The Navis Primer

By Sarvus von Blod, in Rogue Trader

Hey Guys,

So after Soul Reaver, the next supplement book will be The Navis Primer.

Link to the description: www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=3277

What I am most looking forward to is the new Astropathic Disciplines. Its awesome that they are expanding the Disciplines that can definantly be used by Astropaths.

What do you guys think of this book? Anything you are looking foward to?

Weirdboys! WAAAAAAG!

What I'm most interested in is further fluff for Navigators and the Weirdboy career.

But the book as a whole is one of the most exciting releases since the core book.

What am I looking forward to? Well, if it lives up to that cover, every bit of it.

Yeah that looks pretty sweet. Especially the stuff on the Navigator Houses. Is that a Wayne Reynolds cover?

Catbeard said:

Yeah that looks pretty sweet. Especially the stuff on the Navigator Houses. Is that a Wayne Reynolds cover?

Looks like one, the same style and proportions as his D&D & Osprey Publishing work.

I'd say this book is pretty important, as it covers two things that the regular 40K fluff has left largely unexplored - Navigators and Astropaths. Loads and loads of great info for both in this book. Still, my fav part is the Weirdboy career. It is so much fun!

BYE

Being a big fan of the Navis Nobilite… yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Hopefully it'll give the two careers more to do in space combat - namely the Astropath; unless he takes a specific power all he can do at the moment is telepathic jamming.

Nice to see some more on the navis houses, for a group of genetically modified humans that's been around 10-15,000 before the start of the Imperium they always struck me as a vast source of untapped information for story telling.

MKX said:

Nice to see some more on the navis houses, for a group of genetically modified humans that's been around 10-15,000 before the start of the Imperium they always struck me as a vast source of untapped information for story telling .

Not anymore, in a way the W40K RPGs have maintained the tendency to fill gaps in the overall story. Hell, Rogue Trader fleshed out an idea that sat on the shelf since the late 80s.

This book is one that I am egerly awaiting. It contains great stuff. If course the Wierdboy is grand, but the Navigators and Astropaths really could use some more backgrounds and options.

I could really care less about the vile xenos options, but the rest of the book does seem to be potentially quite interesting. It's on my "to buy" list. :)

At the risk of being called a wet blanket, is it too much to ask that we keep the announced-yet-unreleased sourcebooks to one at a time? Maybe it's just because I really want Kuronus Bestiary now, but this is just twisting the knife.

That said, this looks pretty awesome. Love the navigators, would hope for more powers other than different descriptions/mechanisms for Third Eye Laser.

I really hope they include a stack of warp-jump related mechanics. Some really basic, vital holes are left in the main text in this area. Namely, of course, if you can jump in combat, how long jumps take, if you can keep your void shields and geller field up at the same time, and that kind of thing. But also expanded crunch on things like how far you need to be from a gravity well to exit/enter the warp safely, and what happens if you try it too close to a star or planet.

Am I a bad person for wanting an entire book of just playable Xenos?

Eldar and Tau especially. God how I abhor the Imperium.

Seeten said:

Am I a bad person for wanting an entire book of just playable Xenos?

Eldar and Tau especially. God how I abhor the Imperium.

Not at all. I do love that we have basically every possible Ork option with the two careers provided (Freeboota/Warboss and Weirdboy, with the Mekboy and Kommando alts) and the Dark Eldar career has me so excited (it had better come with an ocean of alternate ranks, though - or their own game!) That said, I think Tau and Eldar would both be better off as their own games, at the Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader respectively. I do think it's silly that Eldar Corsairs don't have a career path yet ;)

What Dark Eldar career path are you speaking of?

I am fairly excited about the 'Navis Primer', and I think it looks jolly good fun. It is mildly irritating that the Koronos Bestiary still isn't available in Scotland (or indeed anywhere else, except in Australia), for that is a book I would really like to get hold of, but nevermind…

But I would also like to echo the calls for playable Eldar corsairs. I think in the short term it would be a very easy addition - the Ork and Kroot player characters work reasonably well I feel, and though they may have some believability issues from time to time (Ork spores in the life sustainer spring to mind), ultimately I see the game as about having a good time in our own reading of the universe rather than replicating it as canonically as possibly.

I recall in 2nd edition warhammer fantasy roleplay the skaven sourcebook had a couple of pages about skaven player characters, and the chaos sourcebook had a bit on playing Chaos Dwarves - I never played these versions, and I don't know anyone who did, but the rules seemed reasonable (if dependent on the players being sensible about things), and I don't see why as a relatively short term solution semi-bulked out Eldar characters could take up half 10 or so pages in an 150 page source book of some sort.

I agree that the Eldar could warrent their own Rogue trader style game - there are so many playable characters going, and they are sufficiently important in the literature and fluffed out as a species for such an approach to work. I would imagine careers something like captain/rogue trader, bonesinger/engineer, warlock/spiritseer, an equivalent of the arch-militant (perhaps an aspect warrior of some sort or other though I know they are a very craftworld sort of thing), ranger/pathfinder, priest/remembrancer/skald type character, some sort of pilot/void master type character, a diplomat (who specialises in dealing with humans/other non-eldar). One could maybe delve into Harlquins and Exodites too.

Regarding the Navis Primer, I for one am very happy that navigators are to be bulked out - they are potentially fascinating. In the campaign I am running at the moment, I as GM sort of control the party's navigator - this is in part because we are more interested in doing things on planets, rather than dealing with daemons et al because the navigator roled a 99, but also because the navigator has contacts and interests far beyond the ship upon which he serves, and so he is very useful for driving new plots at my behest. I am looking forward to having extra material to make the navigator a more rounded individual, and more interesting as a source of adventures etc.

Also, renegade 'baddie' navigators seem a good antagonist.

I suppose the only question is whether this book is going to be as delayed as the monster book…

All best,

David.

Speaking of the Koronus Bestiary, I kind of hope the Navis Primer's section on adversaries has some kind of random means to create nameless, unaligned warp spawn of varied sort (Although, as I type, one could say that DH Demon Hunter provided that with its demon creation charts…).