My main problem is this: RT and DH don't really play cleanly together, no matter how much any of us want it to. I've been staring at both books and the list of party members likely to volunteer for (or murder their way to) it...

I've already chain-sawed the rules by allowing the party's seneschal to become an Interrogator due to storyline reasons -- their Inquisitor was assassinated, no one else really wanted (or was suited, personality-wise, or attended consistently enough. So far it hasn't been pretty, but I'm working on coming up with rules for splashing RT characters to Interrogator/Inquisitor that are less suck-tastic than my quick-fix kludge I threw out there to test/use ...

I've always been more comfortable with the Inquisition side of the house, but with my plan to introduce a Warrant of Trade, I'm somewhat at a loss for crossing DH/Ascension characters into a Rogue Trader. No doubt, I'll figure something out before then, but I am very interested in any comments/advice you guys might have that could cut down on my development time... So far, out of all the characters, the party's psyker seems the most likely to be the recipient, as most of the other players don't want to be in a leadership position, or they don't make it to the games regularly enough to throw that kind of load on them.

So, anything helpful on non-suck ways to take a rank 8 pyromancer and splash her to Rogue Trader?

Astropaths don't normally become Rogue Traders. The strict origin path settings are on opposite sides of the chart and for good reason. If you've got a munchkin on your hands and you bend the rules a bit they could take the Wyrdling mutation and Wytch-born which gives them a psi rating of 3 I think.

I really don't think there's much in the way of compatibility for you there, though. The needed characteristics for both characters are way different, the skillsets are different.

A better idea would be to use one of the "alternative" campaign methods, the ones for when nobody wants to be the Rogue Trader. One of the examples is that the RT is an NPC who essentially replaces the Inquisitor boss who used to send the Acolytes out on suicide missions. They get the additional access to highly powerful resources, and maybe even the command of a ship in the service of the Trader, but are still mostly not masters of their own destiny.

Funnily enough my players DH characters acquired a warrant of trade and became rogue trader characters. Now, lacking the skills on their old career paths, i have allowed them to take a rogue trader class as well.

We have a Scum/Rogue Trader, Adept/seneschal, Psyker/missionary, Arbitor/missionary, Guardsman/arch-militant.

Basically they get the special ability and when they get xp they can choose to buy from either of their skill paths. They are up to about 8000 odd xp now and their career paths level up based on this xp (so they are rank 7 in their DH classes and rank 2 in their RT classes). When they get to ascension levels, their ascension classes will carry on from their DH classes as normal while their RT classes continue too.

Its a little more work for them to keep it all sorted but its worked well for us.

Fortinbras said:

I'm assuming I was unclear at this point: the characters in DH likely to get the warrant is an Imperial Psyker, not an Astropath. I'm actually quite happy none of my players have tried to munchkin their way through things. I'd played with the idea of a storyline path similar to what you've suggested, but trading one master for another really doesn't accomplish the same level of internal party conflict that I'm aiming for. Our seneschal/interrogator has already started to realize that if one of our other characters obtains a warrant, that internal politics will become 'interesting' as who is more loyal to who? Warrants of trade being what they are, it'll be an interesting thing none-the-less.

As for Gribble's idea, I don't know why it didn't hit me to try and run things that way... I guess primarily because in the RT->DH/AS conversion, the RT (Seneschal going Interrogator/Inquisitor) had a much larger XP pool and the DH levels were much, much smaller. I'll have to see about that, as I'd started using another suggestion I'd seen on the boards with reducing XP costs by 100 for everything to a minimum of 100 for RT-based classes. Meh, What a kludge. Makes me wish that FFG would get their crap together and at the very least give us some errata on making this possible, or roll out DH/RT v2.0 with more compatibility built in.

The Astropath Transcendent is the only Psy-capable career in Rogue Trader.

Fortinbras said:

True, per my original post, this is more a discussion of giving a RT Warrant of Trade to a Dark Heresy Imperial Psyker.... the idea of posting it here was to see if anyone had any ideas on how to try to do it fairly cleanly without making a mockery of the ruleset. Who better to ask such a question than the folks who run RT games, right?

Personally, while it might be odd, there's nothing to stop an Imperial Psyker from claiming a Warrant of Trade so long as she's legally eligible (or even mandated, depending on the Warrant) I mean, it isn't like the Warrant has some sort of psy-reactive coating that eats into their nervous system... hm. Well, I'm pretty sure that's not the case, but now that I've thought of it, my players might want to stop poking at every odd thing they come across

Simply having a Warrant of Trade does not give you the Rogue Trader class it is a piece of paper (literally).

If a Warrant of Trade with the dynasties ship were to fall to a Psyker for whatever reason.. say he/she was the last remaining scion the rest of the heirs having died off suddenly. They would be a Rogue Trader though not have the class or the skills.

The way we have handled it is like alternate career paths (start their new career at level one reset exp but not advances). The Warrant of Trade is the dividing line. If they choose to..

As I'm fond of winging the hell out of everything, while at the same time trying to keep things believable to an extent, I was planning on using one of a few different approaches to make sure that the Warrant would be applicable to one of the characters and valid. Character rules-wise, that was roughly where I was planning on going with it .

As for truly and legally valid, I was planning on making it so, but that doesn't mean at some point someone isn't going to challenge their Warrant's legitimacy and they have to back it up. I doubt any of my players understand exactly what a Warrant is, or what it does, or how it does it. I've been dropping hints to various players between games, hoping they'll pay attention when they find it. If they prepare enough, or hell, if they actually ask me to write a sample of the warrant down so they can study the language, then I'll be happy enough. Either way, you're right, just having the paper doesn't make you a RT (though technically if you act like one, etc with a false warrant, I'd probably give you the RT class with a Trait like "False Trader - The character has a terrible secret - Their Warrant of Trade is a fraud upon the Imperium. If this is ever discovered, they'll likely be put to death by any of the Adeptus."