If I've got a player who wants to play a character from Rogue Trader, what rank should they start at? The book says that Space Marines start with 12,000 XP and get 1,000 to spend, but the 12,000 is important when dealing with Rogue Traders/Dark Hersey characters. In their little blurb, they say that they should start with 14,000 XP. However, Rogue Trader's are though to have already spent 5,000 on bankground stuff. So my question is, should they get 14,000 on top of the 5,000, or is the 5,000 removed from the 14,000 and they get to play around with 9,000?

DW Astartes start with 14k accumulated exp, this includes the 13k already factored into starting stats and 1k left for the player to spend.

RT explorers start with 5k exp, including 4,5 k factored into starting stats and the Origin Path and 500 exp left for the player to spend.

Since you're starting from scratch, to make exp levels equal, you should give the player 14k - 4,5k = 9,5k exp to spend on top of his starting stats and things gained through Origin Path.

Be mindful, though, that the balance between gamelines is pretty shoddy, and RT characters weren't really designed to survive the kinds of battles Deathwatch does routinely.

Morangias said:

To elaborate a bit on this:

While Space Marines are balanced for maximum combat efficiency for their xp without outside support, Rogue Traders are balanced under the assumption that they will always have outside sources of power to draw upon. Several (ten-/hundred)thousand heavily armed retainers (not counting ship security), friends in high places and at least one giant space cathedral of doom with unlimited orbital strike capacity being the most obvious.

So, at every given level of xp the RT will individually be much weaker in combat as the system assumes that he will have access to many more sources of combat strength outside skills, talents and personal equipment.

Basically, to give the RT equal efficiency in combat you'd always have to give him the ability to bring a few hordes made up of his household troops (at that xp level most likely including some tanks/air support) and some juicy target to messily destroy with orbital strikes. You can probably imagines that this makes mission design much more challenging, complicates combat resolution and most importantly risks taking too much of the spotlight away from the Space Marines. At 13k xp most RT groups will also be at the point where the RT has been able upgrade his ship into a fleet (at least going by what the comments I have seen on the RT board and happened in my own RT campaign).

Another problem is that while the ability of RTs and the DW draw on resources represented by factions like the Inquisition or the Imperial Guard for support is roughly equal (with a slight advantage to the RT thanks to easier access to Peer talents), their approaches for getting that support is different enough they don't really support each other. Getting both the Marines and the RT involved in such negotiations is thus pretty hard and will tend to leave one of the two standing silently nearby.

Well, so far...I haven't had really any problems in terms of power difference between the characters. Granite, the only "normal"human is a navigator with high willpower and that Lidless Stare Maxed out....so yeah, instant kills all around at times. The others are an Orc and Kroot (had to do some GM Magic to get the Deathwatch member to work with sanctioned Xenos). The Exact opposite seems to be happening with my game....the RT characters are able to fight pretty well against some DW level enemies. I think I was able to kill the Kroot after sending them against 4 Bloodletters and a Juggernaut of Khorne, and that was after some Chaos Space Marines. I guess it's a matter of roles as well, my players have been hitting Righteous Fury a lot. Anyways, thanks for the help and info guys!