So I am DMing for a crew of 5 Explorers. We have a Trader, Seneschal, Void Mistress, Missionary, and an Arch Militant.

The Arch Militant maxed out his strength bonus, took Crushing Blow, and is wielding an Eviscerator which nets out to him doing something like 1d10+21 damage (and high Pen) or so with every **** swing. He also has high toughness, sound constitution, and power armor so he can take a lot of mayhem right to the face.

The end result is that I can't seem to find anything that would challenge him that wouldn't wipe out anybody else in the group in a single hit. I've pulled mid level monsters from Deathwatch and he is still cutting them down left and right. These same things tore another PC in half with a single roll and required use of a fate point.

Anybody here encounter a similar problem? Any advice?

-GG

The Arch-Militant on my game uses one Storm Bolter on each hand, firing both on Full-Auto for a total of 20 hits per round, 1d10+5 E of Tearing damage each, with an attack roll of 120% meaning he automatically connects Righteous Fury on a 10 (and he scores an everage of 3-4 RF per Round).

On the other hand, the Missionary, who is the melee expert, does two attacks per round that deal 2d10+14 E (Penetration 10, Shocking Quality) points of damage.

What I mean by this is:

1- No, your Arch-Militant isn't really what I would call powerful for a RT game.

2- Rogue Trader characters are supposed to be powerful. They have unlimited resources at their hand, so it's reasonable they will have the best equipement available to them.

As a GM for RT, there are several things you must have in mind:

1- Players almost never explore planetary surface alone, they usually have some soldiers with them (some players like to land 20 or so while other like to land 500 or so, both are fine). You always have to keep that in mind, because RT works better on massive warfare than in individual combats (I've storytelled two RT games over the past year, and we have had very few individual combats). It's also a good idea to tell your players to buy equipement for their troops as well.

2- It doesn't matter how powerful a character is, a daemon with high Fear Rating can make the most powerful character paralize and run away.

A while back, my players had to fight with a Herald of Nurgle that was trying to summon a Greater Daemon about the ship. They had troops, but all of them run, leaving only the three player character to deal with the Herald, 10 Plaguebearers and several Cultists. Not only that, but the Arch-Militant (the one with the dual Storm Bolters) didn't succeed the WP check so he was only hable to take a single Half-Action per turn until the end of the encounter (so from 20 bullets per round, he could just fire 1 now, really screwed). That forced him to draw his melee weapon and try to reach the Herald on melee, since a single bolter buller of 1d10+5 doesn't do much to a daemon with TB 15. Th combat was hard (they almost die), but in the end they won and it was really great (I even award them a permanent Fate Point). That's the kind of individual combat you are spected to face on RT (at least that's how I see it), something that doesn't happen very often but when it does it's really epic.

3- About Power Armour: while PA can be great and all (+20 to Strenght and 7-8 AP), it's also worth considering that they only last for 1d5 hours because the civilian power source is crap, which means that you can't use it while exploring a planet, for example, since you would really run out of power and be helpless inside a metal tomb. Also armours with high Penetration (a Hellgun, for example) will ignore most of the armour points the power amour gives anyway. IMHO, civilian power amour isn't that great at all.

Most games I've run have wound up with someone becoming a combat monster: interestingly, I've found it tends to be the Explorator rather than the arch-militant. Anyway, the best thing is to develop a combat encounter around an objective. Doesn't do much good to have the militant hacking apart some mooks if the boss escapes unscathed, after all. What do the players want to achieve in this scene? What do the antagonists want to accomplish, and how heavily will they commit their forces to achieve this goal? I find psychic powers make effective mitigating agents, as do hot-shot las-rifles.

Tips:

- I use horde rules from DW vs the AM.

- force him to unusal battle conditon - if he a melee then a shooting and vice versa

- the enemy also powerful. They can use accurate weapons, heavy weapons, vehicles and al off the nasty gear that represented by the rulebook (ie: ORGANGRINDER bullets from ItS) Forget the Dark heresy low level scums with autopistol

- in the galaxy there is a lot of more powerful guy than the AM (ie: another AM with additional 10.000 xp )

- Use fear or psyhic powers too

If he's wandering around in power armour with an eviscerator, then people wishing your players harm will most likely spot him as the biggest threat. As such, he's going to be hit first and hardest (heavy weapons fire, snipers, psykers, you name it: the opening rounds of any combat are going to be mooks and elite mooks staying out of his reach while he gets a thousand round ballistic buffet to the face). If the circumstances don't allow for a long-range option, then the logical result is he's going to get swarmed by 3-6 bad guys working together (ganging up bonuses work both ways, remember) while the spares keep the rest of the group (and their entourage) busy.

But, yeah, overall, he isn't that overpowered. As has been said, in Rogue Trader, there's always a bigger fish... and no such thing as a level-appropriate encounter. If the party has proved a sufficiently pesky thorn in the side of a particular rival, they will happily pull enough strings for someone to go all-out (air-strikes, company-level ambushes, armoured assaults by tank squadrons, high-priced assassins [maybe almost equivalent to Imperial Temple Assassins, but if someone has sufficient clout for one of those then a combat encounter is the least of your worries], hell, even orbital bombardment might not be considered too much).
The bottom line is, it's not about the strength of any particular beasty you throw him up against, it's about the scale of your imagination, and how much trouble he's (they've) been causing in universe.

And, of course, there are a number of problems for which the response "giant chainsword" is wholly inappropriate. If there are times when other players get tobe the viking (social viking, trade viking, navigation viking, shiphandling viking), then it's only fair that when you need someone to be the actual viking, he gets to go to town a-viking...

Sorry but your player's arch-militant isn't all that impressive. In a game I'm in, I have an explorator* (I know what you're thinking, but no, I'll explain in a sec) that took the Genetor alternate career rank. He attacks with an 85 Weapon Skill (WS +10 Best Craftsmanship weapon +20 all-out attack) and has 4 attacks, each of them doing 2d10+34 damage.

*He's not built solely for combat. Yes he does a lot of damage, but that was with minimal xp expenditure. You should see all his knowledges and other Intelligence-based skills he has, like Medicae and Tech-Use. That is where he belongs and that's where he stays. But Emperor protect anyone who comes into his med-bay looking for an easy target.

WhiteLycan said:

How did he manage to do the 4th attack? As far as I remember you can only do up to 3 attacks thanks to talents.

WhiteLycan said:

Challenge acepted. =P

On a more serious tone, I wounder how he managed to deal such damage. The most damage I can do with my Explorator is 2d10+12 with her Omnissiash Axe.

A Machine of Flesh > Multiple Arms 'mutation': Grants an extra pair of arms, Ambidextrous talent and Two Weapon Fighter talent.

STRENGTH: 25 Base + 20 Point-Buy + 20 Experience + 20 Karrikian Lock-Arms + 10 Brute (A Machine of Flesh) + 20 Dragon Scale Power Armor

Unnatural Strength x2: Synthetic Muscle Grafts

WEAPON: Best-Craftsmanship Power Fist: 2d10+2xSTR Bonus (improved to 3x from Unnatural Strength) +1 damage for Best
(3x11)+1=34

But now that you bring it up, if I WERE to ask for elite advances and take Swift Attack and Lightning Strike or whatever the 2 talents are called, I could get up to 6 attacks.

@ Original Poster: NEVER EVER forget: Power Armor only has a power supply of 1d5 hours. If you want them to feel the pain, fudge that 1d5 to come out as a 1. And don't tell him.

have them put halluecenic drugs in his tea. scorpions under his pillow. Attacking a powerful PC in the way he can't defend himself is the trademark of the clever enemy. Have them fight him in a swamp, 1/2 ton of power armor might be prone to sinking.

for more direct combat simply a haywire grenade to shut down the power armour while one of them gets to work with a melta cutter. Hell, have a khorne beserker with really high agility and an ability to parry simply turn aside all his attacks. there are lots of ways to hurt any PC if you want to. that said, if that is what he has chosen to excell at, give him a few scenarios to shine. "we need this breach held against the xenos scum arch militant and you're just the man" while the others search for the forbidden tome etc that they came here to loot.

WhiteLycan said:

Multiple Arms were errata'd out. Dragonscale only gives +10 and adds in after unnatural modifiers, as the Karrikian probably do as well.

Sorry, most of that is just off the top of my head. We don't keep our own character sheets, we leave them at the GM's place. We don't play with most of the errata except for stuff like how they blatantly left out the Hunting Rifle. And you're right about the dragon scale being only +10, I'm sure that's how it is on my character sheet. Even then I could just use power armor and luminen charge it. I have a high enough toughness to make the test most of the time. As for the 'being factored in after unnaturals', I didn't know that rule. Where is that written?

WhiteLycan said:

It's not written anywhere, it's an official unofficial errata from Black Crusade that is supposed to be retconned. javascript:void(0);/*1333000923059*/ Second Page, Second post. Then third post from the bottom is the other half of it.

There was also a clarification somewhere on the Deathwatch boards that Machinator array and other such enhancements were added outside of the Unnatural Stat system. It's a big PITA and the primary reason I went ahead and swapped my game to BC rules.

WhiteLycan said:

Just for the record. All out attack is a full round action. Just as Swidt attack and lightning attack are. So no +20% to him.

And for people who arte to tough to fight normally? Well, describe how they wade through the rank and file (or use the horde rules from deathwatch) and only play out the big nasty fights. You know, fighting those who are as nasty as they are? I found that equiping rank and file with armor piercing weapons helps a lot. In my campaign, armor is considered to be nothing more then a favorite style of clothing. Sure mr I have power armor, you are scary, but all my flukies carry hellguns. Have fun.,

Sister Callidia said:

As I've already stated, I have neither swift not lightning attack.

GlaiveGuy said:

Just remember that as the arch militant that's kind of his schtick, other people get cool powers, arcane, lore, powerful, political connections or various other things, he on the other hand gets to be the unrepentant tiny warrior god. If you keep all challenges perfectly balanced to "challenge him" your effectively punishing him for playing a warrior class. Likewise if the more squishy characters are following the AM into the thickest of the fighting, have them have a few close calls at first but ultimately that's them trying to get their Darwin award.

WhiteLycan said:

Full attack remains doing just 1 attack. Even if you have multiple arms. More attacks means no full attack.

Go for quantity: his attacks are still finite and you can always call the thick of the horde unto him as he will probably have to be in front due to his meelee.

Just one comment here. The 1d5 hours for power armor supply keeps getting brought up. RTs have almost unlimited resources. Aside from starting characters, why on terra would they be using civillian ANYTHING? Bare minimum, any explorator worth his salt should be able to strap a better power supply onto the thing.

Just one comment here. The 1d5 hours for power armor supply keeps getting brought up. RTs have almost unlimited resources . Aside from starting characters, why on terra would they be using civillian ANYTHING? Bare minimum, any explorator worth his salt should be able to strap a better power supply onto the thing.

Emphasis mine.

1) No they don't. Relative to the peasantry, yes, but their resources are far from unlimited, as my consistent inability to get myself a Harlequin's Kiss will attest.

2) Because they can't get anything better. It's really that easy. They either can't find anything better or they can't afford it. Simple as that.

And there's no guarantee that you'll be able to just "strap a better power supply onto the thing". Not only are most explorators complete hack with no actual understanding of mechanics, electricity or robotics, but there's nothing saying that the power armour simply can't handle additional power sources strapped to it.

Why all the issues with Power Armour? Just purchase several spare batteries to be carried/brought around with you if your worried about running out of juice. Wasn't there another topic regarding this specific issue with power armour?

Anyhoot, Glaive didn't ask anything regarding Power Armour. He just asked about having problems with a tough Arch-Militant, which is already answered by various other posts on here.

Orks are my answer to the question. Fight the AM with a Nob or Warboss while the others fight boys, gretchen, or squigs.

You could have a creature that has acid blood. So say they are in the Procession of the Damned or an abandoned asteriod base or a secluded world like Rain/Burnscour, etc etc. Only a few guncutters can/do make it to the location. At the location are creatures whose blood is acid, and after a few "random" encounters, the Eviscerator is no more until he can return to your ship (which no one can until the mission is done/tracker beam turned off/find a new guncutter/send a radio transmission/etc). And now insert your main story arc at the location, and worry no more about the Eviscerator until next time.

You could even have him face off against an Eldar/(insert agile race) who is armed with a power sword/(weapon that can disarm someone) The agile based opponent doesn't hit very hard, but getting into melee with it can potentially destroy/lose any melee weapon.

And there's no guarantee that you'll be able to just "strap a better power supply onto the thing". Not only are most explorators complete hack with no actual understanding of mechanics, electricity or robotics , but there's nothing saying that the power armour simply can't handle additional power sources strapped to it..

This can certainly be questioned on a multitude of levels, but even assuming that the typical Explorator would be the god of engineering that his forbidden lores, Int 80(x2) and X>+40 bonus to tech-use imply, there's a much simpler reason for why your Rogue Trader crew wouldn't use anything other than the civilian power source.

The books don't list anything else.

Arch-Militants are not too strong/OP. In fact, they are pretty much the most "one note" career in the game.

The whole point of the Arch-Militant is to fight. He/She doesn't get any bonuses for grand scale events, they don't do politics, what they are is a mix of the RT's personal commando/bodyguard commander. Their one job is to kick ass, take names and blow stuff up.