I help GM for a group of friends that have only played a few (5) sessions. So far they have done fairly well, managing to capture a Dauntless light cruiser.

Not bad with just using the Firestorm frigate that they started with. Well now to the part I want some advice with. Two of the guys that are in the group play the mini game and want to fight Necrons. I know enough to realize that table top and RPG don't mix well. Fluff wise a Necron raider would crush both of their ships without taking much (any) damage. I tried to steer them towards an opponent that doesn't require a minor battle fleet and a company of marines as backup, but they convinced the rest that it will be 'fun'. So I want some advice to see if any other groups have experience with void battles with Necrons, ground battles would be a plus. As of i go through with it i'm of the mind to have a couple flayed ones teleport onto their bridge for CQB during the engagement.

Have them negotiating with some system, where their ship is much more powerful than the locals, but the locals have things that can't be taken by force*. Things are going smoothly, until there is a sudden flare of light and radio from out of system (as if a really big explosion went off). The locals, having facilities spread across their system, quickly triangulate the source to a point lightmonths, maybe a lightyear or two away.

Negotiations halt when the locals demand that the players, having a ship more powerful than their entire fleet, go there and find out what happened or the deal is off.

When the players get there, they find a massive graveyard. Lots of wrecks belonging to one group (most destroyed before the flare), getting increasingly melted as the players get closer to a shrinking warp rift (the flare was a desperation move where someone dumped a lot of energy from the warp into realspace) which is disrupting Astropathic communication.

One of the ships has an active distress signal and looks more intact than the others. A good place to look to figure out what happened here, as well as a likely spot for high value salvage. When the players get close, a green beam leaps out from a nearby wreck and destroys their warp engines, and they detect the Necron ship (with easily seen gaping holes) moving away until it's hidden among the wrecks.

The players need to salvage a warp drive from the fleet to escape. The Necrons don't want anyone leaving, as it might mean the players come back with help before the Necron ship can repair it's FTL. But the Necrons aren't sure if they will win a straight fight, so they will try to stay hidden unless they think the players have a way to leave. After all, the Necrons can outlast the players food supplies.

Could be fun and, since the Necron ship is damaged, you can tone its power down to a manageable level.

*I'm thinking lots of valuable minerals. Getting the locals to handle all the labour will drastically cut costs, anger the locals and they can blow up the mining operation while the RT ships are elsewhere.

Famous last words:

"Two of the guys that are in the group play the mini game and want to fight Necrons."

Necron vessels are a BIT much for any single Imperial vessel, see 'Necron assault on Sol system / Mars'.

The above idea is very plausible - if the necron are damaged but why bother with a green beam just have your adepts in the enginarium start screaming they are under attack - the necron can latch onto the hull with a pylon (floating in space - launched like a boarding torpedo) and start porting over troops to board and take the shi.

If the pylon is found and detached/destroyed - the boarding attack can be stopped and the hunt for the necron ship is on.

Good luck fighting necrons.

bobh said:

Fair question. Some possible answers:

- The warp did it .

- No boarding torpedos remain functional.

- The Necrons teleporter is inoperative. So any troops that are destroyed over there can't be recovered.

- Even though damaged Necron forces do teleport away, they still need to be repaired, and this ship already has lots of repairs it needs to perform. So the functional troops are being held back to defend against a boarding action.

- There are no troops that can be pulled away from repair work. To the point that the operational combat troops are also taking part in repairs.

- This whole incident is occurring in deep space, not inside a star system. With no local star, there is nothing preventing the players ship from attempting a blind jump. Then there is the risk of the players repeating the flare that nearly destroyed them in the first place. So their warp engine needs to be taken out ASAP, shooting it quicker than boarding, with lots of damaged systems the Necrons power supply has spare capacity, and they don't care if they accidentally blow up the players ship.

No advice, but there are stats for Tomb Spyders and Wraiths in The Emperor Protects for Deathwatch. Might give you some ideas on how to stat some things up.

The badly damaged necron ship is a good place to start. The thing is that ship would be calling for help, and since it would need to be an escort as even a light cruiser thats more or less a wreck stands a good chance of crippling them right off the bat. Since escort don't travel that far alone eventually more of them or if they are really unlucky a Tomb Ship is going to show up and then all the fate points in the world are not going to help them. That said I am toying with the idea of there not being a ship at all. Maybe some locals know of an area with lots of wrecks that is haunted, in fact it would be wraiths that got left behind or where being studied aboard a AdMech ship that got loose. Either way since they don't need air or food plus can phase through the hull I think they would make an awsome 'ghost' without being related to the warp. The group avoids warp related things as the last run in with it was a chaos marine psyker, who left the PC's rogue trader more augmetic then the explorator.

Ravager said:

A couple of justifications as to why help doesn't arrive for the Necron ship:

- The nearest awake Necron ships are too far away to get there in time to matter.

- This ship has it's FTL communication destroyed, so it can't call for help.

- The Necron forces here are recently awoken*. They don't know anything about the living, nor have they had any communication with any other Necron forces since before they went to sleep. All they know is that their base was placed between the stars to make it hard to find, and that ships of the living somehow found and destroyed it**. They don't know if the living can hear their comms, so they are keeping silent to make sure they don't attract any more living ships.

*I've seen a few people say that the dates given for when Rogue Trader is set are a few centuries before the first incident the Imperium can connect with the Necrons.

**Sounds like the Eldar tricked the wrecked fleet into this conflict.

as even a light cruiser thats more or less a wreck stands a good chance of crippling them right off the bat.

What about half the wreck of a light cruiser ?

Fun image: Because the Necrons are trying to repair themselves ASAP, they have been taking working parts from the other wrecks. Since they are incompatible with Necron tech, they can't do any more than the equivalent of nailing it to their hull and sending a minion in to operate it. So the Necron ships propulsion is clearly the back half of one of the other ships.

Now that might be fun. I can see it now a merchant/Jackal hybrid, all the room for cargo and the fire power of a light cruiser. Now that I think about it do Necron ships even have any thing in them except for an engine and weapons? I mean they have room for some warriors i would think, but aside from that i am not even sure if they have a bridge. They obviously do not need life support. Suppose it would be unimportant as I can add one if I want it to have it.

Ravager said:

Try introducing them to an impressive Imperial Navy battlegroup and send them to rendezvous at an unmarked system near the Processional. Due to a slight warp disturbance by howling warp ghosts scrabbling on your gellar field, your Rogue Trader arrives 3 days late with the no sign of the battlegroup. They detect a naval salvation beacon in a debris field only to discover the debris field is the remains of the battlegroup. The warp ghosts are of course the crewmen of the destroyed battlegroup driven mad by fear. I strongly recommend that any Astropaths not already gone mad should be profusely bleeding from the eyes as long as they remain the system. The Navigators should see that the Warp roils strangely in this system. Be very very generous with Insanity Points. Play up the palpable mindraping aura of fear as they go deeper into the system. An eerie silence of despair pervades among the crew as if they have given up hope and life itself. Other effects include fatigue points (they can't sleep), suicides, mental pressure and forgetfulness (-10 to all tests).

If they stlll insist on hanging around, let their final warning be the from Astropath screaming "Liberate tute me ex infernis". Although this line probably fits Chaos better, you get the picture. Do not let them walk away with thinking that Necrons are just Egyptian-Zombie-Space-Robots with sweet ships.

guest469 said:

This is so much pure win I may have to use that somehow.

@BilateralRope

Have them negotiating with some system, where their ship is much more powerful than the locals, but the locals have things that can't be taken by force*. Things are going smoothly, until there is a sudden flare of light and radio from out of system (as if a really big explosion went off). The locals, having facilities spread across their system, quickly triangulate the source to a point lightmonths, maybe a lightyear or two away.

Negotiations halt when the locals demand that the players, having a ship more powerful than their entire fleet, go there and find out what happened or the deal is off.

You do realize that this stuff would have happened a year ago then? I'm just asking...

Cifer said:

That's correct. Plenty of time for the melted wrecks to cool, even with the insulation of hard vacuum.

I have hit on the idea of the PC's arriving in system and heading to a planet with a distress beacon from a high ranking =][= coming from the surface. Once arriving they find the ruins of several large battles and a blasted city. They get down to the surface and Necrons use a stasis field on the ship so they will have to go across the surface of the planet and disable the emitters all the while avoiding Necron patrols and using stealth. Maybe have them bring along a company or two of mercs just so they can be crushed by the Crons as an example of how fighting them is a bad idea.

Necrons are horribly terrible things to inflict on Rogue Trader crews. I borrowed some of the necron rules from Deathwatch (specifically a couple tomb spiders) and used them as guardians in a Xenos tomb complex that the crew was raiding (they looted some one shot self guiding planet buster bombs that they plan on using to shatter Solemnium VII into an asterorid belt) and lemme tell ya....two tomb spiders **** near wiped out a very well equipped and exceptionally well organized Rogue Trader team.

I cannot imagine what a necron SHIP would do to an 'average' Rogue Trader vessel. probably something very unfair and rules breaking.

weaver95 said:

The same thing a few Necron vessels did to the Sol defense net and Mars. They got in and had boots on the ground before they could be stopped.

The same thing a few Necron vessels did to the Sol defense net and Mars. They got in and had boots on the ground before they could be stopped.

And considering Necrons aren't even wearing boots, that's really saying something.

Sort of why I was trying to steer them into something else. If they want it they shall receive. I am just going to have to write down what happens once the first PC gets flayed. Now that gets to another thing, I need to create a crit table just for gauss weapons. Going to need to en vest in bionics since most of the rolls will be 'the character is bathed in sickly energy and horribly flayed layer by layer leaving nothing left' or 'nicked by beam, roll to see missing limb'.

Slaugth Necrotic Beams have a "Disintegrate" trait:

"Any victim suffering Critical Damage from this weapon is blasted into a cloud of dust and vapour and completely destroyed."

I strongly suspect that these are some variant of Gauss weapon

Ravager said:

A crit table for Gauss weapons would be simple:

Arm:

1+: The characters arm is bathed in a sickly green glow and disintegrated. He loses the arm and is now suffering from blood loss* from his open stump.

Leg:

1+: The characters leg is bathed in a sickly green glow and disintegrated. He loses the leg and is now suffering from blood loss* from his open stump.

Head:

1+: 1+: The characters head is bathed in a sickly green glow and disintegrated. Characters who can somehow survive the loss of their head are now suffering from blood loss.

Body:

1+: The entire character is enveloped in a sickly green glow which disintegrates him completely.

*There is no thermal effect, so nothing to close the wound.

i had my group run into a small necron tomb with a burried ship. after the group faiiled to down one single necron warrior they wisely decided to go with the better part of valor and run away. they didnt even try to engage the ship that was emerging.

they had gotten a bit cocky after beating everything to easilly so i had em run into something hard, tho it is a plot to be used later.