Soldier

Master ranged combat as the Soldier in "Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader". Learn about abilities like Run and Gun, Revel in Slaughter, and Firearm Mastery.

Keystone Features (Soldier):

Run and Gun

• Cost: 1 AP
• Area of effect: Personal
• Cooldown: 1
• Effect: You gain +(2 + AGI bonus / 2) movement points. Your next attack costs -1 AP and does not count towards the attack limit per turn. Until the end of your next turn, you become winded. While winded, you suffer a -10 penalty to Ballistic Skill and cannot use _Run and Gun_.

Revel in Slaughter

• Cost: 1 AP
• Area of effect: Personal
• Cooldown: 1
• Effect: You immediately remove the winded effect and gain the following bonuses until the end of combat: +10 Ballistic Skill, +(AGI bonus)% critical hit chance, +(5 + 2 x AGI bonus)% critical damage.
• Availability: This ability becomes available after you kill 3 enemies. This counter is not reset between rounds.

Abilities (Soldier):

Firearm Mastery (Heroic Act / Desperate Measures)

• Cost: N/A
• Area of effect: Personal
• Cooldown: Once per combat
• Effect: You can make a number of extra attacks equal to your weapon's rate of fire (minimum 2), using the weapon attack which costs the least AP. These attacks do not cost AP. In addition, you immediately reload your current weapon and until the end of your turn, your first attack against each new enemy is an automatic critical hit.
• Desperate Measure Effect: Starting from next round, your AP is reduced by -1 until the end of combat.
• Upgrades (available at 9th and 15th levels): Choose one of the following: 1. Until the end of your turn, you gain +4 MP and your attacks do not spend MP. 2. Your rate of fire is increased by +30% until the end of combat. 3. Until the end of combat, your ranged attacks gain +10% armour penetration and all your attacks are 20% harder to dodge. 4. Until the end of your turn, your area attacks deal additional damage equal to the number of attacked targets.

Concentrated Fire

• Cost: 1 AP
• Area of effect: Personal
• Cooldown: 1 round
• Effect: Your next ranged area attack deals ((50 + 10 x BS bonus) / number of enemies in the area)% damage and has an additional (10 + 2 x BS bonus)% dodge reduction.

Controlled Shot

• Cost: 1 AP
• Area of effect: Personal
• Cooldown: 1 round
• Effect: After using this ability, you and your allies will automatically dodge your next attack.

Dash

• Cost: 0 AP
• Area of effect: 3-cell radius
• Cooldown: 1 round
• Effect: You dash in the selected direction. This movement allows you to move through allies and enemies (but not obstacles) and does not provoke attacks of opportunity.

Entrench

• Cost: 1 AP
• Area of effect: Personal
• Cooldown: 1 round
• Effect: You immediately end your turn, spending all AP and MP, and gain a +30% bonus to cover (press the cover button to crouch behind walls or objects) efficiency. The next time you use _Run and Gun_, you regain the sacrificed AP and MP plus 1 additional AP. You also reset the cooldown of all your abilities apart from _Run and Gun_.

Rapid Fire

• Cost: 1 AP
• Area of effect: Personal
• Cooldown: 1 round
• Effect: Your next ranged burst attack will have its base rate of fire doubled but deal -25% less damage. All the shots fired will follow random trajectories.

Talents (Soldier):

When selecting talents from the full talent list, you may additionally choose from talents unique to the Soldier archetype.

Playing a Soldier

Compared to Operative, playing a Soldier is refreshingly simple: you shoot enemies until they stop moving and then you shoot more enemies. Most of your abilities and talents make you better at shooting enemies. There are two basic styles when it comes to playing a soldier: burst fire (Rapid Fire) and area attacks (Concentrated Fire). In both cases, you can take Controlled Shot to avoid killing your own party members. Dash is extremely useful since you can use it both to escape aggro and to take a couple of extra steps so that you can get another enemy in your line of sight. However, Entrench is quite bad since giving up actions now to take actions later is never a good strategy. Besides being offensively strong, you are defensively strong as well. You will have high Agility for decent dodge and then you can take the Second Skin talent allowing you to equip medium armour without compromising that decent dodge. An obvious problem with playing a soldier is that you have a really good one in your party already. An easy way around this is to be an area attack specialist while Argenta mows enemies down with a heavy bolter or vice versa. If you want to avoid later redundancy with Ulfar, you can go down the sniper route since Soldiers are really good at that too. And if you branch out into xenos weapons, that is something that Argenta is never going to match. The obvious choice of Homeworld is Fortress World since the talents make you even better at shooting. An outside choice is Hive World because Weapon Personalisation is really good if you're a burst fire specialist. Voidborn has some nice synergy as well but the Strength penalty is bad if you're planning on using heavy weapons. If you're playing a "conventional" soldier, Astra Militarum is the way to go.