Excuse the presumptive title to this thread, if Rogue trader has taught me anything, its to be BOLD !

So, i've spent a lot of time scratching my head with my group, trying to work out values for acquisitions. Many things are very simple and mechanical. I want a single plasma pistol, easy peasy, its very rare, only 1 and normal quality. Simple. But how about, I want the services of 5 navigators for my newly acquired ship? Or a regiment of 3000 fully equipped infantrymen.

So, this thread. What i'd like to achieve here is for posters to put up an acquisition (maybe from their own games) that would be hard to guess using the system in the rulebook, along side what they pitched its availability and total cost at and a short explanation of why they came to this decision.

My players have craftily employed factors in Footfall, Scintilla and Port Wander to handle these things for them. Yours may have too, or at the very least they'll have a ship they can use to travel to where ever would be appropriate to find these acqusitions. So maybe in your post, put a quick line about where would be appropriate to get the acquisition but otherwise for the purposes of working the numbers, assume the acquisition is being made in a suitable location (e.g. buying ship parts at a hive or forge world with orbital facilities, not over some recently rediscovered feral world).

I shall start the ball rolling.

My arch militant wanted a ratling chef (he is obsessed by ratlings). Since there are no known ratling worlds in the Calixis sector I ruled this as follows.

Ratling chef

Availability: Extremely Rare

Quantity: 1

Quality: normal

Total Acquisition check modifier: 0

I ruled extremely rare, which is the same category as digital weapons, simply because there are no ratling worlds in the Calixis Sector or the Koronus expanse. If there had of been, then this would have dropped to Very rare or even just rare.

Gribble_the_Munchkin said:

Ask yourself this: Will it be as hard for a RT to import a ratling chef as it would be to aquire a digital weapon? I think the answer is obviously not.

Ok, ratlings are TECHNICALLY a rare sight in the Calixus sector. But it isn't going to be hard to import one. You just have to send a message and offer a high salary and I'm sure one will by happy to fly out.

Actually, it'd be easier to fly out a digital weapon then a ratling cook. A digital weapon might be part of a shipment of digital weapons. Ratling cooks are going to be a singular item. However, a enterprising RT might recruit ratlings and set up a colony in the expanse, getting his cook and increasing his profit in one fell stroke.

Yeah, but they don't do SHIPMENTS of digital weapons. Each one is a unique work produced by the...zombie monkey tech-artisan gypsy aliens, whatever they are called. Starts with a Y. Of whom the Imperium has no direct control.

Items of that rareity are not mass produced or shipped, each one is fairly unique and you have to go to great lengths to track one down. Whereas Squats are a known quantity with populations in the billions and you know right where to get them from. You couldn't get the ship sent strait, but you could piggy back them on transports and such.

Ok, off topic, sorry.

(Anyone remember the name of those monkey aliens?)

The Jokaero iirc.

And yeah, digi-weapons are insanely rare compared to ratlings. A ratling chef shouldn't be that hard to obtain, even if there aren't any ratling worlds around. There aren't any kroot worlds close by, yet you see those buggers acting as mercs all over the place.

-Thulis

Using Ascension as a guide can help give a feel for how many of 'Item X' there needs to be available in a Sector to qualify for 'Y' availability...

Daemon hammers are 'Very Rare'.

They are 'Best Quality' which lowers there Availability by two categories, so a 'Common' Daemon hammer is only 'Scarce'.

There's twelve, or perhaps thirteen, in the entire Calixis Sector.

,,, wait...

nikink said:

Actually, according to my copy of Ascension, Daemonhammers are Extremely Rare. Now, depending on whether the listed availability includes modifiers for Craftsmanship (I know it doesn't in Rogue Trader, because Craftsmanship only affects availability during the Inquiry or Commerce Test to find the item, not on the Acquisition Test to obtain it, so it's cleaner to simply leave the effects of Craftsmanship out), that means that a Common Daemonhammer is either Rare (2 steps easier, assuming Craftsmanship modifiers are included) or a Best Daemonhammer is Unique (2 steps harder, assuming Craftsmanship modifiers are not included).

One thing to note is that availability shifts with context - consider Eldar weaponry. A Shuriken Catapult is listed as being Very Rare, and it, alongside the Shuriken Pistol, is the most common Eldar weapon in either the RT Rulebook or Into the Storm (all others are Extremely Rare, Near Unique or Unique. Now, while that's entirely appropriate for the matter of human characters trying to obtain them, it makes no sense from an Eldar perspective, suggesting that many Eldar devices would be much more available for Eldar characters in an Eldar-centric environment such as a Craftworld.

The other thing to note is that Unique doesn't literally mean one-of-a-kind in this context - a little counter-intuitive, perhaps, but after some discussion with Sam, Unique represents pretty much anything that appears once, maybe twice across the entire Calixis Sector/Koronus Expanse region.

Ah, extremely rare then, curse my memory.

Ok, then for something to count as rarer that Extremely Rare, it must be less than 13 in the entire Sector.

So Ingnatius Pattern Power Armour and Neuro Gauntlets also only exist around the 13 per sector mark.

Exitus Rifles are Near Unique, thus must be less than 13, say 10? So 10 Vindicares in the entire Sector? But wait... Each Vindicare gets an Exitus Turbo-Penetrator round, which is Unique... thus there can't be more than one or two per Sector, thus only 2 Vindicares exist there... that'll be your Character and maybe one other guy. Question is, who has the other Exitus weaponry?!?!

In my opinion availbility gets tricky when you speaking about something like the above-mentionned turbo-penetrator round. It's availibily is probably better if you're a member of the vindicare : the things are built specialy for them. The samething can go for most rare item : if it's stongly associated with one group, being part of that group or at least having good relations and contact with them can make things easier.

The propsed availabilities are in my opinion 'by default' options, to be used when you have no special asociation with anyone. If you're a bossom buddy of the item's builder, logic dictates that your acquisition test should be easier - at least when you're in direct contatc with him or his underlings.

Yes, so 'By Default' items that are 'Extremely Rare' consist of about 13 in number across the entire Sector. Thus logically, 'By Default' there are even fewer items of greater rarity, such as the Vindicare equipment, and therefore Vindicares themselves...

In case anyone gets the wrong idea, I agree this is all a bit silly. It's more of a Reductio Ad Absurdum for some laughs. In my own games anything numbering about one per world will be extremely rare, anything about 1 per 5 worlds will be nearly unique and 1 per 10 worlds or less will count as unique.

I do not believe the rarity of an item was meant to show in absolute numbers how many of an item there are.

Rather how rare/hard they are to get for YOU.

llsoth said:

Yup. Just because there's 100 Land Raiders in the system you're docked in doesn't mean the Astartes will let you drive off with one. They're going to be Unique in game terms.

As for a Ratling chef - if he's only normal quality then he's not very good Import an expensive chef and get a bog standard Imperial Guard ration pack menu Enough to hugely embarass the Rogue Trader at his first Captain's table with VIP guests

Note that the Ratling chef is indeed only average. The odds of the reogue trader ever letting him cook for the captains table are approaching zero.

Our arch militant is essentially a child like psychopath who just finds ratlings utterly enthralling. He has tried to recruit a ratling assassin, a squad of ratling sappers, a ratling jester (he actually got this one) and a ratling chef (likewise). In no sense is the ratling chef skilled. In fact he is just some ratling that applied for the job and due to an utter lack of competition got it. Of course being a ratling, he isn't a bad chef, but he is nothing to sing about either.

I got a common needle pistol as a free acquisition and a suit of common power armor out of game while the party was docked at port wander. even though i don't have the talent to use the needle pistol. still a fun little number to test in the down time between games, lol. Haven't used the power armor yet. note, got it before the erreta update

N0-1_H3r3 said:

I am curious. I must have missed the discussion on this.

If Craftsmanship doesn't affect Acquisition, then why do they have Craftsmanship in the Acquisition Modifier Table? (Table 9-35)

According to that table Poor gives a +10, Common is a +0, Good is a -10 and Best is -30.

I am probably misunderstanding something or have missed a discussion; based on my reading of the Aquisition chapter, you take Availability, Craftsmanship and Scale into account when buying something.

Could you point me to what I missed? I don't want to screw over my players.

Unless we are specifically talking about Starship components, then ignore me.

Nalroth said:

It's not as clear as it could be, but I did say that Craftsmanship doesn't affect availability on Acquisition tests, which is true - it's resolved by its own set of modifiers.

Of course, on closer examination, I'm throwing together two distinct rules from Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader without realising it, which doesn't help matters, and I'm embarrassed at having made such a mistake.

My line of reasoning - now shown to be incorrect - was thus: in Dark Heresy, the Craftsmanship of an item modifies its availability - a Good Craftsmanship item is one-step rarer than normal, for example - when determining if you can find the item to buy with an Inquiry Test. When it comes to the Acquisition Test, which is a distinct step in the process, Craftsmanship is resolved separately, using the modifiers you've pointed out, rather than influencing the item's Availability as it does in Dark Heresy.

Hopefully that clears things up.

Please don't be embarrassed, I was just making sure that I had read the rules properly. I made a sheet for my players that has all the initial "free" aquisitions and "quick" rules on the "Zero Mod" initial acquisition and I wanted to make sure that I had read everything correctly and wasn't making a mistake (definitely not the first time I have done that as a GM).

Thank you for the clarification and the time spent checking. I appreciate you spending the time you do posting in this forum. It helps when folks get responses from the people who wrote the rules or other sections of the book.

If I came across confrontational, I was just trying to be precise and supply as much of my understanding so I could be corrected if need be. Thanks again.

the craftsmanship of an item does effect the availability does effect the aquisition. the chart is in the playing the game section of the book. under acquisitions

Not to derail the thread back to its original intent, does anyone have any examples of unusual acquisitions and at what level they pegged them?

I like threads like these. If you have more wealth at your disposal than most planetary governors what would you buy?

I'll be coming back here later but the most unusual thing my players requested in my campaign were two vat-psyker relays mounted on servitor controlled tank treads. They were custom built machines that projected great psi dampening auras to troops nearby. They took over a year to construct and were each at a -50 modifier to obtain after initial modifiers but were needed for the assault on a chaos world. The explorers convinced their allies to help fund the project and reduced the cost down to -10. During the great battle I believe one was destroyed by a fallen deathwatch marine and the other had it's treads disabled and couldn't keep up with the mighty rank 8 senior crew.

Unusual Acquisition Ideas:

- Pay a planetary governor to tattoo his face.

- Create a national holiday on a favorite pleasure world to celebrate your awesomeness.

- Hire, train, and surgically alter a body double to represent yourself in dangerous situations. Additional costs for modifying it's genes to fool auspex scans.

To date, the strangest things I've had aquired in my game are:

-The RT ordering clone vats so that he can clone himself, lobotomise said clones then hand them over to the Explorator for turning into personal servitors. When asked why he wanted this , the RT player shrugged and simply said, "Narcisism."

-When they encountered the Administratum Oecconomica on Footfall, the seneschal made an aquisition roll to provide the Oecconomica with offices, more personel, a set of matching and appropriately ranked uniforms and forged passes that ensured they could pass as Administratum personel, all as a way of getting them as contacts for future dealings.

-A selection of unusual meats and creatures as a bribe to convince the Kroot mercs in Footfall to gather the rest of their Kindred in order to fill the barracks on board their ship.

-A lictor's scythe claw to be hollowed out and turned into a scabbard for the RTs power sword.

-A carnifex skull to replace the command throne on the bridge. The RTs obsession with adding skulls to his throne is now the basis of many a joke/investigation by the dynasties Inquisitorial contact.

-A selection of poets, rememberancers and iterators to follow the dynasty through the stars and make sure everyone knows how fantastic they are.

-What started as an aquisition for a weapon MIU for the astropath ended up as a endeavour to score a couple of dozen of them from the Mechanicum as the other players realised that Weapon MIU's are brilliant and that they and all their friends should have some.

-The navigator, having lost and arm to an Ebon Giest, thought about it for a while and decided that he needed three new cybernetic arms because 'four arms makes my job as a navigator easier' and noone argued. So the dual-limb shoulder augment was invented and aquired.

Our feral-world navigator got as his starting acquisition a giant vat-born bionic wolf for him to ride. He later had it augmented with a heavy flamer built into its mouth. It was a sad sad moment when after he went insane from a chaos artifact and attempted to murder the rest of the crew, the wolf was cornered and riddled with las-fire.

I've been petitioned with some rather odd ones recently:

• an iron tower with a throne room at the top, and 400 honest miners, to be buried in the tower's foundation. Said throne room was to be carefully aligned with an emplacement with a permanently set up high-powered rifle. The player wanted it for executions...
• Bionic eyes for every ship's officer, and one in every ten petty officers, along with vox and volitor implants. The group's seneschal reckoned that would be the best way to prevent mutiny, with as many potential mutineers as possible acting as walking surveillance cameras. He also wanted this to be kept secret from the crew (including the officers).
• A set of servitor implants, suitable for large sauroid creatures (carnosaurs at the smallest ).

Next session we're at port I'll be making rolls to hire a genealogist to track down the remaining living members of my bloodline. I'm playing a Navigator from a shrouded house and am starting on the long path to rebuild my family.