I'm thinking the power level of RT vs DH, based on first impressions of Forsaken Bounty, isn't going to be all that compatable.

You're looking at two distinct bands of operation, and DH characters would need to be in their second career to be on similar footing to a Rank 1 RT character at first glance.

Well the Dark Heresy core rules state that later in their careers Acolytes might become or travel with rogue traders, which would seem to suggest rogue traders are substantially more powerful than acolytes just starting out.

Kyu Kage said:

all depends. once we see the the starting XP and XP ranges for the ranks we will know the power levels and the adjustments you need to make to DH to balance with RT.

I cant see them making RT that hard to mix with DH.

I also think the new book Ascension will bridge that gap in rules.

Well, from looking at the characters in Forsaken Bounty, here's what seems to be happening:

- RT characters have higher starting Characteristics.  There are usually several 40+ and everything else is around 30ish.  Average seems to be 4x stats at 40+

- RT characters each have a powerful Special Ability.  These are things like rerolling piloting skills, providing an ally (each combat round) +10% on a skill test, +2 damage and initiative using a Basic weapon, etc.

- RT characters start with better equipment. They start with modified bolters, hellpistols, chainswords, power swords, Carapace armor, etc.  A lot of equipment seems to be heavily modified/customized.

- RT characters get access to higher-tier talents. For example, the captain starts with Two-Weapon-Wielder (and apparently ambidextrous, although it is not listed separately).  Since he wields a power sword and a pistol, I assume either FFG combined the two-weapon wielder into a single talent, or the captain has both telents (melee and ranged) and for the FB demo they just wrote them as a single talent to save space.

The list (and number) of RT character skills, seems to be slightly larger than a typical 1st rank DH character.  The RT PCs for Forsaken Bounty have maybe 8-9 Skilled skills each. These are also better than DH characters, since their Stats are typically 5-10 points higher.  One or two even start with a +10% version of a skill.

The rules, such as they are in the FB book, seem the same as DH.  There does appear to be some clarification in places (such as sub-categorization of combat actions), but I couldn't see any functional difference between the two using the FB book.

So, most of the 'xp difference' that RT characters seem to have is higher base stats.  Again, an average of 4x stats raised to above 40 (50+ in some cases).  I'd guess about 45 percentage points to 'spend' for a 1st rank DH character, with no one stat able to get more than 15 points.  A few more starting skills, and a special ability (likely based upon class, possibly a choice from a small list for each class as well?) 

Still think the beefed up the stats to be able to show off the cool stuff.

You're not going to lure in the TT players by giving the pc's primitive swords, stub revolvers and laspistols.

A couple of things, and just some food for thought.

First, as has been stated (somewhere) by the FFG staff; Ascension will have rules for going beyond rank 8 in Dark Heresy.  It has also been stated that this will bring an acolytes powerlevel in line with a starting Rogue Trader character.

Second, and of no less a concern of mine; where the hell is Nathin Tsanthos' gear?  I would like to think the Seneschal has more than his armor and (admitedly cool) hellpistol.

-=Brother Praetus=-

Ultimately, I think the beefed up stats of the RT characters offset what a3-5th rank DH character would have with talents and add-on's to weapons and  augmetics.

I ran the adventure for three players and I believe that the DH party that I play in that are around 3600-3800 XP could have managed better than the pre gen RT characters due to their combat talents and better skills.

Overall the players enjoyed it, two of them had never played DH and didn't know much the other was the GM who normally runs the DH game I play in, he played the Missionary, he got to purify things with the cleansing light of the Emperor, he was happy. I had a good time too, until the Captain figured out the trick and then commanded the Arch-Militant to shoot the big bad while he was vulnerable. She proceeded to hit with all four rounds of her bolt gun. The Emperor helped with the first shot to do 38 points of damage and all three others did over 10 each. I wasn't enjoying it so much once she made warp salsa for the whole command deck.

Santiago said:

I tend to agree, like Shattered Hope the players are given exactly what they need to do something cool.

While I personally felt the adventure plot was somewhat pedestrian (but then how many times can you see a ghost ship before it starts to feel a little old,) it does an excellent job demonstrating what we are likely to see in the full game both in variety of characters and in mechanics such as Profit with a capital "P."

And yes, I also noticed that Nathin's gear is missing.  Eh, give him a void-breather, a micro-bead, his data slate, and two extra mags for his gun and there you go.

Yes, the rank 1 RT characters seem to be around 3000xp worth of DH characters.  I base this primarily upon raising 4 stats to 40+ (about 9x stat advances) and adding a few skills / talents.  I doubt the assertion that DH characters beyond level 8 bring them inline with RT characters is correct.  It seems more like the previous comments of @ rank 4 DH = rank 1 RT is close.

I ran a demo with 5 players.  Only 1 had DH experience, and 2 others had Warhammer 40k knowledge.  It played out very well, and they had a ball.  There wasn't much trouble with any of the rules (except some struggling with half/full actions). Everyone enjoyed the game, and seemed quite favorable to the space-theme.  It didn't seem like quite as difficult concept for them to understand (Looking For Profit) as DH investigation was when I explained that.

Yes, unfortunately, despite looking over the PCs beforehand I didn't catch the missing gear... until the player asked about it!  Like Psion, I gave him a micro-bead, void-breather, and 2 clips which was pretty standard for all the PCs.  I did also give him a combi-tool, since he is the engineer geek (not that he really needed it).  The rest of stuff that other PCs have is mostly just fluff, like clothing and personal items, so I skipped those because of time.

Have read through Forsaken Bounty, I had a couple of thoughts...

First, I would have liked to have known more about the PCs ship the Sovereign Venture. Apart for the casual notes that it's a cruiser with enough firepower to destroy whole cities and has a crew of 100,000, we don't know much about it. I think that's a big oversight, especially for players who may be unfamiliar with 40K starships.

Second, the Sovereign Venture's got enough firepower to level a city but her void shields appear to be on the blink? Shouldn't the Venture shields be able to deflect most of the debris field (especially if she turns that firepower to blast a path wide enough to pass through herself)? I know the idea is to force the PCs to take a little ship across to the Bounty but it seems a lame way to do it.

... and about the guncutter. It's explicately described as being about to carry up to 30 people in the cargo hold, but we can only bring 3 of the salvage crew (who we hired specially for this job)? Again, a lame way to limit the number of red-shirts along for the ride, especially given the contradiction.

Otherwise, it looks like an interesting short adventure. Some real potential but those couple of oddities just leap out at me. I'd have to find a way around them if I was going to run the adventure myself.

Anyone know when and where it's going to be made downloadable?  I'm supposed to run it this weekend for friends and I still have to actually lay eyes on the module.

dvang said:

Actually, I haven't run the campaign with anyone yet.  I might try to con my old Dark Heresy group to do a play by post game with it.  Although granted, I'd definitely have to change the main antagonist around with something from Dark Heresy since there are a few guys I wouldn't put it past to read ahead.  Still, certainly easy enough to make the Brass Worm a ornate paperweight and sic something else on them.

LuciusT said:

AFAIK void shields are only of help against rapidly moving things. If the initial kinetic is too low though (like drifting debris and most ordnance) it bypasses the void shield completely.

That Nathin Tsanthos guy, swinging on a cable with a quill in his teeth and dataslate in hand reminds me so much of the beginning of "Monty Python's the meaning of life". Which is a good thing.

While the adventure has its downsides, the art is superb quality so far!

I've just read it. That was a short read, actually :)

Well, the adventure and the glimpse at the rules leave more questions, than gives answer regarding the nature of RT. All I can see that roughly 99 percent of the mechanics are the same as in DH, and some newer concepts are introduced (like Profit).  

BTW, I cannot but cite an article from Encyclopedia Dramatica on "Profit" (http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Profit) :)

"PROFIT! - usually seen alongside its partner ???? - comes from South Parks preachy lesson about how 1337 capitalism is. In the episode, the "Underpants Gnomes" are sneaking into South Park homes in the middle of the night to steal peoples' underwear drawers. After getting busted by the gang, the gnomes use a highly advanced mathematical formula to explain how they turn stolen underwear into profit. The formula was as follows:

Collect underpants
?
Profit
The ultimate goal in life is to gain as much profit as is possible. Jews learn this at an early age. Profit can come in a wide variety of forms and the achievement of any type of profit makes you a winnar. Gaining of profit is the only way to make your miserable excuse for a life worthwhile. By its very nature, all profit is delicious..."

In any case, I suppose, before I come up with some kind of a definite assessment of the game, I will have to take a look at the RT core rulebook. Any time before that - it's impossible.

And no, the adventure didn't impress me to a least extent: reasoniing with computers ain't fun; fighting with lots of zombies is neither... I believe one could come up with a more intriguing adventure, given the word limit. So I'm not GMing it, unless that's an intro to some bigger campaign (hopefully, not, though).