I know this has been brought up before but the search function isn't the greatest so I could not find what I wanted to know.

So my gaming group will be starting a rogue trader campaign soon and some players want to bring their DH characters over. I have no problem with this but as I looked over my new rule book I could not help but notice that sound constitution costs double in rogue trader and that most DH characters will have more starting wounds than most rogue trader characters. My question is how does this affect balance between the 2 systems, obviously having not played rogue trader yet I am unaware of any advantages that rogue trader rules give to character builds. The problem is that many of my PC's are hesitent to start new rogue trader characters do to the fear they will be under powered. Anything I can say to ease their fears.

There have been an number of posts about this early when Rogue trader was released. There are a few differences between Dark Heresy Charactes and Rogue Trader characters. Generally Dark Heresy Characters are going to have more varied skills that the starting Rogue Trader characters. However, the Rogue Trader Characters benefit from the profit stats that is introduced and is critical to the Rogue Trader and his crew. Generally a Rogue Trader is going to have better equipment, and the benefits of being a member of a Rogue Trader houses, namely a starship and his minions aboard. There are a number of house rules out there is you want to allow your characters to transition to a Rogue Trader Class. In the short term the Dark Heresy characters will be better at skill checks and have more combat talents available to them. Rogue Traders characters get some good bonuses from character creation, but will really shine with the number of toys they start with.

Salcor

In our campaign we spend some time on this.

If the DH characters becomes part of a RT crew and get access to all the gear and stuff and in general will be playing along side RT characters with equal rights, you are going to find that the DH characters ranks about twice as fast as the RT characters without having any gear downside. So the simple solution is to award the RT character twice as much xp as the DH characters, to allow them a somewhat equal skill/talent progression rate. There is a lot of discussion about sound constitution / universal weapon skills / psy powers, but going to balance those in detail will bloat your house rules up to incredible size.

I predict that the situation might change when DH characters arrives at ascension. We have not looked into this.

In conclusion, mixing the games so the careers can play along side each other is not straight forward, so your players needs to be in on this idea and be willing to test it out.

A less quick and simple way is this:

Changes:
Add +5 to all starting profile stats of the DH character at creation
If they start with a Basic Weapon Training, Pistol Weapon Training or Melee Weapon Training change those to Universal
Use the Rogue Trader XP Track for the DH Careers

On XP:
With the exception of Rank 1

Everything which costs 100xp costs 200xp
Any Talent which costs more is 500xp

Equipment:
Give them better equipment....

Now the character should be basically equal...

Other:
Tech Priest, oh just use Explorator
Cleric/SoB, just use Missionary
Guardsman, just use Arch Militant
Psyker, Start at Psy Rating 2 (yes you suck)

Mind you this is a rough estimate....

That's interesting, Santiago. Have you tried it out in play, yet?

No, I haven't, it might use some balancing but I think its about equal...

Im still amazed that the FFG design team made the ranks between Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy so different. Overall it is the same system, but XP costs, starting skills/talents, rank structure are so different.

@Peace_Keeper:

Do you think the system I proposed would work...you being?

Santiago said:

Yes, I went the other route though (adapting RT for DH not DH for RT) and I cut the RT costs by 1/2 down to averages of 100XP, 200XP and 300XP advances and listed there starting skills/talents as prerequisites to enter into the RT Careers as Alternate Career Ranks.

My only question is what would be the special abilities of the DH Characters be,I really liked the talents for the RT characters , I just wonder what They would be for DH Characters in RT

by comparison between the two systems skill charts, rogue trader has the slight lead in that their starting skills start at trained instead of basic. RT characters as stated start with better equipment. The weapons talents for RT were also condensed to include all weapons in that class with the exeption of exotic. DH still has to purchase each individual talent. if the DH character has more wounds thats fine, just put him up front with you minions.

I would honestly just start the DH characters at a lower exp, they level alot quicker and if started at 5000 they totally overpower the RT ones so just start them worse, explain that the benifit is that they get better quicker and be done with it. IMO a 3000exp DH character is already better than a starting RT one anyway due to not "spending" exp on stat advances that they dont need.

Kaihlik

I would think that the DH would be effectively useless aboard a capital ship save for the occasional ratting duty, guard posting, or psy-based use. Example; Ship Watch Officer: "Shift power from engine bay generator two to main port thrusters before we're at impact with that incoming torpedo!!" Player Character: "What? This control station just has a bunch of blinking lights and dials. Do it yourself." I kid, of course but the idea would be pretty practical if done correctly and with the appropriate character type. Btw, happy new year in a few depending on time zone and date line.

In my next Rogue Trader campaign I'll likely allow Dark Heresy careers. However, to keep things more in scale I'm going to have all the Dark Heresy characters created using the Rogue Trader origin path. I'll just replace the Rogue Trader careers with the ones from Dark Heresy, and make all Weapon Training Talents universal.