Me and a few friends recently started playing, and nobody was quite interested in the navigator career. So does this limit us to the system of 'calculated jumps' no longer than 4 days? The 5 step warp navigation process is detailed in the navigators section, so I'm assuming all aspects of it are limited to navigators only (especially finding the astronomican). Or would those tests be made with crew rating assuming that there is a non player navigator aboard?

We are currently going with a bit of tech heresy that makes me a little uncomfortable wherein a rather radical explorator among us has the means of navigating the warp. He consults a bevy of machines and sensitive equipment and is allowed to be a 5 stepper. This might be explained at some point as the machines genuinely working, or him fooling himself into believing it and having some natural affinity for the warp, or even recessive navigator gene fragments.

I know ultimately that alot can be done with house rules, but I am curious about other dynasties who just didn't seem to attract a navigator to their party...

First off, there is always a navigator and astropath aboard the vessel by RAW. In most cases, they would be equivalent to the Crew Rating (Which will lead to many, many MANY misadventures in the Warp). At your liberty, you can do without this, and use some other refluffed option; I've used anything from the former navigator becoming entombed in the shipsoul itself, the Navigator's Oculus boarded up and hidden as if it were never part of the ship, to a living NPC Navigator that the explorers recruited after their gellar field failed and trapped their vessel in the warp for over a month. There's a Warp Engine in Hostile Acquisitions that allows you to make journeys without the use of a Navigator, though these are largely restricted in use to the safer warp currents in the Calixis Sector.

Errant said:

By RAW (expanded in Into the Storm ), at least 1 Navigator and 1d10 Astropaths.

Is RAW an acronym for fluff?

I can't find where in ItS it details that.

RAW = Rules As Written

Vendetta said:

Into the Storm , page 200: "How Many On The Ship?"

Thanks all around! I passed that up writing it off as a section for nav and astro players.