So, our group has played Dark Heresy and Deathwatch already, and just got Ascension for DH. Since that's the point where DH characters start to match up with the characters from the later games we wanted to try a mixed game and see how that worked. After doing some research I decided that Rogue Trader was the best system to combine the group in, it has objectives and XP scale similar to DW, allows easy integration with DH since being a Rogue Trader is a traditional cover for an Inquisitor with good reason, and allows Privateering! (It's like Piracy, but legal!) After getting the modules I was happy to see that almost all of them have tie-ins to things that Inquisitorial parties would be very interested in, making working this out very easy.

Very quickly I've come across some problems in play though.

First of all I can't find a way for the ship's crew to increase their capabilities, which should happen over time. Particularly in my game since I'm intending a year to pass offscreen between each adventure as they sell off their loot to get their profit factor. (Gotta maintain cover!) I see reading through early threads that this was a commonly noticed issue, has it been addressed in one of the books yet? (Even though I’ve gotten most of them I haven’t had time to read them all in depth yet.) If not, is there a good house rule that’s been agreed on by the masses that someone can direct me too?

Second, ship damage scales very weirdly. Allowing combined salvos of macrocannons as the book says clearly gave them a higher than expected from the lore lethality. Lances are chumps compared to mass macrocannons. But dropping that rule instantly leads to the opposite effect where macrocannons do very little damage since a single turret has a hard time overcoming average warship armor ratings of 20. Again I saw a lot of discussion on this but didn’t see a good compromise between those extremes in the early debates, I don’t suppose there’s a more recent one that I haven’t worked my way up to in the forums yet is there?

Third, I saw reference mentioned in one of the adventures to Encounters in the Warp, which clearly seemed to be a random encounter table from the phrasing. But I wasn’t able to find such a table in any of the books, at least not by scanning table of contents and indexes. Is there some sort of random space encounters table in one of the books? And if so, can someone direct me too it?

For those wondering, despite everyone’s expectations the DH characters have so far been the powerhouses in the first couple sessions. The higher specialization they have means they’d be the worst option to go solo with but by working in a group they’re better than the RT characters at most things, and even able to hold their own with the Space Marines in combat so long as it doesn’t get extra hairy. Though, we expect that last bit to change as the Deathwatch character’s gain ranks and get some of the special abilities that are allowing the DH characters to keep up right now.

Let's see. First off, there are no rules-as-written for increasing crew rating. Personally, I use the crew experience rules from http://darktrader.wikidot.com/system-rules. Works pretty well so far.

Best houserule I've come across for ship damage is to reduce all ship armour by 12, but apply ship armour to every hit. Balances everything out pretty well.

Navigators section, page 185.

yeah, people have known about this for a while; strictly speaking Rogue Trader characters are only equal to rank 5 DH characters due to their heightened statistics and skills from the Origin Path. In every other way they're entirely worse. Particularly if you allow the DH characters access to Ascension after Rank 8.

Into the Storm has the Ship upgrades on p. 162-164, one of which is the Crew Improvements. Also during creation you can upgrade your crew by trading in ship points. You start out with a better crew but a smaller ship that way (or less profit factor).

What the other guy said

same

DH characters are imo better then RT ones. Especially if you'll give them an equal amount of XP per adventure (should be half of what the RT crew gets as everything is half as cheap in DH). The main edge RT characters have is that they can boost one of their characteristics by quite a lot if they aim for it in the origin path. Other then that they're crap compared to DH ones. To give but one example: a lvl 1 RT character has a comparable amount of XP as a lvl 5 DH character. The combat oriented classes of DH will all have 2-3 attacks by then and several also have two dodges or parries by then. RT has one attack and one reaction. And it doesn't get better later on. Ascension characters are massively overpowered compared to the RT ones. Once they start raking in those unnatural attributes (honestly a psyker with unnatural willpower) they simply kick the living daylight out of RT ones. Hell, in my experience they can go toe to toe with space marines. My Vindicare had 16 dodges. My psyker had unnatural willpower x3 at 90 odd WP.

Basically: you'll have to balance it out with houserules. I like t he one in the forums to retcon RT characters start as DH characters and then have them go through the origin path. That way they'll start slightly ahead of the DH ones and manage to not limp behind to embarrasingly once the DH characters go ascension.

Ah, I see. I'd missed the Crew Upgrades part when I skimmed that section becuase it didn't have a big stat block attached to it like everything else. It wasn't anything like what I was looking for anyway. I like that house rule from Dark Trader, but with the large amounts of down-time I have planned for my early game I'm not certain how well it would work. I'll probably have to handwave a couple advances up to Veteran for the primary crew. But once things get going really heavy I'll probably use those house rules to keep track of crews when they'll be getting XP over much shorter timespans.

I'll have to think about that idea for reducing armor, it sounds like it will probably work but I don't want to have to use completely different numbers than book with a group this new to RT.

And lastly, thanks for the direction to the Warp encounters. Since the Navigator is an NPC I hadn't read through that chapter, didn't have a need too. I don't suppose there is a similar table someplace for encounters in the Void is there? I'm a firm beleiver in one random ship encounter per session to spice things up, and it makes tons of sense for such a wild area as the Expanse. But I'm not particular about what sort of encounter, so a random table would be great.