Now the issue of how good armsmen from your ship are at combat has been raised so how do you work out how well you can train them with say your Arch-militant working on them for say two months etc. The baseline "armsmen" i have stated at 25 across the board but my arch militant wants to go and train up several squads personally (( 6 squads of 7)) he has about four to five months to do it so how should I work out what they pick up?

ok when it comes to rogue trader time dose not eaquel experiance points, these armsment would be bound by the same rules as a character to get better they would need experiance to get better, now this being said, the armsman onboard a ship follow the npc crew rating table on page 214 of the main rulebook this level will have been set when they build there ship for the first time, normaly it is set at 30 that means that all primary stats for his role apon the ship will be 30(for an armsman i would say BS, Strength and Toughnes 30 or WS, Strenght and agility 30 depending on speciality) so one way to deal with your arch militant wanting to train up there armsmen would be to give them a increase of crew quality from 30 (regular) to 40 (crack crew) now as this upgrade would normaly require the expenditure of 5 ship points at creation it should still take something now my sugestions would be...

eather an extended command test over the few months this leaving the posibility of failure

or

an aquisition test to be made to get hold of the required traning equipment thus furfiling the "upgrade to the ship" under standard rules but giving it a fluff reason why this test wold work

another posibility is one of the players in my game came up with retainer rules so you can hire more experianced crew members as if they were "items" i can if you like forward you this document as it is very short and very usefull.

hope this helps
may the god emporor watch over you
Iquisitor lord reven

Sounds about right to me.

yeah I really hope I can get those rules for followers

I would also quite like a copy of the aforementioned document if you would be so kind as to send it me.

To make it easier for you guys and any other GM's that may want these rules iv uploaded them to scribd, hope you like em we have found them to be preaty balanced and a good gigle but as always feel free to comment or leave feedback, also if you have any questions let me know and ill answer as to why i have made sertain rules balance in sertain ways.

www.scribd.com/doc/35509687/Rogue-Trader-Retainer-Rules

and most importantly ENJOY

Inuisitor lord Gregor Firedrake