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I was thinking (A rare occurrence). I read that Daemons are a part on the original god of prince when created. And the god can take them back into their body at will. Wouldn't Nurgle be the most powerful as his plaguebearers are the product of fruit-things and not him? This means that he could disease a planet and have tons more plaguebearers without splitting himself. Am I wrong on any of this?

The chaos gods are fuelled by emotions

As a result due to the perpetual state of war Khorne is the strongest just ahead of Tzeenech because lets face it the galaxy is filled with dirty schemers. Nurgle settles for third ahead of the newbie Slaanesh.
But these rankings are not set in stone as fluctuations occur and thr gods can tag team another one to gain dominance for periods of time.

I would assume that once a person contracts Nurgle's Rot, as their body rots away around them and their soul is corrupted by Nurgle's influence, Nurgle infuses the victims with a small portion of his own essence. So while Plaguebearers might not be born of the warp in the same manner as other lesser daemons, in the end they are still the product of energies expended by Father Nurgle.

No, my reasoning is that, once a human contracts the rot of Nurgle, Nurgle gives them a small portion of his power. After that, the human soul, is slowly corrupted around that power. But that power stays the same, while the soul becomes like it. In a sense, a Plague Bearer is nothing more then a egg. The outer layering is a pure human soul, corrupted and wrapped around the power that Nurgle gave it. The egg's shell, the human spirit, can be stronger the longer the spirit lasted. In this sense, Nurgle has created a way, were he can send out very little power, to create a being that can indeed become incredibly powerful, but he does not get a return when that creature dies, because the thing that makes those plague bearers so strong is their own souls.

If you eat a high calorie diet of mainly fruit you are kind of immune to Nurgle. Vegetables could suffice if you lived in a planet without much access to fruit.

Nurgle is actually underpowered because given sufficient vitamins and minerals the immune system can fight off Nurgle's rot without even noticing it.

Tzeentch is the most powerful because he's the essense of chaos itself - that's why he had to sacrifice most of his power over magic and bring himself down to the level of the other four, or they would have teamed up to take him down for good.

There's also more to Nurgle than Nurgle's rot. He is a twisted version of a life god. That's why he has such jovial and playful daemons. They enjoy the cycle of life and death.

Nurgle's power waxes and wanes like the severity of his diseases. When huge pandemics kill billions and leave billions more with nothing but despair then Nurgle eclipses his brothers.
Yet sooner or later even the most terrible pandemic will have run it's course and when it does, Papa Nurgle's influence wanes as well, until the next time at least.
Regarding the fruit thing, well, one shouldn't take the warp too literaly.

As far as I'm concerned, Tzeench is the most powerful, he can change the future! He could make himself win every battle if he really wanted to, but that would be the end of Chaos..

But how could you change the future of the inevitable.

Zombie survival, Virus Pandemic, the Black Plague. It all ends the same no matter what, you are gonna lose.

 foxyfennec wrote:
If you eat a high calorie diet of mainly fruit you are kind of immune to Nurgle. Vegetables could suffice if you lived in a planet without much access to fruit.

Nurgle is actually underpowered because given sufficient vitamins and minerals the immune system can fight off Nurgle's rot without even noticing it.

Until you get diabetes. Or AIDS. Or the swine flu. Or cancer. Or a genetic heart defect develops. Or any one of a number of diseases for which the human body has no defense, as it's never encountered it before.

Nurgle's Rot is a disease born of the Warp. It's a "magic" construct, like an arcane bio-warfare agent. Pop all the vitamin C you want, it's not going to help.

IMHO Tzeentch and Khorne are kind of neck and neck in the top chaos god contest, nurgle comfortably in third, and the relatively 'new' chaos god slaneesh in last place

It says in the Daemons 'dex that the power tier, at the moment, goes:

Khorne
Tzeentch
Nurgle
Slaanesh.

Iranna.

In the fantasy armybook for Warriors of Chaos it also says that Tzeentch appear lesser than Khorne as a part of a scheme to hinder the other gods to find his real power, and likes to manipulate the other gods to do whatever he likes from time to time.

But in current "known" power Khorne is on the top in the violent times of conflict.

The power shifts among the four, this has been long established over many editions of several game systems. Its such a basic fact of the background its not even worth arguing over.

It's always seemed to me that Nurgle should be the most powerful. There's a ton of violence in the 40k universe, sure, but there's also trillions of people living at the bottom of hives in essentially open sewers. There's basically no medical care for the limitless masses of humanity. Think about how much more misery IRL is caused by living in squalor and deprivation versus violence. I'm sure there's proportionately more violence in 40k, but I can't imagine it being enough to outweigh all those destitute people coughing on each other in a pit.

Hm. Didn't mean to get all serious there. Anyway, my opinion might be influenced by the fact that Nurgle is my favorite, mostly because he seems like he'd be fun to hang out with if you could ignore the whole disease and filth thing.

Well we've been told that khorne is the most powerful but Tzeentch and Nurgle seems to be kind of even. With slaanesh far behind.

We all know that Khorne is the most powerful and Slaanesh the least etc standard fluff....

It is an interesting question though. If you look at Any army throughout history they were crippled by disease, especially things like diarrhoea, which literally ground armies to a halt (got that one from QI on Dave!) and looking at our planet there are FAR more people who are sick of living with chronic illness then there are people who are at war especially as most armies are all male so that's half the number of any population (women) that are not contributing to Khorne at all (fair enough that's a bit of a generalisation)... By sheer numbers you'd think that more people would be contributing to Nurgle then to Khorne in terms of emotion in the warp. I'd have put money on Nurgle being the most powerful...

But the fluff wins... Khorne FTW!

Fairly sure Tzeentch is the most powerful...
The other 3 united to take his staff away so now it's pretty much all equal...