I've been rereading the core rulebook in preparation for a short campaign and I've suddenly realised something odd about Nurgle Psykers.

Since Nurgle and Tzeench are Opposed gods, Nurgle characters pay the premium rate for Willpower advances, whereas in every other version of the game, Psyker characters get cheap Willpower because it's - well - really rather important for them.

I can't decide if this is a bug or a feature, but it strikes me that playing a Nurgle-Aligned Psyker/Sorcerer is prohibitively expensive. Of course they do get some very nasty powers, which might make up for it.

Do people have any experience of playing a Nurgle Psyker? Does it work, or do you find yourself falling behind?

They're about as "borked" as Nurgle demagogues.

There are a few concepts that require you to buy cross-aligned stuff. It may be helpful to remain unaligned for the first 2500 XP and buy up your WP ASAP rather than getting aligned when you can.

Long as you don't hurry into your devotion, you'll do fairly well. Nurgle IS the enemy of the one with the biggest hand in psykerdom however, so its understandable that they'd have a bit tougher time. They're also bloody hard to kill, and have True level access to a bloody ton of survival tools, including such simple ubiquitous staples as "sound constitution".

Not to mention that they have the best defensive power in the game - Inviolable Flesh. I generally find Nurgle's psychic powers somewhat more powerful so it may be the thing that balances it out.

In my mind the best way to run a Nurgle Psyker is to dash straight to WP in the beginning, and then start taking cheap add ons for your alignment like sound constitution.

Also, they're more of a modification specialty, not really all that focused on blasty powers. They're there, but they're not necessarily the most powerful straight attack. I personally use Inviolable Flesh to make me a Nurglenaut as I start swinging around with my neural whip, but there's definitely potential for a longer ranged guy. Torrent of Decay is a good skill for that, rain down filth on entire villages if you're willing to push hard enough.

ShadowRay said:

Most Nurgle aligned psychic powers are rather crap, in my opinion, apart from the Inviolable Flesh. It's more or less a supplementary power giving survivability. Standard Nurgle aligned CSM heretic is tanky, a psyker is even more so with a pushed Flesh sustained. I'd not recommend focusing at powers though, due to increased costs. Perhaps Corruption powers, if any are interesting, as they don't use WP.

The best defensive power in the game is Protean Form, I'd argue, though. PR 6 Flesh gives you 6 TB. PR 6 Protean gives you 12 TB (or other stuff).

Protean form has a number of drawbacks - constant phenomena that can be annoying, demonic instability, and of couse huge requirements. The best defensive powers combined of course with Boon of Tzeentch are Abhorrent Ward and Telekinetic Shield. With booned ward if anyone wishes to attack the psyker he must pass -60 WP test. Besides of powerfull daemons and psykers, no one has that much.

Inviolable flesh has a penalty to agility, and cannot be booned. Telekinetic armour has no drawbacks, and protects against warp weapons which means it cannot be bypassed by any quality (cept for Pen but, same goes for Dmg vs TB, you know what i mean). Blade of Baleful Might could easily get felling (6) or more.

As long as you don't push it you won't get the phenomena (assuming warp staff/no double), and you still get a lot of soak. If a lot of soak it's unlikely you will get damaged and be affected by the drawbacks of warp instability. The reqs is a non-issue as we're assuming you've got it already (and we're talking about best defensive powers, not the most cost efficient).

I'll agree that Abhorrent Ward is potentially better as a pure defensive power -- though Protean wins out on utility (so many options)/soak. Boon is usually not anything for a human though, as you need a lot of soak to not get owned by it and you risk getting stunned which means you cannot sustain a power. And you can always Boon Protean if you feel like it, for even more soak.

Tele shield is treated as cover, so high Pen will still own it. It doesn't add AP stacked on top of everything else -- it uses the Cover rules. High felling is rare (most is 4 or so, not counting bumped up baleful might) so TB is always the more reliable soak.

Hear that borked nurgle psykers? Ditch Willpower, get high PR instead, and corruption. Make some sacrifices, burn some flesh to fuel powers, push to the limit and you've got imba Abhorrent Ward.

That raises a question. If you get characteristic damage from corus conversion, and you lose minimum T, required for some powers, can you still cast them?

Amaimon said:

As long as you possess the talent/power/whatever you can use the thing unless it explicitly says otherwise (which I cannot think of something doing).