Ok so Navis Primer introduced a new navigator shipboard action called Emegency Jump. In a nutshell the Navigator can pass a -30 navigation test to take the vessel into the warp. Because of the suddeness of the transition everyone has to test for a potential warp hallucination at GM's discretion. If the navigator fails he has to roll on the innacurate re-entry table.

I've got a couple of problems with this.

Thematically this feels way too light for just jumping randomly into the warp with minumal prep. While a -30 warp test isn't trivial it can certainly be made that way with the right bonuses or just a seasoned enough character. Then you will have a situation where a navigator because fo their skill is regularly doing stuff that by the setting is supposed to be suicide, jumping into and out of the warp in places they shouldn't with little or no preperation.

Mechanically the technique seems way too good. Essentially anyone else is powerless to stop you or affect you as even if you botch the roll you'll still get away. You could never actually catch a ship trying to flee because if you start to clsoe witht hem and they can't win a fight with you they'd just take their chances and jump immediately to the warp. The fact that it essentially forces all the opposition to sit on their hands waiting for you to come back from the warp also bugs me.

The fix i'm thinking about doing is this. Logically such a quick translation out then translation back puts quite a strain ont he warp drives which will necessitate them getting repaired which will take a minimum of one turn as the crews and tech priests sooth the agitated machine spirits. The second idea i had is if the test is failed instead of the off target table having them roll on Warp Encounter table and not letting them avoid any non physical encounters or maybe even not avoid any encoutners at all. Thoughts?

Really? No replies?

I'm guessing most people are ignoring the Navis Primer ravings about warp travel in general.

I'll admit that I'm finding it best to ignore most of Navis Primer. It finds ways to complicate things that don't need to be complicated. Astrotelepathy was once a great way to send messages to a ship in orbit - now it's a desperate act unless you spend hours prepping the message.

I was sure I answered this a few days ago but the forums were their usual crashy timing-out selves, so perhaps it never made it through.

Emergency jumps aren't all that light at all.

First off, -30 compensates for quite a bit. While a big, super-special PC navigator can handle this eventually, the average, regular ship's navigator might just barely be cancelling it out to -10.

Given this is sudden, there's no way you could be given the time to do your little ritual first either.

And then things get very troubling. This is no dodge roll. First, we check for warp-hallucinations in the crew. Sure the PCs are probably laughing all that off, but deep in the decks, especially when the jump is forced like this, you're going to start having problems. Perhaps not immediately, but a couple of jumps in a single battle could start a cascade of events across the vessel.

Second, you're risking annihilation or warp incursions:

-If another ship moves to this one's location, both are annihilated when it re-appears. A wise admiral with a sacrificial raider frigate could possibly even do this purposefully to save himself far greater losses by telefragging a battlecruiser. Its rather obvious the ship did an emergency jump after all, and while its difficult to react to it so quickly, its not impossible.

-If you failed the roll, it's inaccurate-re-entry at +50, with doubles throwing in a warp incursion. This could once again result in a telefrag, except this time its your fault. Or, ya know, a Great Unclean One rampaging with nurgle's rot across the halls.

Finally: If your gellar fields were damaged, there's no way warp incursion wouldn't be guaranteed, along with some dangerous exposure for everyone onboard. That's "nightmare scenario" created from a single failing 'dodge'.

So overall, this is a method to use when the ship might be lost otherwise. If your group uses this the way the personel stacks their forcefields and reactions, they're going to get what's coming to them in a couple of battles, guaranteed.