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Can you give a sorcerer more than one familiar?

I don't think so. Why would you want to anyway? I run a lash sorc and have only recently added a familiar to try out Doombolt (I've been finding that one or two lashes is pretty much all I need in a game and he sort of sits otherwise). I can't say I've ever felt like I needed a third ability, and two is sort of suspect atm.

Seems like between 2 powers you'd have just about all the tactical flexibility you need. I guess you could get a Tz Sorc for 3 if you realled felt you needed it, but your unit is starting to get awfully expensive.

Nope and besides like 1up said if you want two powers just go with a Tzeentch Sorcerer. Also just for future knowledge DH inquisitors can take more than one familiar in their retinue though.

Tzeentch Sorcerers are expensive, and sometimes it's useful to keep costs down. I've been finding that three powers are almost always too much, seeing as you can only use two per turn, but Doombolt is much more effective in combination with Warptime (like everything). Remember the Force Weapon power as well, which really makes it four. However...

A Familiar is useful if you want something to back up your primary power, like the Lash of Submission, Nurgle's Rot, or Wind of Chaos. The Mark of Tzeentch is moreso if you want to synergize powers with each other (Warptime and, well, nearly everything).

This ability to take more than one (or two) psychic powers is the advantage that Chaos Sorcerers have over Daemon Princes, along with Personal Icons, Force Weapons, Independent Character, Chaos Steeds, Bikes, and Terminator Armour.

Seeing as how CSM Sorcs are incredibly inefficient Psy platforms compared to DPs (They cost more and do less? Sign me up!) there's no reason to ever take one.

That said, if you do, there's never any need for a familiar.

Please explain how Sorcerers are "inefficient Psy platforms".

Please explain how taking more powers that you can't use b/c you can only use one a turn with a non-Tz Sorc is an advantage over an MC with a much better statline that doesn't need a squad to chauffer it around.

Please explain why Personal Icons are good.

Please explain how Chaos Steeds, Bikes, and Terminator armor are of any utility ever over the far superior (even for the Sorc) wings.

Now to answer your question. Let's just look at getting off powers and. survivability vs. points; in other words, how many points does it cost you to use the power each turn. We'll assume that they pass all their LD tests.

And for a survivability test, we'll shoot a single BS 4 lascannon at each contestant each turn.

DP, Wings, MoS, Lash vs. Sorc, Wings, MoS, Lash alone.

1 power goes off each.

Lascannon shoots.
.66 hits.
.55 wounds.
.37 go through the invul.

So both get the power off 3 times before the sorcerer dies (just accumulating fractions of wounds). The DP has taken 1 full wound. He'll go on to cast for the rest of the game (6 turns on avg).

The DP's Lash costs ~26 points per use.
The Sorc's costs ~48.

We can do this test with a squad of PMs and a Rhino for the Sorc but then it's just blatently unfair (to the Sorc)how points-heavy the support for that power is.

Fair enough.

Let's first consider the value of Independent Character.

Firstly, you're going to take the squads they can join anyways. It's not like the points value spent on the squad isn't going to be spent on that squad. Indeed, to fit them in their transport you'll save the cost of an extra body.

So Sorcerers are going to get the benefit of hiding in both a unit and a transport anyways. Sometimes they won't, but then a Daemon Prince won't always get a cover save either.

Did I mention cover saves? That's something else that the Sorcerer also gets for free, and more freely than a Daemon Prince since it's a small model.

So right off the bat that's one red herring, namely that the Daemon Prince has an advantage in the points spent on it because the Sorcerer needs a squad to bodyguard him.

Using that bodyguard is a positive boon because even if it's just a minimum squad of Chaos Space Marines, for example, then you add +5 wounds to the Sorcerer. You also add Ld10, +10 S4 I4 close combat attacks, and +5/10 Bolt weapon shots. But considering only survivability, the Sorcerer in a Rhino with five Chaos Space Marines will gain the following against that single BS4 Lascannon that has been given as a metric for survivability.

4/6 shots hit, 5/6 shots wound, and 4/6 wounds are unsaved. Or, as Iron_Chaos_Brute puts it:

0.67 shots hit
0.55 hits wound
0.37 wounds don't save

That's if the Sorcerer is standing around in the open. But he'll be with a squad, and it's reasonable to assume that squad will be in a Rhino, and he gets that protection for free because you'll have a squad in a Rhino anyways.

So instead it is:

0.67 shots hit
0.11 hits glance, and 0.45 hits penetrate
0.29 damage results are Shaken/Stunned, 0.18 are Weapon Destroyed/Immobilized, and 0.15 are Destroyed (Wrecked/Explodes) results. So 0.44 of causing an effect which also effects the Sorcerer.

After 6 turns of shooting that Lascannon, you'll force the Sorcerer to dismount.

After that, there's a 0.08 of causing a S4 AP- hit to the Sorcerer and his buddies, for 6 hits, 3/6 to wound, 2/6 to fail saves, or 1 dead Chaos Space Marine.

So once you've forced the Sorcerer to dismount with the four remaining Chaos Space Marines, you'll need at least 5 successful Lascannon shots to cause Instant Death on the Sorcerer. So 7 more turns of that Lascannon firing to strip the Chaos Space Marines, and 9 turns in total to kill the Sorcerer.

Sorcerer: 15, Daemon Prince: 11 (4 wounds, 0.37 chance of failing per turn, etc). Advantage: Chaos Sorcerer. Assuming constant success with Psychic Tests, both will get to fire as many times as they have turns.

Personal Icons are good because they let you pick up a very cheap beacon for Terminators, Obliterators, and Lesser Daemons. Being able to avoid Mishaps is good, all else being equal.

Assuming both have Wings and the Sorcerer has a Personal Icon, the Sorcerer has a 5pt advantage.

Which brings us to the stat-line. The Daemon Prince has a better WS, better T, better A, and better W, Fearless, Eternal Warrior, and is a Monstrous Creature.

Let's start with Fearless. A definite advantage until you lose combat and take No Retreat wounds equal to the total that the combat was lost by. If a Sorcerer in that unit of Chaos Space Marines loses by 3 points, and a Daemon Prince simply fighting in the same combat as the Chaos Space Marines loses by the same, the Daemon Prince will likely lose 2 wounds, and the Chaos Space Marines will need to test Morale on 6. The Sorcerer and the unit of Chaos Space Marines will need to test morale by 7.

Of course, if the Sorcerer is in a unit of Plague Marines, then he'll be Fearless, and the Plague Marines will take 1 wound.

So coming to Eternal Warrior, and the wounds while we're on it, the Daemon Prince really needs that extra wound and Eternal Warrior to survive both incoming fire that won't be absorbed by another model, and the wounds it'll suffer if it loses combat.

But will it lose combat? It does have a better WS, S, T, and A. Except that the majority of its enemies will have WS4-, which a Sorcerer also hits at 3+. Where the Sorcerer hits at 4+, most WS5+ targets have multiple wounds that make them great candidates for the Sorcerer's Force Weapon. Does the T break it in favour of the Sorcerer? After all, Independent Character doesn't protect in combat and that's multiplied out by the lack of Eternal Warrior.

But, again, if the Daemon Prince is alone, it's going to absorb all those attacks itself, and if it's sharing combat with troops, then those troops will take the attacks (unless those troops are Plague Marines...) and the Daemon Prince will need those extra wounds for surviving No Retreat, T will be irrelevant, and Eternal Warrior only protects against quality rather than quantity.

It's like the joke about how the Lasgun is the best anti-Terminator weapon: one Lasgun is nothing, but fifty makes a difference. Daemon Princes don't need to worry about Lascannons, because those have targets: vehicles. They have to worry about volumes of anti-infantry fire. They don't need to worry about Power Fists, they need to worry about 20+ S4 attacks.

Against vehicles the Daemon Prince is the clear winner, except that Chaos Space Marines (the army) can be stuffed to the gills with Melta Weapons. Being a clear winner at something that's redundant is an empty win.

But onto Chaos Steeds. They all add +1A, and since a Chaos Sorcerer riding them has a pistol, the Chaos Sorcerer riding them will have A3(5). In my opinion they're all pretty lousy except for the Disc of Tzeentch, which works if you have a squad of Raptors to bodyguard the Sorcerer.

Bikes are much more useful. They equalize T, make the rider faster than if equipped with Wings, though less mobile, and that gels nicely with an Icon to bring in Deep Strike elements. They also add Twin-Linked Bolters, which aren't great, except they're mounted on a Relentless model with BS5 that can Turbo-Boost. If the Sorcerer has Warptime, this bolsters his ability to do stuff outside of close combat. Chaos Space Marine Bikers themselves are a nice body-guard unit, with the requisite availability of Meltas, and the Bolt Pistol/Close Combat Weapon that all Chaos Space Marines get except for Thousand Suns.

You lose that bonus attack with Terminator Armour, and the Sorcerer can't make a Sweeping Advance (not a problem against Fearless units), but you get a Sv2+, and the option for a Combi-Weapon which gel very nicely with Warptime on a non-aligned Sorcerer (or Sorcerer of Slaanesh). That Sv2+ really comes in handy when engaging the kind of horde that will pull a Sv3+ Daemon Prince down with massed attacks.

I'm not trying to bore you to death, but I am belabouring the point that Daemon Princes and Sorcerers have different roles. One is a "bully" unit that can hunt stuff like Dreadnoughts, light vehicles, and enemy characters, and the other is a force multipier enhancing the capabilities of other units. The ability to take an extra psychic power enables a Sorcerer to increase its ability to be useful to the units he joins.

Which is interesting because, in my opinion, much of his utility is found in either enhancing or complementing many units that are commonly dismissed as un-effective.

A Sorcerer of Slaanesh with Lash of Submission and Warptime, for example, has a great power whether in combat or not. A non-aligned Sorcerer with Gift of Chaos, Wind of Chaos, and a Bike is far more effective with all three rather than each because he can better enter effective range for the first two, be effective at ranges up to 24", and so on.

Thank you for your patience in reading and digesting all this.

I personally would start with one power, work the rest in, then see if I have any extra for the second power.

/shrug, it's nothing new, one pays for versitility.

As Nurglitch has said, the DP is a bully unit... though I use him 100% so, so I keep them both at their happy 130 points....MoN if I have extra points

Nurglitch wrote:Truth.

Exactly. I agree with all of it. Especially the part about the two having different roles. DPs lurk around looking scary, soaking up bullets, and killing high value targets like tanks and HQs. Sorcerers help your troops kill their troops. The mission being played determines which is more important.

As for the original question, it seems that the wording is a bit fiddly in the codex. Personally I would not, because:
1. Powers are expensive and mostly situational. I like to keep my units cheap, and goal oriented.
2. Any rule fiddling like that is going to require your opponent's permission to play it, and if you actually work out a strategy for using a whole pile of powers you don't want to have that strategy disrupted even before deployment.
3. You need the Mark of Tzeench to use more than one at a time, including your force weapon.
4. A sorcerer with no gear other than two familiars and the three cheapest powers that don't require a mark come in at about 175. If you add in the MoT to actually use all of those powers you are approaching Ahriman's point cost, so you may as well just go with him. He has all the normal goodies, ALL of the powers (well, the undivided and Tzeench powers anyway), and marks and wargear that allow him to use three powers each turn (But only one shooting power) On top of all of that, he's got inferno bolts too! If you want loads of powers, just take Ahriman.

Well... if you want wings on that package, then don't go with Ahriman...

Agreed that DP's and Sorc's play differently. My Sorc is infinitely more surviable and "tactical" than my DP because I keep my sorc in a Plague Marine squad. Generally I use my DP as a battering ram and expect it to die early. I use my sorc to stay at a distance and lash things around while sniping things with plasma rifle fire. The Sorc/PM squad is almost always the last one on the board and tends to do a great job cleaning up any stragglers for those last minute kill-points.

I am going to try a two DP army soon enough, but I have other things in my modelling queue.