Here is the text:

"Nurgle: The tail resembles the gristly abdomen of a huge fly, the tip of which seeps a noxious gruel of vile liquid. The effect is to reduce the Initiative of all enemies within 20 metres by 20."

Reducing someone's Initiative by 20 would make sure almost everyone within that 20 metres didn't move until last...Is this correct??

L-

I think it means ,,reduce agility by 20 only for initiative" so reduce initiative by 2. Make sense for me

coolzyg said:

I sure hope it's that.

Or it could be that your tail emits such foul smelling, slimy sludge that coats the vicinity that enemies DO automatically act last (well, a super quick assasin may still beat you, and it wont affect anyone using ranged weapons beyond 20 m.

it says enemies. suddenly all your comrades are immune to foul stinky slimy stuff

Considering they smell the tail all day long, chances are that they are .

coolzyg said:

Whew!

OK, this is the interpretation I am going to go with! Thank you!

L-

vogue69 said:

Not to mention, this PC has a fairly high Fellowship...So not only are they used to him leaving a stinky slime trail, but they like him BETTER than someone who doesn't do so...

Maybe he has that kind of crazy Rasputin charisma? :-)

L-

coolzyg said:

While your GM can change the rules to fit their fancy, this mutation is pretty clear in its rules implementation. All enemies in 20 meters have their initiatives reduced by 20. Essentially meaning they will always go last if they are in range.

Shiferbrains said:

However, this interpretation is balls-out insane.

There is many mistakes in the book and your common sense is needed to fix it. Good luck balancing fights on sesions when players always acts first no matter who they fight and how much agility they have.

coolzyg said:

So yeah, unless I'm missing something, even the as written version of this mutation ain't exactly a gamebreaker. I don't think it's what they intended to write, but what they did write more or less works.

Initiative isn't game breaking important but it is and if players know that they will always act first and initiative will only be decided between them it is getting nasty. For example players can mass attack boss before they would even act finishing fights in one turn. With rapid reaction and good agility they will be never ambushed. Also if players know that they will always act first it's kinda boring, no sense of thrill. Of course not every fight is in area of 20 m.

In my games this mutation would only take 2 from initiative of enemies.

While Initiative isn't a be-all, end-all of 40k combat, it's important enough that one version of a Mutation granting you and your team an automatic win at it is much too good compared to other options.

I've seen too many fights won in the first round by the high initiative team to consider this power anything but broken as-written.

coolzyg said:

They can still be ambushed. When the opponents make range attacks from hiding, for example.

Ye-aaah, that's not off of Initiative, that's 20 off Agility for the purposes of determining Initiative. Initiative is only a d10 to start with! The other Tails give you a Toxic attack, a prehensile limb or an accurate unarmed attack. To expect the Nurgle tail to take off twice as much as the maximum die roll for Initiative is just plain silly. It's errata waiting to happen.

If you want something to argue about, how about why it only affects enemies and not allies? Acclimation? Psychic exclusivity? Compact-bound warband or not, would a follower of Nurgle really care if the Slaaneshite or Tzeentchian didn't like their odour? Is there any way of blocking it (filter plugs, rebreather) and what happens if your enemies are using them?

ooops, mispost...sorry...