1st Play Through Char

[Ozmiz]

As someone completely new to Warhammer and to Rogue Trader, I'm looking for advice on what character build should I roll up for the first play through?

I looked at the char creation screen, and I don't understand enough about the skills and abilities from the Warhammer World to know what I'm looking at, so advice very appreciated.

[Tyrendian89]

you probably want to avoid Psykers - they're more complicated and not particularly strong except when built just right, which you probably arent gonna get going in mostly blind. Personally, I enjoyed my Forge World Operative Sniper for a first playthrough - lots of Int plus Forge World talent meant I had like two thirds of the skills at quite a good value. Only drawback was being very squishy, which is less than ideal when the game decides you're solo for the start of one act.

[MilesMk1]

My first character was an agile run-and-gun type also heavily focused on various people skills, because I liked the idea (from an RP perspective) that as the brains behind a Rogue Trader dynasty, I would actually be in charge of making the deals rather than let my underlings do the thinking for me.

I focused more on energy and xeno weapons (so lasguns and various Eldar/Dark Eldar weapons) in order not to just make my character a clone of Argentia in terms of combat capabilities. (Which also meant I didn't gimp her by taking the best bolters for myself)

But I was mainly playing for the story on a low difficulty. (And if you do that, it honestly doesn't matter much.)

I would also not recommend a psyker for the first playthrough, they're confusing AF (Honestly, the class mechanics are kind of a cluster$%#& in general. it's not that they're impossibly complex but they're not user-friendly and I didn't find them fun to dig into, especially.) and you'll also get several psyker companions.

[jomigaru]

Assassin sniper worked wonders for me.

[Woljif]

my first character was a psyker it was fun.

[Taifun_Vash]

There are many good builds you could go for, but you should avoid psyker in the beginning. You get two psykers in the beginning, to test around with.
I started my first play with a astramilitarum soldier/master tactician, which was quite fun.
warrior - weaponskill, strength, toughness, perception (maybe agility, instead of toughness if you want to go assassin)
soldier - ballistic, agility, perception (burst and area attacks are two different categories)
operative - ballistics, int, agility, perception (more of a sniper)
officer - fellowship, willpower, agility (support, could be made tank would require a specific build. Intelligence only with voidborne background instead of fellowship. good for talking)

[Canadian_Zac]

My go to first playthrough character is always a Skill Monkey/Support

Any background and homeworld, really

Officer / Grand Tactician classes

Focus on buffing stats and Persusasion.

You dont need to worry about Tech use or Logic, Pasqual will have those covered better than you can.

My guy is full buffing.

Solo I can't do much. But I sure can tell you everything about the Imperium. And tell Abeldard to fetch me your nuts

Obviously you wont be built for combat too well, but you'll be built for everything else. And you can turn down combat difficulty, rebuildiing a character is a lot more difficult when you don't know it how to properly build things.
And it lets you be more free with the other characters to experiment, knowing your guy is secure and they can focus 100% on combat while you handle the skills, and never fail any Persusasion

[Saltmarine]

officer to tactician telepath+sanctic. pump willpower and fellowship, get 45 strenght for psyker's breastplate, always pick +psy rating, +aditional turns talents, the one that gives +psy rating after heroic acts, the one that overflow damage transfers over to another enemy and read through what and how talents scale and maximize your psy damage that way. up until the end of act 1 you're gonna be an officer as psychic powers take time to ramp up in damage but you'll be unstoppable by the roughly act 2 via insane damage scaling and free turn chaining / crowd control that cassia provides with lidless stare. spec cassia mainly in to navigator specific talents, use the notch of purpose to group up and mow down hordes of enemies.

[Always Feral]

I ran Deathworld > Crime Lord > Soldier > Arch-Militant and it's been a blast. Kinda wished I went with Warrior instead of Soldier but between Abelard and Heinrix they both got the "charge in and beat people to death" angle covered.

[brago90]

If you are going to play a heretical route choose soldier for the main character.