Let me confess first that I just cracked the RT book open today, so some of these concerns may be discussed in other parts of the book or may work better in playing than the Dark Heresy (which had some problems, but I liked anyway).

1) what kind of XP is the characters in the demo built off of? it doesnt really say if they bought any charactaristic advances but all of them could have their scores based solely off of their rolls (I think) So I was intending on transfering them over as having bought whatever skills and special talents they have but no +5 charactaristics advancements... the problem with that being that you cant even make a level 1 character without using those. From what it looks like the character has several thousand points to spend before they reach level 1.

2)How would I translate characters from DH to RT? If I wanted to move a dark heresy character over (or if someone wants to play a sister of battle or something else more specialized) the DH character will be far more versitile. By the time they can be a level 1 character in Rogue trader the guardsman is rank 5, veteran. and has 5 tables to draw skills from ... granted that means they probably spent less points in characteristics, meaning the character is overall a little weaker but far more skilled and with a lot more options than... say, arch militant which seems to be the closest match

Bonus rant) So a 5000 xp guard can get all sorts of skills much quicker... while doing the comparison I realized that the RT skill list is much more compact and has 20 advances on the first level while guardsman has 11 (though you could take sound constitution repeatedly). If guardsman gets 10 options every level (on average) that gives him 50 things to chose from. Including a few at +20

I realize that DH focuses on a smaller scale setting, with people being the equivilant of new recruits and such, while RT focuses on characters that are, if nothing else, stinking rich. A rogue trader might easily come by a power weapon for example, while a guardsman will probably never touch one in his life (unless you count getting crushed by a warboss' power claw)...

Does that actually lead to better play balance? With most of the character's XP buying their stats up rather than skills? By limiting the diversity of their skills?

As a side note- I havent gotten into the psy powers yet, are those kinda more fixed? I had a lot of problems with the infinate psy usage in the game GMed in dark heresy, also with the way a lot of the powers were badly balanced (fear for example could easily get 2 or 3 levels of success making combat with human opponents almost non existant since nobody could refrain from pissing themselves when the psyker used his fear power)

And another thing. I was used to giving out 200-500 XP for a game session in DH. Is the suggested XP earning in RT higher? maybe 1000-3000 per game? enough to max out your weapon skill stats after one or two play sessions? They have to progress a little more quickly, otherwise they are never going to get to use some of those skills that come at later levels like heavy weapons. EVERYONE loves heavy weapons!

RT suggest about 500xp for a 'big' session where the PCs get a lot of stuff done. The published adventures also give out experience bonuses for completing various stages of an adventure or doing something tricky.

I've found that yes, your players will almost invariably become stat-heavy specialists. This may be because they can simply make an Acquisition check for a person with the skills they require, taking the focus away from the insular group mechanic of DH where you could only trust your cell-mates, and only then as long as you kept your eyes on them.

Errant said:

Seems unlikely that a lot of people/characters will reach level 3 if the XP grant is pretty much the same. One of the things I liked about DH was that there was always something to spend your new XP on. Seems with this there will be a lot of waiting for the next +5 and the next level.

Well I'm sure a lot of these things will get ironed out as the system gets revised.

Thank you for your help/input

The trick to getting higher level is to live longer. Though there’s plenty of room for advancement if you want it. There’s a note from one of the developers (I haven’t done the math myself) that Lure of the Expanse will take a green crew all the way to Rank 3 if they take part in everything. I’ve actually found myself holding back the XP a little, otherwise it felt like the players were gaining abilities to fast, like: “You went to a dinner party, gain a talent.” Also, don't forget about that whole "Elite Advancment' system, otherwise known as the "buy whatever the GM says is ok" system. It seems more or less assumed people will be buying things that arn't on their chart.

Though I’ve never (really) played Dark Heresy, it seems like the focus is almost exactly opposite to Rogue Trader. In Dark Heresy your all about being able to handle any situation. Rogue Trader’s about doing what you do well, and knowing people who can do anything.

It’s also worth noting that in Rogue Trader, XP is the primary way to control the power and capabilities of the party. An Arch-Militant’s effectiveness in ground combat stems from his ability to use weapons, not his ability to obtain them. Mine Rank 1 Militant even considered acquiring up a ‘spare lascannon’ just incase there was something big that he could afford to take the BS hit against.

Although I have no personal experience with it, I’ve heard bad things with converting PCs from Dark Heresy to Rogue Trader (there’s at least a couple of threads on it). I’d strongly recommend using the Rogue Trader character builder to make the character and either change the charts or wait a couple months for Into The Storm to come out.

Maybe they just didn't want characters running out of levels. The new DH book 'assention' is about characters that are moving beyond the level range of the core rule book (under 10k XP? or is it 15k?)

The RT book goes up to... what was it 35k? granted about 5k of that is level 0 starting stuff just to reflect your station in life. So it's going to take players at least twice as long to max their levels, with less levels (though it seems maybe the same amount of skill/talents) and without any branching career paths. I'm somewhat less excited about the RT careers than about the DH ones, but I'm still early into the reading.

I can give you an example of how we translated our characters from DH into RT. We had been playing DH for several years (real time), and didn’t want to start new characters again as we had a lot invested already. We had reached just over 5,000 XP in DH, so translated them over to a Rank 1 RT character. It is not as simple as it looks.
I translated an Assassin over to an RT Captain. Not the most compatible character transition, but it has worked out well. In changing character classes the difficulty we had was ensuring that the character had the "prerequisites" to be the new character class and secondly, not changing the character too much as to make it a new character entirely.

I have compared transitioning the character to the character creation process in the RT book...

Stage 1: General Characteristics: These stayed the same.

Stage 2: Origin Path: I selected the Path that suited the character based on experiences in the DH game. For example under "Trials and Travails" I chose High Vendetta because Haarlock had murdered the character's father and half the senior members of her House.
I then applied the Characteristics modifiers and starting skills as were appropriate. eg.

• Homeworld - Noble Born - these were all left as is because the character started with this in DH game. We left wounds and fate points as per the existing character.
• Birthright - Vaunted - Character gained Decadence and resulting modifiers
• Lure of the Void - Chosen by Destiny - Character gained modifiers for "Fated for Greatness"
• Trials and Travails - High Vendetta - Character gained "Blood with have Blood" and "Brook no Insult". As the character already had Paranoia and was Talented at Inquiry these (or alternate Talent options) were not applied again.
• Motivation - Renown - As the character already had the Talent "Air of Authority", it was not applied again or substituted.

Stage 3: Experience Points: We did not use any additional experience points. Instead we worked with the XP that the character had already acquired.

Initially I went through what were the Starting Skills and Talents that a RT required and worked out what the character did not have. For example, my character did not have Common Lore Imperium, Evaluate or Scholastic Lore Astromancy and needed to upgrade Pistols and Melee weapons Talents to Universal. The GM insisted the character also needed Pilot Spaceship. We worked out the XP value of all of these.

I then went through the Talents and Skills on the existing character and removed the Skills/Talents I had not (or rarely) used up to the same XP value and replaced these with the RT required Skills and Talents. The six months of game time we spent in Calixis preparing and outfitting the ship meant the character had time to study and train in these skills/ talents.

Stage 4: Giving characters Life: Obviously this didn't change, but the GM/group did discuss at length the "why" the character was becoming a RT.

Stage 5: PF and Ship Points: We had ‘inherited’ a cruiser as part of the end of the DH game so applied this as per GM's direction.

Stage 6: Gear: The character kept all her existing gear, leaving any new gear to be purchased/ acquired within the game.

This transition process left me with a character that had the pre-requisites to be a RT Captain, although having been an Assassin, the stats were weighted more towards the combat side of life, which while useful, left the RT fairly weak on some key Skills/ Talents such as Command, Imperial Lore etc. On the other hand, the character also had some talents/ skills that a RT cannot acquire until higher ranks or very expensively through elite advancements eg. Inquiry, Scrutiny, Blademaster, Interrogation +10.

Therefore I ended up with a character that was somewhat "overpowered" in skills / talents and "underpowered" in stats relative to if I had just rolled up a brand new RT Captain from scratch. If I had removed all the Talents/ Skills that were not appropriate for a RT, and changed the stats, then it would no longer have been the same character that I had played and I may as well have rolled up a new one.

Do note that for these reasons I would only recommend using this transition process if all the players in the game transition characters in the same way so that no player is disadvantaged. While a Rank 5 DH character and Rank 1 RT character are similar in capability, a DH Rank 5 character is likely to have higher level of wounds, may have achieved “Talented” on some key talents and may have upped stats to a high level that the Rank 1 RT player will not have.

Just a last note on XP - each session earns us approx 200XP, so after playing since practically the week it was released, we have just reached RT rank 3. I think your XP delivery will need to depend on how fast you want your characters to progress. They would progress very very fast if you were handing out 1,000XP per game session.

I was considering just knocking 5000 XP off the difference in RT terms, since the stats are generally the same that way. Most of the points making a new character are used in the background, so dont actually increase the character much. No more than the homeworld and other options that are available for free (or for slight costs) in DH.