Abelard is one of two starting Warrior type classes you can get in Rogue Trader. This seasoned navy officer is packed with tools to survive and be tanky, while having a great kit to turn into an extremely strong DPS class the more you advance into the later stages of the game. If you like the idea of a sturdy and flexible warrior early, with tools to make him an agile and highly offensive assassin, then this Abelard Build in Rogue Trader is for you.

View Full-size

A guide on how to build Abelard in Rogue Trader, featuring talents, weapon choices and party playstyle. Image via Owlcat.

Abelard’s Warrior Assassin Build in Rogue Trader¶

The idea behind the Warrior is that you are setting yourself up to be a tank in the early game, while offering your Navy background to make it easier to get into cover in larger and more open areas. These will help players on hard or Unfair playthroughs for the team and tanking buffs early. And you are also setting your character up for an assassin montage later and getting background survivability. In addition, you enable yourself to get more charge distance for needed mobility with the class for Assassin. The addition of Reckless Strike, Sworn Enemy, and Daring Breach offer great tools to deal serious damage, which will also play a key role later when you start getting Vulnerability and Weakspot targeting in the Assassination tree. Overall, it is a solid framework for things to come.

Abelard’s Warrior Assassin Build Skills¶

The table below provides a list of skills that you can acquire for this build at specific levels.

Skills	Level
Charge	1
Athletics	2
Endure	3
Daring Breach / Thick Skin	4
Contempt / Strength	5
Reckless Strike / Carouse	6
Weapon Skill / Nimble	7
Carouse / Defensive Manoeuvres	8
Daring Breach 4	9
Rigorous Training / Weapon Skill	10
Sworn Enemy / Get Off Me	11
Toughness / Athletics	12
Ramming Speed / Demolition	13
Strength / Scatter	14
Daring Breach II	15

Some of the key picks here are the Defensive Manoeuvres, Sworn Enemy and the Reckless Strike talents and skills. These are talents and abilities you need to set up the basis of your damage windows in the early game, and for synergizing with your Assassination damage windows when you unlock Assassination. You’ll also be improving key characteristics like Strength, which grants bonus melee crit chance, melee damage improvements, and then other tanky stats like Toughness for Wounds, while also improving Abelard’s party role in Athletics, and other role checks in the world and dialogue. You’ll also be taking Warrior and common talents that grant Dodge here, handy for avoiding ranged attacks, and also improving your Lethality bonus, since it scaled with Dodge.

You’ll find that you complete your Warrior build around the start of Chapter 2, ready for your Assassin playstyle to kick into effect.

Assassin Build - Rogue Trader¶

View Full-size

Assassin and Warrior damage buffs combined with a strong weapon make boss and pack management efficient even on the hardest difficulties.

The Assassin build here is all about setting up Abelard to be a prominent melee DPS threat. With your defensive and supporting warrior talents in place, you can see the real effects of Abelard’s damage starting to get more and more powerful. He can be an amazing mobility tool with great AoE and boss-killing potential, and even survive some of the harder-hitting bosses thanks to his already established defensiveness. We are also taking into account talents that consider party synergy, as you don’t want to be spending all your AP on the same buffing skills, when you could spend an extra AP on something else. We’ve even thrown in some options for preferred weaponry, and we have greater explanations on ideal weapons for Chapter 2 and beyond further down this section.

All Assassin Build Skills¶

The below table lists skills that you can acquire for this build.

Skills	Level
Seek an Opening	1
Poised to Strike	2
Bringer of Doom	3
Dispatch	4
AP Increase / Weapon Skill	5
Perfect Opening / Weapon Skill	6
Demolition / Death Whisper	7
Create an Opening	8
Strength / It Will Not Die	9
Ambush	10
Strength / Athletics	11
Dispatch III	12
Swift Movements / Lethality Heightens	13
Perception / Athletics	14
Feinting Attack	15
Power Weapon Expert / Inevitable Enervation	16
Athletics	17
Professional Acumen / Agility	18
Dueling Mastery	19
Dispatch II - Execution Window	20

Again, you have a few core talents here. Death Whisper is an assassination damage tool that allows for a free hit from either your ranged or melee weapon at the cost of some damage. This is handy if you need to trigger effects, force a Prone with a shotgun ready for your melee hit, and other such tactical usages. Inevitable Enervation is good too for reducing dodge chance on enemies, which you’ll find is a great option on harder difficulties against annoying enemies or bosses like Tzeentch or Drukhari themed enemies.

In addition, you’ll also take party synergy traits like Create an Opening. This skill offers you a weakspot / opening facing you if an ally crits a target near you. It’s great so you don’t have to waste AP on creating an opening yourself, and can use your AP on other buffs or items in your inventory.

We’ll also chuck in relevant defensive talents like Agility and Toughness improvements, and Nimble so you can keep up with some of the boss battles and other mechanics introduced in Chapter 2 and beyond. Nimble is huge, since it offers dodge, which you want for your Assassin Lethality mechanic and survivability.

Suggested Weapons, Armor and Accessories in Chapter 2¶

If you’re interested in using the same power two-handed hammer we use, it is called Hammer of Epiphany. You get this for sacking the temple using the Heretical option when you come across the Foulstone monastery on the Trinnitos System. It is by far the best two-handed weapon in Chapter 2, and one you can keep for a considerable period of time. Adding the extra Power weapon talent makes its mighty 40% armor pen even better for the assassin role against all enemy types. You can also find strength and weapon skill modifying items all the way through the game, which you can fit onto Abelard really easily.

As for your secondary weapon, a Melta two-handed gun can be useful if you cannot enter melee range safely in one turn. A shotgun is also nice if you want to Knock Down enemies when in effective range. Feel free to use this attack with your Death Whisper attack if you don’t want it to consume an attack that turn.

We also recommend wearing medium armor for survivability until you get to Exemplar. The Exemplar talents provide a lot of defensive buffs that are perfect for an assassin’s max HP, meaning you can swap out medium for light and start abusing the bonuses to dodge from then on. You can then also start taking dodge modifier talents in Exemplar from previous archetypes and enjoy your assassin hitting its lethality peaks as you get more and more dodge from those talents. But until then, medium armor is great, especially for harder modes.

Exemplar Build Skills¶

From here, you’re picking up other assassin talents or preferential talents you think you want or need for the build. These are for either party roles or just further enhancing your assassin offense or character defense, depending on what you feel you need. We’ve listed a few we reckon you want through Chapters 3 and 4, but there’s room for your own interpretation post level 10 in Exemplar.

Skills	Level
Tricky Defense / Trusty Weapons	1
Athletics / Hellish Life	2
Agility / Preference	3
Breakthrough / Preference	4
Peak Condition / Killing Spree	5
Weapon Skill / Epicenter of Slaughter	6
Elusive Shadow / Weapon Skill or Agility	7
Esquive / Preference	8
Tough as Steel	9

In this section, we are largely mopping up any remaining defensive traits via the Exemplar and previous archetype trees. Tricky Defense is good because Lethality scales from dodge chance. The more dodge you acquire, the better it is better as dodge offers Lethality. You should also consider taking Light armor wit high dodge you boost that further. You’ll likely never get hit by a ranged attack again, but, when you are hit, it will sting, so that’s part of the reason why we take a lot of wound improving talents in this archetype. This brings us to I Will Not Die, since Abelard is tanky anyway, and this only helps him take off to new wound heights with his somewhat high level granting many wounds.

Trusty Weapons is a nice base talent one if you find yourself still using Axes and Hammers by this point in the game, which you likely will. You don’t get many opportunities to pick this up in the warrior tree, and there’s more pressing things to grab in the Assassin, hence its late arrival. You can also get more damage options if you want them, such as Killing Spree.

As for other Exemplar talents, you want:

1. Flesh Wounds for wound restoration since you’re likely in the open and taking damage can be mitigated when your dodge fails by that point.
2. Eager Subordinates. Sometimes, you want the extra turn from an officer, and sometimes, it helps you out for big execution windows where you don’t need the Assassin Ulty.

This concludes our Abelard Build in Rogue Trader. You now have an idea of how the mechanics of the class work, in what areas to focus your efforts to make your characters defensive and offensive, and how to handle threats you encounter during the game.