Deathwatch - Play as a Space Marine

A mod for Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader that lets you create and play a Deathwatch Space Marine in the base campaign.

• A fully converted character creator: choose your Chapter (10 of them, each with its own shoulder heraldry), Speciality (Tactical, Assault, Devastator, Apothecary, Techmarine, Librarian), Deed of Renown and Burden of Service.
• A full-size, fully armoured Astartes in-game: correct scale, Deathwatch power armour with your Chapter's pauldron, an Astartes starting arsenal, and a working Librarian psyker.
• Speciality identity in play: every speciality has an innate combat ability, a matched talent kit, wears its own named battle-helm with systems that scale off your stats (values shown live in the tooltip), and - with the Space Marine voice - speaks its own battle barks.
• Transhuman physiology: failed Strength and Toughness tests are rerolled once, and both characteristics can always be increased at level-up.
• An Astartes armoury: wield any two-handed melee weapon in one hand, use plasma and flame weapons at marine scale, Kick with your power armour's boots, wear capes (including a Deathwatch cape), and - as a Techmarine - take up the Omnissian axe.
• 11 custom portraits and 3 custom voices (Space Marine, Apothecary, Ulfar) in character creation.
• Fully localized: all mod text ships in English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese and Turkish, with terminology matched to the game's official localization.
• Sensible in the world: the marine is Large in combat but fits corridors, ladders and the command throne out of combat; story beats that strip your gear hand an Astartes proper wargear back.
• Also ships one general engine fix that benefits any party: cells of a destroyed destructible (cover, barricades) free up for movement immediately instead of staying blocked.

Requirements

• Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader (current patch).
• The Infinite Museion DLC (owned). The Deathwatch armour, helmet and related assets this mod is built around are that DLC's content. The mod enforces ownership: without the DLC, the Custom Space Marine option does not appear in character creation. The DLC's story content does not need to be enabled, only owned.
• MicroPatches (by Microsoftenator). A required, declared dependency: the game will not load Deathwatch unless MicroPatches is installed and enabled. Most Rogue Trader mod setups already have it. https://www.nexusmods.com/warhammer40kroguetrader/mods/203

Installation

Recommended: ModFinder

ModFinder is the mod manager most Rogue Trader mod pages point you at, and it handles installation and updates for you.

1. Install Deathwatch with ModFinder (or point it at a downloaded Deathwatch.zip).
2. Make sure MicroPatches is installed and enabled too (see Requirements) - Deathwatch refuses to load without it.
3. Launch the game, open the Mods menu from the title screen, enable Deathwatch - Play as a Space Marine, and restart when prompted.
4. Start a New Game and pick the Custom Space Marine tile in character creation.

Manual

1. Download Deathwatch.zip from the Releases page.
2. Extract it into your Rogue Trader modifications folder: %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Owlcat Games\Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader\Modifications You should end up with: ...\Modifications\Deathwatch\OwlcatModificationManifest.json (If you see Modifications\Deathwatch\Deathwatch\... you extracted one level too deep.)
3. Open %USERPROFILE%\AppData\LocalLow\Owlcat Games\Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader\OwlcatModificationManagerSettings.json and add "Deathwatch" to EnabledModifications and ActiveModifications, using a comma to separate any existing mods. IE: "EnabledModifications":["jhArcPlasma","Deathwatch"],"ActiveModifications":["jhArcPlasma","Deathwatch"]
4. Continue from step 2 above (MicroPatches, enable in the Mods menu, restart, new game).

Known issues and things that are BY DESIGN

• This mod is not balanced, and does not try to be. You are an Astartes in a campaign written for baseline humans; encounters will often be easy. Play it for the fantasy, not the challenge.
• NPCs and the story do not react to you being a Space Marine. Dialogue, cutscenes and quests treat you as the vanilla Rogue Trader.
• Most human-scale equipment cannot be worn. Deliberate: an Astartes wears Astartes wargear. If you want to lift the restrictions anyway, third-party tools such as ToyBox can do so.
• Some combat arenas are cramped. The marine is Large (2x2) in combat; a few tight maps have paths a Large character cannot take.
• Some scripted animations look odd at marine scale - sitting on the command throne, certain cutscene interactions, and similar human-skeleton moments.
• The Blade Dancer archetype has broken animations on a marine. Its moveset was made for the human skeleton. It is deliberately left selectable for the curious - pick it at your own risk.
• Human capes equip but render invisible on a marine (their visuals only exist for human bodies). The marine-fit capes - including the Deathwatch Cape - display normally.
• Capes can clip through the pauldrons and backpack. This matches how the game's own Deathwatch Captain renders the same cape; the cloth simulation cannot collide with armour.
• Human hair and beard options may sit imperfectly on the marine head.
• A few inherited talents/abilities still show their vanilla origin's name in tooltip flavour. Most inherited descriptions have been rewritten to name the Space Marine, but a small number are left intentionally: the Librarian's psyker features read "Sanctioned Psyker" (a Librarian is a sanctioned psyker), the Iron Hands augment sub-menu options keep their forge-world wording, and the Apothecary's Brace for Impact! bar tooltip still says "the Navy Officer" (its character-sheet entry is corrected). Mechanics are unaffected.
• Co-op with a marine is largely untested.

Uninstalling / save compatibility

• A save that contains a Custom Space Marine (including a marine mercenary hired into a normal campaign) permanently requires this mod. Uninstalling breaks that save.
• Saves without a marine are unaffected; the mod is safe to remove for them.

Troubleshooting

• All mod log lines in GameLogFull.txt (same folder as Modifications) are on the Deathwatch log channel - search the file for Deathwatch. If you report a bug, please attach that file.
• If the game updates and the mod detects an incompatibility, it disables itself and logs [Init][ERR] ... Deathwatch disabled itself instead of half-working.

Building from source

This repository contains the mod source plus the two customized build-pipeline files it needs.

1. Get Owlcat's official modification template (WhRtModificationTemplate) and open it in the Unity version it specifies.
2. Copy Assets/Modifications/DeathwatchMod from this repository into the template's Assets/Modifications/.
3. Copy the two customized build-task files from this repository over the template's copies:
   • Assets/Editor/Build/Tasks/PrepareArtifacts.cs - ships the mod's Audio/ folder (the two voice soundbanks) with the build; a stock template silently drops it.
   • Assets/Editor/Build/Tasks/CreateManifestAndSettings.cs - carries the MicroPatches build-task integration (per-bundle dependency recording and the Edit-only patch filter) a stock template lacks.
4. In the template's Packages/manifest.json, make sure com.unity.modules.animation is present in the dependencies (alongside the stock com.unity.modules.assetbundle) - without it, Unity silently strips animation assets from the built bundles.
5. In Unity: Assets > Modification Tools > Build. The built mod and Deathwatch.zip appear in Build/. Copy the zip out immediately: the next build of any mod wipes that folder.

Design and architecture notes for modders are in DESIGN_NOTES.md; every edit the mod makes to vanilla blueprints is documented in Assets/Modifications/DeathwatchMod/Blueprints/PATCHES.md.

Credits

• Built on Owlcat Games' official Rogue Trader modification template.
• Thanks to the Rogue Trader modding community, whose open-source mods (PlayableX, MicroPatches, ReDress and others) set the conventions this mod follows.
• This is an unofficial fan modification. Warhammer 40,000 and all related marks are the property of Games Workshop; Rogue Trader is the property of Owlcat Games. No assets from other games are used.