Character Creation

[Covered in Weasels 587]

Hey all,

 

I've been playing Dark Heresy (including the 2nd edition beta) for some time now but haven't looked into Rogue Trader at all. I'm curious as to how the character creation options differ from those of Dark Heresy -- it seems kinda weird to choose a "home world" for a Rogue Trader whose birthright is the ownership of a starship, so they'd basically all qualify as Noble-Born by DH standards.

 

What are the steps of RT character generation, and what benefits does each step provide?

[Erathia 648]

The pure version is you follow this chart, starting from any option at the top, moving down one level and optionally one "step" to the left or right,and then at the end you can pick one of any of the Lineage options. After Home World each step usually gives you a number of options to select from, some of which cost XP.

 

Each option you select do all sorts of things. Home World works similar to how it does in Dark Heresy, but every other step will grant you starting skills, improve attributes, grant talents, give you insanity, change your starting gear... it's fairly elaborate.

[Tenebrae 429]

I personally find character creation much more rewarding in RT than in DH. You can actually begin to forge a narrative even before your character enters play. DH2  has some of this, but I find it much better made in RT.

 

The pure version is you follow this chart, starting from any option at the top, moving down one level and optionally one "step" to the left or right,and then at the end you can pick one of any of the Lineage options.

...or none of the Lineage options, Lineages are purely optional and always cost XPs

 

I believe it is commonly houseruled that the "one step to the left or right" can be ignored, but what Erathia describes is RAW.

[Amazing Larry 127]

My group typically allows players to go totally nuts with one or two steps along the origin path but it has to actually make sense, the crazier the character the better the story you'll need to tell the GM. The Origin Path is a really good feature and something I think other RPGs should take note of, it forces you to think out who your guy is before you even start but at the same time there are few setting appropriate character concepts you can begin with that you cannot easily fit into it so it works from both directions.

 

One house rule I recommend though is in addition to allowing a player to re-roll one characteristic also allow them to take any two characteristics and swap them. That way you wont get stuck in some situation where they envisioned their character as a smooth talking agile duel wielding pistolaro but ended up with a BS 28 and a T 45.

[Tenebrae 429]

What Larry describes is much like how I run my RT groups.

[Nameless2all 210]

I did something similar to what Larry described.  I allowed it to be a free flow chart, along with free flowing attributes and re-rolling one.  What can I say, I'm a guy with a big heart for my players.

[Covered in Weasels 587]

Thanks for the chart, it's a very helpful tool

 

Yeah, I'd probably let my players be more flexible in their choice of origin rather than limiting them to the "one step to the right or left" method in the RAW. Unless I'm reading the chart incorrectly, it seems the only possible motivations for a Rogue Trader are Prestige, Exhilaration or Fear, which doesn't make much sense to me. Really, are no RT's in the universe motivated by Fortune or Pride?

 

I'm brainstorming a home-brew character creation system for RT that follows a similar path to the one in the RT book but uses the Aptitude system from the Dark Heresy 2.0 Beta and Only War. The background charts would allow you to pick a couple Aptitudes for your character, letting you customize your class to some extent.

[Cymbel 122]

Yeah, the Origin Path has it's issues, but on the other hand it lets you start to build up a story for your PC....

 

One issues is that it takes as long as to make as a full regiment in Only War (or at least feels that way).

[Tenebrae 429]

One issues is that it takes as long as to make as a full regiment in Only War (or at least feels that way).

Longer I'd have guessed, unless you design regiments by cometee (as we do), in which cas it can take almost arbitrarily long time.

[SirFrog 64]

I'm brainstorming a home-brew character creation system for RT that follows a similar path to the one in the RT book but uses the Aptitude system from the Dark Heresy 2.0 Beta and Only War. The background charts would allow you to pick a couple Aptitudes for your character, letting you customize your class to some extent.

There already is such a conversion here: http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/82289-rogue-trader-to-only-war-conversion-peach/

 

The only problem is that there hasn't been an update at all since around August 2013, so you might need to do some work on it yourself to incorporate some of the newer supplements. I've been doing so for use of my own group, but I'm not going to release it here or elsewhere unless Snap_Dragon gives me permission, since most of the work is his after all.