I have read the core book a couple of times and a simple detail just makes no sense or at least has not connected with me and your help would be great help. The bonus Achievement Points that components grant are they applied at the per objective level or at the end of the Endeavour? This was not as clear with me since an endveavour does not seem to have themes but objectives do. The follow up question is if it is at the objective level do the bonuses granted by the compmonents stack per each objective they apply to?

Asajev said:

It's a bonus applied per objective. By RAW all applicable bonuses are added to the Objective's Achievement Points and tallied up. Personally I only allow Components relative to the endeavour's main theme (A colossal Main Cargo Hold in one of your freighters is of no practical use if you're only negotiating trade terms with a planetary governor, for example) to apply their bonuses.

So the answer to your questions are that they're applied when you undertake the objective, and they do stack when feasible.

Yes that is one of the main problems i have woth the Bonus achievement points. (rant might follow)

Having a second ship be an extra cheap transport and have it show up when a trade endeavour is involved. 4 Main cargo holds give 5 PF (500 bonus achievemnt points in theory). Seriously???? They buy a transport and can skyrocket their winnings simply like that. Salvaging the ship from the adventure in the core rulebook is worth 3 PF (plus a small bonus). Having any trade objective present would allow the PCs to net 5 PF. Nope doesnt seem balanced in my book.

In effect i tend to ignore bonus PF, and rather use the components to allows certain endeavours to happen. Eg without barracks conquering a planet is simply not possible. Having a Stom trooper detachment is ok regardless of present barracks or not, but without them (the barracks) the RT wont have enough troops to pacify a planet successfully.

Voronesh said:

Thing is, you're supposed to be getting extra achievement points on an Endeavour - the listed/default PF gains from Endeavours are the starting point, and that's all. If you look at Lure of the Expanse, a quick flick through the Achievement Points offered throughout the campaign (which is one big Grand Endeavour, worth only 3-5 PF naturally) offers up nearly 4500 achievement points, a little under 1500 more than the minimum required to succeed... before you add component bonuses. That's an increase of 19 Profit Factor.

As a GM running Rogue Trader, you should be providing as many opportunities to earn additional achievement points as possible, to let the players turn their efforts, risks and choices into extra wealth. Starship components and their bonuses are part of that.

Ahh yes depending upon the campaign you want to play. (I do consider Lure of the expanse a very bad example though. Starting with RTs being semi forced to commit heresy and using the option of an air strike via Valkyries to kill the Eldar Farseer)

But simply adding bonus PF onto said ships and grinding a few adventures of said type will net you a huge amount of PF, my problem is not a grand endeavour, getting 20+PF from that is ok. My problem is doing a miniscule endeavour like transporting stuff from A a to B. SOmething that you can play within 3-4 hours easily. And then claiming +6 PF for so little work. 1 PF for the endeavour and +5 PF from the cargo hold. The starting adventure only gives out 5 PF or so for looting a grand cruiser shock full of good stuff. Getting some medical supplies to a colony in the epxanse (in time) is apparently as profitable.

The problem herein lies not with the system as a total, but rather the fact that trade boni are so easy to get. Never let your PCs get their hands on a Universe. They can transport medical supplis from before and easily claim 10+ PF (somebody once mentioned getting 16+ PF if you psuh it) for that. And that would not include any defeated enemies along the path etc.

If we would be talking about full blown war, the Boni are harder to get, and they involve far more danger. It makes way more sense at that point. Exploration Boni are also pretty well done. You can claim some extra PF, but not such high amounts.

Voronesh said:

Which is why you work Misfortunes into the process. They're covered at the end of the Playing the Game chapter of the rulebook, and additional, more specific examples are provided in Edge of the Abyss... their whole point is to provide a means to reduce a group's PF (something I've not yet done in my own campaign, as the group started off with a PF in the 20s, so I'm holding back while they get properly established) and potentially diverting them from profit-making activities to deal with problems arising (which may itself have costly repercussions for them).

Ahhh yes very true. No i havent missed that part of the rules. But yes when starting with 20 PF aquiring anything is far too hard. I consistently fail to aquire a suit of power armour. But i could melt all the red dot laser sights into one.... AKA If it looks like a fun item the aquisition roll is bound to be a one, when its about increasing ones survival chance pfff......(Bad dice, bad dice, one of you must be sacrificed to Tzeentch soon)

I guess it was having too much of a rant against the ease with which one can stack trade bonus points as opposed to other stuff.

But then again im also impressed with the strange crew numbers in correlation to ship scale etc. All the stuff that seems ok at first glance and doesnt make any sense when really thinking about it.

Not all objectives have to have a type. If the endeavour is just a haul cargo from A to B, it is fine for only one of the objectives to have a trade type.

Heck, if the objective is easy enough, you could make a case that none of the objectives have a type. then it is a straight +1 PF. Or you could make it that each objective shorts the needed points by some value, and the bonus points are needed just to make the endevour succeed.

As an example, a Haul from A to B lesser endevour (900 points needed) could be

Objective 1: (trade): get cargo 200 points

Objective 2 (none): Avoid pirates. 300 pts, +100 pts if pirate ship captured

Objective 3 (trade, creed): Deliver cargo (200 pts). Complication: local ecclesiarchy wants the cargo delivered to them. Allows creed type to be used, makes the points 300 instead of 200, and annoys the local govenor (-10 to interaction with local government)

Now, with a 100 pt trade bonus, and a 100 point creed bonus the PF=+1 if they players just deliver the goods, to PF=+4 should the pirate be captured and the cargo delivered to the ecclesiarchy.

Voronesh said:

If you really want the armour, burn a couple points of PF

Not with my rolls.

Its kinda like a 80+ in most cases. Power armour cant make me burn that much PF. The Arch Militant got a Digi-melter last time around. Ill have to start crafting my own. Being a Techpriest it should work out. Damaged pieces of power armour should be alot cheaper than a working set?

I just found antoher strange component. The trophy room. Ruleswise itll hand out +50 to trade, criminal and creed. If you dont care about the 4 halo barges (probably larger vessels), you can get a vastly superior effect than a compartimentalized cargo hold for less space by dishing oout one SP and one power point.

The system works, if as a GM you keep invoking common sense. But the table top power gamer in me screams crazy at all this. (Read: So easy to abuse its not even funny).

Im just complaining about the rules as written. I know its kinda like saying that Matt Ward cant write a good codex to save his life.

In a RPG the GM and the group as a collective mind can agree on alot of stuff to improve the playing experience.

My gripe is, why cant the rules be written so i dont have to make up houserules? Lances are just the example with the biggest thread up on the front. There are other things that feel strange.

Voronesh said:

Try not powergaming. Then the number of rules you have to make up will be less.

Beyond that, any first edition rules set is going to be quirky. When you only have a few guys developing the game and a few playtesters, it is natural that some things slip by, and that some things end up not tested. It isnt really suprising that somethings dont work well

Hm.. GMs foot down on some occasions might not be the worst thing here.

But even if not, while it's true that trade bonuses are easy to get, they also carry a certain risk. There is no other endeavour, save maybe a direct military action against a well known and connected power group, that will catch the interest of as many potential adversarial parties as a trade endeavour will. Pirates will be after your cargo, trade houses and other rogue traders either feeling you trespass on their territory or wanting a cut on the profits themselves... That simple "haul cargo from A to B" might end up being not exactly as easy as originally assumed.

In the end it's all about balance and the GM will always have a way to throw a monkey wrench in the works of his players, if he feels they are taking it too far. And without resorting to unnecessary evil or far-fetched measures that is, just letting them face some consequences of their prior decisions.

korjik said:

Im of a mind to try to break a system and then fill in the holes. After that the ride should be much smoother. Once i GM it should allow me to circumvent most "too easy to powergame" loopholes. Maybe its a tabletop thing. Do you know the 40k sentence of:

Yes what you say makes perfect sense and follows real world physics; but is it legal with the ruleset?

Next example Shadowblind bays. Take up more space and are inferior to a cargo hold and lighter bay paired with a trophy room. Unless you really want to have that 3 maneuverability.

Spoiler alert for edge of the abyss adventure!

Having just read the Edge of Abyss adventure. It seems fun (unless you have a semi puritan Explorator with you, then its going to be really funny), until i hit the 3rd part. First if you kill the Eldar you are probably dead and after reading Lure of the expanse where all Eldar must be killed it felt strange actually having survival depend on the need not to kill her. And the final Monster has a soak of 20. So if one didnt bring heavy weapons or a melter/plasgun at minimum, you cant really kill that beast (let me roll righteous fry please), to top it off it does enough damage to kill most PCs within a single turn of attacking.

After reading the stats for that thing i though: Must buy everybody a Power armour of at least good quality. Must always carry Lascannon with the group. If i am totally missing something on how to kill it in a different way (relying on the others to finally kill it doesnt count), please elighten me. I felt stumped when reading that adventure for a potential playthrough.

Voronesh said:

Well, you can only have one Trophy Room according to the errata and more than one cargo hold, so that's something. Plus I think there is some shuffled stats between the Cargo Hold and Lighter Bay and the Compartmentalized Cargo Hold. It would make more sense for the compartmentalized hold to have Hidden Spaces since it is spread all over the ship, and thus the Cargo Hold and Lighter Bay would get the bigger bonus of Storage Area to offset Unbalanced. The respective power/space requirements would probably be flipped then, but then everyone would simply get two Compartmentalized Holds since they would be clearly superior. I believed they "fixed" the problem with a solution contrary to the fluff rather than making some other adjustments or writing new text.

Maybe +1 profit factor for every 100 achievement points is the problem. After all, a lesser endeavor that requires 900 achievement points only nets 1 or 2 profit factor. The "money on the side" from excess achievement points probably shouldn't outstrip the profit made from the main goal of an endeavor. If you change it to the more reasonable +1 PF per 1000 achievement points you run into the problem of bonus achievement points very rarely making the threshold of 1000 achievement points in a single endeavor. This has a simple solution however, just have bonus achievement points carry over from endeavor to endeavor and grant +1 PF whenever it exceeds 1000. If you find this makes it take too long to increase profit factor, you should probably increase the rather low rewards for actually completing endeavors rather than making the system easier to game.

Opinions regarding bonus achievement points:

My first endeavour net a bonus of 10 or so PF, and then I finally realize the mistake. Those bonus should only be gained if we effectively use the component in completing an objective (not endeavour, but Objective).

Universe Mass ship with those massive cargo hold, that yield extra 500 points (5 PF) should only receive the bonus, if we use all of the cargo hold; which, according to the text, took months to load and months to offload.

Just my opinions though.

Ahh thanks for that hint.

I guess i missed that part of the errata.

But your ideas abour the achievement points sounds pretty great. Yes why should money on the side be more than that money, which one is trying to gain.

Voronesh, there is another way to defeat the monster at the end of Edge of the Abyss. My players dispatched it handily - Rogue Trader dual wielding Powerfist & Powersword with lightning attack. Between parries, dodges, rerolled dodges, and a conversion field, the RT waxed it without taking a wound. Note to self, hire tougher monsters!

Cheers,

- V.

I find it helps level the playing field on both sides to make Dodging an opposed test. Degrees of success on the hit determine the difficulty of the Dodge test.

Errant said:

One thing to watch out for with this is that it makes the Eldar (and Genestealers and a few other inhumanly agile ones) much, much better at avoiding harm - having Unnatural Agility (x2), they get +2 Degrees of Success on Opposed Agility Tests of all kinds.

N0-1_H3r3 said:

Unless said NPC is vitally important for the adventure. Then ofc the Storm Bolter will instantly kill said Eldar (eg Edge of the abyss). If you are talking about the masses of foot troops a Dark Eldar army throws out, then youre right, no PC will ever hit.

Murphys law ^^.