I have runned a DH campaign for a little more than a year, and the DH characters are somewhere between 5000-6000 XP.

I am considering to let a player join the campaign with a character career from the RT rule book. As such I like the Rogue Trader setup and I am inclined to let them get a ship eventually and roam the galaxy and try some frontier exploring.

But the issue I am running into is that a rank 1 career is really starved on skills/talents. And on top of that they come much more expensive than they do for their DH counterparts.

I know RT is a different setting than DH, and in a real RT game you would have profit factor, and a ship full of people to command. But a DH character in a rogue trader environment would have the same access.

So in order to make the RT career a little more comparable to a DH career I am thinking on moving the RT rank requirements one level down, so a level 2 RT career is from 5000 to 6999 xp. Rank 1 will then be 4500 to 4999 xp (for the starting xp). Keep the costs for skills / talents the same. This should allow RT careers to actually have a decent skills/talents choice from the get go, instead of being forced to spend the majority of their first 2500 xp on stats. Interesting choices is what makes the game after all.

Anyone with experience of mixing RT and DH who can comment on this?

Thanks in advance!

I have found that the games mix VERY badly. The biggest problems come from the sheer number of Skills and Talents available to DH characters for much lower cost than for RT characters. There is a break-even point thanks to the greater Characteristic levels of RT characters, but past this point the DH characters will soar past the RT characters in their areas of skill. Once you dip into Ascension, the DH characters can go way beyond the capabilites of RT characters in ways that really hurt the game. The other balancing factor - that RT characters have better wargear - falls away quickly in any mixed game unless it's artificially enforced ("No, your Dynasty is unable to get Best-craftsmanship weapons and armour for the Acolytes... it's somewhere in your Warrant."). Again, if the DH characters have Ascension-level gear, this breaks things wide open..

HappyDaze could you please elaborate regarding the breakeven point? Like aproxemately how many xp to reach the point?

Possible solutions to the inbalance?

The breakeven point is really hard to find because it's going to be different for each Career. The best thing to do is to rewirte the DH careers from a RT PoV, giving them greater starting Characteristics, Skills, and Talents, as well as allowing for an Origin Path (modified as appropriate) but then having them advance at the same rate as the RT careers. This means charging 200 or 500 xp for most Skills and Talents rather than 100 or 200 xp. Sanctioned Psykers are another can of worms. The DH and RT psyker rules are not really all that compatible with one another, and with DW following the RT model, I'd like to see the DH system revamped to do the same. Lastly, do not use anything from Ascension in a Rt game without considering carefully just how likely it is to screw up the game.

HappyDaze thank you for the answer.

I see your point and guess it could work the other way around too if the majority of characters is DH; substracting 5 from each stat of the RT character, give it a bag of 5k xp and have every skill/talent cost 100 xp less though minimum 100xp a piece. Perhaps only the first 3-6 sound constritution at the lowered price depending on career. Then let the ranks be diveded similar to the DH characters.

Perhaps even allowing ascending in a similar way as DH characters?

Sure.

The important thing is to have all of the characters using the same general starting point (re: characteristics, skills, talents, etc.) and then to make sure that the advancement costs are on the same level. I personally wish that all of the WH40K were truly 100% compatible across the three lines, but that's just not the case.

In the meantime, I'm going to start creating RT-compatible Adept, Assassin, and Interrogator (becomes an Inquisitor after the Agent of the Throne Elite Advance from ItS) careers. When I'm feeling particularly enthusiastic, I'll try reworking the Sanctioned Psyker and rebuilding the appropriate Powers into RT-compatible Techniques. That last is going to be a good while off...

The Rogue Trader careers as a whole need to be rewritten almost entirely if you want them to be balanced with the DH/Ascension careers.

The easiest hotfix is to base the RT character off the DH career path, tack on the class skill for however much xp, and run with it.

HappyDaze said:

I would like to see what you come up with. Sounds like a big project.

In my group the situation is reversed, as it is about taking a RT career and get it to mix with current DH characters.

We have talked about it a bit, and currently we are testing the following house rules:

1. Subtract 5 from each stat the RT character starts with (to put them even with DH starting stats).
2. Subtract 100xp from all talent/skill costs, to a minimum of 100xp.
3. Start with zero xp and follow the DH rank progression table (with the usual 400 starting xp etc).

The few test characters I have made so far looks good.

Stupid forum interface...

Alox said:

It is a big project, and with the end of the year looming ahead and the need to cram in a few CEUs, I'm probably only going to have the Assassin worked up anytime soon. I'll put it up when I can.