytes. You are right in the point that a badly rolled hive worlder can start with only 6 wounds, but in Dark Heresy Void Born might also just start with 7 wounds. RT Death Worlders have a good chance of starting with 15 wounds. I also think the advance tables do not lack Sound Constitution. Afaik all classes get to buy it 8 to 14 times, so I don't see a reason to complain.

Concerning the second question I agree with Quicksilver

About the ship size question, I found it quite similar to the old Battletech tabletop game (published by FASA): the bigger the vehicle, the smaller the space increase. That means the jump from raiders to frigates in free space after fitting all the basic components is bigger than the jump from frigate to light cruiser, and the difference between the free space in a cruiser and a light cruiser is the smaller of all. Add a full weapons complement and you will find that the cruiser is the ship with the less amount of space and energy to spare into Teleportarium and other exotic components.

For me, a frigate is the best option for a Rogue Trader's starting group, unless you are planning to get them into a lot of space battles.