Hey guys,

I have made the entire gaming group happy when we started playing Rogue Trader and it has been the only rpg that the group has continuosly enjoyed playing for weeks if not months on end. But asome of the games rules are still frustrating me and have me asking questions as well as my players....

1. Why are there five rolls for the Navigator to make it to a destination? Our Navigator is frustrated because not only did a recent errata make some of the skills she build up worthless now, but the multiple tests raises her chance of failing one of the rolls. Is there something I can do to help alleviate this probllem and possibly take so much pressure off her dice rolling. I wiould like to keep as much of the system the way it is as long as it doesn't drive our ship prow first into something.

2. I noticed the long distance voyage rules in the game but I am not sure how long it should really take to get across the Koronus Expanse. She it be a few weeks to places like Solcae Encarmine or a few days? What about the Rifts of Heccatone? The book says things like from one end of asection to another is a week or two I think (no book handy), but how long is the Koronus Expanse?

Its kept pretty vague on how big it is. I think 200,000 was a figure I've seen bandied around. As to the five rolls I'd slash it to 1-2 or so.

I'd roll steps 1-3 into one roll (Plotting the course)

4-5 in another (navigating the course)

Lord Jolius, Master Scribe said:

Remember that many of these rolls feed into one another - no one roll determines absolute success or absolute failure, and indeed it's very difficult to utterly fail on warp travel.

The first test result only provides the Navigator with an estimated duration of travel - it doesn't actually influence how easy or difficult the journey will be, whether it passes or fails. While useful, the information gained here is not essential, so this test can be seen as optional.

The second test - to find the Astronomicon - applies a modifier onto the fourth test; this is a fairly critical test, but it alone doesn't determine success or failure.

The third test helps you avoid hazards along the route. It cannot make you succeed or fail on the journey overall, at least not directly. It's also a secret test, the results of which should be unknown to the players, so you should roll this for them.

The fourth test is the most crucial, but the end result of the test is the duration of the journey and its accuracy - failure won't result in the ship being devoured by the Warp, it'll just make it late. However, the longer the duration, the greater number of events and potential mishaps that may take place along the way (once every 5 days as standard).

The fifth determines how safely you exit the Warp; again, not earth-shatteringly crucial.

If you wanted to slim down the process, the first and last tests could easily be discarded (assume any appropriate tests are passed), and leave the remaining three as they're the really important ones.

Lord Jolius, Master Scribe said:

Per the guidelines in the rulebook, crossing a standard Sector (roughly speaking, a cube 200 light years to a side) using accurate information and known warp routes will take about a month or two from the perspective of someone travelling through the Warp (at normal speeds; a skilled Navigator can reduce that to as little as a week). Assuming - and this is an unfounded assumption, more for the sake of argument than anything else - that the Koronus Expanse is of similar size, then it'll likely take several months, maybe even years to cross it. This is because there is very little in the way of known warp routes within the Koronus Expanse, and a distinct lack of accurate information about it, so travel times are increased commensurately. It's the difference between walking down a street in broad daylight compared to hiking over rough terrain in the dark during a thunderstorm.

Distance is only part of the matter here; travelling across the uncharted void will take more time and be more difficult than travelling across a well-mapped sector.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Well, to get the the Heathen Stars (specifically the planets in Lure of the Expanse) it takes about 2-3 months to reach them, and that's assuming no problems occur on the way, and that you have the info for the warp routes to that area of space.

If you didn't have the warp routes to the Heathen Stars mapped out for you (as you do in LotE) it'd likely take 3-4 times that long, just because you'd be ploughing the way through the wilds of the warp, rather than the more gentle stable routes.

Why are there five rolls for the Navigator to make it to a destination? Our Navigator is frustrated because not only did a recent errata make some of the skills she build up worthless now...

Did you consider letting her swap the skills for the new ones?

Thanks to everyone for the input on this. i appreciate the help.

I was reading one of the novels here recently and it mentioned the Navigator being locked in a chamber to pilot the ship through the warp for the journey. Is this true or can she do other things while the ship travels through the warp, like shipboard adventures?

Lord Jolius, Master Scribe said:

Most instances of warp travel require someone to be navigating the ship. It might be possible to swap Navigators during the trip, but that's never stated anywhere.