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Gods in 40k are basically just strong warp entities. They draw power from things offered to them like bloodshed to khorne or the suffering Dark Eldar inflict to stave off soul thirst. People specifically worship the Emperor and die for him so he gets power from that as he's a warp entity.

There's also things like how the Harlequins in throneworld react.

Generally speaking they are as strong or as weak as the writer that is writing them at the time wants them to be. just like everything else in this setting.

But Marbo is at the top of this pile.

pm713 wrote:
Gods in 40k are basically just strong warp entities. They draw power from things offered to them like bloodshed to khorne or the suffering Dark Eldar inflict to stave off soul thirst. People specifically worship the Emperor and die for him so he gets power from that as he's a warp entity.

There's also things like how the Harlequins in throneworld react.

I always thought the emperah is more of a conduit and gets power/substance from 1000's of ordinary psykers sacrificed to him don't he?

So at any given day he's only as power full as 10,000 humie psykers

I'm relatively certain this is your headcanon, so I'll let you have it. Personally? I don't believe Emps is a Warp Entity. Even if he was, I don't believe the 40k Gods gain any power through worship. Beings like Khorne and Nurgle represent aspects of reality (though twisted, obviously). They gain power when their followers do things that are related to that aspect. The only Gods that are specifically empowered by belief (though not really worship) are Gork and Mork. And that has more to do with how Waagh Energy works, than Warp stuff. What Orkz believe to be true often becomes true. They believe Gork and Mork exist, thus they do. They believe Gork and Mork are the biggest and the strongest, so they are. But this is very specific to Orkz. For the most part, belief and worship are not tied to the strength or even existence of a Warp Entity. At least not for the Big 4.

I will concede that Emps may be stronger now than he was. However, I don't believe it would be due to worship. Remember, the Emperor is an amalgamation of souls. That's how he was created. If he's becoming stronger, it isn't because people are worshipping him. Instead, it's because the 10k psychic sacrifices that keep him alive are fusing with his soul.

That's my 2 cents on the matter. To me, this makes the most sense, and is supported by the lore.

 Elian wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Beersarius Drawl wrote:
Is there anyway of comparing power levels? including like when they were at their peak (Eldar)

You can rate them on the Marbo scale, where 0.5M is half of Marbo's power, etc. The Emperor, as the god of the most powerful single religious faction in 40k, is ~0.8M. Chaos is roughly equivalent to the Emperor as they're locked in a stalemate, so each Chaos god is probably about 0.2M. Gork and Mork have to split the worship of the orks, so maybe 0.6M each. Various minor deities would of course be even less, and demigods and such might get down into the 1mM range.

If the Emperor can match all of Chaos then why doesn't he just kill them off? I think the Emperor matches 2-3 Chaos Gods. Enough to stop them teaming up to kill him but not enough to let him take them on.

Do you really think the emperor is so powerful? i'm sorry but i can't picture him going toe to toe against a C'tan or any chaos god

The c'tan are gone, reduced to shards.

And they are of the material realm. I wouldent put them in the deity category.

 flandarz wrote:
I'm relatively certain this is your headcanon, so I'll let you have it. Personally? I don't believe Emps is a Warp Entity. Even if he was, I don't believe the 40k Gods gain any power through worship. Beings like Khorne and Nurgle represent aspects of reality (though twisted, obviously). They gain power when their followers do things that are related to that aspect. The only Gods that are specifically empowered by belief (though not really worship) are Gork and Mork. And that has more to do with how Waagh Energy works, than Warp stuff. What Orkz believe to be true often becomes true. They believe Gork and Mork exist, thus they do. They believe Gork and Mork are the biggest and the strongest, so they are. But this is very specific to Orkz. For the most part, belief and worship are not tied to the strength or even existence of a Warp Entity. At least not for the Big 4.

I will concede that Emps may be stronger now than he was. However, I don't believe it would be due to worship. Remember, the Emperor is an amalgamation of souls. That's how he was created. If he's becoming stronger, it isn't because people are worshipping him. Instead, it's because the 10k psychic sacrifices that keep him alive are fusing with his soul.

That's my 2 cents on the matter. To me, this makes the most sense, and is supported by the lore.

The spreading of things tied to there god is the worship. Khornates go out and kill things, Nurglites spread plagues, Slaaneshi people seek excess and sensations and Tzeentch tries to pull of changes. That's HOW they worship. The Emperor gets his worship and strength via sacrifices.

But if you want to just agree to disagree about it that's fine.

If it was only the followers of the Gods who were empowering them, I might agree. But anyone who commits a violent act empowers Khorne, whether they worship him or not. Same for Slaanesh and the others. I may be arguing semantics here, but there IS a difference between deities empowered by faith and worship and those that are empowered through acts they favor.

If you really want to equate Big E to the Chaos Gods, then I suppose the closest approximation would be that he's the God of Order. In this case, if anything were to empower him, it wouldn't be the acts of worship, or the sacrifices. It would be the highly structured society that the Terrans have have created.

Whether this is true or not, I DO believe that structure is the real reason the Chaos Gods wanted him gone. Not because they feared his strength, but because if his plans had been successful they would have ceased to exist in their current forms. They ARE, after all, Chaos Gods. They represent the dark side of their aspects. If the Emperor had managed to get the entire galaxy under his sway, their aspects would have (most likely) still existed, but they wouldn't be the same as they are now. So, in order to continue to "live" (as a change in their aspects would force a change in themselves, altering their "conciousness" to a point where their old selves would be effectively dead), they had to get rid of the Emperor.

I'm not sure the Imperium is that structured but I see your point and I agree the Emperor would have massively changed Chaos.

pm713 wrote:

 flandarz wrote:
I'm relatively certain this is your headcanon, so I'll let you have it. Personally? I don't believe Emps is a Warp Entity. Even if he was, I don't believe the 40k Gods gain any power through worship. Beings like Khorne and Nurgle represent aspects of reality (though twisted, obviously). They gain power when their followers do things that are related to that aspect. The only Gods that are specifically empowered by belief (though not really worship) are Gork and Mork. And that has more to do with how Waagh Energy works, than Warp stuff. What Orkz believe to be true often becomes true. They believe Gork and Mork exist, thus they do. They believe Gork and Mork are the biggest and the strongest, so they are. But this is very specific to Orkz. For the most part, belief and worship are not tied to the strength or even existence of a Warp Entity. At least not for the Big 4.

I will concede that Emps may be stronger now than he was. However, I don't believe it would be due to worship. Remember, the Emperor is an amalgamation of souls. That's how he was created. If he's becoming stronger, it isn't because people are worshipping him. Instead, it's because the 10k psychic sacrifices that keep him alive are fusing with his soul.

That's my 2 cents on the matter. To me, this makes the most sense, and is supported by the lore.

The spreading of things tied to there god is the worship. Khornates go out and kill things, Nurglites spread plagues, Slaaneshi people seek excess and sensations and Tzeentch tries to pull of changes. That's HOW they worship. The Emperor gets his worship and strength via sacrifices.

But if you want to just agree to disagree about it that's fine.

We have no literal proof of the emperor being a warp entity.

That said, I do feel that the recent fluff in regards to living saints and the legion of the damned is hinting at something..

 Ratius wrote:
Page 15 of 6th ed codex
Pg 26 of 7th ed
Pg 14 of 8th ed

If your asking about specific fluff where they battle other Gods, there was a publication circa early 90s where they fell into a pit with Nurgle and clobbered him.

Thanks. I'll have a ganders. The best sources i've found on my, admittedly small, efforts to read into it indicate that the twins combined would be stronger than any other God (singular), rather than an entire pantheon. This would support the 90's publication.

 Elian wrote:

pm713 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Beersarius Drawl wrote:
Is there anyway of comparing power levels? including like when they were at their peak (Eldar)

You can rate them on the Marbo scale, where 0.5M is half of Marbo's power, etc. The Emperor, as the god of the most powerful single religious faction in 40k, is ~0.8M. Chaos is roughly equivalent to the Emperor as they're locked in a stalemate, so each Chaos god is probably about 0.2M. Gork and Mork have to split the worship of the orks, so maybe 0.6M each. Various minor deities would of course be even less, and demigods and such might get down into the 1mM range.

If the Emperor can match all of Chaos then why doesn't he just kill them off? I think the Emperor matches 2-3 Chaos Gods. Enough to stop them teaming up to kill him but not enough to let him take them on.

Do you really think the emperor is so powerful? i'm sorry but i can't picture him going toe to toe against a C'tan or any chaos god

The Emperor defeated the Void Dragon (one of the C'Tan) and imprisoned it on Mars back in our history - it's where the legend of George and the Dragon is implied to come from in the 40k canon. Whether he can do that in his current state is much more doubtful.

I think the question of "most powerful" is impossible to answer because there's no agreed upon way to determine power level and in the lore the abilities of the various Gods change depending on the requirements of the plot or the whims of the writer. What seems to be true of all of them is they can only directly intervene in the material realm in fairly limited ways.

I always thought the emperah is more of a conduit and gets power/substance from 1000's of ordinary psykers sacrificed to him don't he?

If I recall (and might be wrong) the sacrifice of the 1000 psykers a day was to power the golden throne and keep the Emp alive. Not to fuel his actual power in the warp.

I've always viewed the Legion of the Damned as lesser daemons of the Emperor (whether they used to be the Fire Hawks chapter beforehand used to be canon, now it's one possibilty among several, with sightings occurring before the disappearance of the Raptorous Rex), with entities like Celestine, the Sanguinor and other Living Saints being daemon princes or greater daemons.

The Imperium has countless people believing in "The Emperor of Mankind" as a god. That much belief from a latently psychic race has to do something in the warp, doesn't it? The emperor certainly wasn't a god when he was still around but since getting almost killed and reduced to a psychic nightlight and after 10 000 years of billions upon billions of people praying and worshipping him, it's possible that either he's become a god himself, or some sort of new god of mankind has been created and replaced/absorbed/fused with the emperor (I'm sure theological debate about the nature of the God-Emperor could be as passionate and divisive as early christians arguing about the true nature of Jesus).

Apparently, faithful humans can sometimes get some sort of divine intervention going on (sisters of battle seem to be the best at that). In extremely rare cases, they can become living saints. Something in the warp must be empowering these, so unless Tzeentch is seriously trolling mankind, the Emperor is the one doing it. I'd say this qualifies him as a god, although with how rare his interventions seem to be, he might be one of the weakest ones. Maybe he'd compare to what's left of Khaine...

 Ratius wrote:


If I recall (and might be wrong) the sacrifice of the 1000 psykers a day was to power the golden throne and keep the Emp alive. Not to fuel his actual power in the warp.

While the throne does take 1000 phsykers a day to power it, In Dark Imperium, Rowboat Specifically states that E felt more powerful now than ever before and put it down to the sacrifice.

Tiennos wrote:


, they can become living saints. Something in the warp must be empowering these, so unless Tzeentch is seriously trolling mankind, the Emperor is the one doing it..

I cant get the picture of Celestine turning out to be a shape shifter at the crucial pint in a battle -

"I gotcha suckers!!!!! it was all magic the emperah is not real *tardum dumu dum dum!!!*" Does a chicky victory chicken dance and goes back to the warp.

Tzeench sits in front of his warp equivalent of a computer and watching a life feed and writes "LOLZ" to nurgle on a group chat…

 Beersarius Drawl wrote:

 Ratius wrote:


If I recall (and might be wrong) the sacrifice of the 1000 psykers a day was to power the golden throne and keep the Emp alive. Not to fuel his actual power in the warp.

While the throne does take 1000 phsykers a day to power it, In Dark Imperium, Rowboat Specifically states that E felt more powerful now than ever before and put it down to the sacrifice.

He's not exactly an expert on psychic mechanics so I wouldn't take that as fact.

Tzeentch's power level is over 9000!