lurkeroutthere said:

You either didn't read the full quote given above your post or you are unable/unwilling to understand what it is saying.

Here it is again:

"The Warrant also elevates the recipient to the highest of ranks to which a servant may rise, granting him equivalent status with such men and women as Imperial Commanders, Inquisitors and Space Marine Chapter Masters. They are granted the power to deal with such peers of the Imperium as equals, and the Warrant allowing them to call upon what aid they can negotiate."

You'll note that the first sentence talks about status while the second talks about power - a RT has both equivalent status and equal power to Imperial Commanders, Inquisitors, and Space Marine Chapter Masters.

I am unwilling to get the same incorrect reading you are, yes. Raising you to a peer puts you in the same social stratta as those people, which is a very important aspect in and of itself in the neo-feudal society that is 40k.  You actively have to read it the wrong way completely ignoring:

"They are granted the power to deal with such peers of the Imperium as equals, and the Warrant allowing them to call upon what aid they can negotiate."

If they had real power other then an elevation in social status (remember, neo-feudal, lord vs commoner) it would grant them specific powers or abilities to command troops or the like, not imply they negotiate with others. You don't negotiate for something you already have.

Basically what it means to me at the end of the day. Everyone below those august ranks has to call you sir and render you all appropriate customs and courtesy's of your rank.  That's a big deal and I'm not really downplaying it, but it's not the same thing as having the raw power of any of those other listings.

We're also way off topic and tracking things even further so so i'll restate my specific points and bow out.

1) Rogue Traders have lots of wealth and huge amounts of latitude from normal imperial rules and authority. Just the ability to travel unrestricted in the imperium is a huge deal, let alone leaving it's borders and dealing with xenos. They also receive elevated social standing and basically the ability to grab all the wealth they can lay their grubby hands on without breaking a few distinct Imperial bylaws. However their actual authority in the Imperium is really very limited. That's ok because money and favors goes a Long Long Way.

2) Having said that, there are some things in the Imperium that can't be bought with thrones alone and their acquisiton should not be represented by just an acquisition test. These either represent their rarity, their special nature, or both. Terminator Armor is one such example. Just because Inquisitors (who are flat out perhaps the most powerful singular individuals in the setting, if not the most powerful). As a lesser example the Storm Trooper detachment improvement is a lesser example showing that at the very least you need some solid contacts in the guard to get it.

 Re: Terminator armour thing- people are aware that the original Tactical Dreadnought suits were up-sized militarised versions of the exo-armour suits used in starship construction, and maintenance- issued particularly to those engineers who had to do work inside an active plasma drive, right?

Human-scaled versions (without the cool military-grade sensors and communications equipment, or possibly the outer layer of armour plating) are still around on the oldest of ships, and are probably being made and used at the larger (and AdMech) shipyards. For that matter, they may well still be in use in the more important planetside generatoriae.
Getting hold of one of them doesn't even need to bring the Astartes into it at all. Granted, it won't have the nifty toys the astartes suits do, like autosenses and targeting-assist HUDs, or networked noospheric datalinks, but those have already been established, by the RT core, as available as after-market add-ons.

It's still not going to be easy to get hold of (and will likely leave the Dynasty massively in debt to the Mechanicum, and/or the Navy or whichever body runs the shipyard in question), but it's now at a stage where you don't automatically have to worry about dealing with sociopaths in powered armour.

Alasseo said:

Actually I figured that all of those suits would have been snapped up or used up long ago. The technology was near lost as at the time of the space marine legions founding. I figured outfitting said legions probably consumed many of the civilian suits (or maybe not). But since then it's been a couple millenia and there's been a lot of upheaval since. I'm not saying it's impossible there's some baseline Extreme Hazard suits around, just that it seems unlikely that more are getting made.

Basically if they are having a hard time producing the militarized equivalent for their super elite forces I doubt there's anyone who even bothers trying to make the civilian model, which coupled with the time factor means they've probably been lost.

lurkeroutthere said:

An Inquisitor doesn't really have any more raw power than what he can negotiate with others to accomplish. He typically needs troops seconded from others, relies upon the voidships of others for transportation, and so on. Even his immunity to Imperial law can be rendered moot by another high level peer of the Imperium. The Inquisitor's 'negotiations' often fall into the realm of intimidation, but a RT can go that route too (and since he often has one or more vessels that can reduce entire hives to slag in moments, he can be rather intimidating). In a feudal-based society, the ability to negotiate with other high rollers as an equal is raw power and the exchange of favors is the currency of such power.

You are pretty much functionally flat wrong per literally droves and droves of setting material, codex items, pages and pages of Black Library books and other canon sources.

There is no negotiation to an inquisitor's request. There is more then a little intimidation involved, because theoretically someone could get it in their head to say no. Their life expectency within Imperial Space could be measure in days if not less, but I could happen. It will just not end well. The only forces within the Imperium that have stood up and refused or combated the Inquisition are a few Astartes chapters, and more often then not it has gone very poorly for them on the whole.

lurkeroutthere said:

I think you simply don't understand what I'm saying, nor do you understand the meaning of the quote this discussion is based upon.

What power does the Inquisitor have that does not come from others? How is he/she different from anyone else (like a RT)?  He/She can't really do squat without going through others because he/she is just one man/woman. Humans are all social creatures and all organizational power is negotiated. That is what the bit on the power of a RT mean - he can negotiate to exert organizational powers on par with Inquisitors and Chapter Masters.

Note also that I'm not talking about the powers of the Inquisition (the organization) but rather those of an Inquisitor (the individual). Any given Inquisitor may or may not have the ability to direct the forces of the Inquisition in any given situation, as there is likely a great deal of countering checks and balances within the Inquisition acting in any given instance. A RT with connections to the Inquisition could hold more sway with it in a given instance (via his ability to negotiate with peers) than a given Inquisitor. In such a case, things may go very poorly for the Inquisitor that tries to move against the RT.

lurkeroutthere said:

Given that the Lexicanicum article on Inquisitors includes the quote "Learned Inquisitors show discretion and request the assistance of the Space Marines and attempt not to anger the Adepts of Mars" this suggests that significantly powerful entities may well resist an individual Inquisitor (Likewise, the traditional "Not even a High Lord of Terra may refuse the order of an Inquisitor without good reason" means also that "A High Lord of Terra with good reason may refuse the order of an Inquisitor" which shows that they really can be flat out told no at the highest levels.

The lone wolf operating system that many Inquisitors use is also extremely detrimental to their power. In the Eisenhorn books, Eisenhorn mentions that many Inquisitors simply wander off in the unknown and are never heard from again, or operate in secrecy for many years at a time. At several points in the series they encounter Inquisitors that had been simply written off as dead because no one had seen them in awhile. So while it's true that quietly killing an Inquisitor who gets irritating is a dangerous business, it's also very possible that no one will even suspect foul play for decades. "Elijah Lanthorn? You know, I do think he passed through here awhile back. Didn't stay long, didn't say where he was going, just turned his collar up and brooded a lot."

So yeah. Inquisitors can only get what they can demand safely, and how much they can demand before people start having doubts depends on their reputation and connections, influence being something measured by profit factor.

In theory, an Inquisitor can order around anyone they like within the Imperium with no limits.

In reality, the Imperium is a byzantine mess of feudal obligation, backscratching and webs of influence and alliance. *No* individual, no Inquisitor, no High Lord of Terra can act completely unilaterally. Some come close, in specific areas and times, but the idea an Inquisitor has simply unlimited power does not mesh with the reality of the Imperium.

A rogue trader who builds a web of alliances and cultivates favour with other mighty peers can play the game of power and politics and even win against individual Inquisitors.

As for acquiring suits of mortal sized Terminator armour, it can be done but it is staggeringly rare. An Inquisitor detailed in Dark Heresy: Radical's Handbook managed to obtain an archaic suit somehow and refused to explain how.

Cryhavok said:

I bet the Inquisition, Ecclesiarchy, Arbites etc love these guys….

Visitor Q said:

Some of those characters are not well loved by the imperium at large, however most of them have developed close working relationships with various parts of the inquisition, and that helps mitigate the hate quite a bit. As a group the arbites and them kind of just leave each other alone, but the ecclesiarcy lol, well they have had to fight off ecclesiarcy funded crusades lead by the sisters of battle and a puritanical Inquisitor, crusades focused solely on the groups destruction. To everyone else, they end up being to useful to hate so much…

… all except that explorator, the group itself put him down.

I came here expecting a discussion about power armour and any game balance issues, and found this thread massively de-railed!
 

Back on topic, the only thing i'd be wary of is Explorators with Best-Crafstmanship heavy Power Armour and Flesh is Weak trait…. that gets scary.

…especially if the armour is lathe-wrought

eBarbarossa said:

Obviously upgrades and subsystems make this even more potent a combination.
The explorator in my game had a wrist mounted, backpack-ammo fed Storm Bolter. Oh and an MIU. Suffice it to say that i am glad he never stuck around in my game long enough for combat to happen!

The acquisition roll for Lathe Wrought Power Armour would be:

Availability: Near Unique, -50 (see combined acquisition rules in main book)

Scale: N/A as we are at Near unique we get no mod for buying one off.

Quality: Lathe wrought armour is mandated as Best Quality, -30

Combined Acquisition (Power armour + 1 upgrade): -5

Total modifier: -85

if your PCs have a hope of making this, then the power level in your game is already at an extreme level…