I've been trying to find a new navigator power that is both interesting and fits my character but the options are pretty limited.

I have Rogue Trader, Into the Storm, and Battlefleet Koronus. Are there any sources that have navigator powers that I am missing?

Nope, there are none else (at least no official ones). What kind of power are you looking for, anyway?

That is unfortunate.

I am not really looking for any particular ability in particular, just something that both fits the character and is interesting.

Both are pretty subjective, I know. I could go through each power in the two books to show why it seems to me it doesn't do anything, isn't interesting, or doesn't fit the character but I'm not sure it would be helpful here. As a few random examples though.. 'A cloud in the warp' seems to have no useful benefit until rank 3. Up until then it simply either does nothing or shifts focus to another pc, which isn't really useful over all, while costing resources (a power selection and while it is running another power can't be used). There are a bunch of navigator gaze powers, but I already have lidless stare by default and they aren't really significantly different, especially for the resource cost. Then there are powers like 'Tides of time and space' where it seems generally better off not using them than doing so as the fatigue cost is greater than any benefit that they might give.

Gah.. now I feel like going through each power and giving my reasons why they aren't appropriate to see if I am missing anything but that doesn't seem likely. The powers aren't really all that complicated in general so I'm probably not missing much. Although I am new to the game so it could be.

Take the last one I mentioned as an example. After the first round initiative is set so adjusting your initiative bonus doesn't seem to do anything. Based on how the campaign has gone so far the pc's only very rarely get the jump on anyone so using it before entering combat in some way is of only marginal use. Gaining an extra half action seems to be an extra move, at best, since you cannot take the same half action twice in a single round. So, at best it seems like it gives almost nothing and that is usually only around half of the time, often less, while always giving a point of fatigue. Why bother?

I already have 'Immolate the soul' and 'lidless stare' so combat is mostly taken care of. I was hoping to find a non-combat power that would be useful at least once every other session. I was thinking about getting, 'stacking the deck' but as it would grant a +60 bonus to one of those checks on a success I'm hesitant. We've been going with the thought of, 'if the players do not do anything way over the top neither will the gm' so the teleportarium has been used only sparingly (and never to transport people against their wills) and we steer clear of anything that we wouldn't want used against us as well. +60 to hit with a ballistic test in space combat could do some massive damage.

Ok, that was a lot of ranting. I was just hoping that there was a source of powers that I was missing as I'd prefer not to go into home-made powers.

Well since you did not mention what type of power you are looking for or what type of personality your character has I can only recommend the 2 most useful powers. Tracks in the stars and void watcher. Get them both and level them up.

llsoth said:

Now, I haven't been playing for all that long, could you explain how and why these powers are any good? I'll give my thoughts on why I skipped over them to begin with below.

Tracks in the stars allows for tracking another ship through real space in between jumps through the warp if they have a warp drive. So, local movements of ships that can jump through the warp and only fairly recently at the first rank. It sounds like something that could be duplicated to some degree using ships augers though or perhaps even a psyiscience check if the other ship had powerful enough psychic people on board. I'm not sure how this would come in handy all that often even if those other options didn't work though. It doesn't let you follow a ship through the warp, ships augers should be able to do something equivalent pretty often, and I'd imagine in high traffic areas it wouldn't do anything at all. Have you had a lot of use with this power? If so, in what way?

Void watcher is entirely subsumed by a simple auger scan by the ship. Since an active augury has a range of 20 VU's the range of void watcher could be longer at master level, which is a plus. However, a perception +30 from my character would be worse than the check for whoever we had taking the active augury action (generally because of aid the machine spirit). So, if I maxed it out it could potentially be better on some occasions than an ability someone else picked up for a lesser cost and that is good for quite a bit more. It seems I should just leave the detection to the pro here. Now, if I could use it to cancel the penalty of having our auger array damaged that would be something but that seems like a stretch and unlikely to be a given.

Am I missing something here?? I'm not trying to be difficult, this is just how I am currently viewing the situation. If I've missed something obvious please let me know.

I don't have much experience with Void Watcher, but Tracks in the Stars is really usefull because you can follow warp tracks at Adept and Master levels. So it's much more than ship augers can acomplish.

My previous PC, a House Benetek Navigatrix, had 4 powers in total - Lidless Stare (Master), Held in My Gaze (Adept) (this one was not that useful), Tracks in the Stars (Adept) and Stacking the Deck (Adept). With this set (and usage of additional space combat actions for Navigators from Into the Storm) she was pretty well equipped for both ground and naval combat, and pretty good in her expertise.

I did miss that you can track through the warp with tracks in the stars at adept level. That does make a decent case for it being potentially useful as something that cannot be simulated through augury at least! I'm still not sure when it would be useful in the campaign though. I'm mostly just going by what we have done so far and what I can see in our future. I'm not sure how going half speed in the warp would work.. or what it would mean.. since you arent plotting a warp jump there isn't any check on how long it would take or modifiers from there so I'm not even sure what normal speed would be.

I also wonder if it would be reasonable to make psyniscience checks to follow an astropath choir through the warp. I'll have to ask the gm if such a thing is possible.

Also, Chthonia, did you have a cortex implant for unnatural intelligence (x2)? If you did, how did that make stacking the deck work in your game? I can see rank 2 and 3 being interesting but probably not game breaking.. but the first rank? ouch..

With psyniscience, you can only detect active disturbances in the warp, so you could only detect an astropath while he's manifesting a psychic power. And since there are no real distances in the warp, I guess psyniscience won't help locating some tiny psyker in the warp at all. Besides, tracking a ship following a secret route or trailing one's rival can turn out quite useful

Well, my PC had no implants at all, except lung filters^^ Her Intelligence was 61 for a +30 bonus with the Stacking the Deck power. She hadn't had this power at rank 1, though (we had started our campaign before "Into the Storm" has been released). So I suppose it might be ouchy at rank 1, but on the other hand, it's quite difficult to maintain your ship's Hull Integrity at the beginning unless you start with 60+ PF.

Edit: aw, I seemingly misunderstood you. Well, my GM had some complaints about Novice level of Stacking the Deck, too, but he managed to design challenging battles anyway.

A single point why using a navigator power for detection is useful:

My group uses silent running regularly and an active augury breaks that. And at this point, enter our Navigator. I hate that guy...

Coldshard said:

Well first lets look at tracks in the stars. Is almost breaks the game setting in all ways not involving combat... Remember no only does it let you follow vessels through the secret "safe" route through minefileds and asteriod fields, follow them where ever they are going, etc. It also would let you go where they had been.. Basically all the secrets of the expanse are a roll away, want to find out where the rok'gol come from.. easy as pie (for a master anyway) as a single example. One of your rivals bragging about a huge find he made? Go and claim jump it. Etc Etc.

Next is void watcher, I admit this one is based on how good you play the normal scanners. If you play them around star trek levels then other than stealth uses it is only good for not being very hard to interfere with. Because basically that is what it is, even tells you what other ships crews are (which is invaluable). The lunar cruiser that is hailing you and wants to negotiate some trade? Check it out what makes up its crew will tell you a lot. Mostly mutants, probably chaos, got a mix of races probably pirates, etc. Awesome for finding hidden infestations of genestealers. Think on how differently the introductory adventure would go if you had an adept or master to scan the bounty? Bunch of mostly human crew hiding in the bilges and a single thing/something/mutant/navigator on the bridge... do the math. Also this power is pure Profit, lets you know what stuff is made of, finding valuable resources is a snap. In battle it can act as a second set of sensors, always good.

As you can see the 2 I believe are the best powers are information powers. First I think this fits a navigator better than combat ones, but that is purely opinion. Second unless your game is very combat focused, knowing really is half the battle, knowledge is power, etc.

Thanks for all of the replies! I will try to respond to each now

Chthonia Stauratos said:

With psyniscience, you can only detect active disturbances in the warp, so you could only detect an astropath while he's manifesting a psychic power.

Actually.. The psyniscience skill description says:
"Those with the Psyniscience Skill sense the currents and eddies of the warp. The Explorer can use the Skill to detect the presence or absence of daemons and the use of psychic powers. The Skill also allows detection of psychic phenomena, disturbances, voids, and other areas where the flow of the immaterium has been unsettled or disrupted.”

That doesn’t sound like only active disturbances can be detected.

Chthonia Stauratos said:

And since there are no real distances in the warp, I guess psyniscience won't help locating some tiny psyker in the warp at all. Besides, tracking a ship following a secret route or trailing one's rival can turn out quite useful

If tjere are no real distances then why would it matter how far way or how big/small something is? 0:)

Finding someones secret route could potentially be useful, I’m just not sure it isn’t possible with skills already present without having to pick up a new power to do it.

Chthonia Stauratos said:

Well, my PC had no implants at all, except lung filters^^ Her Intelligence was 61 for a +30 bonus with the Stacking the Deck power. She hadn't had this power at rank 1, though (we had started our campaign before "Into the Storm" has been released). So I suppose it might be ouchy at rank 1, but on the other hand, it's quite difficult to maintain your ship's Hull Integrity at the beginning unless you start with 60+ PF.
Edit: aw, I seemingly misunderstood you. Well, my GM had some complaints about Novice level of Stacking the Deck, too, but he managed to design challenging battles anyway.

Yeah, my gm might be able to find a way to work around it but a +60 to a maneuver test or a ships ballistic test pretty much turn either into an auto-success.. likely with a few degrees of success as well. Our gunner has already taken all four of the ballistic skill advances and so is sitting at a nice 69 ballistic skill. Rolling for a 129 and wanting at least 4 degrees of success becomes pretty easy at that point.. It also means that we can focus all of the other actions people do to help the guns on the other gun rather than spreading them out between the two, so the other gun would likely be getting at least a +30 pretty easily.

With my character I’ve already nearly eliminated rolling for warp travel because I’ve put so many resources into awareness. I don’t want to take away from the gm’s fun or give him a toy that could kill us almost trivially when used. I really like the rank 2 of stack the deck though and I don't think it'd be game breaking in the same way.. shame

master_death said:

We haven't had a lot of use for silent running yet. We've tried it two times. The first we had to break it ourselves in order to save another ship and the second we were spotted anyway..lol

I don't see anything about not being able to use active augury while silent running though. It is the action used to detect things that the ship might run into so if you aren't able to use it then you are literally flying blind. Am I missing a rule somewhere that says you are unable to use it? I don't see it as 'pinging' like a submarine would do for active sonar, merely letting relevant information be picked up by scanning equipment. I could easily be missing something though as there are bits and pieces of important information strung all over the book with the only way to find it being reading it through completely over and over again.

llsoth said:

I guess this really does all come down to how the gm views augury or other skills. We've already done some basic ship tracking using the normal augers, we'd probably just shoot mines in a floating minefield, and I'm not sure how one could plot out a safe route through an asteroid field that isnt detectable by simply scanning where they are. It might be a 3d puzzle but hey, that is why my guy has a massive intelligence and unnatural intelligence (x2), for just those sorts of problems!

I can certainly see how getting void watcher at master level could have some uses but the novice level looks to be a throw away and the adept is starting to get there but when you are within 8 VU of an enemy the game is likely about to change to combat regardless.. and that check is neither easy or well laid out for what the gm should tell me ;/ If I spend 2 ranks worth of navigator power, get that close to a potentially dangerous ship, make the difficult check, and then get told only something like, 'the crew is mostly human with some mutants'.. I might be a little underwhelmed

We haven't played whatever adventure you are talking about though so I've no idea what you are talking about with people in the bilges and a single person on the bridge. But, if whatever that is has a lot of psychic power would the gm be justified in giving different information? Saying later that it put up some sort of thought shield or ghost images or who-knows-what? Because if so, the results with having or not having the power would be the same, or similar enough to not really matter.

Perhaps our ship is a little odd but we have a large mix of races and aren't pirates, we've just saved a few out of the way people here and there and let them be part of the crew. We have quite a few mutants but for the same reason as above and there was some unavoidable warp trouble that hit us with some odd radiation, but we aren't chaos. We also have a tenebro maze so if someone used a similar power on us they might be confused and think a bunch of crew was in the bildge pumps for some reason.. So, you bring up some very good points, but if you ran across my ship you would apparently get some very, very wrong ideas!

If only the first rank of the power didn't exist and the adept level was actually novice.. So that the power was sometimes better than simple augury and sometimes not. Same thing with tracks in the stars really. Using a very limited navigator power selection to get a power, and possibly a debilitating mutation, that is worse than a normal skill option already available.. well.. that frustrates me a bit. Once you do get to the better bits, like tracking through the void, the gm is left hanging and has to rule on the fly for pretty much all of it. I'm not a big fan of that either but I guess this whole system is big on that.. ahh well..

Actually.. The psyniscience skill description says:

Those with the Psyniscience Skill sense the currents and eddies of the warp. The Explorer can use the Skill to detect the presence or absence of daemons and the use of psychic powers. The Skill also allows detection of psychic phenomena, disturbances, voids, and other areas where the flow of the immaterium has been unsettled or disrupted.
That doesn’t sound like only active disturbances can be detected.

If something isn't active, it isn't a disturbance. Also, "use of psychic powers" means a psyker has to manifest something to become visible in the warp for a short while. You simply won't detect an Astropathic Choir when the guys are having their lunch or cuddling with their teddy bears.

If tjere are no real distances then why would it matter how far way or how big/small something is? 0:)

Finding someones secret route could potentially be useful, I’m just not sure it isn’t possible with skills already present without having to pick up a new power to do it.

I admit it was a bad wording. Nevertheless, I imagine doing psyniscience while on a warp journey would rather detect tons of stuff you don't want to see at all. Besides, there are no other ways of warp tracking in the rules afaik.

Yeah, my gm might be able to find a way to work around it but a +60 to a maneuver test or a ships ballistic test pretty much turn either into an auto-success.. likely with a few degrees of success as well. Our gunner has already taken all four of the ballistic skill advances and so is sitting at a nice 69 ballistic skill. Rolling for a 129 and wanting at least 4 degrees of success becomes pretty easy at that point.. It also means that we can focus all of the other actions people do to help the guns on the other gun rather than spreading them out between the two, so the other gun would likely be getting at least a +30 pretty easily.

With my character I’ve already nearly eliminated rolling for warp travel because I’ve put so many resources into awareness. I don’t want to take away from the gm’s fun or give him a toy that could kill us almost trivially when used. I really like the rank 2 of stack the deck though and I don't think it'd be game breaking in the same way.. shame

Still, Stacking the Decks improves only one BF test per round, so if the gunner had to fire different macrobatteries or macrobatteries and a lance, only one salvo would get the bonus. And we're not even talking about the navigator having to succeed on his -10 Perception test first. Besides, enemy ships with good maneuverability can slip away out of the PC's ship's firing arcs^^

Chthonia Stauratos said:

If something isn't active, it isn't a disturbance. Also, "use of psychic powers" means a psyker has to manifest something to become visible in the warp for a short while. You simply won't detect an Astropathic Choir when the guys are having their lunch or cuddling with their teddy bears.

Something that has been disturbed doesn't need something currently disturbing it. The skill phrasing leads to both present and past effects.

Also, the skill can explicitly detect psykers and other entities that aren't currently doing anything. I think it is safe to assume that their mere presence has some impact on the warp in some way that is even stronger than most other people. This seems to be supported by some of the fluff I have read.

Chthonia Stauratos said:

I admit it was a bad wording. Nevertheless, I imagine doing psyniscience while on a warp journey would rather detect tons of stuff you don't want to see at all. Besides, there are no other ways of warp tracking in the rules afaik.

I'm not sure that there are rules for tracking in the warp period, even with having the tracks in the void power (it is very vague). It might be a difficult check, I've no idea, but there is a certain lack of rules either way.

Chthonia Stauratos said:

Still, Stacking the Decks improves only one BF test per round, so if the gunner had to fire different macrobatteries or macrobatteries and a lance, only one salvo would get the bonus. And we're not even talking about the navigator having to succeed on his -10 Perception test first. Besides, enemy ships with good maneuverability can slip away out of the PC's ship's firing arcs^^

We can already get a +30 to a single gun pretty easily. Having one at +30 and one at +60 is really scary.. I would not want it to be used against us! With what we have now we have already taken a npc frigate from full healthy down to space hulk in a single round. Admittedly, it was with some pretty good rolls.. but still.

Ok, so does a multi-quote not work on this site or does it take some sort of special formatting? I've been using [ quote] [ /quote] style and that seems to not work at all.

It's horribly broken and doesn't work properly. But it's still better than the old forums. Generally you're better off just italicising something you're quoting with your responses in clear.

Active Augury is searching for stuff, like mines, ships on silent running etc. "Seeing" things is something like "passive" augury. And yes, their is nothing in rules about using active augury while in silent running, so consider this a house rule.

My group actually killed an Eldar frigate with Silent Running. They sneaked up, the eldar ship missed multiple Scannings (they were not aware of the groups ship) and wasted it in a single salvo. And they have a Orion freighter... Actually I thought a holo field would make a ship hard to hit, but when the astropath roles 6 Degrees of success thereby giving a +30 Bonus to the Macrobattery, all is useless...

They basically fly everywhere in silent running, and still have a speed of 6. And as the navigator does the scanning, they are practically invisible. The name of the ship is "Red Octobre"

Even with the -40BS a holofield applies? Impressive.

The -40 is for lances. It's actually "only" -20 for macrobatteries.

-40 too lance -20 too macro have too remember that bit

Tracks in the stars is a fantastic power. Our group navigator uses it regularly when the Pcs fleet enters a system he does a quick scan to see warp trails in the last few months. If there are recent trails, he knows there are likely enemies/rivals around, if he sees nothing going back 6 months, then likely the system is empty. Very handy.

Stacking the deck is sick, frankly. My PCs have an archeotech lance on their cruiser and +60 to the BS roll is enough to polish off most foes.

Lidless stare at master is also death on a stick. In one carefully set up operation, the navigator managed to kill half a rom of 30 odd guys with his lidless stare. Admittedly they went to all kind of lengths to protect him and ensure everyone in the room was looking at him. But still, its pretty awesome.

I allow psyniscience to do various things in our game, but only locally. The psyker might be able to detect a fellow psyker (if they have a fairly good psy rating) while not manifesting, but only at short range. At space ship ranges, dealing with 10s or 100s of thousands of kilometres, a normal psyker has no chance. Navigators on the other hand excel at this kind of range.

The Navigator I'm playing now is a Shrouded House Navigator (we made up a house: House Sovul) who has: Lidless Stare (Novice), Foreshadowing (Adept), Gaze Into The Abyss (Adept) and The Course Untravelled (Master).

I have found it most rewarding to build around a theme, around how this particular Navigator sees/interacts with his vision of the Warp. In this case, I opted for a "timeand secrets" theme and concentrated on 2 powers which I felt were most appropriate. I've developed a reputation for running away but also being at the right place at the right time to turn the tides. However, I also accept that I am probably the worse combatant in my party. Which is fine by me. you can't be everything and usefulness has many different definition. I got my GM to let me buy Scrutiny at Rank 1 so I could be the guy working the augur during space combat.

Speaking from my own experience, the power I use most often is The Course Not Travelled . Especially since, at master level, you can use it as a reaction. Seeing as my Dodge is a paltry 36% and my The Course Not Travelled is a whopping 83% which does not require multiple degrees of success to dodge auto-fire, I rely on it to get me out of trouble pretty regularly. It also makes my character really useful at capturing objectives (just last session, I 'teleported' past a bunch of guards to reclaim our shuttle.)

Foreshadowing is a gamble but it pays off more often than not. The best use for it, however, is during ship combat: you can use it to influence all sorts of ship combat actions! (+30% to Lock n Target? No problem!) It's also lead my character to walk over the Arch-Militant's tactical station and program in my own firing pattern... because of a "premonition."

I use Gaze Into the Abyss as a tool of extortion: I know at least a half dozen mutants and tainted people on the ship. In exchange for not revealing their secret, they supply me with information about the lower decks, or hard to get materials, or even do some of my dirty work. It also provides the Lord-Captain (a fellow PC) with a good rationale for taking his Navigator with him on missions in addaton to his Arch-Militant PC bodyguard: I'm good at sniffing out rats and threats the guard misses.

Most powers can be excellent depending on your character concept, on the type of game and assuming that the GM is planning games with your particular skills powers in mind. (My GM, fortunately, does an amazing job of that!!) I can Imagine a pretty badass inquisitor-type navigator with Held in My Gaze and A Cloud In The War p powers. Or someone who specializes in the power of the Eye itself (gaze powers).

Void Watcher and Tracks are both excellent powers for an bounty-hunting type scenario, or someone looking for lost secrets (particularly at higher levels).

Macharias the Mendicant, i love your character and think the idea of building his powers around a theme is excellent.

Gribble_the_Munchkin said:

Thanks. I really enjoy playing him almost as much as everybody else seems to enjoy watching him slime his way into and out of trouble over and over again.