Pasqal is your retinue’s Tech-Priest, offering delightful techy insights whenever possible and reminding you of cold, hard calculations of how everyone is inferior, a heretic, or just downright idiotic. His humorous quips aside, our Tech-Priest offers some interesting build choices, with the character making for a great bruiser with its tech, medicae, and Forge World options. Furthermore, Pasqal has some amazing talents to fully support Melta and Plasma weapons, making him an anti-armor menace. Stack these pieces together, and Pasqal can become a tough cookie to crack, dealing some serious damage in the process. So, that’s exactly how we are going to build Pasqal in Rogue Trader, taking advantages of these ranged weapon types, while still offering players solid melee tankiness and combat with his Power Axes of pain.

View Full-size

A guide to a Pasqal Operator Build, speccing into buffs and debuffs, and enhancing his own crit strike potential.

Pascal Build in Rogue Trader¶

The important thing to note about the Pasqal build is that it is essentially a bruiser build, which has damage capabilities in melee and range. You’ll start the build off using your starting gear’s Power Omnissian Axe, but, by the late point of Chapter 1, you’ll start finding Plasma and Melta weapons to use at ranged on Rykad Minoris, and you’ll find more upgrades for both your melee and ranged weapons in places like Kiava Gama ([Mezoa-Pattern] Plasma Gun), trader reputations, colony projects, side, and main story content.

These ranged weapons will become a more important part of your build, especially when you unlock Bounty Hunter, and can start range critting enemies, nuking armor, and enemy dodge chance. You’ll be using these ranged attacks and Bounty Hunter Prey marks to build your critical hit and critical damage through the course of the fight, while selecting low-threat enemies to generate Temporary Wounds, improving your tankiness as a bruiser.

When you reach the level 20 spot, you can start looking into Dual-Weapon Combat, and begin to use ranged weapons and melee damage consistently through fights when required. This is when the bruiser side of Pasqal can take shape. Feel free to buff his tankiness with skills like Stronghold from a Master Tactician, Pascal’s Machine Spirit Banishment, Officer buffs through Voice of Command, or Wall of Ferrocrete from a Vanguard. From here, Pascal is in a position to nuke melee threats and shoot ranged targets with incredibly high damage and high armor penetration, all the while debuffing an enemy’s armor and dodge to enable his allies to also hit more frequently. From here on out, Pasqal only gets more from this and becomes even more tankier.

As for his more general playstyle, Pasqal is still an Operative, so he can play support by building Weaknesses on enemies through various passive talents and his active skill. Feel free to use Expose Weakness to lower their dodge and armor, or to increase your damage, depending on what you need to do. Additionally, keep Machine Spirit Communion up, as that will greatly buff your allies like Argenta’s Build, who use Rapid Fire and Burst Fire builds to maintain their accuracy while lowering enemy Dodge reduction to make it easier for your ranged damage allies to kill enemies.

Operative build¶

Order	Unlock 1	Unlock 2
1	Analyse Enemies	–
2	Tech use	–
3	Expose Weakness	–
4	Dismantling Attack	Passive Learning
5	Ballistic Skill	Pinnacle of Weaponry
6	Tide of Excellence	Ballistic Skill
7	Perfect Spot	Optional
8	Comprehensive Analysis	Persistence of the Forge
9	Dismantling Attack 3	Logic
10	Logic	Intelligence
11	Overcharge Protocols	Optional
12	Precise Attack	Plasma Weapon Expert or Melta Weapon Expert
13	Manipulator Push	Intelligence
14	Perception	Nimble
15	Dismantling Attack 2	–

When you reach level 12, you will likely find some form of Plasma or Melta Weapon. Select whichever option you prefer, as it doesn’t really matter. Melta is better for closer-range builds, while Plasma is a bit more friendly for popping ranged targets. Typically, Meltas have 5 range with a cone blast radius extending its damage range slightly. Meanwhile, Plasma Rifles typically have a range of ten and have single-shot attacks. You can do a few more combos with Plasma over Melta, so we’ll recommend running Plasma over Meltas, which you’ll read more about later in the Bounty Hunter section, but it’s not a big deal if you fancy Meltas over Plasma.

Bounty Hunter Build¶

View Full-size

Pasqal loves jumping into combat, making enemies bleed, and rinsing them of all of their dodge and armor, exposing them to himself and his allies.

Order	Unlock 1	Unlock 2
1	Hunt Down the Prey	–
2	Piercing Shot	–
3	Pierce and Ruin	–
4	Wild Hunt	–
5	AP Increase + Perception	Dual Weapon Combat
6	Perception	Filtering Protocols
7	Claim the Bounty	–
8	Pierce the Armour	Optional
9	Perception	Power Weapon Expert
10	Aiming Protocols	–
11	Optional	Weapon Skill
12	Wild Hunt 1	–
13	Machine Spirit Scan Protocols	–
14	Optional	Ballistic Skill
15	I Will Not Die	Ensnare the Prey
16	Prediction Protocols	–
17	Perception	Optional
18	Skirmish Protocols	–
19	Duelling Mastery	–
20	Wild Hunt 2	–

When you get your first AP increase, you can now opt for a new niche type of combat. One of Pasqal’s benefits is that he can equip two, two-handed weapons, which work with Dual-Weapon Combat. Using both a ranged weapon and your melee in combat will cost between 3-4 AP, with the plasma combo costing 3, and Melta costing 4. However, Pasqal gets one AP in return when you have Filtering Protocols. It means that he can use both his weapons in the same turn, and then still have a few AP spare to use Piercing Shot or some other Operative debuffs you need to throw out. You can even use Manipulator Push to throw any enemies blocking you from shooting this turn too, thanks to the bonus AP you get. If you can use your ranged weapon to then kill an enemy with Claim the Bounty, you can get more AP, which is handy if Pasqal ever gets the Officer’s ultimate, Finest Hour, for throwing even more attacks at an enemy. It’s also worth mentioning that going melee at this point allows you to take full advantage of the talent you cannot respec called Passive learning, since this talent shrinks to 2 cell radius after the first turn.

Essentially, your rotation here will look something like this, depending on the circumstance.

1. Melee attack - 1AP
2. Mechanical Push - 2 AP
3. Shoot Plasma - 2 AP
4. Gain 1 AP
5. Claim the Bounty - 1 AP

This is if you find yourself in a spot where you can melee and shoot, and don’t need to do anything this turn. This is your combo and you can only use it in those moments. In other turns, stick to Analysing and creating Weakness, shooting your ranged weapon, and pressing Piercing Shot for crit farming synergy. Also, remember to maintain Machine Spirit Communion every 4-6 turns, depending on your Intelligence Bonus or tactics you need to shake up. When you’re going melee, you can also use Machine Spirit Banishment in place of Claim the Bounty if you need more defensive tanking. You may also cast Analyze Weakness for a 30% damage buff next turn if that is something you are interested in. There’s a choice depending on the situation you’re in. Either way, no matter what your options are, you are always working with some form of Bounty Hunter skill, Operative passive, or unique Pasqal passive to delete enemies or debuff enemies.

Another thing to note is the Overcharge Protocols talent, as this is a very important talent for Pasqal’s damage. You took this in the Operative skill line, so, you’ll be making more use of it now you have this part of the build’s powerspike enabled. It increases his damage with those Plasma and Melta types by 10% every time he fires one. However, you will lose those damage bonuses if you don’t attack for one round. But considering you use both weapons each turn, you are now in a spot where you can easily build up damage momentum. You can also use Claim the Bounty for an extra attack if you have the AP spare to use it. Combine that damage amplification with guaranteed crits from Piercing Shot on prey. Your damage will go through the roof. Not to mention all the stripped armor you have from your Operative’s exploits and armor stripping you’re doing. Yeah, enemies are dying for Pasqal. There’s no two ways about it.

Overall, you have a nice and varied playstyle for dishing out damage and shredding armor at range, then becoming a bruiser and tanking things when needed with your dual combat melee and map control tools.

Exemplar Build¶

In the Exemplar tree, you are mainly looking to pick up talents like Know it All, Destroyer, and Flesh Wounds. These talents are the most synthetic with Pasqal, since you get more anti-armor, anti-dodge, better hit, better crit, and crit damage. It is extremely flexible for the positions you’re putting Pasqal in. Meanwhile, Fleshwounds is a great choice if you find you’re using Pasqal more to tank enemies and use that bruiser playstyle. Destroyer is an all around good damage increase since you’re likely hitting several targets in the course of combat, whether picking them off with range or going in melee. So, pick whichever one you want first and that’s more fitting for your composition.

As for the other talents you’re largely picking up any other beneficial Bounty Hunter talents that increase your crit potential, defensiveness, or further armor shred. Your plasma and power weapons will likely hit around the 80-100% armor penetration at this point in the game and deleting bosses in the later stages, which is the great thing about Pasqal and the build options he has. When you have Operative talents, feel free to get things that make Analyse Enemies cost 0, or spread more easily among other enemies and other debuffs you need for your squad.

With that said, this concludes the Pasqal build guide in Rogue Trader, and with it, you have a solid support Bruiser, capable of shredding armor, dealing heavy damage, critting enemies, and granting allies meaty buffs to clear the hordes of Xenos and Heretics! We also recommend taking Strength training and Heavy armor here, so you can then later grab the final heavy armor proficiency from the Forge World talent and become the giga metal chad Pasqal always wanted to be.