What’s the best Warrior build in Rogue Trader? There’s nothing more Warhammer-like than a chainsword-wielding maniac leaping into battle to slice up the Emperor’s foes. Thankfully, Rogue Trader offers the Warrior as one of the game’s four starting archetypes, and while it’s a bit straightforward – and your first companion is a Warrior – there’s more versatility to the class than any other. Warriors are fully capable of being melee powerhouses, defensive tanks, and have the flexibility to wield a powerful sidearm or secondary long ranged weapon to make sure they can always turn your enemies into a bloody mess. As a result, it can be quite daunting to make a Warrior in Rogue Trader’s already complex character creator, but the build detailed here will ensure your versatile melee enthusiast survives the hordes of vile xenos.
What if a Warrior doesn’t fit your style? Check out our guides for the gun obsessed Soldier, the debuffing Operative, and the supportive Officer. If you want to wield two-handed greatswords in a sci-fi setting, any one of these classes can develop the use of melee weapons – you don’t have to stick with the Warrior archetype. That said, if you want to really hone in on slicing and dicing through Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader, read on for our best Warrior build.
Best Rogue Trader Warrior build
The best Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader Warrior build is:
- Homeworld: Death World
- Origin: Astra Militarum Commander, Commissar, Navy Officer
- Characteristics: +10 Weapon Skill, +10 Strength, +10 Toughness
- Talents: Epicentre of Slaughter, Contempt, Ramming Speed, Rigorous Training, Thick Skin
- Abilities: Taunting Scream, Reckless Strike
- Advanced Archetype: Arch-Militant
Best Warrior Homeworld
The best Rogue Trader Warrior homeworld is the Death 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 Warrior; however, you definitely can get away with choosing a homeworld for roleplaying purposes if you’re careful with future level ups.
The best homeworld for a Warrior – by a long shot – is the Death World. Not only does a Death World character receive +5 Strength, +5 Toughness, and +5 Agility (along with -5 Intelligence and -5 Fellowship, but let’s ignore that), they also gain the use of the Survival Instinct feature, which will help keep them alive on the front lines. Furthermore, they also get access to a handful of great defensive talents such as Tenacity, which ignores certain status effects and grants extra wounds (health).
If you want to roleplay a devotee to the God Emperor, the Imperial World option gains an instant buff to either Weapon Skill or Ballistic Skill, both of which can benefit a Warrior, along with a handful of talents that provide party-wide benefits when fighting xenos and vile creatures of the warp. Be warned: if a xenos character joins your party, they won’t receive the benefits. For this homeworld, there’s no buffs to your base characteristics, but there aren’t any debuffs, either.
Best Warrior Origin
The best Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader Warrior origin is Astra Militarum Commander, Commissar, or Navy Officer.
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.
As one of the most versatile classes, the origin for a Warrior is the most wide-open: the Astra Militarum Commander, Commissar, and Navy Officer all fit the melee attacker or tank role well. It really depends on what type of playstyle you want to pursue: for a defensive playstyle that can use both melee and ranged weapons, the Astra Militarum Commander has quite a few talents that benefit your companions. The Commissar makes for a great offensive attacker with its At All Costs! feature, allowing you to mark enemies and grant benefits to those that kill them. Finally, the Navy Officer’s Brace For Impact feature has an amazing amount of defensive talents that go along with it, making it the best class for a protective tank.
If you’re uncertain between these three, choose the Astra Militarum Commander as your first companion will be a Navy Officer Warrior, and he makes an effective tank.
Best Warrior Characteristics
You’ll have 30 points to spend in any characteristic of your choosing in chunks of 5. As you’ll want to deal as much damage as possible while surviving as long as possible, +10 Weapon Skill, +10 Strength, and +10 Toughness is the way to go. Weapon Skill will allow you to dodge and parry attacks, Strength will make sure you hit hard, and Toughness will keep you alive when you do get hit.
Here are the best characteristics for an Soldier, including the Death World homeworld and Astra Militarum Commander origin bonuses:
- Weapon Skill: 40
- Ballistic Skill: 35
- Strength: 45
- Toughness: 45
- Agility: 35
- Intelligence: 25
- Perception: 35
- Willpower: 30
- Fellowship: 25
It’s important to not neglect Weapon Skill and Toughness as you head into the second and third chapters; on the normal difficulty, enemies still hit incredibly hard. Dodging and parrying become essential. Then, invest in Strength. Later, you can add points to Ballistic Skill in order to remain somewhat competent at ranged combat.
Best Warrior Talents
While leveling up the Warrior archetype, you will be able to select 3 common and 5 Warrior 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 Warrior talent, prioritize these:
- Level 4: Epicentre of Slaughter
- Level 5: Contempt
- Level 8: Ramming Speed
- Level 10: Rigorous Training
- Level 13: Thick Skin
Epicentre of Slaughter, Rigorous Training, and Thick Skin provide a lot of buffs for when taking damage from enemies, ensuring your Warrior will survive to retaliate with a boost from Contempt. Ramming Speed offers an upgrade on the essential Charge feature, allowing your Warrior to reach far away opponents to dish out massive damage, or get in the way of them to help out a vulnerable ally.
For common talents, focus on those provided by your origin while grabbing Duelling Mastery and Nimble to increase your parry and dodge chances, respectively.
Best Warrior abilities
Twice, you’ll be able to select a new ability – a usable skill – for your Warrior. Charge (rush ahead to attack an enemy) and Endure (gain bonus health and damage mitigation) come automatically. If you choose the Sanctioned Psyker origin, you can select a powerful Psyker spell. For a non-Psyker Soldier, select the following:
- Level 6: Taunting Scream
- Level 11: Reckless Strike
Taunting Scream is essential in drawing aggro from enemies that may target your squishier companions. When combined with Endure, the Warrior can take a lot more hits than any other archetype. Furthermore, Reckless Strike is extremely beneficial when going up against boss characters that you need to whittle down quickly, even if it comes with the drawback of a retaliatory attack from your foe.
Best Advanced Archetype for a Warrior
The best Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader Warrior advanced archetype is the Arch-Militant.
The Warrior has access to three archetypes: Assassin, Vanguard, and Arch-Militant. For this versatile Death World/Astra Militarum Commander build, the Arch-Militant is by far the best choice for an advanced archetype. This artchetype’s keystone feature allows you to gain stacks of versatility every time you use a different type of weapon, meaning that if you switch between ranged weaponry, melee attacks, and more, you steadily increase your damage output. Arch-Militants have a feature called Wildfire that you should pick as soon as possible that allows you to make an extra attack each turn, building more versatility.
The other great Archetype for a Warrior is the Vanguard, which builds stacks of unyielding beacon when attacked. If you like playing as a tank, this class is the way to go as it protects its allies like none other. It does, however, require some investment in the Fellowship characteristic. Once again, the first companion that joins your party was pretty much made by the developer to slot into the Vanguard role, but if you don’t want to use him (he’s kind of a buzzkill), you can’t go wrong with this advanced archetype.
With all this information under your belt, you’re ready to leap into battle with your chainsword swinging and your flamethrower blazing. Like all other archetypes in the game, you will have a couple other companions that fill the same role, so you can have several hardy Warriors decimating the field at any given time. For more on games as deep as Warhammer 40000: Rogue Trader, check out our list of games like Baldur’s Gate 3, and don’t forget to take a peek at our review to see what we thought of our journey through the Koronus Expanse.