In various parts of the book it seems to disagree on XP value to start with. The character creation indicates you give the players 500 points to start, and the career path shows level 1 starting at 5000. So do you give the player 500 XP to spend and tell them that there total is 5500? Just saying that their influence and wealth make up the other 5000 points ... I mean that seems somewhat fair right? Owning a ship (or having influence in the captain's inner circle) makes one fabulously wealthy/powerful and lots of other RPGs include wealth or influence in a character's value (however it's determined) so why not this one?

And I'm going to be transfering the 'forsaken bounty' crew straight over (with some bonus XP from doing the demo mission) so any idea what XP those character sheets represent? It doesnt say if any of them bought any statistic upgrades... so if they need to spend another 4000 or so XP to be level 1 then anyone could add +20 to their weapon skill without sweating it... that's possibly unbalancing for other people who might join later or if a player dies and makes a new character.

Page 30 in the starting experience section states that the origin path cost 4'500xp, the 500 xp you get to spend will bring you to 5'000. As for rank 1 starting at 5'000 you have two options:

1 - Just say that the rank starts at 0 so they can buy from it normally.

2 - Characteristic advances are not part of any rank. Since characters aren't at rank 1 yet, the 500 has to go towards characteristic advances.

It doesn't really matter which way you go as there simply aren't enough skill and talents to buy, so you will have to buy characteristic advances before reaching rank 2 unless they get a lot of elite skills and talents.

*An attempt at balancing DH and RT characters when their XP is the same, I have no idea how well it works. If in doubt just stick with the RT characters.

As for trying to continue with the forsaken bounty characters, I'd suggest to build a character from scratch that matches one of them. Use the allocating points option from page 14 should make it eaiser than rolling for them. You won't be able to match them perfectly (for example Trask has charm +10, which a Rogue Trader can't buy until rank 2, Tsanthos has a weapon that doesn't appear anywhere else I know of), but you should come close enough.

Or just make completly new characters and retcon them to being present while you were using the pre-made characters.

If you play the creation correctly to get charm twice, it upgrades to charm +10 (but only if you get it twice before spending xp.)

But yeah, I'd build normal characters using the original 3 as inspiration. A couple of fiat-GMs, like giving the seneshal that weapon, could make it almost seamless.

Quicksilver said:

I looked through the starting options to confirm what you said and found something interesting. To get charmed twice as the RT character has, you would have to pick it as your skill from press-ganged*. But that doesn't link to renown (his listed motivation) and renown doesn't like to Rogue Trader, meaning that Trask's origin path has at least two free rows.

*I didn't see any other option that could give charm. If I'm wrong please list the other options.

A better example of an advanced skill/talent being present would be in the Missionary from the additional characters. He has wrath of the righteous, which isn't available until rank 5 (17'000 xp for the rank, another 500 for the talent).

As for the pistol, I'd suggest saying that its availability is near unique (like the archeotech laspistol) and let them make an acquisition test for it as normal.

Why did you decide to transfer the Forsaken Bounty characters over instead of just having your players make new characters ?

Bilateralrope said:

Because at least 2 of the players are new to roleplaying and making new characters is a lot more confusing than learning with premade characters. And adding a few new skills to customize their character based on what they want is an easy way to get them to realize the joys and potentials customization without having to have them all read a text book before playing. I'm going to give them each 600 xp from the adventure and it will let them have fun with a cool new move or something, and then when they taste the power they can search for it's source with the passion and drive that they wouldn't have if they started from scratch. So by the time I rip the senshal to bloody shreds in front of everyone my friend will be sad, but also excited to try a new path and willing to skim over 30 or so pages to get it going.