NWN: Kingmaker-verse Strategy Guide

 

Kingmaker is a module for the game Neverwinter Nights, a Dungeons and Dragons video game. It takes place in a unique setting and is a complete story, the only official story in that universe, making it technically one of the shortest "series" and universes in the setting. This is how to be OP in it.

Wall Tier:

This tier contains the inhabitants of the Keep and most of the minions of the villainous Masked Man. This tier has a CR (Challenge Rating) up to 4, meaning they should be at least comparable to the creature called the Rothe, a large mountainous cow variant known to uproot trees and shatter stone walls. This is consistent with basic spells doing things like creating a wall of flame, the usage of siege weapons by the Masked Man's forces. In terms of speed, characters can dodge arrows even from close range which would be subsonic speed. This may be considered gameplay mechanics but this tier includes as well various summoned animals including some birds of prey which can reach subsonic regardless so this tier does include at least SOME subsonic characters, it just may not scale back to most of the characters if you don't include the arrow-timing.

The Masked Man is a powerful force of evil who has gathered five different evil groups under his domicile. This includes it goblinoids,  the small chaotic and violent creatures called goblins and their larger more disciplined and ruthless counterparts the Hobgoblins. Most are warriors armed with blades and bows but some of them are Shamans, primitive magic-users with various magical abilities including healing, power-draining, power amplification, creating a magic circle of protection, confusion inducing, creating rays of cold, and creating magic missiles and magical armor. The Masked Man's forces include Orcs, large warriors known for their brutality. The Orcs have their own Shamans with many the ability the Goblin Shamans but also the ability to create light, the ability to lightly mentally manipulate people and to shoot arrows of acid. The Masked Man's forces include Duerger, the Dark Dwarves, an underground tunneling race. The Duerger are immune to paralysis and can turn invisible at will. Their Wizards are more advanced than the Shamans of the Goblins and Orcs and can cast more complex spells like inducing sleep or dispelling enemy magic. The Masked Man's forces also include the Drow, the dark underground siblings of the Elves, elegant assassins with resistance to various magical effects, increased dexterity and speed, enhanced senses, and the ability to conjure darkness at will. Finally the Masked Man's forces include the Kobolds, a race of small Reptillian humanoids known for their swarm and ambush tactics. Their Shamans along with some of the prior spells can bolster the resistance of their allies and shoot a dazzling display of color to confuse all who see it. All of the Masked Man's forces have blades, poisonous arrows, and various potions, mostly healing potions. Their magic-users can also use summoning spells to summon dire animals (larger and more aggressive, often prehistoric animals), and elementals, creatures made of pure elements. 

This tier would also include the denizens and military of the Keep, the central stronghold against the Masked Man. Though their military is stretched, they have to repel the Masked Man's assaults against the Keep until the Masked Man himself showed up to attack them. Even more impressive, they did this despite their self-admitted lack of spellcasters, relying almost purely on martial might. There is a dark underbelly of the Keep that helps keep it functioning despite itself including assassins, skilled thieves like Stiletto, and amoral manipulators like Thaddeus Squilt. The Keep's forces also include the Scout Alias who can take The Lord of the Keep into the middle of the enemy's domain without being noticed, the captain of the guard Dylan Ogder, and the adventuring whip-wielding archeologist Ohio Smith (a reference to Indiana Jones.) The Keep's forces have access to a wide array of enchanted weapons and armor as well as potions that can heal and bolster one's stats temporarily.

Outside the two forces there are also neutral forces roaming, mostly animals. Outside the keep are a traveling gypsies with enchanted items and powerful enough magic to render their whole caravan invisible to the Masked Man, and the bee-keeping hermit who can attack with a swarm of bees. There are many zombies coming from the Ancient Crypt far afield the Keep that attack life directly and try to infect them. The Rakshasa are known to keep so many slaves that in a single slave rebellion hundreds of thousands of them died. Outside the material plane are the dwarf-like creatures known as Azer whose heads are constantly aflame who engage in political games and contract fire elementals as assassins. Wererats, humanoid rat creatures able to shift between human and humanoid rat form at will are used as stealthy assassins, and the forest is home to Dryads, the protective fey of the trees.

However perhaps the biggest threat overall in my opinion are the ghosts. The Manor of the late Lady Rehan is haunted by malevolent spirits who can possess physical objects like suits of armor to fight and in their natural form are incorporeal to all but magical weapons. The Lady Rehan herself, or at least her soul, lingers in the manor, ever-weeping. These ghosts can sap the strength and life of opponents. Far crueler there is a creature called the Soul Harvester, the "blackest death" an evil spirit that steals away the souls of the suicidal after death to torture them and feed on their despair.

So how to fight this tier? Well while it is generally a very well rounded tier of characters, it does have some weaknesses. Most of the characters are lacking in either power or speed compared to the max of the tier so anyone with full subsonic wall level stats will, against anyone but the best warriors, be able to blitz or easily overpower anyone here. While the verse has a lot of stealth from the Gypsies' invisibility to the Duerger invisibility to the ghosts being astral plane to more conventional stealth of assassins and animals to the drows darkness, what it doesn't have a lot of are anti-stealth outside the animals senses meaning someone who is themselves very stealthy would have a good benefit here, as that's the reason that it's so commonly used. This is especially true as the only ones here who scale fully to the upper end of the stats AND have stealth capabilities are the Duerger and Drow Warriors and possibly the Ghosts if you think they scale to arrow-timing.

While having astral and even a spiritual plane is difficult,, there are some ways around it. The Soul Harvester can only harvest a soul that is suicidal and has died meaning against most characters it can't really hurt them. Both of them can be hit by any of the magical weapons in the setting meaning an attacker can hypothetically take it from their bodies to use against them. Both the Masked Man's Forces and the Keep's Forces rely a lot on their weapons for their abilities with only the Masked Man's mages having non-magical non-item abilities so removing them would be a great help. And the mages have the general weakness of mages in the verse, they need to speak and concentrate for several seconds to cast, and interrupting either will break the spell. 

Perhaps the biggest help against the tier would be intangibility. While magic weapons and spells can hit intangible enemies, this removes the threat of anyone else including the many kinds of poisons from weapons or bees, the bites of zombies, the Duerger's sleep spells and so forth. Alternatively one could do an elemental form of opponent which is slightly more at risk from conventional attacks but which even magic weapons would have a hard time hurting and provides much the same benefit.

So the kind of character that would be strong here is a stealthy elemental or ghostly character who can easily break enemies' concentration, that can steal their opponents weapons and has stats in the right range. So who would be a good counter? 

The Weird Sisters from Dracula would be a good counter. 

The Weird Sisters are fairly in the range of the tier statwise. As vampires, they have 20 times the strength of humans and are stated to be invulnerable to all weapons existing at the time, putting them likely around the strength of fighters in the tier. During Nighttime, they should have greater speed than Count Dracula had during the day when he was powerless, where he was described as having the speed of a panther consistent with John Harker, a powerless human the Weird Sisters would scale to in speed outrunning wolves for kilometers in a forest at night. This would put them around most fighters speed-wise if you think the arrow-timing is a gameplay mechanic.

The Weird Sisters are invulnerable to conventional combat due to their immortality and regen factor, as well as their power to turn into elemental mist at any time. This would make them immune to most of the forms of the attacks in the verse. Even magical weapons have no showings suggesting they would affect something like mist tangibly. And it's unlikely magic would work. Magic in this verse requires concentration but the Weird Sisters project a passive aura of fear that caused horses to outright die of fright and can paralyze people especially if they use their hypnotic gaze, stated to sap away Harker's strength. It's likely this would completely break any mage's concentration. 

Because of this the only way anyone could hurt them is through a blitz, unlikely for anyone in this tier, or through stealth. That said the Weird Sisters not only have night vision and can turn into bats or wolves to use their senses, they also command the creatures of the night and can use them as extra senses for them. But they of course they have their own stealth, including invisibility, turning into mist, changing their size so extremely they can slip through the cracks in their coffins. This combined with their teleportation would make them a nightmare for the tier, almost impossible to land a blow on and which can land one in return at any time.

They also have numerous other helpful abilities. They are said to know the art of necromancy, the raising and divination of the dead which could be used to control much of the undead of the tier. They can command the elements with fog and lightning being particularly noted. The two elementals seen are the water elementals and fire elementals by lightning can counter water elementals and fire elementals can be damped by fog, weakening them. It's possible they may have a lesser form of Count Dracula's telekinesis which maintained his castle and the hill it stood upon,  and if they have even a fraction of that, disarming enemies of their weapons and potions should be fairly straightforward.

Indeed their only counter-strategy is their own weaknesses. Holy Forces, the Sunlight, Running Water and so forth. While I think they could get by through the vampires' usual MO of a slow and subtle infiltration if found out in the daytime, they would be at a massive disadvantage and the world of Kingmaker is not a modernist rationalist verse that wouldn't believe in vampires. For an even better counter you could use

Koto from Yu Yu Hakusho

Koto's Spirit Class is not clear, but she's likely at least a D Class demon which would scale her to or significantly above Gouki being able to easily tear a tree from the ground similar to the Rothe as well as to or above Jyaki who moved so fast as to be a blur of energy. This means Koto should be at least comparable to the strongest warriors of the tier.

Koto is a Demon, an invisible race who can interact with incorporeal characters natively including astral entity and even spiritual plane entities. Through her ability to sense spiritual energy and her fox-like hearing, Koto should be able to see through any stealth in the tier while her own invisibility would make her mostly indetectable to anyone but animals, the ghosts, and the Soul Harvester (all of whom she can overpower stat-wise) and she should be able to physically interact with anyone but maybe the Soul Harvester

Koto, as a demon, uses Demon Energy "Yoki". Yoki doesn't just amplify her stats and let her hit incorporeal enemies. Demons can use yoki to telekinetically control objects and affect the elements which Koto can use to mess with any of the Masked Man or The Keep's forces' magical equipment and affect the elementals. 

Koto has numerous advantages outside these. Against someone like the mages, Koto is a skilled announcer of the Dark Tournament and is used to manipulating people and focusing their attention and should be able to break their attention. She can use her Yoki to create barriers or heal herself and is a naturally highly acrobatic demon which make it very difficult for anyone to do any kind of significant damage to her. 

The only threats to Koto would be wide groups of enemies at once. Also she may be too high in stats depending on how strong you think she is. For the best counter to the tier I would use

Paxton Fettel from FEAR

Paxton Fettel should be somewhat relative to his brother Point Man who has super speed fast enough to avoid bullet fire and is tough enough to withstand the shockwaves of a distant nuclear blast that was throwing cars all around him. As such Paxton while in the same general range, should be noticeably above the tier in stats.

Paxton is psychopathic cannibal psychic ghost with his psychic powers being potent enough to affect astral and spiritual entities as though they were made of matter. His standard tactic is to use his telekinetic powers to make enemies explode around them. This would be... slightly distracting to any near mages and is beyond the capacity of anyone in the tier to maintain. And given his psychic powers he should be able to just overwhelm any of the verse's ghosts or the Soul Harvester.

With his telekinetic capability, Paxton should also be able to pretty easily crumple any magic weapons that might harm him or perform one of his infamous thunderclaps, telekinetically levitating a thrashing enemy before splattering them in a shockwave powerful enough to take out large groups of enemies.

In terms of stealth, Paxton is himself an astral entity and not only does Paxton demonstrate telepathic sensing that lets him see peoples spiritual energy making him immune to stealth himself, but he can possess people and gain all their memories making him an unstoppable infiltrator as well.

Even if Paxton was somehow killed, it's likely he could return through his own psychic energy just as he did the first time. The only way the tier would have to permanently kill him is the Ghosts life draining but they have functionally no defenses against him. Paxton and Point Man basically went modern cities of soldiers with anti-ghost weapons and were fine. Something like the Keep would be relatively easy.

Building Tier:

This tier includes the strongest characters in the story outside the gods who never appear and whose divine rank is unknown. The strongest characters in the story reach into the small building range scaling from spells like Cone of Cold able to freeze multiple people solid or summoning a lightning bolt as a spell and the Masked Man being stated to be able to completely destroy the entirety of The Keep, a large city, over a long timeframe. Technically a lightning bolt contains over a ton of tnt in power, but is highly inefficient in doing damage with normal humans having survived lightning strikes. However considering that someone like the Masked Man can in gameplay terms endure a lightning bolt against Jaboli, it's like the top tiers scale to at least a portion of the energy, putting the characters at nearly a ton of tnt of power.

In terms of speed similarly the characters are fast enough to somewhat dodge lightning bolts in gameplay terms, even at somewhat close range, though with a bit of a caveat mentioned later. To perform this feat however is calced at double digit mach.

The strongest fighters of the Keep would be here including Feran Fairhand, an Elvish Fighter who leads the military with a talent, the Dwarvish Hunter and Forester Levio'sa (as well as the fearsome manticore she challenges the player to hunt), and the Half-Orc Adventurer "The Stan." All of whom have access to various magical equipment and potions. The Keep is bereft of pure spellcasters, but it does have a few. This includes the three lead priests Rafael Leonallomen, priest of the god of money Callahi who has a magic coin that grants supernatural luck such that he made it come up heads 147 times in a row (a chance of 1 in 178 tredecillion), Lavos Gallian the priestess of Mistress Death who can exorcise astral plane entities and absorb spiritual energies, and Dynschall LaVelisi, priest of Pharos, God of Battles. It also includes Yenna, a powerful wizard whose magic blasts can threaten The Masked Man, the PC and all his companions at once as well create magic shields to protect eight people from the blast. She also has magical divination, can sense things about people, is implied to have spatial manipulation as her mirror can teleport one to a mirror in the guildhall, and has other wizardly powers. Yenna is so strong that the Keep is made up of nine guilds that elect their leaders and Yenna is one of the Guilds by herself.

The two leaders of the keep and two candidates outside the PC to become Lord or Lady of the Keep are Sir Becket and Enivid Divine. Sir Becket is an evil warrior and brute who use intimidation, manipulation and assassination to maintain his control over the underworld of the Keep. Enivid is a righteous paladin who uses her ideals and charisma to keep control over the official part of the Keep and has the usual holy paladin abilities. Both of them have resistance to magic and outright in-universe immunity to mental effects due to high willpower and special gear. 

The Masked Man's greatest forces would be in this tier including his "pets", intellect devourers, small walking brains that consume the intelligence of those they latch onto as well as the leader of the crypt, a Mummy. Mummies have a broad range of powers including a supernatural aura of fear and despair, a paralyzing gaze and the ability to use their negative energy to induce diseases and corrosion that's hard to heal, even turning enemies to dust and preventing their souls from being resurrected. Mummies are also immortal and regenerate faster, though they are weak to fire. 

However their leader is the Masked Man who is, in reality, a Mind Flayer, a psychic monster of the underground. The Masked Man has various psychic abilities including telekinesis, telepathic communication across a large region, telepathic sensing, the ability to control several minds at once, levitation, psychic blasts and dimensional travel. Mind Flayers also have a resistance to magic and can drain the memories and thoughts of enemies. The Masked Man in particular has also shown soul manipulation, stealing away the souls of two of the four companions, even away from the Soul Harvester, and bringing them to his lair before reconstituting bodies for them. Beyond abilities Mind Flayers are also all supergenius intellects as they are all connected to an Elder Brain, a brain with the collective knowledge of a giant colony of Mind Flayers including ones who have perished, a level of intelligence beyond that of characters who can enslave empires just via manipulation. 

The Masked Man was eventually defeated by the PC and his/her companions, of which there are four. The first is the noble if tempestuous Azer Calibast, a dwarf-like being from the plane of fire who has a constantly flaming head and an immunity to fire. In addition to being a powerful fighter, Calibast can affect fire elementals directly and is a shrew and charismatic person having been the advisor to the duke of his plane of reality. Second is Jaboli the wise Rakshasa Wizard. Rakshasa are a race of evil catlike outsiders with a natural tendency towards enchantment and illusion magic with a superior complex and outside of Jaboli rebelling against the evil nature of her species, she is pretty much exactly one of them being a skilled enchantress and illusionist. Jaboli also has other access to other schools of magic, telepathic sensing, and while she is unlikely to use it most of the time the natural ability of the Rakshasa to use their claws to induce horrific visions and night terrors. Third of the PC's companions is Kaidala, the depressed Nymph Druid who has the natural beauty of the nymphs as well as the ability to communicate with, summon, and shapeshift into animals along with other druidic magic such as summoning plants, healing, and purifying. Finally there's the cowardly insane and possibly slightly cannibalistic wererat Trip, a giant anthromorphic rat who is a talented thief and is especially good at stealth to the point that despite being a giant rat man, Trip can disappear into a crowd of normal humanoids. They were lead by the PC, the eventual Lord or Lady of the Keep and while much about them is determined by the player, one thing that remains constant is that they the spirit of their dead demon-hunter grandfather manifested as a living weapon that can psychically communicate with them. This weapon can gain a wide variety of abilities including setting enemies on fire, becoming so cold it hurts, shocking enemies, acid burning them, poisoning them, making their heads explode, confusing enemies, stunning enemies, healing allies, resurrecting allies, and blocking out psychic interference from the Masked Man. 

However that leads to the final and greatest threat of the game, Momma Dane. Momma Dane, while she seems to be a sweet old lady who likes gossip, is actually the demon grandmother of the PC in disguise who masterminded the entire sequence of events of the game to kill the Mind Flayer and get her blood on the throne of the Keep. Did she do it to maneuver herself into a position of power while staying out of the spotlight, as her own twisted form of love for her kin, or some combination? Who's to say. However as a demon she's obviously very strong to the point she can mentally compel Yenna and the PC's weapon to be unable to reveal her plans and designs (though Yenna was able to somewhat trick her.) She can obviously disguise herself however she wishes and fly. As an outsider, demons in any D&D universe have roughly the same abilities, giving Momma Dane access to a wide spread of abilities by scaling. Demons are part of the multiversal balance of good vs evil and order vs chaos on both the evil and chaos side. This means their presence corrupts and warps chaotically reality around them, turning animals into dire versions (aggressive meaner versions), causing diseases, making weather more chaotic, causing plants and animals to die inexplicably, warping space to make buildings bigger on the inside than outside, making magic more sickly and deathly in appearance than normal, and causing blood to start seeping from random places such as walls. Demons in their native state are conceptual entities that create bodies to interact with the material plane, but can they also possess people warping their bodies, souls, and minds gradually as they do so. If one of their fleshly forms is destroyed they are sent back to their home realm, the Abyss, to eventually come back someday. Momma Dane as a demon should also have a few other abilities including dimensional travel, soul consumption, enhanced senses, telepathy, and black blood that messes with the minds of anyone who comes into contact with it. 

So how to counter this tier? Well the biggest threats of the tier to my mind are Momma Dane and to a lesser extent the Masked Man and Rafael's Magic Coin. As a Demon, Momma Dane is particularly weak to weapons and abilities associated with goodness or law. The Masked Man and Rafael have extremely potent abilities but are clearly not used to fighting conventional opponents with the Masked Man used to easily psychically dominating enemies and Rafael not being any kind of conventional fighter. 

Beyond that, the tier has a pretty notable weakness. While the characters can reach fast enough speeds to avoid lightning, they can only do over an extremely short distance. While the verse has extremely potent offenses, most of them are within an extended melee range and past roughly the range of a building, the only abilities anyone on the tier has are mental manipulation from Momma Dane and the Masked Man and literally arrows from people like Enivid and Levio'sa, things that are a lot easier to protect against. Yenna's spatial manipulation might be a problem though that's at best warping space between two close buildings and it's unclear what kind of prep that requires.

So the kind of character that would be really strong here are characters with good aligned weapons, resistant to mental hax, with comparable stats but farther range so they can snipe away at them while keeping at range, is highly skilled to avoid arrow fire and out-skill the biggest threats of the tier, and ideally can somehow sense where the big threats of the verse are.

The first counter I would suggest is

Wing from Hunter x Hunter

Be merely pushing his Nen, Wing was able to dramatically fracture a wall, calced at being over 22 megajoules of energy or small building level. While the feat was much weaker than the feat for this tier, about 100 times weaker, this was extremely casual done by laying his hand on the wall and he should probably near the power level of the tier. He should be in the same range of speed as someone like Kite who was able to blitz large squadrons of chimera ants officers, calced in the hypersonic range and should down scale to a fraction of Killua's lightning speed putting him in the same speed range as the tier.

Win is a master of martial arts and the usage of Nen, a power system allowing him to utilize his aura for supernatural powers. Nen as a symbol has the particular quality that one applies self-imposed restrictions upon ones own aura as a way of defining one's ability, making the techniques much stronger when those conditions are met. It's likely this would count as making Nen techniques law-aligned in D&D terms and therefore able to banish someone like Momma Dane. As an enhancer like Gon, Wing should have 80% capacility to use emission type nen techniques which allow for ranged attacks equivalent to the range of something like meaning he could attack most of the verse from outside their range. 

Beyond this, Wing has access to all the basic techniques of Nen including Zetsu to make him stealthy against the tier and Gyo to see through the tier's own stealth, Ren which creates a paralyzing fear aura which can help him fight against the large number of opponents and Ten which creates a barrier around oneself to protect against negative effects and potentially can protect against the Masked Man's mental attacks.

However Wing's defense against psychic attack is a bit more speculative and if Rafael gets serious and uses his magic coin, Wing wouldn't have much defense from it. Also the stat comparison is kind of shaky. Another counter you could use would be

Ardor B from Bayonetta

Ardor is one of the highest ranked of the third sphere Angels, outranking the Fidelity, a large Angel that can tank the pressure difference of quickly going between the bottom of the ocean and the surface quickly, with some calcs for this reach 64 megajoules, and Ardor significantly outclassing the Fidelity, suggesting Ardor would have comparable stats to the tier. In terms of speed, even the lowest class of Angels can engage in fights with witches so quickly that the outside world seems frozen in comparison, suggesting hypersonic speeds with Ardor upscaling from them.

Ardor is an angel meaning that it typically resides in a dimensional called Paradiso where Ardor can still interact with things in the physical realm but can't be seen or interacted with from there. Neither the Masked Man's psychic powers nor Rafael's magic coin naturally has the range to affect something as far as Paradiso. The only one who might be able to reach Ardor would be Momma Dane. Unfortunately for her, she's a demon and is highly weak to lawful and good aligned things like the weapons and attacks of an angel. Momma Dane might be able to take an ally with her, but if she can't it would be at most a few at a time, and even then it's speculative.

But even if she can Ardor would be fully equipped to stop almost anyone in the tier even in a direct fight. Ardor are highly skilled warriors having fought the demons of Hell for at least thousands of years and, can likely steal magic, and can Ardor B is constantly enwreathed in flames. As shown with their interactions with Caliblast, Trip and Jaboli are both light-sensitive and Kaidala's plants and animals are threatened by fire. Similarly the mummy is highly weak to fire. 

The only real weakness Ardor has here is that Third Sphere Angels are not especially bright. While difficult it would not be impossible to imagine the few mages of the Keep to divine the invisible extra-dimensional angelic force attacking them and deceive it into entering the physical world. Even then Ardor would still be massively dangerous as it can potentially just re-enter Purgatorio at will and has a strong suite of powers, but for the best counter to the tier I would suggest

Nubia from DC Comics

Nubia is one of the strongest of the Amazons and should be at least around the same strength as Artemis who could knock down a building with one strike, if not stronger than her, putting her in the same range as the tier, if not a bit stronger. Similarly even normal Amazons can bullet-time, with Nubia downscaling from characters who can lightning-time putting her in similar range of speed as the verse's best.

Nubia like all Amazons has millennia of combat experience, in fact is considered one of the most skilled fighters of the Amazons, and is a superhuman master of melee fighter as well as archery and horsemanship which she could pretty easily use to keep at range of most of the tier. She wields the golden staff of understanding which not only allows her to shoot electric bolts from, something the verse would have a hard time fighting, as well as the Sword of Mars, a sword blessed by the god of war that can nullify magic and mind manipulation as strong as the Lasso of Truth's. This means things like the Rafael's Magic Coin or the Masked Man's mind manipulation would simply be nullified against Nubia, especially given her naturally high willpower and, if she uses it, the ring of Mars which clouds her mind with hatred and prevents her from her mental state from shifting.

Amazons are trained primarily for fighting demons and mythological creatures and would absolutely know how to fight something like Momma Dane with her staff, blessed directly by Aphrodite, Athena, and Hestia and sword blessed by Mars as well as the mummy via using her staff's lightning to create fire, a fairly simple application of it. Even Nubia's body itself was blessed by Mars to become a weapon meaning even a punch from her would be a threat to Momma Dane. Even if Momma Dane tried to go to the Abyss or BFR Nubia, it's like Nubia could simply follow her or return as Nubia's armor allows her to travel back and forth to mystical realms as far as Hades at will, a similar distance away to the Abyss. 

And that's not even getting into Nubia's other abilities. She was gifted cold sight by the Gorgons allowing her to turn people she looks at to stone, something that would allow her to fend of any kind of attack from a large number of fighters from the tier at once. The Staff of Understanding similar to the Lasso of Truth can reveal illusions and intent, allowing Nubia to bypass the stealth of characters like Momma Dane or Trip. Nubia has the high level of intelligence all the Amazons do and even if damaged conventionally, has both a passive healing factor and can regenerate herself with the Earth under her feet. Nubia would be able to easily withstand any direct blow the verse has, resist all its supernatural type abilities, and fire back with conventional power tied to the top tiers' weaknesses that most of the verse couldn't withstand all while keeping out of range and avoiding returning fire.

And that's how to be OP in the NWN: Kingmaker-verse. 

How they Compare: The Shadow Destroyer (Champions)

 

The dimensions are infinite and contain every variation on every possibility, but of all the dimensions in the Champions Multiverse, there is a forbidden one to travel too, a dimension known as Multifaria. Multifaria is the Chaos Reality. While the time stream flows differently in most dimensions, in Multifaria it is a chaotic whirlpool where places and events can spontaneously exist next to each other, where Victorian buildings sit next to modern skyscrapers, Da Vinci's flying machines fly in the sky under the Space Station forming a second moon, and one can experience a minute yet find one's comrades have experienced a year. In the chaos reality all moralities are inverted where heroes are villains and villains heroes. To this reality was born James Harmon IV was born to the powerful Harmon Family, a family with great power and connections in technology and though it was secret to the public, dark magic. 

As part of his family legacy completed the Lost Aztec Ritual and ripped his father's still beating heart from his chest, his father's dark magic entering into James' body, adding to his technological capabilities. Yet this still was not enough. James refused to believe the chaos of Multifaria was all there was. He plunged himself into studies of physics and sorceries and metaphysics and his ambition was recognized by the darkest powers of the Champions Multiverse, the Presences Beyond, beings from a horrific nightmare realm called the Qliphothic realm. Under their guidance over the next 13 full moons, he performed blood sacrifices in their name, crafting a perfect armor, a mixture of magic and technology, taking the moniker of the Shadow Destroyer. Horrible creations would come from the Shadow Destroyer as he eventually did the unthinkable and impossible, bringing order to Multifaria, bending it to his will.

When the Demon Cultist from the main Earth broke into the Multifarian Earth, the Shadow Destroyer took it as his opportunity and began his all-out assault against reality. Shadow Destroyer is an unfathomable threat, one who can make the Champions temporarily ally even with Doctor Destroyer, greatest villain of the main reality to stop his alternate universe counterpart.

Shadow Destroyer is one of the most powerful villains in the Champions Multiverse. This should make him pretty easily consistent in power to the Galactic Champions, players at the end of the power progression, who are consistently said to ward off threats to the whole universe. This is because Shadow Destroyer beat Doctor Destroyer in one on one combat, albeit by the "slimmest margins" with Doctor Destroyer being stated to be a threat to the players of a Champions campaign no matter their power level. This is consistent with it being stated that if Tezcatlipoca gave mortals much thought, he would be concerned with the power of the strongest magical villains including Shadow Destroyer, Takofanes, and Doctor Wu. Tezcatlipoca, as a god, is one of the Cosmics, the Cosmics being the race of beings who govern reality, often representing universal concepts and some of which being stated to survive the Big Bang. As such the Shadow Destroyer should be Universe Level.

Speedwise, even relatively low level Champions can gain lightspeed movement or at least near it which Shadow Destroyer should pretty obviously scale above. Galactic Champions have to protect large sections of the universe with travel thousands or millions of lightyears in years being common levels of speed for them, a speed Shadow Destroyer likely possesses. Some of the Galactic Champions are stated to be able to travel the length of the entire universe in a "blink of an eye", a speed of 20 quintillion times the speed of light. Shadow Destroyer may or may not scale to this level of speed, but he can match blows with his main universe counterpart who can clearly react to characters this fast, meaning he likely has reaction/attack speed this fast. It's notable that it's stated that Multifaria's bizarre time does not seem to affect Shadow Destroyer, suggesting that the passage of time may not be a factor to him and speed therefore is somewhat irrelevant.

Shadow Destroyer uses his armor, a combination of advanced technology and dark sorcery to boost his stats to the superhuman degree that it is. His suit also has numerous other assets to it including basic utilities like a life support system to allow Shadow Destroyer to travel into space, underwater, or other dimensions as he may need and a universal translator. It grants superhuman sight and hearing to percieve all things happening at once in his city of New Harmon. It's helmet, the Helm of Horthos as well as gives infrared and ultraviolet vision, 360 degree vision, and boosts Shadow Destroyer's already superhuman willpower to the extent he can't be controlled by psychics that can control entire countries as well as granting him resistance to powers that weaken his sense of sight and hearing directly.

However Shadow Destroyer is not quite as reliant on his suit as his mainline counterpart Doctor Destroyer is with Shadow Destroyer still having his old spells to rely on regardless. He can toss magic bolts, create mystic armor to ward off enemy spells, and has awareness of the mystically invisible, common powers of most sorcerers in the series. He can use his magic to sense lifeforce and magic nearby, telepathically sense nearby people and the level of darkness in their hearts as well as telepathically "nudge" them towards certain locations (a form of subconscious suggestion as he did to Luther Black), and can grant invisibility to himself and his followers. He was able to bind Doctor Destroyer after their first fight and he is stated to have a general capacity for magic to perform any limited magical task he might need. This should include pretty much any common magical power in the verse including mystic circles and sigils, divination, creating degenerative energy degenerating their bodies and minds, summoning powerful minions, causing mental confusion, causing direct pain, healing others, and general small scale reality-warping. The core of his abilities and his main tactic are his darkness based Qliphothic Powers.

Shadow Destroyer's main power and what's he named for is his darkness manipulation. He can shoot darkness as bolts or blasts, create bindings made of it create maelstroms of darkness around him and many others forms of conventional attacks. He can use his his darkness to drain lifeforce and energy from his opponents and add it to himself healing and revitalizing himself or bestowing it upon an ally, or more realistically a minion. In the rare times he is desperate, he can feed his own lifeforce to the darkness to amplify its power or to transfer it into more dark energy for himself or his masters. He can use phantom dark blasts to hit intangible targets and create layers of darkness armor around him multiplying his defenses and protecting him from many forms of haxes within the verse. The Shadows of Terror as they are called can be used to directly instill fear in his target, such that just the presence of the Shadow Destroyer is known to cause terror. Shadow Destroyer is referred to as the Master of the Qliophothic shadows and they cannot harm him against his will. They are referred to as a multipower, an extremely versatile powersource that can mimic pretty much any minor effect through versatile application. He can use them to teleport or create shadow portals to anywhere in the multiverse.

Outside of his darkness powers, Shadow Destroyer has a couple other Qliphothic powers. He is one of the few mortals who can endure the Qliphothic realm which generally causes madness and corrupts the being into a monster over time. He himself can create rifts to that realm that threaten to suck up anything nearby. This works even on immortal souls with souls trapped in the Qliphothic realm being unable to return negating most forms of regeneration or immortality. The Shadow Destroyer can use the power of the Presences Beyond to corrupt others into minions or create them from the darkness. His very presence corrupts magic on a planetary scale, turning it Qliphothic and causing all magic-users to risk going crazy if they use their magic and causing the magic to turn unstable, and with prep was able to sacrifice the souls and lifeforce of an entire city instantly to the Presences Beyond. However most disturbing of all, The Shadow Destroyer is draining power from the Qliphothic realm with his continued existence, the Qliphothic Realm being an infinite realm, and temporarily reached a pinnacle of power beyond. 

Shadow Destroyer to ascend into becoming "destruction itself" drained the very power of the Qliphothic Realm to the point that the Qliphothic realm itself allowed the Champions to enter into the heart of Nightmares to confront him. This ascended form of Shadow Destroyer is Edomite Shadow Destroyer, Edomites being lesser Kings of Edom. This is an extreme level of power far beyond anything prior.

The Kings of Edom are the dark reflection of the Tree of Life in Kabbalah, metaconceptual entities beyond all concepts represented in "Briah" the world of concepts. Having ascended to this point of being relevant to the tree at all, Edomite Shadow Destroyer would have metaconceptual power, beyond infinite conceptual power and would be a metaconceptual entity.

Even outside his temporary stint as a Edomite, the Shadow Destroyer is a massive threat not just for his powers but for his mental capabilities. He created his own technological suit of armor and matched wits evenly with Doctor Destroyer who created a similarly powerful all-technological suit of armor, suggesting a level of Type 4 Intelligence with an extremely diverse set of knowledge including hand to hand combat, battlefield combat, physics and metaphysics, military history, technology and engineering, sorcery and mysticism, philosophy, politics, legends and lore, and secret knowledge. He also has an intense willpower strong enough to be a mental defense on its own.

In terms of weaknesses, the Shadow Destroyer draws from a limited pool of energy and while he can replenish it by drawing from the lifeforce of others, he can grow weak from stamina. He has a psychological compulsion to kill and corrupt which can cause his actions to be predicted and is extreme anti-social nature means he's one of the few antagonists with literally zero allies and with a predilection of causing people to team up against him, even the Champions with Doctor Destroyer or the Kings of Edom. Finally while he doesn't draw as much power from his power armor as Doctor Destroyer as his magic remains his regardless, destruction or removal of his power armor would leave him much weaker in stats.

Name: The Shadow Destroyer, James Harmon IV, Citizen Harmon

Origin: Champions

Powers and Abilities: Superhuman Stats, Power Armor, Enhanced Senses, Magic/Reality-Warping, Darkness Manipulation (Projection/Binding/Armor/Constructs), Portal Creation, Teleportation, BFR, Astral Sealing, Planetary Magic Corruption, Fear Manipulation, Pain Manipulation, Confusion Manipulation, Summoning, Lifeforce and Energy Manipulation, Stasis Spell, Rituals, Anti-Intangibility, Resistance to a wide variety of powers especially Mental Manipulation and Magic | Metaconceptual Nature and Metaconceptual Destruction

Weaknesses: Antisocial and with a Psychological Compulsion to Kill and Corrupt. Relies on a limited pool of energy and his power armor

Destructive Capacity: Universal | Conceptually Infinite

Range: At least city-wide | Beyond the concept of spacetime

Speed: Likely MFTL. At Least MFTL Reaction/Attack Speed. Possibly Irrelevant | Irrelevant

Durability: Universal | Conceptually Infinite (Metaconceptual Entity)

Stamina: Fairly large but still human level | Infinite (As an Edomite, draws power from the infinite Qliphothic Realm itself)

Standard Armor: Power Armor

Intelligence: Type 4 Supergenius

Key: Base | Edomite

So how would the Shadow Destroyer do is Multifaria invaded other multiverses?

In DC Comics, Shadow Destroyer would have the problem that against people on his own power level his speed is vastly below unless the fight takes places in Multifaria or you think Shadow Destroyer's speed is irrelevant due to armor nullifying Multifaria's nature. If that is the case Shadow Destroyer would be on roughly a late Pre-Crisis powerhouse's level of power, maybe slightly less as they often had universal feats that were much more casual or low multiversal feats such as Captain Atom casually creating universes, Hal Jordan overloading the electromagnetism of an amped Doctor Polaris that controlled the electromagnetism of the universe and Supergirl puncturing the armor of the Anti-Monitor. 

At most periods in DC Comics Shadow Destroyer would be roughly a crisis level threat similar to other universal threats that the Justice League had to come together to face. His powers are actually fairly consistent for that level of power. In late Pre-Crisis and Rebirth while Shadow Destroyer wouldn't be as strong, assuming you think the speed wouldn't be a problem he would be a moderate threat to major superheroes and supervillains. Him messing up the magic passively however means he would attract a lot of attention (as usual both positive and negative) from the Magic-Wielders of Earth. In a straight up fight his best asset would be his ability to create Qliphothic Portals which if they sucked in anyone would be nightmarish for them as not even a Boom Tube could likely return from this, the Qliphothic Realm being beyond conceptual realms like the Godsphere. However he would be at a disadvantage from having a lot less range the most of DC's big name heroes, and strong enough technopaths like Cyborg could mess up him Power Armor's tech. However the biggest counter to him would definitely be Obsidian, DC's Heroic Darkness Manipulator. Obsidian could command Shadow Destroyer's darkness away from him, resisting the Shadow Destroyer's main form of attack and even the Qliphothic Portals wouldn't work as Obsidian can travel at will to the Shadowlands and through them to any darkness in the multiverse, the Shadowlands being part of the Great Darkness, an even FURTHER distance than the Qliphothic realm. While both characters have fear manipulation and resistance, enough to resist each others powers and Shadow Destroyer has other magical abilities he could potentially fight Obsidian with, Obsidian is a much more experienced fighter against opponents on his caliber and could potentially outlast Shadow Destroyer's stamina. A fight between them could probably go either way but even if Shadow Destroyer wins, Obsidian is the embodiment of the Shadowlands and if beaten will return to fight him against until he wins.

If Shadow Destroyer was in his Edomite form, obviously he'd be much higher and would compare more to the stronger entities of the Godsphere, some of whom have shown finite metaconceptual power. While Edomite Shadow Destroyer would be a metaconceptual entity, he lacks almost any real feats in that form and so would be stopped by one of the first beings who can actually hurt him, which would probably be someone like one of the lords of one of the Godsphere realms like Darkseid/Highfather, one of the God Pantheon Leaders, Archangels, the Strongest Lords of Hell, and so on. A good comparison for him would be someone like Fenrir from The Sandman who was conceptual destruction and could do so even to other concepts. 

In Marvel Comics, there is a similar problem of speed vs power, with Shadow Destroyer being blitzed by characters who are similar in power, unless the fight takes place in Multifaria or yadda yadda. Overall the Shadow Destroyer would be a High Herald to Low Skyfather level threat, around the same level as the likes of Hulk, Thor, and Thanos normally.

Shadow Destroyer would instantly become one of the foremost magical threats in the Marvel Universe if he appeared, being able to beat the likes of the Norse God Loki in a one on one fight of sheer magical power, and with abilities like BFR-ing opponents a metaconceptual distance, vastly beyond the ability of almost anyone to respond. This combined with things like lifeforce draining, magical corruption and general reality-warping are powers not often seen in the Marvel Cosmos. Not that he would be an unstoppable threat. Someone like the Hulk would tear through the Shadow Destroyer since he tanks dark magics and can return from the Beyond Place. Overall Shadow Destroyer would be a massive threat but one of the top tier Avengers could probably send him back to Multifaria, let alone a team of them. The bigger potential threat would be him teaming up with others though even with the most twisted of hearts like Demon Lords, Shadow Destroyer is not liable to team up with people being anti-social and an insane cultist of the Beyond Powers.

Edomite Shadow Destroyer would be a totally different story and would require one of the strongest skyfathers like Odin to stop, as Odin was able to fight on "all planes of reality." Now granted someone like Odin should be able to win fairly cleanly given Edomite Harmon's general lack of abilities, but still if most beings in the multiverse, even some on the conceptual hierarchy were to run across Edomite Harmon, he would conceptually destroy them.

In the Freedom Force Multiverse, The Shadow Destroyer would be an immense and immediate threat to everything. Man-Bot and Supercollider technically have the capacity to kill the Shadow Destroyer but it would require extreme circumstances (getting in close and desperation or getting in close and extreme rage respectively) for that to work. For the most part the only the threats are the god tiers Entropy, Time Master, and Energy X, who scale off Time Master being able to destroy the Celestial Clock and Man-Bot being able to power the Celestial Clock which provides motion and change to infinite timestreams.

While these characters would have infinite more power than Harmon, they're vastly less smart and experienced fighters with much more pronounced weaknesses. Shadow Destroyer's mystic awareness should let him perceive Energy X. Time Master and Entropy are both temperamental personalities that Shadow Destroyer should have no trouble predicting and he can use their weaknesses against them, electricity and energy for Time Master and randomly determined for Entropy. While they have powers that should work on him, with time powers being a really high tier power in Champions and it being unlikely Shadow Destroyer's magic resistance would protect against Entropy's chaos hax, Shadow Destroyer has a fairly decent chance against either if he can keep from getting tagged by either, especially as he can drain the Energy X from either keeping them from using their more powerful abilities. Of course that's against one at a time, and the three cosmic beings, especially Energy X which granted all the superpowers of the entire series to all the characters could overwhelm Shadow Destroyer. It's not even clear if Shadow Destroyer can kill Energy X, though overall he would be another god tier like Entropy and Time Master.

Edomite Shadow Destroyer would be on another tier. There are no metaconceptual powers in the entire verse. As such it's possible he would just solo his way through the verse. The one possibility is that even Edomite Shadow Destroyer seems to be affected by time while Time Master exists in all parallel realities simultaneously which means he may be able to mess with Harmon's personal timeline to prevent him from ever being born or from gaining his powers or some such, something that's implied to maybe be effective in Champions Online for some reason.

Shadow Destroyer is one of the strongest villains of the HERO RPG System, so how would he do in the most famous RPG in the world, Dungeons and Dragons? Harmon would be on the level of Intermediate Deities, deities superior or on the same level as Demon Lords that can control their own universal sized realms in the Abyss, which makes sense as he's comparable to Champions Cosmics which are roughly the equivalents to Intermediate Deities. 

Unfortunately for Shadow Destroyer he wouldn't do very well against most intermediate deities due to lacking conceptual powers and being lacking in versatility against them with most deities having cosmic scale reality-warping and the capability to grant and cast most spells in D&D. Shadow Destroyer should be able to at least protect for a bit using Magic Armor and portal to the Qliphothic Realm, the equivalent of the Far Realms in D&D would be a credible threat. That said against most of them he would be a bit out of his depth. He would do pretty alright against most Outsiders on their tier such as Demons and Angels as even if he can't kill them permanently, he can at least fight them conventionally and kill the material forms sending them back to their native plane. While his technology would be strange in most settings, Harmon would overall be a fairly conventionally epic level dark spellcaster with a strange connection to something akin to the Far Realms.

As an Edomite Shadow Destroyer's capabilities would grow hugely until reaching the level of the Greater Deities like Shar who ordered the chaotic multiverse and Mystra who unintentionally reorganized the multiverse with her magic. His nature as a metaconceptual entity however would be more akin to one of the Overdeities, albeit one lesser in stature than normal. The strongest of Greater Deities should be able to stop him such as Vecna the Lich Lord and God of Death and Occult Knowledge who by invoking the power of the Overdeity Tier Serpent, embodiment of magic resisted destruction from the The Lady of Pain, another Overdeity Tier Entity, with high difficulty. Vecna should be able to do something to Edomite Shadow Destroyer.

In Saint Seiya, another series with fighters of enchanted armors, Shadow Destroyer would be roughly Gold Saint Tier. Those with the Seventh Sense like Gold Saints with a great extension of their cosmo are able to recreate the Big Bang and Ikki with the Seventh Sense believed he could fly to teh edge of the universe, putting Shadow Destroyer somewhere in the range of the Seventh Sense wielders.

Harmon would do really interesting against the local threats. He has an extreme level of intelligence compared to the tier, but far inferior feats of combat skill. Normal applications of the Sixth Sense can grant resistance to the psychic powers that Harmon possesses yet things like atomic destruction, sensory manipulation, BFR, and mental attacks are things that the Shadow Destroyer happens to resist in spades. His BFR is more potent than anything in SS and can neutralize the regen of the Eighth Sense by trapping the soul in the Qliphothic Realm but on the other hand numerous fighters in the tier have shown ways of resisting being bfr-ed such as Andromeda Shun using his chains to grab onto nearby objects and pulling himself back or Virgo Shaka resisting the Another Dimension of Saga. They have numerous other powers that they can use on Harmon such as illusions, immense pain manipulation to the point of causing insanity or instant death, or splitting his consciousness across different planes of reality though he has counters or potential counters to some of these. I think the coolest potential fight would be against Anti-Pope Aiolos. Anti-Pope Aiolos is the Sagittarius Aiolos of the Chaos Reality, a chaotic universe where everyone's moralities are inverted with evil Sagittarius Aiolos killing the other Saints and becoming dictatorial ruler, a mad worshipper and sacrifices to the dark power Athena. Anti-Pope Aiolos' lightning would be an immense threat to Shadow Destroyer's metal armors though he can protect with Shadow Armor. Harmon could try to manipulate Aiolos, but Chaos Aiolos like his main universe counterpart has a particularly strong ability to see through deceptions. It would be a very good matchup of equals.

Edomite Shadow Destroyer would be a much bigger threat, having infinite conceptual power like the strongest of the Royal Gods like Cronos who threatened all time past, present and future or Chronos who embodies all space and time in the multiverse. Most of the gods couldn't directly hurt Shadow Destroyer but as mentioned time seems to for some reason to affect him so Chronos might be able to mess with Harmon's timeline. Also Zeus has the Dunamis, the divine lightning which seems to have a measure of metaconceptual power. This would also apply to the Chaos Zeus....who inhabits Anti-Pope Aiolos. This means even if the two reached their ultimate forms, the two could fight evenly with metaconceptual destruction. I may have made this blog to pitch this amazing matchup idea I had.