Ran my first ship combat this evening.

The rogue trader frigate with twin dorsal macrocannon against what i thought would be a terrifying for in the form of a frigate armed with fore melta cannon and a dorsal lance. My expectation was that this short range combatant would give the PCs a serious run for their money maybe set fire to them a bit and leave them battered and bleeding.

Thanks to some spectacularly poor rolls on my part, the challenge failed to land a single hit on the PCs vessel past the void shields.

They hulked it in 4 space combat rounds. The PC's are rank 1, they don't have much in the way of skills and yet...

Now they have a greatly damaged although salvageable spare frigate.

...

My dicerolls are spectacular... either critical success or critical failure. If I'm to use the rules at all there's a risk I'll drop my players into hotter water than they can possibly handle. So... throw danger at them and see what happens or just provide them with more ships to capture for their glory?

Actually it is really up to you (and the players), what kind of game that all of you would like to play.

If you guys would like to do some 'exploration', then go with the Space Hulk encounter. Who knows of the survivors, mutants, or even daemons inside the ship. Who knows maybe inside the ship exists a minor Halo Artefact? Who knows that actually inside the ships there are some Inquisition's acolyte in a mission?

Or, if you'd like to simply annex the ship to them, well since it is already spacehulked, they will need to 'tow' them to refit. Or need to separate the crews to man the hulk. Furthermore, surely they need to recruit more people. If you guys enjoy lots of roleplaying, it is a chance to roleplay the recruitment.

But if your group tendency is kicking the door, then simply annex them, roll some Acquisition, and continue the game (but now they have two ships, ready to acquire more).

Just my opinions, hope that helps.

lysdexic of hollow said:

You could roll your dice secret and shift some rolls slightly to better suit your story.
Just don't do it too often and too much against your players.

My RT campaign started something like that; I put then against 2 pirate raider ships, they ended up capturing one (with critical hits only getting their power plant 'unpowered') and then after interrogating the pirate captain, they are now the owner of a brand new old pirate hidden space station

Unfortunately you have come up against one of the more regretable parts of RT ship combat, lances suck.

As for the captured ship, don't sweat it to much. A badly broken ship can take ages to repair, refit and recrew. Heck, getting it back to a base to repair can be an adventure in itself.

If you are worried about them building up a fleet as you try them against different levels of opposition to find the right challenge mix for them, pit them against chaos infested ships. Those things are better scuttled than captured...

In my experience the most important factor in space combat is the BS of the character firing the guns. This (along with the potential for rerolls) is what gives the PCs their edge, as an NPC vessel with a standard '30' rated crew is only going to get so lucky with their shooting. For a more dangerous fight, give the opposition a higher rating or an NPC captain who can command the gunnery crews.

One thing i dont see enough of are modifiers to the PC rolls. Yes, the Archmilitant with 75 Ballistic skill will be shredding enemy ships, but as your ship takes damage, the carnage and mayhem onboard will start distracting them, so start slapping on -10, -20 modifiers etc as the combat progresses. Same can be said of the Rogue Trader on the bridge - what may start off as a calm and collected engagement will soon devolve into anarchy as bridge staff yell damage reports and call targets, medicae staff remove injured personnel etc.

Not every group wants to have multiple ships and it's not always a good idea... to put it bluntly depending on your NPC crew with a rating of possibly 30 to do anything is risky, if they PCs are split over two ships then some of them have to put up with having a less awesome pilot than the players void master. Or if they just have the NPC ship following them it wont be that scary.

Give the players a choice whether they want to repair it which will require both a long time and likely a few acquisitions or letting them sell it off in it's damaged state as a minor endeavour or possibly suggest if they want that they might be able to barter it with some people for some other goods.

The Archmilitant wanted to trade it for terminator armor for himself and his 150 strong force of heavies.

The explorator managed to critically fumble while repairing systems and i decided this meant a damaged system would end up destroyed due to power surge or whatever. Rolled to select the system and the dice chose Geller field generator so no dragging it back to the shipyards now.

The Rogue trader has decided to use it as a sustem defense boat / mobile mining carrier.

Next time I use Orks as the antagonists.

Dude wanted 150 TERMINATOR armors? for just 1 ship.... guy must have been loopy when he asked.

I said "no way" to the 150 sets of teminator armor. In my view that armor is archeotech and of course it would have belonged to a space marine chapter initially. Also I don't think space marine chapters would have been able to field more than a few squads of terminators let alone a company's worth.

I may give him 1 set of terminator armor just for the sake of comedy.

His character is a pistol specialised agility build. So all he has to do is go through extensive cyber modification.... taking who knows how many months followed by training to use the armor followed by the realisation that he can't use any terminator sized weapons yet.

I think he may encounter lots of small doors / air ducts if I go that route as well just to rob him of the armor when he most needs it. I'm not evil, I just act that way when I GM.

Well not to get overly ...Fluff...y.......anyway as a Mere human he cannot use the Terminator armor at all unless he somehow gets inducted into a space marine chapter and has a whole BUNCH of parts installed including the implant which allows the Marine to interface with his armor they way he does (not the mention the one that will physically grow him into a 8 ft tall juggernaught so he could fit in the thing) . Thne there is the fact that the Armor in question belongs to a Space Marine Chapter and they would want it back badly as a chapter relic.

As I said I don't want to beat you with Fluff and if you want him to get a Terminator suit more power to ya.

Inquisitors can use Terminator armour. No mention is made of them requiring the blackskin carapace.

They can? I know they can use normal non Space Marine armor but never heard that.... then again it is a lot of fluff to go through and my knowledge base is anything but complete.

Errant said:

True, but they do require MIU to use it effectively.

Errant said:

Is this Space Marine Terminator armour, or Terminator armour designed for humans ?

*shrug* Terminator armour is terminator armour, insofar as the codex rules go.

Don't use tabletop as a basis for assumptions in the RP. All fluff points to Astartes Terminator armour being relics now un-producable - no chapter would ever voluntarily part with a suit of it.

Inquisitors can use power armour - yes, civilian power armour that is. Astartes power armour requires the black carapace and is design for an altogether larger build of human.

Inquisitors can use terminator armour - yes and no. In so far as terminator armour means tactical dreadnought armour (ie a man portable version of the heavy carapace armour used on walkers) then yes, a civilian could theoretically get hold of a suit of civilian pattern terminator armour. However there is no chance they could get hold of Astartes terminator armour.

I'd personally use the heavy power armour stats from Into The Void, add another point of armour on all locations, increase the weight by 10kg, give it an unlimited power supply and allow it to have heavy weapons mounted on it (ie heavy stubbers, missile launchers, heavy flamers etc I'd be reticient to allow autocannon, heavy bolter or any of the heavy energy weapons to be mounted).

And why not? The Grey Knights are the Chapter Militant of the Ordo Malleus; an Inquisitor Lord of sufficient rank and respect would be worthy of bearing one of the relics of the chapter.

I think it is not so much a question of "Can an Inquisitor have the right and the resources to wear terminator armor" as much as it is a question of "Does an Inquisitor have the necessary physical requirements to wear Terminator armor?" As mentioned already, Astartes power armor and terminator armor require a black carapace, larger build, etc. Unless your inquisitor has been augmented nearly as much as an Astartes, it isn't likely that they'll be wearing terminator armor simply because he/she lacks the necessary physical requirements, even if he/she has access to the armor.

Even if an inquisitor may wield a set of terminator armor, that is besides the point. DEFINITELY NOT every trooper in a unit can be outfitted with it. 150 troopers with the armor? That is more than an entire space marine chapter's allotment of terminator armor. Only 1st company gets the armor, and probably not all of them. Considering there is only 100 marines in the first company, you are probably looking at around 80-90 suits tops. 150 is nearly double that.

Tell your player to lay off the obscura!

lysdexic of hollow said:

If you don't want your group to keep the frigate at this level, there are plenty of ways to force them to abandon it. The most obvious would be the arrival of a much larger, hostile vessel (lions sometimes steal kills from hyaenas...)- or a bunch of smaller ones (orks would be good for this). More insidious would be to have the ship infested with something (Genestealers? Enslavers? That might explain the ship's dismal performance...) that makes it's salvage too dangerous to be profitable. I'd let them loot it a bit first (maybe planting a clue for the next session...?) to reward their efforts before springing this on them, but, yeah, there are lots of ways to force them to abandon the frigate if it would be unballancing to let them keep it.

If its greatly damaged then you can simply pull a "It will take X PF and Y amount of time to get the **** thing up and running and then you will have to find Z crew to run the thing." It is a lot of resources and time to get a ship up and running after a beating. Even if they do tow it back it could be months or years till it is space worthy again.

P.S. sorry to bring up the Terminator armor, i have a bad tendancy to get hung up on stuff that really doesn't matter in the greater subject at hand.

I'm happy for them to keep the frigate at this stage. it's been rendered incapable of warp travel, has no auspex and only one short range weapon and it's stuck in a system which will take a long while to build up shipyard facilities in. The Rogue trader has expressed intent to turn this system into a shipyard / supply base within the expanse so I can keep the frigate for surprises later.

for the record there is a named inquisitor in Dark Heresy with Terminator armour, he's in the Radical's handbook.

Equally for the record: if they've got access to a ship with an old enough drive and the original ancilliary equipment, they've got access to "civilian" terminator armour. The first suits were up-armoured and militarised versions of protective gear worn by engineers working inside plasma reactors; the astartes versions simply got scaled up for a space marine's body, a few extra layers of armour cladding and plug in points for additional support gear and control/sensor feeds.