I am working on a Sorcerer that I am planning on being devoted to Nurgle with. A former Apothecary from the Death Guard. He likes to uses diseases and poisons. I plan on giving him the Mediace skill. Anyone have any other suggestions as to what I should look at for other skills and talents.

As a sorcerer, you're a non-squishy wizard, and it's a good idea to capitalize on that. Force weapons are nasty, nasty things, and space marine are tougher than beef jerky. So don't be afraid to extend yourself a little and pick up some combat aiding advances to boost your potential as just that. If you're aiming for Nurgle, chances are you're gonna want to aim for advancements aligned to him, which means survival ones.

True Grit is truly brutally good for space marines, since that makes putting you into serious critical hits a slow, painful, horrible grind for your opposition.

Never Die is also a high tier Talent that could be worth it, but it really only shines when you combine it with true grit. Get those two, and you will not go silent into the night. You'll most likely also kill a shitload of people before they bring you down.

Sound constitution is a cheap, useful and advancement boosting pick that's always a good place to throw a bit of leftover XP into once in a while.

Jaded and Fearless are both nice, though as a sorcerer the no-warp immunity of Jaded will most likely hurt you more than most, and there really is no point in getting jaded if you intend to grab fearless. Likewise, since you get Nerves of Steel as a space marine, fearless is most likely gonna be the better choice. And since the test to back down is based on Willpower, it's not that huge a problem for you, since that should be one of your primary stats.

Iron Jaw is also really good for a psyker if you got a combat style based on sustaining powers. Getting stunned means being unable to sustain psychic powers, so getting a solid chance of shaking that off is a good thing. Especially as a Nurgle aligned character, since Toughness should be your secondary stat of choice. It gets less useful if you don't commonly sustain powers though.

As far as psychic powers go, you can't really go wrong with Doombolt. It's a quick and easy access to some solid psychic damage, and it never hurts to have a damage power at your disposal.

Another real neat power is Telekinetic Shield. It requires a little bit of buy in, but if you push it and then just sustain it, it's a solid +5 AP to keep you alive. It also scales pretty well, so that's nice.

Apart from that, it's the obvious good for sorcerer stuff. Child of the Warp, Psy Rating advances, warp sense never hurts.

If you're trying to save on your xp spenditure it could be wise to invest in the Tzeentch tier 3 talent Favoured by the Warp before being aligned with Nurgle, as useful sorcerer centric talents will be opposed to you as soon as you're aligned with Papa Nurgle. Not really a must, but could be handy sometimes so save a bit of xp here and there (as long as it doesn't doesn't drag the alignment too long, you still want your cheap Nurgle advancements). Even Warp Lock could be worth it if you really wanted/needed. But it would cut deep into your xp spenditure, sadly.

+1 on Iron Jaw. It's more or less a must have for any Sorceror who plans on sustaining powers, and a Nurgle one can get it dirt cheap. As for the Nurgle psychic powers, none seem like a must-have (but I haven't gone over them too much), with perhaps the sole exception of the one which gives PR Unnatural Toughness. That's probabably the one power you'd want to sustain at all times, making you even tankier. A CSM Sorcerer devoted to Papa Nurgle who's got 50T (considering he's got cheap toughness advances, 50T is probably a minimum), +4 TB from being a CSM and then (we're pushing, so let's say) 6 PR, that's 15 TB soak. Not too bad, but you still got a way to a Great Unclean One's 22 TB. Add in True Grit and it will probably take your enemies 9 hits to kill you AFTER you've reached Critical Damage.

Only other Nurgle power I personally would consider is Leper's Curse. But one dodge and it's negated for the whole combat on that particular enemy. For other powers I'd echo Telekinetic Shield (but does it act as cover and suffer -1 AP after a hit like standard cover does? If so, that'd make it a little less useful) and Warptime is usually good for any character.

one thing i would recomend if your gm allows it, is to get your character soul bound. the added saftey net on psycic phenomina rolls is worth the draw backs. and since it would be to nurgle you could have some interesting roleplay with it.

htsmithium said:

It's not much of a safety net as you're rolling Perils anyway. Plus, there's a cost. Assuming you'd convince a GM to allow a character to start with it. Either way, Favoured by the Warp is preferable.

First off I totally agree with Reverend Mort on the force weapon, I was looking at the Force Scythe the other night myself. Though a heavily modified normal scythe would be very nurgle-y with a mono & venom drip upgrades along with possible others that I can't recall. I'd even see if your GM would allow a Venom-Drip on a Force Weapon. Another aspect if you have the deathwatch Rites of Battle supplement is using an older-mark of power-armor. I honeslty think it'd be easy to just say it's an older mark using the existing armor generation rules but flavor is flavor is flavor. I'd also reccomend a few human followers to serve as go-betweens for imperial worlds and your character. The idea of an Ministorum Priest or Ordos Hereticus Inquisitor gone over to the worship of Grandpapa Nurgle would be good to introduce plagues or even better yet release plagues from those factions vaults.