: I realize this has been brought up a number of times
: before, but I still felt some things had been left out
: in the argument for the Watcher's power. So as to not
: leave any out, I'll just list the reasons why the
: Watcher is DA BEST.
: 1.HE CREATED/DISCOVERED THE DREAM OF UNLIFE! This means
: EVERY thrall, soulless, shade, etc. you fight exists
: because of The Watcher (or at least his discovery).
True enough. Of course, this spell has been successfully adopted by zillions of other mages--and the Watcher (to our knowledge) only invented Thrall, while other necromancers came up with Soulless, Stygians, Wights and so forth. So the Watcher's imagination seems to be a little limited. :-)
Whereas Myrdred's signature Binding Dream doesn't seem to ever have been copied very successfully, much less improved upon (unless perhaps by Balor). Which might indicate that it takes more personal talent and power to use than the Dream of Unlife.
: 2.He defeated Mazzarin, the most powerful
: avatara/archmage that ever lived. Though he had to use
: a big ol' army of thrall to do so, the fact still
: remains that The Watcher is the one that finally
: finished him off (I'm pretty sure this is from Shade
: flavor text, tho it might be from thrall/avatara,
: can't remember)
True. But this is an advantage the Watcher shares with The Deceiver--both can raise armies with ease, and thereby overwhelm foes they'd lose to one-on-one. Effectively, it makes them much more "powerful"...but of course they require more prep time to gather their resources than someone like Soulblighter, who can just grab the nearest glaive, stride out and start hacking away.
: 3.He's immortal. Or at least so close to it that it
: really doesn't matter whether he is or isn't, as
: evidenced by his being around for 1000's of years and
: being labelled an ancient evil. Though I realize
: others have acheived immortality (ex.-Soulblighter),
: this still takes a whole lotta power.
Well, really, who *hasn't* achieved immortality? Mazzarin and Myrdred and Shiver did (though like Soulblighter Shiver can be considered undead rather than immortal). Every Heron's immortal and the Warlocks might be too. Alric doesn't look like he's gonna die of old age any time soon. Not to mention Shades and the Trow, undying in their own way.
The Watcher's just unusual in being a comparatively high-profile Dark dude who survived through an entire Light Age as well as the preceding Dark one...but you could argue he just got lucky in being imprisoned for most of that time, and therefore out of harm's way. The same thing could easily have happened to The Deceiver, sleeping in that glacier for the whole Sword Age.
: 4.He can go one-on-one with the Deceiver and survive. The
: Deceiver's flavor text states that he and the Watcher
: fought at Seven Gates (or Bagrada, one of the two) and
: that the Watcher barely survived. Barely or not,
: surviving at all while going one-on-one with the
: Deceiver is something no one else can do. And I
: realize this is sorta making The Watcher seem the
: equal of the Deceiver, but don't worry, #5 will
: address that.
I wouldn't have been surprised if--during TFL--Shiver or Soulblighter could have gone one-on-one with either The Deceiver or the Watcher and beaten them. Shiver was severely weakened after her resurrection in M2, and Myrdred only defeated Soulblighter because of his recent stint as a human battery in the Tain Shard.
That's always the problem with fighting Myrdred or Bahl'al...it's not impossible to beat them one on one, but if they know you're coming they'll have an army of thousands and a bunch of cunning tricks and ambushes primed by the time you get there. Which, again, makes them effectively more powerful--but I'll buy GURPS' argument that TFL Shiver could whip anyone else except Balor one-on-one if they didn't know about her vanity weakness.
: 5.He's more powerful then the Deceiver. Though there is
: no straight evidence of him being able to kick the
: Deceiver's ass, we can still infer that he is more
: powerful through some observations. The Deceiver was
: defeated by the weak, shattered remnants of the legion
: at the end of the Great War and was imprisoned in a
: block of ice, and couldn't break free without the help
: of my zerks bringing him his staff. The Watcher
: however, could only be defeated by the mighty Connacht
: (and even Connacht needed his army to help him out in
: order to do so). And as far as imprisonment methods
: go, Connacht needed a whole damn mountainside to
: imprison the Watcher, not just some worthless block of
: ice. The Watcher also managed to free himself on his
: own, without my zerks bringing him anything.
The Deceiver was only defeated *after* Balor died, however, when he lost much of his army and his personal power reserves. The Watcher was defeated at the height of his Balor-enhanced power.
Also, the Watcher didn't free himself; Balor rescued him. I know, one of the flavors says, "The Watcher only escaped by tearing off his left arm," so we could argue about exactly how it happened--maybe Balor uncovered the Watcher and woke him up and the Watcher did the rest himself--but the fact remains that he needed Balor's help.
And something else to think about here--the Watcher couldn't break the Confinement Dream on his arm, and apparently, neither could Balor (or at least he didn't bother to.) But SOMEONE was able to free the arm. And since it happened right around the time The Deceiver came to Silvermines, who do you think it was?
I agree, though, that Bahl'al is probably physically tougher than Myrdred. The Deceiver seems to be simply "human-plus," like the other Avatara--he needs to breathe and whatnot, and he's vulnerable to hypothermia--while the Watcher may well be fully or partially undead. Probably didn't matter much when they were dueling, though, since each had the power to easily tear the other apart.
: 6.In the end, the only thing powerful enough to drop the
: Watcher was himself, arrows tipped with bone from HIS
: arm. Nothing anyone else had could stop him, they had
: to use the power of the Watcher himself.
Well, I doubt The Watcher would fare well against an Eblis Stone, or even against the Legion's best. (Myrdred was only chased down and finished off by a coalition of heroes like Durak and Turgeis with Burning Steel.) The problems were, as always, his enormous army backing him up and the Legion's being on the run in the wilderness without supplies or time to prepare. So the bone arrows were simply the best thing Alric could come up with to stop the Watcher *fast* before his army could intervene.
And incidentally, no one ever came up with a single weapon that could disable The Deceiver instantly. Not even shooting his missing eye at him. :-)
: Just had to give props to my favorite character in the
: whole series. It's a shame we don't see more of him in
: the game. Oh well. Let the debating over who's more
: powerful begin!
Overall, I buy the game's implication that Myrdred and Bahl'al are pretty evenly matched. More powerful than almost anyone else, but weaker than Mazzarin, or any Leveller or Savior at the height of his power. Bahl'al is probably somewhat tougher, Mydred's more devious. And one or the other has the advantage in army-building, depending on the local corpse-to-living-person ratio.
