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Rogue Trader Sheet "For the love of the God-Emperor..."

   
Rogue Trader Sheet "For the love of the God-Emperor..."

FFG Official Sheet PDF

I saw recently that providing the sheets and explaining them can speed up the process of creating so I thought I would take a stab at this one.

This is the official character sheet for use with Fantasy Flight Games' Rogue Trader. Overall, I don't think that it is too complicated and all of the information present is pertinent to playing the game. The only major changes I would suggest would be to move the fluff at the top of the page to the very bottom and do open fields instead of lines. Also, we could lose the duplication of stats on the second page. We only need to see them once.

I am sure there will be more questions but I am going to try to anticipate a few here.

Why are there a circle and a square for each Characteristic?
In this game, every ability has what is referred to as a [insert Characteristic] Bonus. An example would be a "Strength Bonus." These numbers are used to determine various things like bonuses to damage reduction, melee damage, initiative, and resisting various effects. Basically, it is the 10's place of the Characteristic. These are not required but formatting of some kind, like bold text or circles is appreciated to quickly differentiate and help newer players.

What are the 4 circles underneath the Characteristics?
The four boxes represent a character's advancement for each of the 9 characteristics. Each box represents a 5% increase to the base stat and may only be taken 4 times per characteristic. Each stat has a XP cost weighted by its apparent usefulness to the career the character has taken.

Skills & Training
A Basic Skill is one that may be used even if the Character did not purchase it, albeit with a 50% less chance to succeed. These are mostly determined by a player's chosen career but also include universal skills that everyone would know such as swim and dodge. A Trained Skill is one that a player is competent enough in to use without penalty. 10% and 20% Skills are ones that a character has trained to the point where you could consider them a specialist. After taking the Trained Rank of a Skill, a character has the option to spend xp to provide a bonus to the roll instead of just rolling against a flat characteristic.

Profit Factor
Profit Factor is the engine that drives the game. The characters are in a dynasty of traders whose sole purpose is to increase that dynasty's wealth. Profit Factor is an abstract representation of that wealth typically ranging from 1 to 100. The number is used for all sorts of things but mostly in characters aquiring gear. They use the group's Profit Factor as a base to aquire new items, equipment, personel, and even ships. A misfortune is an event that has harmed the group's trade power in some way. Regardless of how it occurs, it represents a permanent drain on the dynasty's resources until (if possible) the misfortune has been rectified. Every point of Profit Factor makes a huge difference in how easy it is for characters to aquire things so you can see why this is important.

Hope this helps in some way and hope this is in the right place...

Michael what would be the chances of having the many different genres of 40k games added to the character sheet database once there is the generation of starting them up? I think there are five different sheets that could be added. Is this too many sheets?

My last recollection is that we have yet for the relationship of the various systems/settings/genres/games in 40k explained to us, and it has made us unable to make a judgment on how to best organize it within the Game Systems setup, and by extension the sheets (since they're associated).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dramacydle View Post
Michael what would be the chances of having the many different genres of 40k games added to the character sheet database once there is the generation of starting them up? I think there are five different sheets that could be added. Is this too many sheets?
I'd rather one sheet that covers all flavours, as was done for Exalted.

It's a setting with a number of related game systems - most of which we list separately.

Some of the sheets seem similar, some not. Either way, even if they're nearly the same it should probably be a sheet per system to support underlying differences. Unless of course someone wants to explain that there are no differences but then why are the systems different?

It's always been a headache area.

Done
I will gladly tackle this!

There are 5 sets of rules that FFG and BL Publishing have released for the 40k RPG universe. They are Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch, Black Crusade, and Only War! They were released in this order. While all the systems are supposedly interchangeable and provide conversions for one rule set to another, some of the games are vastly different both thematically and mechanically.

Dark Heresy is used to tell the tale of a group of Acolytes who serve an Inquisitor of His Majesty's Holy Inquisition. The Inquisition is an organization apart in 40k as they answer to no one but themselves. They have the power to damn entire worlds through the cleansing fire of Exterminatus and have sent more than a few worlds and their entire populations screaming into the void; all for the good of humanity.

Rogue Trader takes place in a zone just outside of that of Dark Heresy. Because Dark Heresy was the first book released it is the base line for all others. A brand new level 1 character in Rogue Trader starts out with 400xp to spend, but is equivalent to a Dark Heresy character with about 8,000xp because of their gear and abilities. Rogue Trader follows the exploits of a Trader dynasty as they ply the stars for profit and plunder. This game is unqiue because it actually takes place outside the oppresive regime of the Imperium of Humanity.

Deathwatch is the most "advanced" game a player can take place in. The comparison to Dark Heresy puts a level 1 character in Deathwatch at about 13,000 experience. This game follows the exploits of the Space Marine's seconded to an organization known as the Deathwatch. These super-human individuals are tasked with ensuring the safety of a region of space where aliens and apocalyptic threats abound. They are second to almost none in martial prowess because they cannot afford to be, for the sake of humanity. These games are mostly combat based as that is what a Space Marine was built for and rarely exit the classic "dungeon crawl" arena.

Black Crusade is the story of the Screaming Vortex and individuals who have turned from Humanity to Chaos in an effort to rise to power. Whatever their motivation, all aspire to become elevated to the lofty ranks of Daemon Princes, but most fail. This game is interesting because it ventures into the Taboo presented by all other 40k games. Citizens of the Imperium are taught from birth to abhor the alien, the witch, and the mutant. This game throws all of that out the window and says embrace it. The game really has no one theme other than the race between Corruption and Infamy, tangible rewards and penalties, awarded for succeeding or failing at a mission. If you hit 100 Corruption first, you turn into a gibbering spawn. If you hit 100 Infamy, you turn into an almighty Daemon Prince capable of purging whole sections of space.

Character Sheet Breakdown

Dark Heresy & Rogue Trader are probably the only ones that you could get away with using the same sheet. Apart from currency differences and a few skills, there really isn't too much that has changed between the basic rule books as they were released one after the other. I think the major difference is that players in Rogue Trader can use starships which they can stat out and equip. I purposefully did not include the ship sheet because every player needs to have access to it and I thought only GM's could see a player's sheets.

Deathwatch is completely different as it follows the Space Marines, a group of engineered, super-humans. Just being one grants you about a quarter of a page worth of abilities that you won't find on any other sheet. Also of note, there is a system that allows characters to use abilities that allow them to benefit from fighting alone or as a group. Before each mission the group takes an oath that determines what abilities they have access to and all of this has to be recorded each game. I believe, but might be mistaken, that there is a whole third page of the character sheet that is dedicated solely to this.

Black Crusade is about the evil elements of 40k and the game is the most radically different from the original 3 that I am aware of. Several of the skills and their purposes have changed completely. Their is a new characteristic called Infamy that works similar to Profit Factor but in Rogue Trader but also takes the place of the Fate Point system which allows characters to avoid failing Tests and even death. The game combines odd elements from Deathwatch, Rogue Trader, and Dark Heresy that would make it all but impossible to use a sheet from one of the other systems. Also of note, the player's serve the dark gods and how they take advancements determines what god they pay fealty to. This can become something of a headache but the sheet for this system has a way of keeping track of it.

And I have not gotten a copy Only War! yet so someone else will have to be the authority on this.

Overall, I don't think we could get away with doing just 1 sheet as there are too many differences. Obviously, as I stated above, Rogue Trader and Dark Heresy MAY work if you played with it for a little bit.

Hope this Helps,
Elem

I'd like to voice my support for these sheets. Especially Rogue Trader. I think Elemtael's description is accurate. Let us know what information you need more of to make it work.

Amazing job Elemtael!

But I would have to disagree about the need of vast differences between sheets of Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, Deathwatch and Ascension(which is just Epic Level versions of Dark Heresy). Though Deathwatch does have Solo and Squad mode abilities, I don't feel as though they wouldn't benefit from a general sheet.

Here is my memory of a breakdown of lines ONLY on a specific character sheet for each system.

Dark Heresy has Throne Gelt(Currency) and Income

Ascension has Influence

Rogue Trader has Profit Factor

Deathwatch has Renown and Cohesion which is kinda like a currency used on the Squad Mode abilities in combat. So a blank field near where Wounds and Fate Points would be nice(but not necessary as it is tracked by the group)

And while I have no access to or played in Black Crusade they have Infamy it seems.

As far as I can tell, that is the biggest difference in Character Sheets, and it all boils down to how do the characters acquire or pay for gear and assistance. Having two fields dedicated to this(Two is one too many for some, but Dark Heresy would like the space for Currency and Rogue Trader MIGHT want to know original Profit Factor) and calling it something more clever than "Bling Getting Power" or, in all honesty, just leave it blank and have the User fill the field with the appropriate nomenclature.

While the Deathwatch marines gain quite a few talents and traits that you might find in the other systems, I don't believe a completely different sheet is needed to facilitate the differences. And having space dedicated to the Squad Mode Abilities would be a luxury considering the mercurial nature of it as it changes per mission based on the oath taken.

I would request more room for Skills(particularly the Knowledge skills, if anyone has ever made a higher level Adept they can attest to the lack of space there) and Talents to accommodate differences in Rule Systems. What I mean by this, is that given more room to add custom fields will help eliminate the need for different sheets(assuming adding fields is simple and easy to do, if not I would be willing to delve deeper into the sheets and find an optimal spacing)


Here are some examples of characters I have played with formatting shamefully ripped off(with permission) from other players as I have little to no formatting skills. One note on each of these sheets I find funny is that I have not included Influence, Profit Factor or Renown. Partly, this is because each of these characters are completely new characters in each system while another reason is that two of those are universal for the entire party, so only one record needs to be kept by the group, while the third definitely requires playtime to accrue. So perhaps we don't need a space dedicated for this on the character sheets.



And here is a small stat I included in most posts as they were relevant to combat, it had everything I felt was needed to reference in combat for my Ascension Character, don't know if it will help(and it shows off my amazing formatting skills, or lack thereof).

I agree that you could make it work by adding fields, but I think the idea of actually having a sheet for it is to get away from having to do things like that. Otherwise we could just use a post to get an identical result.

And skills definitely need to be given more room. Psychic powers could probably be expanded as well come to think of it.




 

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