My current GM has ruled that the Navigator can not leave his/her sanctum during Warp travel, this makes any Warp born encounters incredibly boring for me as a player. I've skimmed the Rogue Trader book and Navigator section but can not find anything stating one way or another how the Navigator interacts with the ship during Warp travel. Every picture of a Navigator shows a myriad of cables and wires coming out of the back of their head and we have all assumed that this means they are physically connected to the ship during Warp travel. The sanctum would seem to be more a prison for anything more than a "short" Warp jump and would explain why they're so lavishly equipped. Is there anything in any of the books tha would give a concrete determination to their role during that time period?

The Navigator player in my game Aquired a MIU-controlled servo skull. When in warp transit, the servo skull wanders around the place, chatting with others. They've also set up hololithic displays on the Bridge of Antiquity so the Navigator and Astropath can both have a presence on the bridge.

Thankfully "Into the Storm" book clarifies that Navigators can Navigate the ship in shifts during long passages, to prevent burnout from exhaustion. Therefore, when something interesting (in the Chinese proverb sense of the word) happens during Warp transit, your Navigator might go and check it out while his junior underling (or alternatively his more competent master) continues to pilot the ship.

You could just out of the Warp and then have a look around.

The Navigator in the group I run has the Void Watcher power. I've ruled that this lets the Navigator view the PCs ship as well as others. The Astropath can also form a Telepathic network allowing communication between all PCs in a range that covers the whole ship.

In any ship-based encounter the Navigator typically retreats to the Sanctum and starts viewing the ship itself, using the power as a Divination/Augury combination. The other PCs will therefore have donned their armour and gone to confront the Warp Entity that's slipped through the Gellar Fields, while the Navigator will be in their heads telling them "It's close, maybe 100 metres down the corridor. Oh, there's also some crew trapped to your left, maybe 30 or 40, and it seems to have spotted them..."

The player has RPed the Navigator as having an active distaste for setting foot on the surface of a planet or leaving the luxurious Navigator Quarters. Of course, the when the Navigator finally did get into danger and the other PCs saw The Lidless Stare in action for the first time they suddenly started trying to drag the protesting Navigator on these dangerous "away team" missions...

Tantavalist said:

In all seriousness though, I had to put in a formal request with the RT to be brought planet side and I'm still left on the ship half the time while they scout the LZ to make sure nothing decides to nibble upon me post landing. It usually involves me listening to whatever combat happens over the ship vox and laughing my arse off while making food. The holoprojector and servo skull ideas are great and I'll be implementing them as soon as we get back to a port that can outfit the ship properly, with the RT's approval of course.

As we're already on the topic of Warp travel here's another question, can another ship be towed/lashed by/to the main ship to be safely taken through the warp? Say for example the smallest Warp capable cargo ship, just to prevent accidental debarking misshaps or mislandings.

Ale Golem said:

No official rulings on it, but clearly it must be possible or no ship could be salvaged unless it was crippled in a system that has a shipyard.

My house rule is to give a penalty to Navigation: Warp rolls equal to the base Hull Integrity of the ship being towed, increased or decreased for each point over or under that of the towing ship. So, a Vagabond Trader with 40 points towing a Havoc Raider with 30 points would have a -30 penalty for the ship being towed, which is reduced to -20 because the towing ship is 10 points "bigger". If the Raider tried to tow the Trader, it'd have a -40 penalty. A Cruiser can tow a smaller ship without even noticing, and trying to tow a Cruiser with something smaller isn't going to end well.

I also apply this penalty to the towing ship's Manoeuvrability score, and give a -1 to Speed for every full 10 points of penalty if these things become important (ie the ship is attacked while towing).

Wouldnt pay too much heed to artwork, 40k artists likes wires, bits of metal and skulls hanging out of everything, with little regard to practicality. As others have mentioned there is more than one navigator on a ship and its fairly easy to go kick someone awake to do the job of not crashing it into a major daemon or something. Navis are squirreled away for a couple of reasons though, firstly theyre mutants and normal people tend to want to set them on fire if they hang around too long in one spot and secondly, the sanctum is the one part of the ship when everything else is buttoned down- its openly visible to the warp and anyone not a navigator will go crazy in very short order.

It is important sometimes that the navigator goes for a wander when there is a problem on the ship, if anyone will see it, its a navigator which ends up fairly easily with +20 Awareness, Psyniscience and a Perception stat of about 60ish... then there's all those other fun little abilities which let you see levels of corruption, possessed people and then lets you blow up both people AND daemons.

Normally when there's a shipboard event, the party goes off to check it out, if we're lucky we'll just have to fix a geller field or something minor with the peons having a bit of a revolt, if we're unlucky my navigator will point at someone who's possessed or a hidden nasty critter in the darkness and jokingly expect the violent idiots with guns and power weapons to kill it. When their brains melt, they run screaming, lying on the ground passed out or painting the walls with their own poo... the navis is still standing there looking unimpressed, with her willpower of 63, her assloads of resistances and with a resigned sigh "deals" with the problem and then wanders back to the sanctum muttering about how pathetically inadequate her travelling companions are.

At some point, she's just going to servitor-ise two or three of the more useless 'baggage' ones and hook them up to a rickshaw or hover sled.

Ale Golem said:

Ale Golem said:

I made rules for Salvage Arks in my campaign; basically, modified Jericho transports that are capable of latching onto larger ships and projecting a much larger Geller field around the vessel being salvaged. Much of the ship's space is taken up with a lesser manufactorium and the engines, so they're rather fragile, but it's better than trying to restore your looted vessel to full function in the middle of nowhere or risking it becoming full of demons in the intervening journey.

Yeah, ships can be towed, it's mentioned in Battlefleet Gothic fluff that damaged ships were towed to repair facilities after battles. How it is accomplished? Who knows. But there definitely should be a penalty to Navigation (Warp) and Pilot checks, at least -10, I'd peg it even higher at -20. In my own game the party are trying to repair a cruiser they've salvaged, but because their own ship is too small to tow it, they've established a semi-permanent repair base nearby to gradually rebuild the cruiser into shape.