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JackMann posted:Notably, Wrath and Glory is being designed by Ross Watson, who also created Rogue Trade and Death Watch, and contributed to Black Crusade. Despite this, I'm cautiously optimistic from what I've seen so far. I think he might do better without being shackled to trying to the skeleton of WHFRPG (which as Night10194 has said is a great system, but does not scale well when you throw big numbers at it). His Savage Worlds stuff is interesting, though a bit uneven. I remember in the World of Morden sourcebook for Accursed there were some pretty dire design choices, though thankfully those were fixed after I pointed them out in the comments. I've heard the Savage RIFTS stuff is actually pretty good. Yeah, one of the interesting parts of the whole thing and one of the reasons I wanted to do some of 40kRP is that it's so very, very clear that the people FFG brought in to work on it A: Didn't like working within the original system they'd been given to publish, which had been designed by Black Industries before they were shuttered and then given to FFG simply to put out there and B: Had a very different vision for the scale and sort of game they'd be writing. They really needed their own system, and I think the need to be backwards compatible really hurt things.
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Apr 11, 2018 12:12
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Having gotten to have breakfast with some FFG employees and freelancers at GenCon a number of years back, I can say the frustration of working within that system was very real, as was the at-times seemingly arbitrary process of Games Workshop approval. Savage Rifts is solid, but you can tell they kind of had to shrug and wing it when came to character balance, and damage values can be pretty wonky (particularly the Glitter Boy, which remains true to its game-breaking roots). It's still a quantum leap over using the Palladium system, though, and functions pretty well overall.
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Apr 11, 2018 12:23
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I'm hoping that you can play renegades who haven't gone completely razdraz* yet. Black crusade is fun and all but there's little exploration of the actual fall. *Clockwork orange reference.
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Apr 11, 2018 12:26
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gradenko_2000 posted:
I have to say I'm not a fan of this entirely because of the chance for you to gain a level and effectively be weaker because whatever you're gaining from getting one of the next highest level spell is not worth losing the dedicated slots for the level that's phasing out. I guess if Pathfinder's got a way better designed spell list than D&D maybe it'd be fine but I have no reason to believe that.
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Apr 11, 2018 13:33
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It doesn't. It rounds off some of the harsh edges, but that's about it.
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Apr 11, 2018 13:44
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Alien Rope Burn posted:Having gotten to have breakfast with some FFG employees and freelancers at GenCon a number of years back, I can say the frustration of working within that system was very real, as was the at-times seemingly arbitrary process of Games Workshop approval. I would legitimately love to get a chance to talk to them, because the impression I always get is 'Got a system they didn't really like, tried to take it in a direction they felt more comfortable making, tried to fix it, kind of gave up a little and just wanted to get it done with around OW/DH2e', which I really sympathize with. FFG's fluff, art, etc is all really good once they get into their 'zone', so to speak. Jericho is a vast improvement on Calixis. The 'thin' RT setting is on purpose and still has plenty of hints for stuff to explore. Black Crusade's setting is surprisingly fun and again, the company managed to put out a non-creepy Slaaneshi sourcebook and you've got to give them respect for that. I strongly suspect they'd respond to a lot of the things I see wrong with the system with 'Yeah, gently caress the damage system' among other things, given that's one of the principle things they tried to change in the abortive DH2e beta. You know, I still have my copy of the DH2e Playtest Beta from when they tried to revise the system and abandoned trying to be backwards compatible before fan uproar made them just put out 'Only War, but you're Inquisitorial Acolytes' instead. Maybe I should do that after I finish RT.
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Apr 11, 2018 14:17
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Alien Rope Burn posted:It doesn't. It rounds off some of the harsh edges, but that's about it. I mean I guess if you use both suggestions so that higher level spells are 'better' than lower level ones just by virtue of eliminating the scaling on lower-level offensive spells the spell pool would feel less awful just by virtue of you caring less about your utility spells competing much more directly with what would normally be key portions of your offense? But at that point you're hoping casters feel better about being kicked in the genitals because you've already cut their balls off, so there's less to kick.
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Apr 11, 2018 17:29
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Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Rogue Trader Shopping: Surprisingly not very in depth. I don't really need to talk skills and talents because we've been over them before, and most gear is as it ever was. I will take a moment to briefly point out RT has more Exotic Weapons than past and future games, and that they range from 'holy hell yes' (Crux Beam Gun, a long-range alien assault shotgun run off of lasgun packs that can blow away a light tank) to useless (The Ghost Sword is an alien sword made of magic metal that makes the Ordo Xenos dislike you and that is statistically inferior in every way to an Imperial Power Sword while requiring an expensive and limited proficiency pick) to meh (Eldar Shuriken guns are fine, I guess. Why not use a bolter? They're automatic this month!) and are very rare and expensive. For the most part, expect players to have a lot of exotic guns and power weaponry. Also note, this was added in errata in DH1e, but any rifle with Accurate, when fired single shot after spending at least a half-action to aim, adds +1d10 damage (max 2d10) to its shot. This is notable because it means that Accurate is a nice trait to have on pistols, heavy weapons, or whatever (+10 extra to-hit if you aim at all is helpful) but a total game-changer on a rifle, especially since heavy weapons talents are fairly limited in RT. Even the mighty Explorator can't use any Heavy Weapons until Rank 5. Getting 2 Heavy slots at Rank 4 is one of the only 'good' things for the Arch Militant. If your group needs to handle a vehicle or a big monster you're going to be relying on sniper rifles, meltas, heavy melee weapons like power fists, etc for the first 20 sessions or so of a campaign using normal progression. However, since I have so little to really talk about in gear, we're going to skip ahead a bunch to Chapter 9, because the Acquisition and Profit rules *really* should have gone in the Gear chapter. You've seen me mention 'profit factor' often in this review. Your Profit Factor is a group stat that reflects an abstraction of your obscene wealth, starting from 20-60 depending on how awesome your starting ship is. You can either roll d10 (10% chance of 60 Profit, 30 Ship Points, 20% of 50-40, 40-50, 30-60, 10% of 20-70) or just pick one of the options. We aren't into ships yet, but 70 points can get you a tricked out light cruiser or a somewhat stripped down heavy cruiser, while 30 basically demands you take a lovely transport that won't be doing much fighting or adventuring at first. Your Profit is then adjusted for backstory and background picks. Profit is used to buy items, favors, starships, and everything else. Increasing your Profit Factor is the assumed core goal of a Rogue Trader campaign, because you are here to make enough money to have your horrible clone-baby robots dipped in molten diamond. For the most part, Profit is your base % chance of acquiring an item, modified by its rarity, quality, what sort of item it is, and if you're trying to get more than one of it at a time. UNLESS the item is 'Unique' or 'Near Unique' you get a huge bonus for only buying one (+30%). I wish they'd dropped the naming scheme for the availabilities because at this point they literally do just mean 'base difficulty on the buy poo poo test'. A Good item imposes -10, a Best -30. There is no guideline for how often a party can try to roll to acquire items, it should be limited by the GM's sense. There is no penalty for a failed acquisition, and until later books, no way to, say, burn permanent Profit to demand you win an item. The book also recommends that if players are failing at Acquisition rolls you write an adventure where they seek out the item they wanted and steal it or whatever. If you're acquiring an item with attachments, like a gun with a scope, you take the highest Availability penalty among the components, and an extra -5 per component. So let's say I'm a Space 1%er with average starting space-money (40 Profit) who wants my own tricked out autogun, a pretty simple item that a mid-level DH character could get trivially. I want it to have a Red Dot Scope (+10 to hit on single shots) and a Fire Selector (Load 3 ammo types at once). The Autogun is common, but the scope and selector are Scarce. Scarce is the base +0, I'm putting 2 things on, and I want it to be Best because hell yeah, tacticool space M-16. Best is -30, two items is -10, and I'm only buying the single gun, so it's a total of a 30% chance to get a fairly easy mid-range DH era weapon. But wait! Say I want my own suit of Power Armor or Light Power Armor! Those are both Very Rare (-20) and I get +30 for just buying 1, so I've got 50% chances of getting some of the most advanced armor in the Imperium. Hell, let's make it Best for the most expensive personal armor possible! Still 20%, only slightly less likely than getting that silly little autogun. The system is simply not all that coherent. Also, Profit generally goes up 3-6 points per adventure. Profit also generally doesn't go *down*. There's actually little to no resource management in this, the game about running a commercial empire. The problem with profit is it's incoherent, it advances at a fairly glacial pace book-as-written, and it doesn't do a good job of symbolizing what it's trying to do. It's meant to show you're so wealthy that it's more a matter of 'can I find this thing in my budget' than 'could I afford it at all'. But it ends up being a really weird subsystem that can also really punish individual players for being unlucky. When we were playing, our Navigator kept trying to get exciting pistols for her collection or fun trinkets, and kept botching all her Get Stuff rolls, while over here we've got the Rogue Trader walking around with a a Best Power Fist and a suit of Best Power Armor because he kept rolling under 10. It also doesn't give them much granularity to work with for pricing items. For instance, Power Armor, Carapace Armor, and Light Power Armor *all have the same availability*. Almost all Power Weapons do, too. Etc. When you really only have a few levels of cost to work with, and all these modifiers, and the general 'Roll whenever the GM feels like letting you do it' you end up with a weird system where it feels at once too hard and too easy to get all the 'best' gear. They say you can arbitrarily demand that players reroll to acquire their items as insurance against, say, 10% to get the best gun in the game. If they fail, they either suffer -5 to all acquisition tests, lose the item, the item stops working, or the item's quality or scope goes down one step, with all of these that don't discard or degrade the item lasting until the group's Profit increases. Once again: It is totally arbitrary when this happens, though there is the suggestion of limiting it to the item being damaged (and thus needing to pay to repair it) or people trying to steal it or whatever. The arbitrariness of this rule makes it feel spiteful and unfun to deal with, and I'd be surprised to see very many groups making extensive use of it. You can also check Profit vs. Profit when dealing with another organization as if it was an opposed skill test. For every DoS you beat them by, you get +5 on an Interaction test (cumulative) because you overawe them with wealth. For every one you lose by, you get -5 as you prove gauche. You can also just roll Profit vs. arbitrary number for 'favors, passage, etc'. You lose nothing by trying, generally. You gain profit by doing endeavors (having adventures) with their whole (again, arbitrary) victory points system modified by your skills, ship components, etc to meet the GM's assigned numbers and gain enough points to count as succeeding, gaining the endeavor's profit value for your group's total. For instance, one Lesser Endeavor suggested is 'Actually carry goods from a far-flung port back to Calixis.' You'd first do a Trade objective for X Winning Points to get the items and establish a route, then a Criminal/Trade objective for X Arbitrary Winning Points to establish a market for your goods in Calixis, then a Creed (Propaganda)/Trade objective for X Victorybucks to overcome the shame of having actually traded things in this, Rogue Trader, and at the end get +2 Profit Factor for your group. I say X because again, no number guidelines are EVER GIVEN. You're left to determine them by looking at how many Winbucks the various ship components and things give over in the ship section and by the note of 'Per 100 extra Winbucks over what's necessary, gain +1 extra profit for the endeavor'. We'll get more into this in ships but I'm being really loving harsh on this because Winbucks ARE THE ONLY THING MANY SHIP COMPONENTS GET YOU. A significant amount of ship-design and ship rules depends entirely on the Arbitrary Victory Points system for Endeavors. You cannot easily simply excise this half-baked loving mess from the rules like I could with Kill-Markers back in Deathwatch without invalidating a ton of the options for one of the central mechanics of the game, building your ridiculous flying cathedral. So, Profit is a mess and so is the means of gaining Profit. You can also find your Profit put under threat and have to do a nega-Endeavor (Resolving a Misfortune) to save it, or else your team loses Profit permanently. Why does this trigger? GM decided it does, same as loving everything else. This section is basically where RT lost me as a game. This is a game about being a mighty merchant-noble who flies around space wheeling and dealing, and its commerce and profit system is a lovely half-baked after-thought where everything is up to throwing up your hands and going 'Well the GM will decide'. This is a problem because, again, this is the central, assumed goal of the loving game. There's no mechanical complexity, that's all in the same places it was for DH (Shooting, investigating, etc). There's no decision making, it's all 'roll vs. Profit' and 'GM decides something bad happens'. There's no guidelines on crafting Endeavors or making the Winbucks matter or balancing Winbuck amounts. Welcome to the staple of the FFG 40k system: A half-baked subsystem that looks deep and complicated but ends up doing almost nothing. We'll be here all Squad Mode. Next Time: Wizbiz.
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Apr 12, 2018 19:44
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Profit factor was an improvement over DH's always-get-a-recipt but not by much.
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Apr 12, 2018 19:49
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The real problem with Profit Factor is how boring it is to engage with. Like, 'Alright! We plundered the ancient ruin of its treasures and sold them off to the highest bidder, probably dooming an entire Calixian house later when they turn people into turbo fire monsters or something but that's not our problem! +3% to out Get Stuff roll!' is hardly exciting.
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Apr 12, 2018 19:58
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I feel like at that point you may as well track credits directly because then at least the numbers going up are large.
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Apr 12, 2018 20:05
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Could be used like: "you have found a large cache of archeotech relics" +10 to any acquisition rolls relating to high-tech.
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Apr 12, 2018 20:07
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Night10194 posted:The real problem with Profit Factor is how boring it is to engage with. Like, 'Alright! We plundered the ancient ruin of its treasures and sold them off to the highest bidder, probably dooming an entire Calixian house later when they turn people into turbo fire monsters or something but that's not our problem! +3% to out Get Stuff roll!' is hardly exciting. The worst part is, everything before "but that's not our problem" is actually exciting. The plot hook of "your adventuring indirectly doomed someone" can be interesting as long as you don't overdo it.
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Apr 12, 2018 20:37
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Rogue Traders exist to cause fun adventures for other lines as you clean up after another spoiled prick tooling around in his dad's space cathedral.
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Apr 12, 2018 20:44
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 Rifts Index & Adventures Volume Two, Part 2: "Upon investigation of the creature's lair, the group will uncover several skeletons and bones from children, putting to rest the string of child disappearances that had been taking place over the past six months." This is almost like a prelude to The Rifter, as this supplement is clearly being used as a clearing house to vet people who would go on to work for later books. Predictably, this will not work out terribly well for anybody involved, at least as far as the notion of becoming a Palladium author goes. The Siembiedan imperative is still much too strong. Click here for Part 1 of the review! Click here for Part 2 of the review! Review Notes:
 Surplus art of Native American robots from Spirit West. Don't know why this didn't make it into the book, it's kind of neat. Next: Good preachers and bad preachers.
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Apr 12, 2018 21:19
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Night10194 posted:Rogue Traders exist to cause fun adventures for other lines as you clean up after another spoiled prick tooling around in his dad's space cathedral. According to Ciaphas Cain, they're also an exceedingly popular Inquisitor disguise to the point of stereotype. In the first Cain book, the Rogue Trader is merely pretending to be an Inquisitor pretending to be a Rogue Trader while the actual Inquisitor is the lounge singer.
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Apr 12, 2018 22:00
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Cythereal posted:According to Ciaphas Cain, they're also an exceedingly popular Inquisitor disguise to the point of stereotype. In the first Cain book, the Rogue Trader is merely pretending to be an Inquisitor pretending to be a Rogue Trader while the actual Inquisitor is the lounge singer. Amberley Vail is one of the only Inquisitors in the entire setting that isn't an incompetent idiot or monster, though. Cain is probably the biggest influence on the tone of anything 40k I ever wrote.
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Apr 12, 2018 22:04
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Night10194 posted:Amberley Vail is one of the only Inquisitors in the entire setting that isn't an incompetent idiot or monster, though. As it should be.
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Apr 12, 2018 23:05
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:I'm hoping that you can play renegades who haven't gone completely razdraz* yet. I have no idea where the Age of Sigmar RPG is going in terms of characters, but based on the novel I was listening to on a long rear end drive recently, you might be able to get some of it there. 2/3rds of the book was tearing through Nurgle's chaos dimension, including the various settlements and had a lot of viewpoint from a nurgle pirate dealing with the weird rear end social politics of the realm (plus nurgle bretonnians running around babbling about chivalry). So at least in terms of the fiction, they seem oriented towards making chaos have more personality and less single minded bent towards whatever the respective god's theme is.
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Apr 12, 2018 23:25
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Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Rogue Trader Primarily Redundant I would have a hell of a lot more to write if I hadn't just done Deathwatch. The psy system pretty much works exactly as it did in DW, albeit your powers will be way less impressive because you don't have ~the adamantine will of a space marine!~ on your side. Let's instead talk a little about the fluff of being an Astropath, and why that limits your powers to just Telepathy for your starting abilities and you have to buy other disciplines later. As an Astropath, your space wizard was selected not for strength, but for raw stability and steadfastness. Outside of various Dark Age or alien technologies, you see, humans have no way to break the laws of the physical universe enough to make things go faster than light. To accomplish FTL travel, they send ships through the Warp and across its shifting currents where time doesn't matter nearly as much and space is all screwed up. If you can't break *this* universe's laws, go to another universe! It's genius, even if the other universe is full of angry hell-monsters. Human ships have shielding against this, the so called Gellar Field that was produced sometime during the Dark Age. The thing is, humans can't make radio signals and things go faster than light either. But they *can* transmit psychic dreams and impressions through the Warp. So they take the most stable and reliable of psykers, and they train them endlessly in sending messages in highly symbolic code and prophecy across a galactic scale. An Astropath is the ship's communications officer and interstellar communications system in the same person. They are also soul-bound to the Emperor, a ritual that grants them a tiny fraction of his power, which is then contained by their unusually stable gift (in theory) for the small price of exploding their eyes. It's okay, though; they don't need eyes to see once their psychic senses are that sharp. Honestly, Astropaths are the kind of stuff that is Actually Pretty Neat in 40k fluff, where because there's no simple technological solution the humans have had to resort to this extreme but normalized production of living, psychic radio-people. As an Astropath, you get to be a literal space wizard, afforded protection and respect by other starship crews and officers, because you're critical to the function of the ship and the only way to contact people at interstellar distances. You decode communications from home by casting runes and divining rods and interpreting dreams and it actually works, because there are standard reporting crazy dream messages and things in Imperial communications protocol. Being a mighty wizard and all, you are also much more resistant to possession than normal and your spells are safer. This is the justification for the shift in the psy system relative to DH. Also, the Unbound Demonhost In The Middle Of The Party result has been pointedly removed from the Perils table, replaced with the Astropath getting temporarily caught by demons, gaining a shitload of corruption, and appearing on a planet d10 weeks later. Astropaths also get a +20 to WP on ANY opposed WP test with a demon, meaning spells of control or banishing are actually way better for Astropaths. The actual spells are mostly like they are in DH, though the combat spells get powered up some in the official Errata to be more useful compared to the kind of guns and knives Rogue Traders can buy. They're also really dull; basic telepathy stuff like stunning screams and mind-taking, divination abilities that let you buff yourself and allies with forewarning about the future, and telekinesis that provides some direct damage and defense magic. Originally, all combat magic also forced a BS or WS test, but Errata shifted it to all working off WP. Astropaths' actual magic is functional, useful to a party, and kind of dull. It's short, but there's really not much to say that I haven't already said about the new Psy system. It's more forgiving, but it's also a bit less insanely powerful when a psyker is operating on a smaller scale rather than 'my spells count as heavy weapons'. Next Time: THE SPICE MUST FLOW
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Apr 13, 2018 16:05
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Night10194 posted:Amberley Vail is one of the only Inquisitors in the entire setting that isn't an incompetent idiot or monster, though. I think reading the first trilogy affected why I like Only War out of the lines so much. Those Valhallans, they're okay. (If I'm being honest Gaunt's Ghosts are fine, but they're either getting the crap kicked out of them or being lionized.)
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Apr 13, 2018 16:18
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Dawgstar posted:I think reading the first trilogy affected why I like Only War out of the lines so much. Those Valhallans, they're okay. (If I'm being honest Gaunt's Ghosts are fine, but they're either getting the crap kicked out of them or being lionized.) The Cain books do a good job of making 40k sound like a setting that has actual people living in it by doing to it a lot of what the Bretonnia RPG book did for Bretonnia in Fantasy: Pointing out that the propaganda is one thing, but there's no way in hell everything *actually* works that way. So instead of shooting people for every infraction you have the best commissar in the setting taking away weekend passes and things instead. You have a 'friendly' Inquisitor acting like an actual spymaster while the insane Radical who acts more like a normal fluff Inquisitor is a monster and a villain for them to overcome because of it, all while patting himself on the back for being a Hard Man who makes such Hard Choices. You have a commissar who is smart enough to realize his job is being an aide and sounding board for his assigned officers, and that if he shoots his troops willy nilly then it's really easy for the distinctive guy in the big hat to mysteriously and violently die in an active warzone. They're repetitive, they run out of plots and ideas after awhile, but Cain's books absolutely do a lot for 40k. ESPECIALLY for making it seem like a setting that could host an RPG.
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Apr 13, 2018 16:28
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Night10194 posted:The Cain books do a good job of making 40k sound like a setting that has actual people living in it by doing to it a lot of what the Bretonnia RPG book did for Bretonnia in Fantasy: Pointing out that the propaganda is one thing, but there's no way in hell everything *actually* works that way. So instead of shooting people for every infraction you have the best commissar in the setting taking away weekend passes and things instead. You have a 'friendly' Inquisitor acting like an actual spymaster while the insane Radical who acts more like a normal fluff Inquisitor is a monster and a villain for them to overcome because of it, all while patting himself on the back for being a Hard Man who makes such Hard Choices. You have a commissar who is smart enough to realize his job is being an aide and sounding board for his assigned officers, and that if he shoots his troops willy nilly then it's really easy for the distinctive guy in the big hat to mysteriously and violently die in an active warzone. I like the remembrancer stories in the Horus Heresy novels for the same reason. They're something that absolutely makes sense in a setting like this before everything went grimdark: an officially licensed order of artists, poets, and historians charged with recording history of the Great Crusades beyond just military after action reports. They're part propaganda machine, part pop history writers, part bard. The Space Wolves book makes the skald comparisons explicit, but they're something that makes a lot of sense before the setting went completely derp and offer an excellent vehicle for stories about normal humans living among Space Marines in an era even more dominated by them than usual.
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Apr 13, 2018 16:51
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Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Rogue Trader SPIIIIIIIIIIICE So, Navigators. Navigators are taken from Dune. Navigators in 40k are a series of powerful, inbred guild-families who pass down the Navigator Gene, a necessary component for not getting lost in hell when trying to travel faster than light. This makes them spooky and mutated (They actually gain from a list of Navigator Mutations as they level up) and makes the Imperium hate them, but it is genuinely impossible to have an Imperium of Man without them. Every single Imperial agency relies on their contracts with the Navigator Houses. Yes, even the Marines. Yes, even the Inquisition. If someone really hates mutants and psykers, they will make an exception for this one class of mutant because it is a matter of life and death. There are sometimes hints that in the Dark Age, humans built computers that could do what Navigators can do, and that the families destroy these as often as possible and try to cover them up so they don't get exterminated by the Imperium. Without a Navigator it is possible to do very slow, careful jumps along well-charted routes, and nothing more; it can take decades to make the same trip that a Navigator would've let you handle in a week. Having even one of these in your employ marks you as one of the potentates of the Imperium. Which begs the question, why the gently caress would you ever take your totally-irreplaceable and incredibly expensive Navigator down to a planet with a flak vest and a laspistol and get them shot at by space bugs? The answer is that the average Rogue Trader is kind of stupid. As a Navigator, you get a whole subsystem where you also pick what kind of House you come from. A Shrouded house is one that is deeply out of favor or hiding itself on the edge of space. They get -1 Profit (because poor) but are especially good at divining powers and sensing warp phenomena, and they also know how to negotiate contracts and do business because they have to do it themselves. A Magisterial house is a totally orthodox one that gets better crazy death-stare powers and mutates less AND gets along better with other Imperials and oh, hey, they don't have any actual downsides. You're just an ultra-rich weird-looking space mutant. Nomadic houses are Navigator voidborn, and they get the ability to spend Fate to auto-succeed their powers with d5 DoS, get +10 to actual warp navigation checks (which is nice), and take -10 to deal with normal people who lived on planets. Finally, Renegade Houses are crazy people who do genetics experiments and poke Chaos, but they get bonus powers that function significantly better and mutate all the goddamn time while gaining Corruption. Navigators count as Psykers even though they don't use Psy, and they also cannot gain Corruption by failing Fear checks against demons and stuff. Other means of Corruption, yes, but mere Warp exposure won't do it to someone with a literal Warp Eye. Navigators generally start with the ability to force people to look into the warp and die through their eye and one other power. They gain Powers by buying them off their advance table, choosing a new power each time or choosing to advance one of their pre-existing powers and upgrade it. They also risk mutation every time they buy a new power, rolling at Toughness+10 (+0 if Renegade, +20 if Magisterial) and if they fail, rolling on the mutation table. Absolutely every Navigator PC has the Lidless Stare, where they open their third eye and expose the raw power of the Warp to enemies (and friends who don't turn away fast enough). This attack hits everyone within 15m of the Navigator, though it won't affect Daemons or robits or anything without a real soul. Allies forewarned don't avoid the power, they merely get +30% chance to dodge it. The Navigator makes a WP test and compares their DoS to every living creature within 15m; any who fail take d10+WPB damage that cannot be reduced by any means and are stunned for 1 round. The Navigator takes a level of Fatigue for using this power, and an extra one if they fail to harm anyone. If they buy extra levels it does 2d10+WPB and stuns for d5 rounds while inflicting d5 Insanity. If they buy the final level, it causes a Tough-10 save or die in every creature that takes damage that has 20+ Int. So yes, Lidless Stare is really powerful. Most of their other powers are situational. Stuff like locking down a demon by staring it down (which at Master Level causes an insta-kill check for the demon, too), scanning the Warp for signs of hidden stellar objects, messing with time to give yourself extra actions, etc. One of the problems is that Navigator powers tend to inflict Fatigue. If your Fatigue exceeds your TB, you collapse. Having any Fatigue at all imposes a -10 on all checks. Also, making yourself hyper-fast in combat is useful, sure, but when your only real offensive power has a good chance of killing any allies within 15m of you and you're terrible at all physical combat it puts a bit of a damper on things. Navigator powers are a bit of a mess, is what I'm saying. Mutations are on a simple d100 chart, giving you stuff like oddly jointed limbs, turning super fat or thin, becoming pale and hairless, getting huge black star eyes, etc. Most of them impose a -5 Fellowship or d5 Toughness penalty, though some of the high up ones can give you things like Regeneration or Unnatural Agility (x2)! You're going to be a weirdo either way, though. Finally, we get the Random Encounter Subsystem, the main reason you want a Navigator and the main reason you'll probably have an NPC one around or just handwave all this bullshit. It's a 5 step passage to make it through a Warp Voyage. First, you make a roll with secret GM modifiers for Navigate (Warp) to see how long the voyage might be. The GM already knows how long your trip will be, this is just you rolling to see how accurate your guess will be. For the people aboard the ship, usually, it will feel like time passes much faster in the Warp (The rough guide is 1 day warp travel per 12 days realspace, but this can change depending on wholly arbitrary bullshit that the GM is encouraged to make up at random). Next, your Navigator tries to find the Emperor. Roll Awareness+10 and for every DoS, add +10 to the Navigate check for the trip. For every DoF, subtract -10. So...you roll a check to see how much of a bonus you get on the next mandatory check. If for some reason you cannot find Empy at all, you have to make the eventual Navigate test for the trip at -60 as your base. Next you roll Perception+10 to see if you pick up on major warp phenomena or trouble on the way to your destination, and if you fail you won't know there might be annoying random encounters. Finally, the GM adds or subtracts from your chances at random depending on their whims and you *finally* roll the actual Navigate (Warp) test. Success by 3 degrees will make you arrive much faster (1/4 the time), 2 will make you get there faster (1/2), 1 will get you there quick (3/4), bare success gets you there at roughly your ETA, then you go slower for Degrees of Failure up to x4 journey length for 3+ DoF. If you roll a 9 on either die while failing, you'll go off course and arrive somewhere the GM makes up on the spot. Finally, you roll d100 for every 5 days in the Warp, adding +20 to the roll if you succeeded the Per+10 roll earlier to spot potential random encounters, with a 25% chance of nothing happening (45% if you got that sweet +20!) and lots of chances of hauntings or spooky events or whatever that will hurt crew and morale. Also, most of the random encounters in the warp are vague and will rely on the GM to arbitrarily take their description and insert an adventure and are you seeing the loving pattern? It's almost like you roll a ton of dice just to arrive at 'The GM waves their hands and makes up some spooky poo poo and then maybe we get on with the real adventure'. Navigating is a ton of random, non-interactive bullshit that adds up to a totally pointless subsystem I'm sure a lot of players ignored after the first couple voyages, AND THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT MECHANICAL THING NAVIGATORS GET TO INTERACT WITH. I remember my Navigator player being bored to tears with this whole mess, because it's literally just 'roll, roll some more to see if the first roll gives you a bonus to another roll, then roll, then roll more, then maybe you can roll some dice' without making any actual decisions. No option to try to hustle and take risks. No meaningful mechanics attached to most of the Warp Phenomena. There's nothing to actually DO in all of the Navigation system. Welcome to Rogue Trader, this is going to be a goddamn theme of our stay. Next Time: Space bote!
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Apr 13, 2018 17:49
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Can confirm, never once bothered with Navigation when running my campaign and left all that nonsense to an NPC. Same with the ship astropath.
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Apr 13, 2018 17:58
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At least that's not the Hard Mode version of Warp navigation, which instead shows up in The Navis Primer. And it also has the Hard Mode version of astrotelepathy, because of course.
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Apr 13, 2018 18:00
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Like at least it isn't nearly as insane to bring the Astropath down to the planet. You might need to call the ship in at a moment's notice or have your Space Wizard check out some spooky poo poo for you. And losing your communications is a little less terrifying than losing your only means to navigate the Hell Dimension.
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Apr 13, 2018 18:01
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And ships have a whole choir of Astropaths, so not irreplaceable.
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Apr 13, 2018 18:28
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Horrible Lurkbeast posted:And ships have a whole choir of Astropaths, so not irreplaceable. I always figured that there's more than one Navigator on board too - the PC is just the boss one.
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Apr 13, 2018 19:05
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Angrymog posted:I always figured that there's more than one Navigator on board too - the PC is just the boss one. Nope. Most ships just have the one, owing to how rare they are.
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Apr 13, 2018 19:11
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A trainee sure, just not a whole band. Could be fun playing a runaway navigator, they live under some confining internal laws.
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Apr 13, 2018 19:13
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It's to the point that it also makes it weird to think how random pirates actually operate. Spaceflight in 40k is always portrayed as so incredibly weird and hard that it's a wonder they ever get any of these big wars in. I know the numbers are made up and the scale doesn't matter but it's always bugged me. E: We had as NPC Astropath and Navigator Literally Dr. Orpheus and a runaway Navigator who was trying really hard to pretend to be a normal mutant hive-ganger until the party's Seneschal broke out of an Arbite lockup with her.
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Apr 13, 2018 19:14
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Night10194 posted:It's to the point that it also makes it weird to think how random pirates actually operate. Spaceflight in 40k is always portrayed as so incredibly weird and hard that it's a wonder they ever get any of these big wars in. I know the numbers are made up and the scale doesn't matter but it's always bugged me. Books typically suggest that any Chaos psyker can work as a Navigator, if less reliable than the real deal, so I've always figured that pirates have a pet sorcerer on board. My campaign eventually ditched the Navigator entirely when they got their ship refitted with a Necron inertialess drive giving them safe, non-Warp FTL.
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Apr 13, 2018 19:20
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Are there any mechanics for going backwards in time during Warp travel? You can make like the Ork Warboss who killed his past self to get a second copy of his favorite shoota.
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Apr 13, 2018 20:37
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Warhammer 40,000 Roleplay: Rogue Trader Space? Wanna go to space. Space! So, as you might imagine, Space is sort of important to the game about space capitalism. Your team's starship is by far the most important individual asset you own. It thus has its own long character creation system, where you pick hull, buy essential components, put on weapons and other add-ons, roll for various quirks of the machine spirit and design, give it a pretentious name, and come up with a backstory. Building a spaceship actually feels fun, I will be clear on this, but further additions to it are messy (Adding weapons, for instance, is Acquisition-30, for instance, so good luck early on) and much of what you do in building your ship is either going to have such clear right and wrong answers or leave you dependent on the victory points system that the luster wears off quick. Not to mention that starship combat is basically 'play a simpler version of Battlefleet Gothic where you only control a single playing piece and most players just make the same roll to boost the important attack/move rolls move on rote every round'. Any SP not spent are added directly to Profit Factor so, uh, there's no reason not to start with the 20/70 start and just buy as little or as much as you need, mechanically. It is outright the best option. There are several general types of ships, and pretty limited numbers of hulls for each in the main book. There's bigger, more powerful ship types and more hulls in the various add-on books, particularly Battlefleet Koronus, which also adds in fighter craft and torpedoes. Which is sort of important, because ships have an entire stat (Turret Rating) that is intended specifically to defend against those despite the fact that they are not actually in the game until the add-on. You can fly a Transport, a Raider, a Frigate, a Light Cruiser, or a Cruiser. Transports are cheap and can take high Victory Point trading holds, but they're slow and poo poo at combat. Raiders are fast and light, but rely on forward-mounted guns, don't have very much space for weaponry or add-ons, and will be relying on outmaneuvering and annoying transports to death or running from 'real' warships. Frigates are solid all-arounders with weapons that can fire in lots of directions and a good balance to them. Light Cruisers are the heaviest ship that gets a base 90 degree turning angle, their forward-gun mounts can fire out to the sides, and they have a great balance of speed and size but they're expensive. A real Cruiser was designed to act in a squadron, with escorts, and will be pretty awkward for an RT. However, it is so goddamn big, heavily armored, and heavily armed that if you can afford one and arm it, normal pirates will just bounce off you while you lumber about and punch them into next week. Or ram them! You can ram people. Imperial Cruisers are often specifically designed for it! The key to your ship choice is that Ship Points stat back from when you determined your starting resources. Someone with 70 Ship Points can, in fact, afford a full military cruiser (though they probably can't afford to fill it out completely yet). It makes up for the 20 Profit Factor, trust me. At the same time, someone with 60 starting Profit might actually be able to buy parts for their ship beyond this whole thing. A ship's profile will give you its base Ship Points to buy the hull; you *can* operate a ship without any further ship points. The basic, essential parts will not cost additional ship-points and which ones you choose will be primarily a matter of using up two other important stats: Space and Power. Your hull gives you Space, your engine gives you Power. For the most part you have no options about Engines until the add-on books, so every Raider will have the same Raider sized engine taking up the same amount of Space and generating the same Power, etc. Ships also have Maneuverability, which is a generic number added or subtracted to all piloting rolls when driving them (Most have positive ratings, even the cruiser), Speed (the number of Units they can move at base), Hardpoints (Where and how many ship-scale macro-weapons they can hold), Hull Integrity (HP), Armor (DR), Detection (Base numbers added to sensors and targeting checks), and Turret Rating, which is how many tiny autocannons and missiles and stuff the ship has to fend off boarders with (later, fighters and torpedoes). The Transport options usually cost very little, being the cheapest ships at 20 SP each. Your options are the phenomenally slow and poor at fighting Jericho-class Pilgrim vessel, a personnel transport usually used by chartists and pilgrimage fleets rather than military customers, or the slightly more able but smaller Vagabond Merchantman. Neither is very exciting and with their terrible armor, speed, and maneuver you'll be outmatched at base in almost any ship combat. You'd better hope your opponents are inept, stupid, or badly armed if it comes up. Both do come with a free Main Cargo Hold, the best kind of Cargo Hold, with its Space already built into the design and it only needing a little Power to keep the lights on, but they're really only useful for monumentally cheap Rogue Traders or for buying a second ship to drag around for profit. Raiders are weird. They're small ships with small crews (Why they're usually only 1.5 km long! And only have 22000 people aboard!) that have the highest speed and maneuver ratings in the game, but both of them have a Dorsal and Prow weapon battery. Dorsal batteries can fire on anywhere but behind you. Prow can, unless you're a Cruiser or Light Cruiser, only fire on the front arc. With their tiny Space ratings, both Raiders won't be able to mount enormously heavy guns, and when we get to how shooting in space combat works it will quickly become apparent that against any serious military opponent you're only going to be able to do real damage if you're flying directly towards them and laying both batteries on. The Prow slot DOES give them the option of mounting, say, a light Lance (Lances are a weapon that ignores armor but has very few potential hits and is very heavy and space intensive) but their tiny size makes it rough. Your options are the SP 30 blazing faster Hazeroth Privateer with the highest speed of any ship in the core book, or the 35 SP most maneuverable Havoc Merchant Raider, which is also bigger. Frigates are sort of the 'default' ship. Frigates are solid. They've got only Dorsal weaponry, but both mounts are Dorsal, so you can fly rings around slower ships staying in blindspots while you destroy them. Imperial Escorts are actually one of the hidden upsides of their navy, and appropriately the Frigates are really good in RT. They're quick, they move fast, they have okay HP, they're just a little strapped for space. You can get a nimble, reliable Sword class frigate or a Calixian Tempest, both for 40 SP, and they're both really good ships for an 'average' starting vessel if you had, say, 50 SP. They're both solid; the Sword is nimbler, has better turrets, is more maneuverable, and has better sensors, while the Tempest has slightly more Space, armor, and HP. You won't go wrong with either. The Light Cruiser is a Dauntless Class Light Cruiser and this ship is totally sweet. This is partly my perceptions being colored by having played Battlefleet Gothic but also, this is a ship described as having a long operational range, efficient engines, good speed, good maneuverability, fantastic sensors (Best Detection in the core book), and enough firepower to hang with heavier vessels if it must. It can also fire its Prow weapon on the left or right, like a heavy cruiser, and it can mount full Broadsides instead of just batteries on its Starboard and Port weapon slots. It also has a ton of HP relative to the smaller ships, and a lot of space (though its essential components are huge). It costs 55 SP, so starting with one can be a bit tricky and hard on profit margins, but if you can fill out a Dauntless and get it a good crew it will do whatever you want. The ship is event built for scouting and exploration by the Navy, and for pirate-hunting. Finally, we have the Lunar Class Cruiser. The Lunar is a huge brick of a ship and turns half as quick (45 degrees per turn action instead of 90) as other ships, and is built to have tons of backup as a capital ship. Other ships can just fly rings around your Lunar. However, the Lunar can get multiple hit-negating shields, unlike everyone else, has a ton of armor, and has a lot of HP. It also has 2 Starboard and Port weapon slots, each. And can mount full Broadsides. It's slow, it's solid, it's expensive as hell (60 SP) so you *probably* won't start with one (though you can! It might be fun!) but a Lunar can brawl with anything you can encounter out in space and it could be funny to watch a pirate vessel try to stick and move you until it makes one mistake, ends up in your gun arcs, and explodes in a single turn. Next: The Stuff You Put On Boats
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Apr 13, 2018 20:52
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Speaking from DM experience, a Rogue Trader's threats are taken a lot more seriously when made from the bridge of a Lunar class cruiser, so that's always a factor to consider.
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Apr 13, 2018 21:13
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As a note: Lunar and up is the sort of vessel that can perform Exterminatus.
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Apr 13, 2018 21:19
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So it looks like they are trying to have some decent fidelity to Battlefleet Gothic, and as a result I'm going to talk about spess botes for a sec. Ship Classes: Ships in BFG are divided into Escorts (which are the lightest and most maneuverable ships, making 90 degree turns), Cruisers (which are intermediate in size and generally only make 45 degree turns), and Battleships (which are heaviest but have the most trouble turning generally because of special rules). Light Cruisers are a Thing certain fleets have, which are exactly what the name suggests. They're larger than an Escort and good at turning but are more fragile than a real Cruiser. Fleets: Imperials: The Imperial Navy is pretty much the simple generic one in BFG. There's not a lot of weird rules about how they work, they've got good workmanlike ships that are pretty well armored and you can probably pretty much make your fleet do whatever you want. Their main gimmick is increased Front arc armor, which incentivizes you to make sure enemies are shooting at you from there. You are sometimes allowed to bring along a Spess Marine Battle Barge as a battleship choice which is an expensive and pretty badass ship that's going to attract literally all of the attention so hope it tanks long enough to be worth it. Chaos: The Chaos fleet is very similar to the Imperial Navy, seeing as how it's a bunch of way old Imperial ships. You don't have the increased prow armor because that's a newer development but you are better at boarding and get access to marks of chaos and such. You can even buy creepy Daemonships that are all possessed and weird. Eldar: Eldar ships are more fragile than comparable Imperial ships and lack shields. They instead have Holofields that make it harder to hit them with batteries and a much more significant advantage: they are HELLA maneuverable. They get a free turn before they move then another free turn after they move, and most of them are able to turn to any heading when they turn (I think the battleship might be limited to 90 degree turns? Don't remember). They've got solid weapons but the main trick is to just try and dance around the firing arcs of the enemy and shoot poo poo up their fleet's rear end until they are dead. Dark Eldar: Less maneuverable than normal Eldar but fast as gently caress and covered in guns. They're also great at boarding. I recall they love them some torpedos, too. Still, just like any other Dark Eldar force it's weird and poorly supported and only for people who like both of those things. Tau: Tau escorts are pretty good (and you're actually limited in how many you can bring because they rely on the capitol ships to move quickly) but said capitol ships are decidedly mediocre. On the other hand, you're allowed to take poo poo like a Kroot Warsphere or a Demiurg battleship and both of those are p baller. Ork: Ork ships are kind of exactly what you'd expect as I recall. Lots of dakka, durable but not with the greatest armor or maneuverability. They're better at boarding than usual and can take some really crazy poo poo like a Space Hulk. Tyranid: Tyranids have lighter and cheaper capitol ships than any other fleet, with an emphasis on close-range armament. They can literally have ship-scale claws that let them goddamn melee other ships. They have weird special rules where your ships will just sorta do their own thing by following a priority chart if you don't roll to take direct control. They are also loving b-a-n-a-n-a-s at boarding. Necrons: Necron ships are super hard to kill and have some crazy sick weapons, and their Inertialess Drives can actually be used to scoot across the loving map at Ludicrous Speed. In exchange their ships are expensive as hell and when you've lost enough of your fleet points wise the whole lot vanishes and unless you really messed the enemy up that's probably a loss.
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Apr 13, 2018 21:57
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You'd think that the Tau would have some Battleship Yamato Wave Motion Gun bullshit in there.
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Apr 13, 2018 23:41
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The Tau don't have Navigators and can't go directly into the Warp because they don't even have pyskers. They're stuck using a really inefficient computerized solution and kind of grabbing warp currents instead of entering it period. They don't really get lost, mind, but they're much, much slower than anyone else. Their big space battleship building is in its infancy, too, and most of them are converted mass conveyors or colony vessels strapped with enormous numbers of smart missiles. Missiles well beyond what others build because the Tau are the only people in the setting with good computers they actually understand, still.
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Apr 13, 2018 23:48
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