Harkonnen. If you think that that's what a Rank 3 melee monster Explorator is going to look like you probably shouldn't be throwing stones about Naieve.

Well let's see. If my guy's a just got to 4 ^th level Hereteck he's probably looking at having better than starting equipment by a long shot.

He's a very dangerous man. We'll assume his origin path nets him +10 to his WS and +5 to BS and Toughness. Maybe he's a false man or a Subjack who hears the Call of War, or someone who carries a Dark Secret (could be why he's being hunted).

Assume when purchasing attributes he spent 15 on BS and Toughness and 20 on WS and Strength leaving them at WS55 BS45 S45 T45. That's only 65 of the 100 points so there's plenty left over for other stats, by which I mean intelligence and maybe a bit of agility and willpower, but those don't matter for this experiment.

He drops 2200xp getting the first advancement for WS and BS and the first three advancements for S and T. It's easy to get a bunch of advancements early since Rank 1 for Explorator is fairly un-insipiring and they don't get many fighting skills and talents until later on (you're lucky he doesn't have quite enough for a machinator array).

Final(almost) stats WS60 BS50 S60 T60

His starting bionics, let's go with some Subskin armour and a MIU Weapon interface. Those are good for a Warriorator.

We'll give him 6 good solid very rare or higher purchases. It'll probably be a bit more knowing how players play but whatever, these will be the six relevant to the fight.

With his best purchase he picked up a best quality Omnissian Axe

He's also bough some civilian grade heavy power armour. It's not generally as good as Dragonscale, but Dragonscale's not a Rogue Trader item so it was a good purchase. He can keep it charged with Luminen Charge if he goes over 12 hours.

He'll have a ballistic mechadendrite of course at rank 2.

He also picked up 3-5 Inferno pistols and 3-5 red dot laser sights. Since he's an Armorer since 1 ^st level he can buy them separately and assemble the bits himself no problem, but that's not relevant so it's just one purchase. We'll be loading 2 of those pistols into the Mechadendrite and MIU.

To that we'll add 3-5 units of Airtorch Canisters.

And for his final purchase that ole Synthetic Muscle grafts, best quality since they're only rare. (whoop unnatural strength)

Other equipment of note includes One suppression shield.

Now you're looking at Armor ranging from 10 on the head all the way up to 16 on the torso and shield arm with toughness knocking off an additional 6. Average wounds at this level will probably be around 15 so he should easily be able to survive two non Righteous Fury hits without going into critical damage.

He's not going to parry regarldess of what you do because he'll be using that dodge action to fire his mechanidrite at you, as well as his free action MIU. Oh and the cyberskull familiar that's been with him from the start will also be shooting at you. And every shot will be an inferno pistol using airtorch canisters (let's see that's 2d10+8 pen 13 with the Scatter trait, +50 for his 2, and around +25 for the cyberskull with penalties and bonuses). Range is 5 meters, but that's ok since he wants to be in melee to clobber you with his best quality Omnissian axe (dealing out a whooping of 2d10+12 unnatural strength, +1 best quality, +2 power armor strength +4 base damage, so +19. Oh and pen6. +90 to hit since it's best quality and he too will be all out attacking).

Now let's assume you get lucky and one of the pistols miss (probably the servoskullt), and he spends a two fate points to re-roll two of the other attacks. Can you survive two airtorches and an axe of doom?

Alternatively he can hold off on the MIU and activate his logis implant to give him +10 to his ballistic and Weapon skills until the end of the next turn. Probably do that if he does happen to go first (unlikely). Oh and don't worry about the inferno pistols overheating or jamming since he's had Sacred Ungents all the way since 1 ^st level.

That's a legitimate bottom of rank 4 build, fairly minmaxed, but I could push things a fair bit further if I ignored his int and tech skills entirely.

You may know no fear, but I have calculated a high probability you will know death,

What I would do is respec the dark eldar and pull one of the chaos space marine characters from black crusade and have him rank up on the arch-militant career path. Characters in BC = 7000 exp, RT = 5000 exp, where as DH = 13,000 exp. So all you have to do is either put the BC character in dept 2000 exp or give everyone else the 2000.

While Cpt. Harkonnen and Spatulaodoom are busy whipping them out and measuring I would like to point out that there is still the option of using Black Crusade for the base stats, Space Marine abilities from either BC or DW as they are about the same, and get your base equipment and talents from BC p.48. I suggest getting base equipment from BC if you are going to be cut off from you chapter for long periods (which is why your armor has systems that have failed) if not then give them armor from DW. For your skills, I would give them to the character from the Arch-Militant career and have them rank up on the AM career.

Edit: Oh and I would still dock them 2000 exp that they have to wait for the others to spend to catch up but would let them spend 500 of the 2000 exp on the Rank 1 AM chart and count the 2000 toward the AM career (ie once the other members catch up you can spend exp starting at Rank 2)

It's not so much about measuring anything so much as not liking unhelpful condescending attitudes. My post was however quite a bit off topic.

I was surprised that the two xeno races in Into the Storm were ork and kroot rather than ork and eldar, what with the eldar corsairs and occasionally manipul-err allying with humans for various reasons.

If I were going to fudge something up for various races I'd probably use adjusted characteristics tables like the Kroot and Orks have, give them gin up some racial talents for the player to buy with the starting 500xp, and then let them pick whatever origin path and career they like and change the fluff as appropriate.

A tau who picks Forge World might be an Earth Caste while an eldar who picks Death World would likely be an Exodite.

Actual careers like Explorator and missionary might need some tweaking, but most of the mechanics can easily be renamed and reused.

What I'd like to see is some Sq[redacted]

There's a site that came up with a decent starting part for both homebrewed Eldar and Tau PCs.