I am setting up a new Campaign surrounding the idea of a Penal Colony Ship. The ship itself will be crewed by a mix of Tech Priests (Ship Maintainers), Adeptus Arbites (using Arbitrator and Guardsmen careers), Clerics (Crew and Ship Chaplains, Prisoner's who have FOUND FAITH), Criminals (pretty much any non-psyker career) and the Senior Crew (including at least one astropath).

My question is, using the Dark Heresy Sanctioned Psyker, what is the easiest way to transfer over the Rogue Trader Astropath Transcendent abilites? I imagine, essentially it would be to take the Astropath Transcendent RT Career and turn it into a mixture of a Background Package and a Rank 1 alternate Sanctioned Psyker career rank.

Any suggestions?

My solution would be to simply import the Astropath directly from Rogue Trader. The only real issue here is that the Astropath is essentially a 5,000 point character. I forget which at the moment, but one of the RT books has some basic frameworks for converting the RT psy system over to the threshold-based DH system.

If you go with this you will have a character that starts with higher attributes but spends more XP to advance skills and talents, so the other characters should catch up and have a bit more versatility over time. Not exactly balanced, but it has the advantage of not re-inventing the wheel.

Some of the potential problems with making Astropath a psychic discipline are your rank 1 Astropath is in-fact not yet an Astropath at all, but merely a sanctioned "spooky guy". You also have the potential issue of Cross-discipline training: "Hmm, I think Jonas the Pyromancer is going to pick up some Astrotelepathy when he gains Psy Rating 4, that would be cool!" Be sure to include the Rite of Soul Binding in any conversion you brew up.

Just give the Psyker access to the Astropath Telepathy powers as it's first major Psychic talent instead of the usual blowing up stuff he can choose. The Psyker starts out as a lowly Astropath Choir member and has to prove that he got the power and control to be better.

Let the Astro-path come in as is but has to pay the difference in xp first ( Ie )all xp gains go into a hole untill the group catches up to his level.

After all who would willingly want to be assigned too or care about a penal vessels well being.