Video Game / Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader

" I, …, Rogue Trader by the grace of the Emperor, vow to be the paragon of Humanity, unbroken by adversity, to walk bravely first into darkness, to unite and reclaim what was lost, to triumph over nightmares untold, to hold boldly the reins of fate, to walk steadily the road of thorns, through pain to greatness."

— The Oath of the Rogue Trader

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is an isometric Role-Playing Game developed by Owlcat Games set in the Warhammer 40,000 setting and based on the Rogue Trader system.

The player is cast as a recently discovered by-blow of the von Valancius dynasty of Rogue Traders: independent agents licensed by the Imperium of Man to ply its vast reaches, exploring the galaxy and troubleshooting the economic woes of the Points of Light Setting that is humanity in the 41st Millennium. Lord Captain Theodora von Valancius took the Player Character aboard at her last port of call to become an apprentice Rogue Trader and possible candidate to become heir to the dynasty. En route to their next port of call, however, a mutiny fomented by agents of the Ruinous Powers of Chaos breaks out aboard the von Valancius flagship, critically endangering the tens of thousands of lives aboard. Amidst the confusion, Theodora and the Player Character's competitor Edelthrad are both killed, forcing the Player Character to take responsibility for the ship and the Rogue Trader's Protectorate much sooner than planned.

Unlike Owlcat's previous games, Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Rogue Trader abandons the Real-Time with Pause system completely, instead featuring a turn-based combat system that serves as the first-ever adaptation of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay system and its many derivatives (in this case, Rogue Trader) to a CRPG of any platform. With the addition of a terrain cover system, the combat portion of the game plays similarly to the 2010s wave of Turn-Based Tactics games such as XCOM: Enemy Unknown.

The game was was announced in June, 2022, with the first alpha version released shortly thereafter. It consisted of the game's chapter 2. The first beta version was released a year later in June, 2023, expanding to cover the first half of the game — the prologue and chapters 1, 2 and 3. The game saw full release on December 7th 2023.

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Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader contains examples of:

• Amazon Brigade:
  • Your companion Sister Argenta is a member of the Adeptas Sororitas, also known as the Sisters of Battle, an entirely female fighting force under the control of the Ecclesiarchy, aka the Imperial Church. The Ecclesiarchy is, after all, forbidden by decree from maintaining "men under arms".
  • Also, on a practical level, with a female Rogue Trader PC, you can assemble an all-female party with Idira, Argenta, Cassia, Yrliet, and Jae.
• Ambiguous Situation: In Abelard's first character quest, a lower deck is on lock down due to the finding of a chaos artifact. His harsh response ended up causing a strike, as various clans try to make their voices heard, stating they have no idea where the person who had the artifact got it from. While many of the clans are fine with Abelard's actions being reversed and the enforcers lightening up, an old woman clan leader also wants the enforcers gone and their deck armed so they can police themselves and weed out heretics. Abelard is also attacked and named upon visiting the deck for negotiations. If you ask about this to the strikers, they claim they know nothing. A hidden awareness check reveals that they do indeed know nothing, but there's also a box of grenades hidden in a pipe you can only access after meeting with the strikers. This suggests that there is a heretical presence somewhere on the deck, but the strikers were genuinely unaware of it, and that presence did that attack and name Abelard in particular to try and make the situation go violent. The ambiguous part is that the awareness check makes note of strikers in the background, not the negotiators talking with you. The old woman being the only one calling for the removal of the enforcers and arming the deck could be a legitimate want, or she could be apart of the heretical activity here. It's never made clear. She's also the only one not excited by you choosing the coercion option to negotiation terms without removing the enforcers or supplying guns.
• Artifact of Doom: A common thing with Chaos artifacts. You can even pick up a piece of a Chaos blade in the prologue, and that will lead to a dream later on trying to tempt you into falling into Chaos.
• Artificial Stupidity: AI characters are extremely reckless with burst fire and will oftentimes do a lot of the work for you by gunning down their comrades while trying to hit you. Unfortunately, this also applies to allied characters, some of whom would probably probably be put to death in this setting for just how careless their marksmanship is around Imperial VIPs.
• Asteroids Monster: Tzeentchian Pink Horrors make several appearances in the game, and true to their lore, will each split into two Blue Horrors upon being "killed", though these will not divide further into Brimstone Horrors if slain again. The being that masquerades as Theodora after her death is one such Pink Horror.
• BFG: The Heavy Weapons category is comprised of almost entirely of these, though there are such examples within almost any ranged firearm class, with many of them like the Multi-Melta or Heavy Bolter being hefty enough to require considerable investment into Strength and/or several prerequisite proficiencies in order to even equip them. Those with the Adeptus Astartes tag in particular are logically massive due to being designed to be used by Space Marines.
• Bad Powers, Bad People: The bread and butter of Chaos. The power of Chaos from the warp outright corrupts people into being bad.
• Bad Powers, Good People: In a few spots, though there's definitely some more grey morality at play with some, particularly with Xavier, who's trying to use very much not good powers to support the Imperium. For your own team, Idira leans more good while using very questionable psyker abilities, and with your support, can resist the voices of the warp and follow her own path.
• Battle Butler: As your Seneschal, Abelard is part-stalwart manservant, part-The Spymaster and part-Warrior.
• Being Evil Sucks: While there's plenty of pain on the way of a good path (see below), there's also some moments that show evil isn't all it's cracked up to be. The Imperials often subject themselves to horrible treatment due to their self-destructive dogma, or just general ineptitude caused by bureaucracy and backwards thinking. The guy piloting your ship hasn't slept *in thirty years* due to someone messing up some implants. As for the forces of Chaos, a lot of cultists usually end up being human sacrifices, or cannon fodder for imperial agents to shoot through.
• Being Good Sucks: The game makes it clear that while the Iconoclast path may be the most moral path, it will not be easy given the tone of the 40k setting, and it is not kidding. Not only does an Iconoclast Trader slowly but surely draw the ire of the Inquisition due how "heretical" their actions are, but there's always a risk of your good deeds blowing up in your face eventually.
• Bittersweet Ending: For many characters, the "best" outcome they can hope for is still this, and some lean heavier on the "bitter" than the "sweet." Well, what did ya expect in the 41st Millenium — a happy ending?
• Blown Across the Room: Can be done with shotguns, which will blow the enemy backwards several tiles if one keep shooting them while they're floored.
• Borrowed Biometric Bypass: Kunrad forces the player character to open the Warrant vault using their von Valancius blood (while he is of von Valancius heritage himself, his servitude to Chaos and dabbling in warp sorcery has apparently changed him enough that the systems don't recognise him), fortunately the Sentinel is advanced enough to not only identify the PC's lineage, but stress hormones in their blood and to ask if they require assistance.
• Boss Arena Urgency: The final boss of Chapter 1 is a Chaos Space Marine who progressively destroys the shuttles needed for the Player Party to get offworld before the planet becomes a Daemon World (he takes the field by crashing straight through the one you arrived aboard). You must kill him before he destroys all of them or get a Non-Standard Game Over.
• Bottomless Magazines: While you do have to reload clips, you do not have to worry about any sort of ammo pool. Some Counting Bullets still required, but not that much.
• Broken Bridge: Used here and there, though the one in the prologue is less broken and more on fire.
• Brown Note: Side-effects of exposure to Chaos, the Arch-Enemy, include mild nausea, slight bleeding and murderous insanity.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Several examples. A radio is called a "vox", a digital computer is called a "cogitator", wine is called "amasec", and Chess is called "Regicide". Justified because the people of the 41st Millennium speak Gothic instead of English, and in some cases it may not exactly be the modern-day thing as much as something similar enough to fill the same sort of role.
• The Chains of Commanding: As a Rogue Trader, you have far greater reach and leeway than most planetary governors and military commanders in the Imperium. This also means more responsibilities and having to a make difficult decisions that could affect entire worlds, if not star systems.
• Character Class System: The Rogue Trader rule-set brings in a more unique version of this, with your origin, background, and archetype all working together to form a "class." The first two open up unique passives and abilities to chose from as you level up, the latter a more traditional class option, leading into different options for a second archetype when the first is filled up. Surprisingly, being a psyker is a background option instead of an archetype one, so you can mix Psychic Powers into any archetype due to how this system works.
• Character Development: Interactions with the main character, through their personal quests and the dialogues chosen, can alter the personality and outlook of the party members. For example:
  • Abelard: Can be encouraged to remain a stoic, dutiful servant, or encouraged to pay attention to his family and noble house whom he's been neglecting in favor of his duty.
  • Cassia: She can be taught to think for herself and become an independent-minded noble fit to rule her house, or coddled and made dependent on others telling her what to do. Lastly she can be made cold and distant, uncaring towards any other.
  • Argenta can be pushed towards Repentance, causing her to feel the need to atone for her past misdeeds eventually becoming a sister repentia. She can be pushed towards "Glory", encouraging her to follow her destiny, believe in her own dream, and live up to St-Argenta's legacy. Or she can be pushed towards Fury, where he zeal and hatred of the witches and mutant take over and she focuses on destroying heresy.
  • Pasqal can be taught to value his own identity and sense of self, or high loyalty to Armanat and the mechanicus doctrine.
  • Heinrix can be pushed towards becoming more callous towards the collateral damage the inquisition can cause, believing the end justifies the means, or he can be encouraged to be more humane, and remember that the Inquisition exists to protect the Imperium.
• Checkpoint Bluff: The Iconoclast option in chapter one while dealing with some cultists torturing a tech-priest includes this, with a cultist guarding one of the devices you need to deal with while in disguise.
• Collateral Damage: Friendly fire is very much active here for you and the enemy, but especially among the AI, and sometimes enemies will do more damage to their own party in a turn than you can. Whether that's awkward programming or the result of them being mostly blood-crazed and insane is unclear.
• Cool Starship: Naturally. Your dynasty starts off with a city-sized spaceship, which is actually on the smaller end of Imperial starships; the larger ones being several kilometres long and having hundreds of decks, with sometimes entire lost civilizations made up of the descendants of generations of crew members forming on the ancient and forgotten lower ones. You can expand your fleet to include many more, and customize them. To say nothing of Asuryani Craftworlds like the one Yrliet came from, which are planet-sized starships that travel the void of space and house millions if not billions of Aeldari.
• Cult: The Final Dawn is a Chaos cult established by a local World Bearers warband who are trying to take control of the expanse by subverting the Von Valancius dynasty. They serve as the main overarching antagonists of the game and the source of most of the Chaos threats you face.
  • One rumor mentions a ship called the Wasteland Wayfarer that went missing while transporting colonists for a colonization effort sponsored by the Order of Saint Drusus. When you discover the ship, you find an Apocalyptic Log written by the captain leading the expedition detailing a schism, with several of the pilgrims establishing a new sect of the Imperial Church called "the Nourishers". Slowly, they begin to gain more and more influence until the whole crew sans the captain has joined the new sect. Their interpretation of the faith is... odd, referring to the God-Emperor as the "Emperor Progenitor", and stating that he drifts aimlessly through space, but will eventually arrive on their world to bring salvation. They believe they must cultivate the world to prepare for his arrival. It's a Gene Stealer cult. The people on the ship were infected by them, causing them to be mind controlled into worshipping them and to produce Half-Human Hybrid children who will prepare the planet for invasion by the Tyranids, their "progenitors".
• Culture Chop Suey: The Imperium of Man is a cultural amalgamation of various imperialistic nations throughout human history: Ancient Rome, Spain during the Reconquista, and England during the Age of Sail and the early part of The British Empire. Combined with a ton of Catholic/Gothic-themed Dieselpunk. As you might expect, this blend is far from pleasant - it is described as 'the cruellest, most bloody regime imaginable' for a reason.
• Death World: One of the many possible origins for your Rogue Trader, which provides many powerful survival traits as one Had to Be Sharp to thrive on such worlds. Having hailed from Fenris, Ulfar technically uses the Death World origin template as well, though with a Weapon Skill stat in place of Agility instead.
• Deliberate Values Dissonance: Dogmatic choices represents how Imperial citizens are "supposed" to act in a futuristic society far detached from ours, one defined by acceptance of slavery (as long as it's between humans - humans enslaving aliens is a no-no because that means the xenos are suffered to live), systemic Fantastic Racism, religious fundamentalism and the glorification of ignorance and mindless zeal. The Iconoclast choices, which have you act more in-line with how modern people in the first world might think and act (treating your subordinates with kindness, trying to help the unfortunate, and showing a degree of tolerance towards non-human races), is seen as deeply strange and even suspicious in-universe.
• Disc-One Nuke: The Chaos Space Marine Boss in act one drops a unique heavy bolter that can only be equipped by Heretical characters. A Rogue Trader of that alignment and of the soldier class, preparing to pick up the Arch-Militant class, can basically keep using this gun for the rest of the game. Its insane rate of fire, along with the way damage buffs from the arch-militant archetype interact with burst fire weapons means this gun will output insane damage that scales through the whole game and outstrips many later game weapons. It takes well into Act 2 to find your next Heavy Bolter (with no alignment restriction) and some non-negligeable investment in gaining favor from one of the merchants, meaning it's a while before anyone else in the party can get access to a similar weapon.
• Dressing as the Enemy: An Iconoclast option when trying to rescue Abell Haneumann from Chaos Cultists in the Adeptus Mechanicus's temple on Rykad Minoris is to dress in the gear of nearby dead cultists to sneak by them so you can overload some generators and wipe them out without a fight. Most of the party is reluctant to do this however, since Imperial Doctrine considers it heresy... and because the occult symbols on them have actual power and potential corrupting influence.
• Earth-Shattering Kaboom: The Dogmatic choice at the end of Chapter 1 features you doing this, better known to 40k fans as Exterminatus. A planet has had its star removed, and is falling to the forces of a Chaos cult. Your resident member of the Inquisition insists you fire upon the ancient archaeotech fusion reactor on the planet's surface; destroying it will cause an explosion that wipes out the planet's life, killing everyone on it but preventing it from falling to Chaos and turning into a Daemon World, a situation where using an Exterminatus is considered borderline necessary by any sane Inquisitor.
• Easy Logistics:
  • None of your ranged weapons require any ammo. While they do have magazines that need to be reloaded when empty, there's no greater pool of ammunition to worry about, so have fun introducing heretics to More Dakka with your shiny heavy bolter.
  • Your starship requires neither rearming nor refueling, with the only maintenance required being the occasional hull repair after void combat, which uses generic Scrap for materials.
  • In lieu of currency, trading is dictated by your Profit Factor, which can be increased through many different means. As long as you've met the minimum required Profit Factor and reputation with a given faction, you're free to take anything from their store that you so desired.
• Evil Versus Evil: Playing as a dogmatic trader results in this, a fascist imperial agent facing off with the more wild cruelty of chaos cults and demons. That's not even getting into playing as a heretical trader.
• Eye Scream: Used by the Chaos cultists in Chapter One, trying to make people see their truth by burning their eyes out. Where they're going, they won't need eyes to see.
• Failed a Spot Check: Make sure you have a party member with good awareness to get all the goodies in a level, you you may just not notice them.
• Fantastic Racism: Standard Imperial policy towards alien races and non-sanctioned mutants is normally "shoot or burn them on sight for the glory of mankind", but as a Rogue Trader bearing a Warrant of Trade, your duties include contacting alien species for trade opportunities. You may even recruit an Asuryani Ranger and even a Drukhari teammate into your retinue. That's not to say that the racism only comes from the human side though - Yrliet sees a female human crewmate hitting on her as deeply offensive and repulsive, like a human being lusted after by an animal. So for those who want to romance Yrliet, it is possible, but this is your clue that you have to be more subtle going about it than expressing open attraction.
• Fate Worse than Death: In the Underworld quest, one of the big questions is "Who is Fidelio?", the person set to inherit Denz' fortune. You can only figure it out if you don't pretend to be Fidelio. She's the wife of the captain of a ship called "Repentance" whom Denz brutally murdered in his pirate days. She tried to assassinate him in revenger and almost succeeded, but he sent mercenaries to capture her and had her turned into a Servitor, destroying the parts of her mind that gave her free will and self-awareness, but keeping intact the parts that stored memories, so she'd be aware of what happened to her and her husband even as she was forced to serve the man who murdered her husband and did this to her. Occasionally her memory would return and she'd write "REPENTANCE" around the house. As he grew older Denz got remorseful about his past deeds and facing the Emperor's judgement in his final days (Not helped by Fidelio writing on the walls to remind him), so left his inheritance to her. The player can give Fidelio a Mercy Kill or ask Denz's chaplain to take care of her for the rest of her life.
• Fire-Breathing Weapon: Flamers in all shapes and sizes are available to you and your party (and, of course, your enemies). There are also Melta weapons, like the Meltagun used by Arch-Militant Mort in the prologue. This gun works by projecting a beam of intense heat, defeating all but the very heaviest of armour and reducing most targets to ash and molten slag with the pull of a trigger.
• Foreshadowing:
  • A crashed Drukhari ship can be found and investigated on an uninhabited planet in the Rykad system. If the player refrains from investigating it until the governor organizes a parade in their honor and asks if they have any other business to complete first, it becomes Five-Second Foreshadowing for the Drukhari fleet stealing the sun during the parade.
  • Idira's fortunes are all a form of foreshadowing, but they rarely make any sense until a second playthrough. Though, if you read them carefully, you can learn something important or get a heads up on future events or the nature of a particular character. There's usually a bit of context in the metaphors that you can grasp onto, the most obvious in chapter one being an obvious mention of a glass you already came across in the prologue, but the meaning of that context is obfuscated.
  • There are multiple clues to the identity of Theodora's killer and their motive long before it is discovered:
    • Theodora was killed by a stub pistol used by an expert marksman who had a faster draw than Theodora's Arch-Militant Mort. Argenta starts with an autopistol as her backup weapon, and has the highest ballistic skill and agility of anyone on the crew at this point save potentially the player character.
    • In the prologue, when the Daemon masquerading as Lady Theodora appears Argenta immediately recognizes her as a sorcerous apparition and raises her gun towards her, unlike Abelard and Idira who who both take her to be the real deal. You'd think at first it's due to her being a Sister of Battle, and thus versed in such matters, but it's because she's already killed the real Theodora, so she knows this can't be her.
    • When you find Theodora's body, Argenta mutters a prayer asking the Emperor to welcome the souls of his faithful servants, but she's looking at Mort's body as she's saying it, not Theodora - because she recognizes that Mort was only doing his duty, while Theodora was a heretic.
    • On Rikadi Philia, when the party recognizes the lenses as being made from the same material as the shards found around Theodora's corpse, a successful perception test reveals that Argenta is not surprised at the discovery that Theodora was handling chaos artifacts.
  • Janus similarly has a lot of foreshadowing that the governor is a worshipper of Slaanesh. If you tell her you'll burn the root of the planet's heresy and rebellion, she briefly looks concerned. Several details around the mansion will note this is a place dedicated to the Prince of Excess: Argenta will note the palace is extremely luxurious, Abelard adding it probably is worth more than Footfall. The local Chapel is ostentatious, but abandoned and shows signs it's not even regularly cleaned. Meanwhile a commerce check will show the Governor's palace is regularly re-plastered and redecorated, too frequently even for a building on the coast. The fountain has extra piping for wine and sparkling beverages. The idyllic beach where you can spend time with Cassia has chains and manacles hidden in the sand.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The 10 companions are split evenly between male and female.
• "Get Back Here!" Boss: Extremely notable with a Demon of Tzeentch you can encounter in some sewers, as it has a nasty habit of teleporting around the area. Suggested you bring a sniper.
• Gone Horribly Right: The Haemonculus Tervantias wants to humiliate the Fatal Thirst Cabal leader Keykeross and show her he's not to be underestimated. To do this he recruits the player, and intends to send them to the arena to slaughter some of Keykeross' newest recruits. Only Keykeross instead sends her top gladiators (And Marazhai). The original plan was for the Rogue Trader to defeat the newbies, slightly insult Keykeross and then Tervantias would give her the trader's head, showing his might but also burying the hatchet. Instead the player very publicly crushes Keykeross' champions, causing her to be absolutely livid with the humiliation, and start sending assassins after Tervantias and the player. Tervantias is forced to leave the anatomical opera and find himself an Archon as a patron to protect him, cursing all the while that the player should've died in the arena.
• Guest-Star Party Member: In the first combat you face, Kunrad will participate and constantly provide buffs; in the second combat, the ambush on the cathedral deck, Captain Theodora and Arch-Militant Mort join the fray and will largely handle the situation on their own while the game tutorializes about a few things. You won't have a chance to have them in the party again after this, because Kunrad turns traitor and Theodora is killed offscreen.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The game has "Rumors", which are basically small quests to encourage the player to explore but who don't have full quest logs. A lot of the rumors fall into this, as their aforementioned rumors often have precious little detail to tell the player what they are expected to do. To make it worse, several of them are bugged, or just do not update or remove the rumor from your log when completed, creating further confusion about if they were done or not if there's still steps or developments pending.
  • What conversations or replies affect a party member's development and how these relate can be outright obscure and impossible to know, with the game telling you how you influenced someone but you having no idea how you did that. For example, what you tell the orphans during Argenta's quest actually counts towards how she develops, despite the dialogue choices themselves having basically nothing to do with the three character paths Argenta can develop into and their respective theme. Another example is singing alongside Ulfric during his boss battle on his first quest, the lyrics you pick will affect his development.
• Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Your cast of companions are roughly divided this way due to their class and stat assignments, with most of your male companions being more inclined towards melee combat, while the female members tend to favor any kind of ranged fighting (if you consider psyker spellcasting to be "shooting"). The exceptions to these are Pasqal, who trend towards firearms, and the Arch-Militant specialization can blur the line for those that have it. Of course, nothing's stopping you from giving Abelard a gun, some Ballistic Skill upgrades, and a pat on the back either.
• Haunted Technology:
  • The Adeptus Mechanicus believe all technology to be this, with it being inhabited by "machine spirits" who need to be communed with, worshipped, or tamed to do various tasks. Like in the main game, it's ambiguous how true this is, and a lot of their "worship" is what most would call "basic maintenance". There are however, several phenomena that back this idea up, such as how your ship manages to get working despite a huge malfunction when fleeing the Rykad System, seemingly because you prayed to/commanded it to. Pascal seems to be able to commune with these spirits really well, in a manner he himself doesn't fully understand.
  • Daemon Engines from the main game make an appearance here, specifically Forge Fiends, mechanical dragon-like mechs with fire-based weaponry. They are a much more litteral example, being machine inhabited by an actual daemon.
• Heroic Sacrifice: One of the Arch-Militant's desperate measure abilities is called this. It allows you to make an additional attack each turn with no AP cost but inflicts bleeding as well as a -30 penalty to toughness, making it likely they'll go down shortly, hopefully taking as many of the enemy as possible with them.
  • Edelthrad makes one at the end of the prologue to stop Kunrad's ritual, charging into the center of the circle before Kunrad can finish, but in the process being transformed into a chaos spawn and the first boss. In this case, they were about to die (or at least mutate) anyway.
  • During Pascal's introduction, he seemingly causes a construction vehicle to explode via incantation, eliminating several cultists. When asked how he was able to do this, he states that he doesn't actually know, and that he was simply trying to commune with the machine spirit for aid. According to him, the vehicle's spirit was dying, and wanted to perform one last act of service, as it was built to. In essence, a forklift performed this trope to save Pascal.
• Hugh Mann: Yrliet is initially met posing as a human mutant by banking on the fact that the average Imperium citizen has never seen an Aeldari before. She immediately gives up the act if you bring a party member who has.
• Human Sacrifice:
  • You'll be fighting a lot of chaos cultists, and this is how almost all their magic and summoning is done.
    • Konrad Voigtvir sacrifices three crewmen on the bridge of the ship to set the stage for the Justified Tutorial's boss battle. Edelthrad von Valancius attempts to stop him—and Adelard attempts to stop him due to his importance. He manages to interrupt the ritual right as he succumbs to warp mutation, becoming a Chaos Spawn.
    • You can see a particularly nasty bit of aftermath of this in a prison during chapter one.
  • An Imperial version happens when Cassia attunes to the ship, at the start of the ritual she (non-fatally) takes blood from her valet to use as paint, but then the psychic energies unleashed wind up killing the rest of her servants. Vigdis implies this is how such rituals usually go.
• Human Shield: A mechanic exclusive to Ulfar and Uralon due to their sheer size and toughness, where they act as full cover for the smaller teammates hiding behind them. Patch 1.1.28 stacked more Wounds on top of their innate tankiness to let them fill this role better.
• Injured Vulnerability: Party members cannot die (in combat); instead, they accumulate Wounds and Traumas. Wounds can be easily healed quickly once combat is done; failing to heal it quickly results in it becoming an Old Wound, which requires a harder Medicae check to heal. Accumulating 5 Wounds (or getting reduced to 0 HP) means the character gains a Trauma, a much more specific injury with much greater penalties, that can't be healed until you return to your starship. The trick, of course, is that if everyone in a combat goes down, it's Game Over as the enemies finish you off, so just letting Traumas pile up isn't a wise policy.
• Industrialized Evil: The Forge world Kiava Gamma has been turned into this by its traitorous Fabricator-Cencor, who has since turned to Chaos. He's repurposed the factories into industrial human slaughterhouses to create various demonic technologies, primarily Forge Fiends, demon possessed dragon mechs. If you want, you can keep production going as is so you can build your own army of Daemonic Engines with no one the wiser.
• Invading Refugees: One rumor mentions that several refugees from the Winterscale realm found that Footfall couldn't support them and, in an act of desperation, boarded a ship to take them to a nearby dessert world of Foulstone that had a monastery dedicated to St. Cognatus. The captain was meant to help them set up on the world for the time being but instead he simply dumped them there and left. They approached the monastery in the hopes that they'd provide food aid. Several of the monks were rather callous, believing that outsiders would simply bring in negative worldly elements and disrupt their ascetic lifestyle. Their leader however argued that they should show compassion, as Saint Cognatus was known to do as well, and had the monks bring out food, water, and fuel for the refugees. However, fights began breaking out between the increasingly desperate people, causing several deaths as the monks attempted to restore order. At some point, some monks were caught in the crossfire, causing them to treat the refugees as hostile, arm themselves, and open fire. By the time you find them, they're engaged in a standoff, with the refugees seriously considering trying to take the monastery, while the monks have hunkered down inside, preparing to defend themselves. When talking to both parties, the monks feel rather vindicated about their suspicions of outsiders and ask the Rogue Trader to handle them themselves. The Dogmatic decision is to simply obliterate the refugees from orbit for attacking an Imperial religious institution, with the Heretical option allowing you to fire on both sides, killing as many people as possible, just for the heck of it, while the Iconoclast option sees you arranging for a ceasefire and having the monks use some of their equipment to prefabricate structures for the refugees to live in, as well as fortifications for defense, allowing them to start up a city of their own nearby, and agreeing to coexist from then on under your rule.
  • Ironically, you can later invoke this yourself by having the people of Foulstone to embark on a crusade to other worlds to pillage, plunder, and exterminate xenos and mutants in the Emperor's name and enrich their new home.
• It's Up to You: Despite being as close to Imperial Royalty as you can get and having explicitly thousands of people on your ship whose whole lives are dedicated to serving your dynasty, you will still end up being the one to do everything, inspect every nook and cranny and get into many fights yourself, rather than ordering some of the thousands of soldiers in your employ to do it. The game justifies this to an extent since by the time you ascend the throne, your territory is in complete Chaos (no pun intended). It's often stated or implied that your people are putting out fires left and right or completing other parts of the mission offscreen.
  • Later in the game, you can avert this when your ship gets boarded during warp travel by sending troops to handle it. It becomes downright trivial if you kept one of the Forgefiends on Kiava Gamma.
  • Abelard actually tries to avert this during his first character quest, where there's a strike in the lower decks, he tries to suppress the normal way (namely, with force) without informing you. It's only when an officer goes over his head by barging into the bridge (possibly getting in serious trouble for doing so) that you hear about it at all. When pressed, Abelard will say that it genuinely never occurred to him to bring it up because it's a routine occurrence that has a mundane (by Imperial standards) solution. Becomes a Discussed Trope as the quest progresses. Choosing to intervene will actually annoy him because he feels it's pointless for the person in charge to do so and just creates more busywork. He'll be even more annoyed if you solve the issue peacefully, not only because he feels it will backfire, but also because he feels like you don't trust him to do the job he's been doing for years and are throwing all procedure out the window, headless of the risk. The player can either agree to let him handle these things in the future, or they can counter that they need to intervene personally , either because Abelard had already lost control of the situation, or because acting by the book clearly didn't work with Theodora, or just reasoning with Abelard that the player isn't Theodora and Abelard will need to accept and trust their different managerial style. Despite his apprehensions, he'll respect your stance on the issue.
• Karma Meter: Three that are measured together to create a fourth.
  • Dogmatic represents your adherence to the ways and methods used by the Imperium; praising the God-Emperor, exterminating heretics (and potential heretics, i.e., collateral damage), abhorring xenos, etc.
  • Iconoclast is your willingness to do the moral act — protecting people, comforting orphans, finding common ground over uncompromising destruction and the like.
  • Heretical is your lean towards using the weapons and methods of Chaos and your submission to the Warp.
  • You can only raise one of the three values to level three ("Votary" and above). Once one of them reaches level three, the other two be raised cap higher than level two (Adherent)
  • The fourth meter measures where you would lean between Puritan and Radical in the Inquisition, with Dogmatic moving you toward Puritan, and Iconoclast and Heretic moving you toward Radical.
• Kill It with Fire: The Pyromancy skill tree for psyker characters allows them to conjure fire out of thin air to attack their enemies.
• Limit Break: Killing enemies fills a Momentum bar shared by the whole party. Once it's high enough a character can use an incredibly powerful once a battle ability. Alternately, characters taking damage lowers the bar, and if it falls low enough they can use the same ability, but at the cost of a battle long penalty.
• Ludicrous Gibs: A 40k game has gory kill shots, unsurprisingly. There's even brief slow-mo on kills to show the carnage for a bit.
• Magikarp Power: Burst fire weapons early in the game feel very unimpressive. Their per shot damage is low, as is their max range, and recoil means that most shot in a burst can miss so their damage output falls well short of their theoretical maximum. They are prone to Friendly Fire. Compared to single shot rifles, who have longer ranges, can reliably hit (especially with their deadeye attack) from long range, and can also hit several enemies with overpenetration. Their damage is 3 to 4 times higher meaning they can one shot enemies reliably and cripple tougher enemies. Later in the game the dynamic flips around. Burst fire weapons begin to take huge advantage from the growing sources of damage buffs (as these apply to each shot in a burst), and higher ballistic skills mean they hit reliably. The Game-Breaker Arch-Militant mid-game archetype allows one to boost Ballistic Skills so high as to negate their recoil and general lower accuracy. Meanwhile enemy HP growth and higher armor value mean that single shot rifles lose favor to autofire or dedicate anti-armor attacks like Melta Guns and Plasma.
• The Man Behind the Man: The Rogue Trader and their retinue think they've killed Aurora, the leader of the Rykad Minoris rebels and the governor insists on holding a parade in their honor. Only for a Chaos Space Marine to crash the party and proclaim himself the true leader of the rebellion.
  Word Bearer: "You thought you had killed Aurora, false believers? Tremble, for I am Aurora! I am the herald of change! Behold the Final Dawn... and die!"
• Mass "Oh, Crap!": The party's encounter with a Word Bearer Chaos Space Marine inspires a range of reactions ranging from It Has Been an Honor to outright horror at the thing's gruesome psionic presence.
• Master of All: The Arch-Militant Archetype specializes in using both melee and ranged combat. Their passive buff Versatility gives +5 to both Weapon Skill and Ballistic Skill per stack, up to 1000 stacks. They gain a stack each time they use a different attack from the last one used (single fire and burst fire from the same gun count as different). It's ridiculously easy to get huge stacks of Versatility using various mechanics to give them extra turns or extra attacks (they come with a skill and a heroic that lets them get free extra attacks to begin with, allowing them to farm Versatility really fast), causing the Arch-Militant to have better stats than other characters who dedicated their build towards either melee or ranged combat by several hundred points. With the "Cautious Advance" Talent, Arch-Militants can make Versatility instead buff both dodge and parry, maxing both stats with several hundred points to negate any penalty they might have, effectively letting them dodge or block anything that's not a warp power. Another talent also causes Versatility to boost crit chance, meaning an Arch-Militant also has maxed out crits.
• Mechanical Monster: Forge Fiends, dragon-esq fire breathing mechs possessed by daemons.
• Merchant Prince: You, the Player Character! Rogue Traders are fantastically wealthy and powerful individuals granted Warrant of Trade by the Emperor himself (putting them on the Imperial totem pole at the same height as Lord Inquisitors) to brave the perils of the galaxy, search for lost archaeotech and bring the light of the Emperor and civilization to lost holdouts of humanity.
• Mooks: There's a lot of lower level enemies with suspiciously small health bars, due to the game's momentum system require a lot of easily killed goons to tear through to gain said momentum.
• More Dakka: A viable strategy for battles is using burst fire spreads with your gun wielding party members. Accuracy will be low, but shoot enough bullets and you'll eventually hit something, and hopefully keep enemies from advancing.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Pointing out the absurdity of the chaos doctrine to an old man swayed by cultists ends up with him having a quiet version of this, due to him having previously blinded members of his family while having more as hostages at gunpoint.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: One of the biggest dangers of an Iconoclast playthrough is the ever constant threat of your previous good actions having disastrous consequences later on. Just as one example, if you choose to evacuate as many of Rykad Minoris' population as you can before it transforms into a Daemon World instead of just subjecting the planet to Exterminatus, it's eventually revealed that a number of those "refugees" were in fact disguised Chaos cultists who promptly spark massive, destructive riots throughout your fleet.
• Non-Standard Game Over:
  • It's very possible to cause one not long after the prologue by simply telling Abelard that you do not want to be a Rogue Trader. They'll drop you off at the next planet and presumably you go off and live the rest of your life quietly.
  • Letting Aurora destroy all of the shuttles during the Rykad Minoris spaceport boss fight results in this, as the Rogue Trader and their retinue are deprived of any means of evacuating from the now-sunless planet that's on its way to becoming a Daemon World.
  • You can also cause one in Commorragh, if you push the flesh crafter too far.
• Notice This: Like Owlcat's previous releases, party members say out loud when they see something in the area.
• Optional Boss: Like Owlcat's previous games, there's extra bosses to find if you explore.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: The Rogue Trader him-/herself can feel this way, being constantly surrounded by a retinue composed of representatives of the Imperium's most powerful and most prestigious institutions, most of which have access to unique backgrounds and game mechanics not available to the player character. That said the Rogue Trader's main advantage is that the choice of backgrounds and archetypes allows for extremely synergistic builds. And as the game mechanics mid to late game reward Min-Maxing over Jack of All Stats the Rogue Trader can often outperform some of the party members with more unique backgrounds that don't as severely compliment their archetypes.
• Our Elves Are Different: Asuryani are "High Elves" who live on planetoid-sized starships, have psychic powers and organically-grown technology that borders on Functional Magic, and see humans as primitive, heavily-armed upstarts taking over their galaxy. Drukhari are "Dark Elves", an off-shoot Aeldari culture that preside over a deeply xenophobic, decadent and piratical slave-taking civilization dwelling within a gigantic interdimensional city named Commorragh.
• Player Headquarters: Your ship acts as your HQ, with the bridge being where most business is handled.
• Plotline Death: While it's impossible for any of your companions to die in combat (they just get knocked out, and assuming you win, they wake up afterwards with an Injury), many of your companions can be killed off (or worse) in the story, often at your hands. Some of the more notable ways are handing them off to Heinrix, executing (or ordering Argenta to execute) Idira if she gets out of line or loses control, executing Jae for over-asserting her authority, executing (or allowing Idira to kill) Argenta on Commoragh, the list goes on.
• Prestige Class: These are actually required with the Rogue Trader rule set. The four initial archetypes have three possible second tier archetypes to spec into after filling out the initial one at level 15 (from a pool of six total archetypes), and everyone will go into Exemplar at level 36 and above, letting you grab anything you may have missed from the first two archetypes you picked.
• Prophecy Twist: Throughout the first chapter, the Chaos cultists frequently make mention of an event known as "The Final Dawn" that is prophesied to occur in Rykad Minoris. It is later revealed that the Final Dawn is meant to be literal: Drukhari space vessels enter the system and use their advanced technologies to steal Rykad's sun, bringing utter darkness to the whole system. The event causes widespread panic amongst the planet's population, which also results in the majority converting to the Chaos cult and the Imperials losing total control of the planet. Whether the planet converts itself into a Daemon World or be subjected to Exterminatus, either way, Rykad Minoris experiences its Final Dawn.
• Puzzle Boss: A common boss type, even as early as the prologue. The boss at the end fully heals itself by killing one of its allies on the field, so you have to get rid of them first before focusing on the boss. Similar thing happens in a prison in chapter one, where you have to destroy a series of lenses on the field to stop the boss from teleporting there for a full heal when their health is emptied.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Big time. Your party includes a naval officer who lost his job talking out of turn, an unsanctioned psyker with questionable sanity, a zealous battle sister with a huge chip on her shoulder, a sheltered mutant noble who barely understands the value of life in commoners, a tech-priest who doesn't even seem to understand himself, an inquisitor-in-training who's not as put together as he first seems, a very sexually active cold trader rogue, a space marine cut off from his pack, and two xenos, one VERY MUCH evil. That's not even getting into the ship crew, which includes a very grumpy captain who has been unable to sleep for three decades! Oh, and whatever Nomos is. You know, a newborn C'tan.
• Real-Time with Pause: The game can be paused out of combat (and by default will pause automatically if one of your party members spots a hidden object), though combat gameplay is fully turn-based.
• Refusal of the Call: After the prologue, you can simply refuse to become the Rogue Trader, leading to a game over.
• Returning the Handkerchief: Invoked by Cassia on her romance route, as she draws heavy inspiration on how a "proper" romance should be enacted from chivalric novels. When visiting the Rogue Trader's quarters to inquire about a book she'd seen there, an Awareness test can show that her dropping her handkerchief was a deliberate move, as she looks more at the RT than the fabric.
• Rocket-Tag Gameplay: You can stack extremely powerful buffs on your party members, who can dish out incredible amounts of damage per turn as they level up. So too can (some) enemies. In particular, the boss fight that ends Act 4 is a coin toss that nearly entirely depends on which side wins the Initiative order; with either your party nearly destroyed in a single turn, or you mopping up the floor with most of the enemies before turn 2 even start.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Rogue Traders are roughly equivalent to marquesses in terms of their role in 40k's Feudal Future, and are expected to be active rulers of their fiefdoms and not sit on their laurels. All the Rogue Traders you interact with in the game indeed do, albeit with mixed results.
  • Theodora was on her way to meet a contact in the Holy Inquisition when all hell broke loose during the Justified Tutorial, and had picked the Player Character up from a subject world on the way there. It's gradually revealed she was involved with a lot of really shady stuff.
  • The Player Character is an active ruler by default because it wouldn't be much of a game otherwise. During Adelard's first companion quest, he actually insists you don't lower yourself to dealing with something as petty—in his opinion—as a labor strike on the lower decks. If you resolve the dispute by negotiating instead of putting down the strike by force, he complains that Lady Theodora would never have sullied herself by sticking her nose into something so minor, to which you can reply with a couple different variations of "And look where that got her."
  • Your competitor Lord Winterscale's cousin Evayne personally travels to the Rykad system in hopes of getting his old friend, the Warden of the local Penal Colony, to abandon his rebellion against the governor. He fails miserably: The Warden is a Chaos cultist.
• Running Gag: "Abelard, introduce me." As your Senechal, Abelard can be asked to introduce the Rogue Trader to pretty much every major, and several minor chracters, often with appropriate threats or references.
  "Abelard, please inform this pirate rabble they're about to die."
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: As a holder of a Warrant of Trade issued by the God Emperor Himself, you have permission to operate outside of the spatial borders and legal scope of the Imperium and the Lex Imperialis.
• Secret Police: Companion Heinrix van Calox is an Interrogator in the ranks of the Imperial Inquisition — the Imperium of Man's ecclesiastical secret police.
• Shock and Awe: Electricity is indeed a weapon to make use of, especially as a psyker. Starting psyker staffs even give you access to such a power.
• Shop Fodder: Used in a different way than most games. As a Rogue Trader, you don't actually have to worry about individual purchases, you can automatically obtain anything at the level of your current wealth; however, to get the factions to open more options to you for purchase, you do have to manually pack up miscellaneous items as cargo and trade it to them so their opinion of you will improve.
• Shoot the Dog: Many iconoclast and dogmatic choices come down to this. Killing someone (sometimes as a Mercy Kill) that proves a threat to others even if they don't mean to be. Notably, you can do this to your own party members: When Idira, in her grief, summons a warp entity pretending to be Theodora, the player can choose to execute her for this. As she's an unsanctioned psyker losing control, several party members recommend it and it is the dogmatic procedure. The game even gives the player a lot of ways to do this. From having Argenta snipe her, shooting her themselves. You can also tell Idira you won't kill her, reassure her that you'll find a way to help her regain control, wait for her to pass out, then order your crew to toss her out the airlock.
• Sniper Rifle: There are a few different varieties of accurate, long-range weapons that get a "Deadeye Shot" secondary attack that increases its hit chance still further, including a couple types of slug sniper rifles, but the undisputed winner is the longlas, a lasgun with a base range of a whopping 18 tiles.
• Space Elves: Asuryani (commonly known as the Craftworld Aeldari) and the Drukhari (their vile and sadistic kin) are two of the xenos factions present in the Koronus Expanse. Two potential party members, Yrliet and Marazhai, come from the former and latter respectively.
• Space Pirates: As to be expected for the setting. One of the main factions you trade with (The Fellowship of the Void) is made up entirely of them.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Due to being the group's designated ambassador on all things Aeldari, Yrliet is a Required Party Member, or at least has special content, on significantly more missions than any other companion, basically whenever Eldar are involved. That said, it is still possible to kill her or kick her out of the party at any point.
• Starship Luxurious: The higher up in a starship (namely, yours) you get, the more luxurious you get. The top level, for the Rogue Trader and senior officers, has virtually every luxury you can ask for available at your beck and call.
• Start X to Stop X: It's entirely possible to play a character who's loyal to the Imperium but frequently resorts to heretical means to combat its enemies, typically by having a rank or two in Heresy while otherwise maintaining a Dogmatic or Iconoclast character. As mentioned above under Karma Meter, this puts one closer to the "Radical" side of the scale (especially if you're also an Iconoclast). This can range from simply using enemy equipment and items to Taiming a ForgeFiend or even continuing to mass produce them to outright agreeing to work with the enemy to gain the means to double-cross them later.
• Story Branch Favoritism: The Sanctioned Psyker origin gets you some extra dialogue and a significantly larger number of possible abilities and mechanics to choose from. While a typical RPG may have chosen to present the psyker as its own mage-type class, making it into an origin means psykers get access to the same regular classes as everyone else in addition to all the unique abilities and increased customization exclusively available to them.
• The Strategist: The Officer, Master Tactician, and Grand Strategist archetypes all fit this role, based around creating party buffs, netting extra turns, and unleashing powerful stratagems. The Commissar, Navy Officer, and Astra Militarum Commander origins also fit this role strongly, with abilities to make the most out of the party's skills and keep them moving.
• Summoning Ritual: Comes with the territory of the 40k universe and the endless supply of chaos cultists held within. The prologue even ends with stopping one.
• Take a Third Option: Alongside skill checks, your given moral alignment will open up options at set points. For example, an Iconoclast trader will be able to overcome Cassia's emotional powers through sheer will when you first meet her.
• Time-Limit Boss: The boss battle in the Adeptus Mechanicus monastery in Chapter 1 gives you two full rounds before the villain tampering with the main reactor succeeds in exploding it, though you actually fight her mooks instead of the villain herself (who is behind a Deflector Shield). Killing the Electro-Priest Elite Mooks extends the time limit by one round each.
• Treacherous Quest Giver: Cassia's recruitment mission involves a particularly cantankerous steward of her noble house requesting your help to save her from traitorous mutineers. As it turns out, he's the mastermind behind the mutiny, as he's convinced that Cassia's powers are too much of a threat to the noble house and she and her supporters must be eliminated.
• Turn-Based Combat: The game fully simulates Rogue Trader tabletop gameplay, with each character moving and acting in turn. This is culmination of Owlcat's gameplay evolution: Pathfinder: Kingmaker started out only having Real-Time with Pause, with Turn-Based Combat being added in the Definitive Edition patch following the example of a popular Game Mod, while Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous shipped with both gameplay modes.
• Vast Bureaucracy: The Adeptus Administratum. Jae's companion quest involves her trying to get her a trading certificate, and to do so the party has to go the their capital world's Administratum office. The Rogue Trader has to go through a lengthy procedure of signing various forms, and afterwards, travel to two separate systems to obtain the necessary seals for the documents. After returning to the Master of Seals to get things over with, it looks like the process will be over soon. Wrong! The game does a Bait-and-Switch where the Administratum office looks to be oddly small, but when the Master of Seals leads the party to another room to for the certification procedure, the room is enormous with hundreds of applicants waiting in queue. The wait is so long that some people have gone to bringing beddings because it'll probably take the whole day (at best) until their turn.
• Video Game Caring Potential: The Iconoclast ideology. It generally involves protecting your people and doing the moral, if not necessarily best, thing. As notable directly below, one of the 40k Twists™ the game operates on is that too much of this will actually be seen as strange in-universe, and you might find out the hard way that all of the cruelty of 40k is because being nice can just as easily make things worse for everyone involved.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: Lots. You're a Rogue Trader, one of the most powerful noble positions in the Imperium. It's not only possible for you to treat your lessers like scum, punishing them for not only the slightest infractions but the slightest infractions of their neighbors, in many cases it's outright expected. Some of your own subordinates will give you the eyebrow if you're too much of a soft touch. And that's not even going into the possibility of succumbing to Chaos and inflicting horrors in the name of the Ruinous Powers.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The final boss of Chapter 1, a Word Bearer Chaos Space Marine. Despite the Mass "Oh, Crap!" it inspires, it isn't that hard to take down... for a well-built, well-equipped, and well-optimized party. However, parties that have been sleepwalking through the game will struggle to put out enough damage to stop it from destroying the shuttles that will get them off-world before it becomes a daemon world.
• Wham Line:
  "I killed Theodora von Valancius." - Sister Argenta
• Wooden Ships and Iron Men: Space travel and life aboard a starship in this setting carries a lot of the tropes and aesthetics of the Age of Sail, including Space Is an Ocean.

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