What’s the best Officer build in Rogue Trader? By far the least straightforward of the beginning four archetypes, Rogue Trader’s Officer excels in supporting the rest of your adventure party as you traverse the horrors of the warp and battle waves of dangerous xenos. But why play as an Officer, you ask? Well, giving allies an extra turn can quickly turn the tide of battle, and the archetype’s focus on the Fellowship characteristic means they’re a great help dealing with all the dialogue you’ll be sifting through. However, it is the only one that doesn’t have a pre-made character to build off of – but don’t worry, we got you covered, along with the best choices for an advanced archetype.
If you do want to play as a more initially straightforward class in Rogue Trader, check out our Warrior build guide – great for smashing things and staying alive. Likewise, our Soldier guide shows you how to make the most out of ranged weaponry to decimate your foes; otherwise, the unconventional Operative guide might fit your style more. If you’re still keen on the Officer, read on to learn the best way to build a veritable commander, in and out of combat.
Best Officer Build in Rogue Trader
The best Rogue Trader Officer build is:
- Homeworld: Voidborn or Hive World
- Origin: Noble
- Characteristics: +10 Fellowship, +10 Willpower, +10 Ballistic Skill
- Best Talents: Commanding Voice, Personal Oversight, Inspire Courage, Steel Resolve, Focus!
- Best Abilities: Get Back in the Fight!, Move, Move, Move!
- Advanced Archetype: Master Tactician
Best Officer Homeworld
The best Rogue Trader Officer homeworld is the Hive World.
Your homeworld provides a bit of background lore for your character, a feature, access to a handful of talents that you can select later, and, most importantly, some buffs and nerfs to starting characteristics. Outside of allocating your characteristics, it’s the most impactful step toward making an effective Officer; however, you definitely can get away with choosing a homeworld for roleplaying purposes if you’re careful with future level ups.
For the Officer, the Hive World homeworld provides +5 Fellowship – the most important stat for the archetype – and +5 Agility, while sapping -5 Willpower. While Willpower does provide quite a lot of utility for an Officer, they receive the Strength in Numbers feature, which gives them a pretty sizable buff to Resolve (used to build a meter for special abilities) if surrounded by friends.
The other option is Voidborn, which gives +5 Willpower and +5 Intelligence, while sapping -5 Strength which isn’t necessary. While there’s no buff to Fellowship here, most other origins negate the stat. What makes a Voidborn origin more appealing, however, is its Fortune feature, which grants a 20% to reroll a failed dodge, parry, characteristic, or skill check in combat. As your Officer will be the linchpin of your combat party, keeping them alive will help keep everyone else alive.
Best Officer Origin
The best Rogue Trader Officer origin is the Noble.
Origins provide context for your character as you navigate the Koronus Expanse. It is perfectly fine to choose an origin that interests you from a role-playing perspective, or, if you want to wield some unstable magic powers, become a Sanctioned Psyker.
Of the seven origins, Noble is by far the best for an Officer. They gain the You. Serve Me. ability, which allows you to buff an ally’s characteristics, along with a host of talents that improve it. Furthermore, +5 Intelligence and +5 Fellowship characteristic modifiers are nice, and +5 Coercion and +5 Persuasion for skill modifiers are also a nice boon for the frequent dialogue skill checks you’ll want to pass.
Best Officer Characteristics
You’ll have 30 points to spend in any characteristic of your choosing in chunks of 5. Placing +10 in Fellowship, Willpower, and Ballistic Skill will ensure your Officer can pass dialogue skill checks, buff allies, and snipe some enemies as well. It isn’t recommended to spec into Strength and Weapon Skill as Officers don’t have access to the talents required to stay alive during melee combat.
Here are the best characteristics for an Officer, including the Voidborn homeworld and Noble origin bonuses:
- Weapon Skill: 30
- Ballistic Skill: 40
- Strength: 30
- Toughness: 30
- Agility: 35
- Intelligence: 35
- Perception: 30
- Willpower: 35
- Fellowship: 50
You’ll have ample opportunity upon leveling up to increase your characteristics. Focus on increasing Fellowship as much as possible as it provides bonuses to Persuasion and Coercion, both of which will pop up as skill checks in dialogue quite often. Rogue Trader is rather harsh with its skill checks from the second chapter onward, so you’ll need as much as you can get.
Afterward, focus on Ballistic Skill to give yourself some combat utility and then Willpower.
Best Talents for an Officer
While leveling up the Officer archetype, you will be able to select 4 common and 5 Officer talents as you progress to level 16, where you’ll move on to an advanced archetype. The common talents available to you will depend on your origin; however, for when you can select an Officer talent, prioritize these:
- Level 4: Commanding Voice
- Level 6: Personal Oversight
- Level 8: Inspire Courage
- Level 11: Seize the Initiative
- Level 13: Focus!
These talents will give your Officer plenty of ways to buff your allies by keeping them alive and increasing their damage. Commanding Voice increases the range of your Officer features, and Personal Oversight helps build momentum to use powerful Heroic Acts. Inspire Courage and Focus! can help your tanks and ranged weapon users, respectively. Seize the Initiative gives your Officer an extra turn at the beginning of every battle. It’s remarkably powerful to cast Bring It Down! immediately on a heavy-hitting companion.
For common talents, focus on those provided by your origin while grabbing Swift Movements for +2 movement points at some point.
Best Abilities for an Officer
Twice, you’ll be able to select a new ability – a usable skill – for your Officer, other than Voice of Command (buff your allies’ characteristics) and Bring It Down! (give an ally an extra turn with 2 action points) which come automatically. If you choose the Sanctioned Psyker origin, you can select a powerful Psyker spell. For a non-Psyker Officer, select the following:
- Level 7: Get Back in the Fight
- Level 12: Move, Move, Move!
Quite often your companions will get set on fire or poisoned. Get Back in the Fight! removes those statuses from them, allowing them to survive longer and stop taking passive damage without the use of a consumable item. Move, Move, Move! on the other hand, provides a handy buff to movement points to reach those out-of-the-way enemies or to have a squishy companion dash into cover while avoiding attacks of opportunity.
Best Advanced Archetype for an Officer
The best Rogue Trader Officer advanced archetype is Master Tactician.
The Officer has three options upon reaching level 16 for advanced archetypes: Vanguard, Master Tactician, and Grand Strategist. Vanguard favors tanky melee characters, which an Officer is not, while Master Tactician and Grand Strategist are much more suited for a backline Officer role. Master Tactician, however, builds a resource called tactical advantage every turn, which you can then spend to massively buff your Officer or allies. With the decent Ballistics Skill of our build, a good ranged weapon, and tactical advantage, your Officer can deal some of the highest damage in the game while still providing support for your allies each turn. Tactical advantage increases every turn based on the Fellowship skill and momentum, which means you’ll be able to make use of it often.
Grand Strategist is another good choice that designates specific areas on the battlefield to provide buffs, but fellow a companion character and Officer – Cassia – fills this role much better as she doesn’t have an initial investment in Ballistic Skill.
Now you’re all set to give commands to your allies and snipe Drukhari in Warhammer 40000: Rogue Trader. Keep in mind that a few other Officers join your party, and you can have six companions with you at any given time, so you can stack powerful turn-granting abilities that’ll help you decimate the horrors of the Koronus Expanse. If Rogue Trader scratches your RPG itch, check out the best games like Baldur’s Gate 3, and don’t forget to check out our Rogue Trader review to see what we made of the game.