Ok so I started trying to make my first character, just for fun. So I decided I wanted to play a Nurgle Apostate, a charming jolly fellow with a silver tongue leads his followers in the joyous nihilism of decay and destruction. Nurgle isn't 'oh fear me and do my bidding'. he likes his servants to rejoice in the corruption of all life.

So everything started working well and then when I started to pick my abilities. Almost every single ability my character has is placed in the Slaanesh section. So I went back over the apostate abilities and all of the abilities that were 'Nurgle' were all of the abilities I wanted to avoid. I didn't want intimidate because what use would i have for it when my chaos space marine comrades could do it better? and why the heck would I want disturbing voice? It just makes me less likable and screws over my fellowship. I personally wanted Radiant presence because it went with the idea of the character as it gives that sweet feeling of ease, happiness, and acceptance to the fate of all life.' Everything must decay and rot beneath the festering feet of Lord Nurgle. Do not weep my brothers. Rejoice in the plague!' sort of idea yet once again its in the Slaanesh section.

Its just so irritating that I can't manage to make my character into a nurgle character without making him into some stupid cookie cutter bull @#%$

What do you guys think? Anyone else having these problems?

Do not forget that you only need 5 more Nurgle advances than Slaanesh advances to become aligned to Nurgle.

If your character only takes Fellowship and Social Advances he would not be much of a Nurgle cultist, every Nurglist is tough and hard to kill (relatively). Refusing to take the advances that make Followers of Nurgle what they are means that your character is quite unwilling to actually indulge in the gifts Papa Nurgle has to offer, so why should the Lord of Flies bless him?

If you worry about taking "senseless" advances there are actually quite a few Nurgle advances that are useful even to a character that tries to keep out of combat, like Medicae, Survival, Intimidate (even if your character wants to Charm, he could still be able to Intimidate if necessary), most Resistances, Fearless, Jaded and others.

I kinda like it, it means that a character focusing on one set of abilities naturally drift towards the god representing those abilities. If you want supreme psychic powers you will naturally worship Tzeentch, if you want supreme melee abilities you will probably ask Khorne for gifts and so on, if you want to make a non-cookie-cutter character you have to pay the price since you are basically dipping in to 2 gods' domains.

I will admit it makes it hard to make a Nurgle psyker or a character who focuses on the social skills, but as long as you also remember to pick up the "normal" skills for Nurgle instead of focusing too much on the psychic/social skills you will still be a fine Nurgle worshipper who is able to worm his way into positions of power or call up dreadful diseases.

I was under the impression, from what I read, that if you contain abilities and talents from other gods, you basically need to get even more nurgle abilities. Perhaps I misread that.

Its not that i don't want the nurgle abilities (I'm definently taking the tougness and medicae stuff) its just that there are certain abilities (like disturbing voice) that I dont want and these are the ones I have to start off with and if i don't take those its more slaanesh abilities which just makes it harder to allign with nurgle.

You are not incorrect - you need 5+ more Nurgle aligned abilities/skills/etc than any other single god.

However, you seem to be working under a mistaken premise that the skills you get as part of your archetype count towards the Alignment system, when the book in fact explicitly states that they do not.

Not only this, but you cannot start off as aligned with Nurgle regardless, because the first time you can test to become aligned is when you get your first 10 Corruption points. It is only then that you can become aligned.

The rule is you need 5 or more talents more than you have in any of the other gods areas. So if you have 3 Khorne, 1 Slaanesh, 4 Tzeentch and 7 Nurgle you will need another 2 Nurgle (to get you to 9, which is 5 more than the highest of the others).

Dont focus too much on being aligned right at the beginning, think of it as a roleplaying opportunity that your character is slowly drifting towards Nurgle.

Edit: Aah yes, what MILLANDSON is true, your starting skills/talents do NOT count towards being aligned, so make sure you get all your skills/talents from OTHER gods when picking starting talents, then when you buy stuff with XP you can buy stuff from Nurgle.

Noctus-Cornix said:

Yes, you need to have 5 more advances in Nurgle, then any other god. So you can have 12 Nurgle, 7 Slaanesh and 6 Khorne, and be aligned to Nurgle.

Also, do note that the talents and skills you start with, i.e the one you get for selecting the Heretic race and Apostate Archtype, does NOT count towards any alignment. So, starting with Radiant Presence, a Slaanesh talent, does not move you towards Slaanesh. Only the advances bought for the 1000 starting xp, and any after character creating (of course) counts towards alignment.

Aaaw, Millandson beat me to it...

Crate said:

It is all advances, not just talents.

But otherwise, yes, what he says is correct. Starting characters don't (and can't, unless you use very specific builds) start off aligned, so you will still have to slowly build your way to becoming aligned anyway. Plus, you don't have to be aligned in order to follow a specific god, it's just that his specific blessings haven't been drawn to you yet.

Well I'll be damned.

I hadn't seen that and will now go searching for that.

My apologies for the mistake.

On another note, which do you guys think it would be more in my favor if I take Radiant Presence or Disturbing Voice? I'm thinking I take Radiant Presence as my starting ability and then purchase Disturbing voice with experience.

That'd probably work best, since it means one more advancement towards Nurgle.

It also suggests that he was radiant and the like before he became a heretic, and Nurgle is slowly corrupting that.

I'm just jotting down some notes while I'm at work before I get home. radiant presence gives a -10 to willpower tests, right?

I personally like that it's more difficult to make characters marked by a Power that are not "iconic" of their patron Power. I really don't want to see bloodthirsty slaughterers devoted to Tzeentch or prettyboy manipulators devoted to Nurgle except as very uncommon examples. The rules as written make it so that you have to try really hard to play against type - and to really pull it off, you really are fitting the stereotype but just going beyond it with some added variety. The prettyboy manipulator devoted to Nurgle still needs to have all those characteristics/skills/talents that we expect from a Nurglite and probably a lot of them to outweigh the non-Nurgle stuff.

To me, the fact that the Marks represent powers bestowed upon you by the Chaos Gods leads me to believe that the Marks are more indicative of the attention of the Ruinous Powers than the actual devotion of the character who earns them. They are blessings according to your *actions*, so it makes sense that the Gods would Mark mortals for what they *do*, as the way in which they choose to get things done spreads the influence of that God in the galaxy. If you worship Slaanesh by seeking to perfect warfare through the creation of biological weapons, the consequences will be to increase Nurgle's influence, regardless of your intentions.

I don't see it in any way contradictory for Slaanesh to bestow his Mark upon a worshipper of Nurgle because he likes the way that Heretic does things, or for Khorne to Mark a follower of Slaanesh because that Heretic's version of 'perfection' revolves around martial prowess. It doesn't mean that the character isn't completely devoted to the God of his choosing - just that a different God has taken a liking to him. I especially like that dichotomy because it opens up interesting roleplay opportunities; how does a Heretic react when his rigorous devotions don't attract the attention he craves?

Don't forget that Sound Constitution is a Nurgle talent, and can be bought fairly cheaply multiple times. That should help you tip the balance in Papa's favour fairly quickly!

Doomaflatchi said:

Basically, this - and yes, it can create a lot of very interesting roleplay opportunities.

Hygric said:

This, this... a thousand times this! Toughness and Sound Constitution alone can get you nurgle marked in no time at all. It's one of the easiest marks to get imho.

Kasatka said:

Only one easier would be Tzeench. 14 forbidden lore skills and they are cheaper XP wise than talents and attributes. 3100xp can get you 20 advances of Tzeench and a free mark!

Hygric said:

Yes, a Tzeench loremaster is a no-brainer if u want a mark, fast. By the rules i play that can grant you a mark in two, maybe three, sessions

I'm currently working on a Tzeench Heretech, maybe i should opt him for forbidden lore? hmm hmm, dessisions dessisions

I could be missing something, but I haven't found any rule saying you get a mark when you get aligned, though admittedly I couldn't find ANY conclusive way of receiving a mark.

There's two ways of being marked, both of which are available after you're aligned to a deity. Either you randomly roll the mark as a mutation on the Gifts table of your god or you automatically receive it after buying 20 advances of your god.

Ah, thanks, I'd missed the second possibility entirely.

Almost correct on the marks. If you have 20 advances towards one chaos god and still have 5 more than any other god you will get the mark. On the gifts of the gods. If you make a infamy test while aligned you can roll on the chart for the specific god.

Makes me think about purchasing infamy to actually have a chance at making that roll.

I hope you like the idea of looking extremely silly then. My personal favorite is the big n' beefy Khorne hand.

@Deinos

I hope you like the idea of looking extremely silly then. My personal favorite is the big n' beefy Khorne hand.

While some mutations venture into the "silly" territory, I don't think the hand is among them. Or would you say this guy looks silly?

In general, the rewards of the gods tend to have better stats than the "normal" mutations. If you're not unaligned and thus unable to reroll, you might as well go for them before you get one of the entirely negative mutations.