This isn't so strictly a "how they're beaten" so much as it's a "How they're balanced out".
General:
Remember that fights in verse aren't necessarily gonna be at fair engagement ranges like we make them in vsbw. Ambushes, prep, etc can be used to overcome a passive in a believable way.
https://vsbattles.com/vsbattles/2372567 Late, but that's the thread (Composite Human wins against a guy with thought based
Reality Warping)
Basically stealth and range are huge advantages that this site doesn't really take into consideration due to SBA. You can have all the thought based RW you want and that won't save you from what you have no way of being aware of.
A lot of the really haxxed verses you've gotta remember have a bunch of other weaker characters in it that we just don't use profiles for because making files for 10-As to 9-Bs doesn't appeal as much to people on the site as making jaxxed files. In Warhammer, most of the stories are actually about random inquisitors and maybe low level space Marines. Someone like
Ahzek Ahrima is a huge anamoly by the standards of the majority of the vrtse. In destiny, the really haxded dudes include gods, the absolute strongest humans (meaning player character and like 2 others), an ancient superweapon, and a race as a collective. Even in MtG, being a Planeswalker is rare as is, and being someone like
Jace Belere (not especially strong in comparison to the likes of tezzeret and Liliana) far rarer, as the dude's a prodigy who's studied magic under some of the best mentalists there is. This site just gives people the false perception that an entire verse is like the few characters from it that get a ton of exposure on the site.
Chaos Gods:
As for the Chaos Gods, remember that they are less characters than they are forces and concepts, and that 40k has heavy cosmic horror aspects. Of course killing the concept of change, or fighting the concept of fighting is going to be a generally fruitless endeavor. They've also got Ynnead above them, Malice who feeds off of them, and the Emperor who's a bit stronger than them, albeit waning in strength. The Chaos Gods biggest weakness, by far, is their inability to cooperate. It's been often suggested that if the Chaos Gods actually worked together and stopped getting in one another's way, the Emperor would no longer be able to hold them back and all would fall to chaos. Ynnead would never get to form, and they'd ultimately win out. Notice how the greatest threats came from those rare moments where Chaos comes together. Look at how Horus severely wounded the Emperor, necessitating the usage of that 1-A erasure that would bind him to the throne for millenia to come. Look at Abaddon and his black crusades, a man who managed to gain the favor of all four chaos gods. Their contradictory nature is their downfall, and why they haven't already won.
Ahzek Ahriman:
While he's powerful, his life sucks. Ahzek Ahriman started out as being one of the oldest space marines, and one of the few Thousand Sons that were around before Magnus was found to survive the effects of the warp distorting most of them into hideous shapes. His twin brother was not so lucky. He didn't like how other chapters had all this blind faith in the emperor without any knowledge on the subject to back it up, and would fight for the future of mankind, not the emperor as so many others did. He also didn't have complete faith in his primarch, unlike so many others did, as he saw that Magnus could not avert the flesh change, and earlier on lead a search party for him when he just disappeared for a while. He would go on to learn that Magnus had been messing around with the powers of the warp, but Magnus found out about his prying and erased that bit of knowledge from his mind. He would re learn this later on, also discovering a lot of other stuff that Magnus was hiding. It was due to all of this that when Magnus ordered the Thousand Sons to stand down and accept their deaths at the hands of the space wolves (The heresey had started by now), Ahzek disobeyed, rallying a defense of Prospero while constantly imploring Magnus to join the fight. Despite all this, Magnus stayed out of it, and the Thousand sons were falling to the might of the Space wolves. As Ahriman prepared one final last stand, he would enter the mind of Ohthere Wyrdmake, his former friend who was a major part in convincing the emperor to ban Psykers. He shared with him the knowledge of Horus's deception, the scapegoating of the Thousand Sons and how the Space wolves were sent to obliterate them to keep them out of the way, but just as he was to release him, and possibly stop this carnage, he looked around, saw the Space Wolves torching all he knew and loved, saw his homeland being desecrated, saw Russ butchering Thousand sons, and in that moment would fall to rage and vengeance (he saw Wyrdmake as responsible for this in large part due to his condemnation of psykers), destroying his soul before it could even fall to the daemons of the warp. While he realized what he had done, and how he could possibly have stopped all of this had he not given in to anger, he decides that the Thousand Sons are basically ****** by now, and accepts that they, and he, are simply fated to be destroyed. However, Magnus finally shows up and starts fighting with Russ, transferring The Book of Magnus (a relinquary of basically everything Magnus knew about magic at the time), his prediction of Ahriman's survival, a lot of power (with Ahriman already being an extremely powerful psyker, Magnus's boost helps explain just how strong he is considering this is before millenia of powering up), and one last spell. Ahriman warped himself and all the remaining thousand sons offworld, leaving Magnus to lose his duel and make a pact with Tzeentch to live. This was his life up to the Horus Hersey.
Now, could he have averted the Horus Hersey entirely if he didn't spitefully kill that one guy? No. Eldrad had already tried to warn the Emperor himself of what was to come, as did Magnus. It didn't matter. However, if he was able to share this knowledge with the others and the Space Wolves, there is the possibility things could have gone differently. The Thousand Sons may not have fallen to Tzeentch, which means Magnus and him wouldn't be huge issues, the Space Wolves may have been able to have been diverted to somewhere that they actually should be, rather than being on a wild goose chase at Prospero, and the Horus Hersey may not have put the Imperium in such a dire state. Of course, this is all speculation and what with it being Tzeentch and all stuff would have likely gone this way regardless, but this still weighs on Ahriman, as he still kinda feels responsible and in some way wishes he could still serve the Imperium. He doesn't like Chaos, he sees it as a way to gain power. (which to be fair, he's right about.) His ultimate goal is to usurp Tzeentch via finding the black library. Needless to say, this is not gonna happen. There's more, but I'd recommend just reading his books tbh.
As for a defeat, there was the time he lost to Yvraine after getting them into a position where he could have killed her and her entire party easily. He ended up BFRing her, the Yncarne, and the Visarch into his own corner of the webway where he was nearly all powerful. To get them out of there, Yvraine exploited the fact that he still deeply cares for his rubricae brothers and how much he desires a way to undo his mistake. She rezzed a few, showing him that she can help him which gets him to let them out of his weird space so they can try to rez the rest of the legion. Instead, Yvraine proceeds to punt them in to the warp and get the hell out of there, as she knows that Ahzek would be driven to save them over chasing her down.
Also, Psykers remotely as strong as him are super rare in verse.
Jill Presto:
Her story isn't really about fighting. To quote Sandman:
Yeah, Jills story isnt about fighting or anything like that. She only used her powers offensively twice which was when she killed a bunch of neo nazis who beat up her gay friend and when she destroyed Cestis with her mind hax. I think Lephyr already explained what Jill's story is about. Her life is sh*t, Innocence appeared and said that the Basanos can make her life better if she accepts to be their host. Then the rest is about her struggles against the Basanos, her quest to remove the baby in her stomach (She was raped and impregnated by the Basanos) and her relationship with her daugther, Noema. She's also quite gutsy. She called Lucifer a son of a b*tch face to face despite being warned by the Basanos and the Basanos themselves being afraid of Lucifer.
Culexus Assassins:
Culexus assassins are first balanced out by being few in number due to being rare to be born as is, and rarer to be found before their parents kill or abandon them due to being blanks. They also have to be found by the right branch, otherwise they're just put to death. Even regular assassins are a huge investment in resources, to say nothing of a Culexus.
First, one must understand the measuring system used to measure Psykers. Capping out at Alpha (Though some, like the emperor, Magnus, Malcador, and Eldrad exceed the scale and are Alpha Plus), and continuing all the way down through the greek alphabet. It's basically a measure of your presence in the warp, and consequentally how strong you are as a psyker. However, at levels below Sigma, the individual starts to be more of an "Anti warp presence", effectively being soulless. The further down you go the more of a void you become, and this continues all the way down to a few such individuals to be known as "Untouchables". While one in a million may be born a psyker, one in a billion may be born a blank, and even fewer to a dangerous level. There have been noted Omega Minus psykers, which, short of the likes of the Alpha plusses, basically spell doom to any psyker who faces them. Daemons in the warp die to their presence,
Ahzek Ahrima got horrific seizures and spasms just from astral projecting too close to one, and in large numbers they managed to block out the Emperor's Astronomicon, making safe warp travel impossible. They are bred and raised specifically to kill, acting as one of humanity's trump cards against other factions, especially psychic ones. Sounds busted as ****, right? Well, there are some things to balance this out.
First of all, these things are seen as abominations by the majority of the Imperium as well, in many ways worse than psykers. While due to our site you may be getting a skewed view of psykers, remember that generally while they can be destructive, they can be contained and killed by the imperium without too much sweat. Beta and above is incredibly rare, and even alphas vary.
The Burning Princess is an alpha level, for instance. The shit Ahriman pulls off? Even by the standards of Alpha levels, he's top of the classification. By now he likely borders on Alpha plus all things considered, though he's got other stuff going for him as described. Blanks however, you don't even need to be a strong blank to cause issues. They mess with human minds, causing irrational fear, paranoia, hatred, etc in the minds of regular people, and for psykers they are far worse. Low level blanks get it the worst: Not strong enough to be a Culexus, but won't really be making any friends or positive human connections. As a result, they tend to live sad and short lives. Culexus candidates are often the victims of infanticide due to the sheer strength of the tangible wrongness the baby will emit. Much of the imperium wanted them eradicted, and officially they were. It's likely that in the imperium, only
Malcador the Sigillite, founder of the project and second only to the emperor, The emperor, the Culexus assassins themselves, and the Directors Primus of each temple even know that they're a thing and that Malcador didn't actually have every one killed. Even in current they're illegal and accept that they may be killed by most of the imperium if they're found. Being very strong in fights doesn't preclude your life from having other serious issues.
Second of all, their numbers are limited. As said above, they're really rare to begin with, illegal, usually killed at birth, and don't lead very happy lives. You know the Imperium, the same organization that uses slave labour to load Titan weapons even though it could easily be done with tech because among other things, humans are a really plentiful resource? How they often just throw more and more imperial guards to die against a clearly far superior foe, because they're expendable? How its emperor has likely personally killed billions, and far, far more indirectly? Well, Culexuses are a way more limited resource than that. The Imperium's population numbers in the trillions, maybe even quadrillions, yet I'd estimate that the numbers of the Culexuses likely don't break 5 digits. Note how after a strike force of every type of assassin failed to kill Abaddon, marking the first operation (Excluding Leigenstrasse, which was a strange scenario) where a Culexus assassin failed (Ahriman wasn't a target, he just got really unlucky with where he projected himself), they didn't send any more. They gave up, and the Culexus temple regards Abaddon as impossible to assassinate. This is because, unlike the imperial guard or even the space marines, they cannot afford heavy losses due to the scarcity of Culexus assasins. So if you're wondering why these dudes aren't used more often, here you go. It can take a temple years to replace the losses of an Execution force, and considering how long term much of 40k's stuff is, years is really meaningful.
In short, while they may be one of humanity's best weapons, and a terrifying hidden superweapon to the psychic races, they are balanced out by things not applicable to vs battles. Deploying even one is a far bigger commitment than deploying an army of the imperial guard, and while they may be amazing killers, that is literally all they can do with their lives. I like them because I find the concept of users who's ability is to break the rules of their verse an interesting one, if done well. I personally like their powerset as well, since I'm a fan of abilities like
Durability Negation,
Statistics Reduction, and
Power Nullification that bring strong opponents down rather than buffing their user, but that's not the only reason or even main reason for them, or blanks in general, being a very interesting part of the verse for me. To ignore the mystique and secrecy surrounding them, the fact that they're treated as akin to superweapons with a huge cost in resources, and the fact that being a blank is generally horrible just because they pretty easily kill some of your favorite characters is a pretty bad stance to take.
In short, even if you view them by their powers, which others point out is not wise, you need to remember that a lot of the balancing factors for dudes like this are simply not applicable for vs debating, and as such you don't often see what makes their powerset reasonable. Ofc a superweapon that's one of the best kept secrets of the imperium will be insane, that is what it is. Comes with all the drawbacks of that status as well. I'm pretty sure that that sort of thing applies to a lot of characters like this.
If that doesn't satisfy you, then here's a vsbattles applicable weakness: Their powers scale to their opponents. The more powerful/haxxed an enemy is, the more intense their aura. This also works against them, however. Psyk-Out grenades, also a very finite resource, to say the least, are absolutely useless against people without that sort of powerset. There's also their relatively low durability, at "only" being superior to space marines. While even if you're not like that, its hard to fight something you can't really see, sometimes phases through your attacks, can absorb attacks, messes with your head, and can end you with a touch or blast, with sufficient skill and physical strength they're not impossible to kill. Someone like
Sigismund or pre heresy
Khârn the Betrayer or even likely some chapter masters could probably beat them.
Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Despite them basically being immune to precog and being one of the imperium's deepest secrets, an Eldar Farseer once did find the location of their temple. He sent a ship to destroy it, but then with his precog learned that doing that would have caused something way worse than the existence of the Culexus Assasin (I think a craftworld would get destroyed or something I don't really remember), so he had to recall the ship and not tell anyone about the location. Even in terms of stuff not applicable to vs battles, they're not invincible, as the Eldar, the race hit the hardest by them, would have been able to destroy them if there wasn't any other consequence.
Hive Gods (Warpriest, Daughters, Oryx, etc):
So basically, much of the power of the hive comes from the Sword Logic. Its pretty complicated, and I need to make a blog eventually, but what's relevant here is that by killing you can inheret your victim's power and thus all the power they've inherited from their kills, and if you're superior your law is as well. Warpriest is one of Oryx's oldest lieutenants, being probably billions of years old, and also one of the best. He was able to learn how to make Oversouls just by watching Crota for one thing. Due to his law he's immune to anything the Guardian can do until you do the raid mechanic to temporarily drop his invulnerability.
The reason this is even possible is due to how the Sword Logic works. The thing is, PC Guardians are one of the few things that can compare to a billions of years old hive god in terms of death because of the prep you've done for the raid. While the Guardian has definitely killed a lot of people over the course of the game, that alone wouldn't compare to WP who burns 585 worlds in a day. What does is the powerful entities you've felled. Consider Atheon. Consider Crota, the son of Oryx himself, who once singlehandedly slaughtered thousands of Guardians. Not only do you kill him, you even absorb his soul at a later date to become Ascendant. Before the Raid, Eris has you go around killing basically every notable hive or Taken left after Oryx retreats to the Ascendant Realm. There's 3 reasons for this:
- This indirectly weakens Oryx. The Oryx you fight is not at his full power, Raid or not, due to how you've killed basically every other Hive worth a damn first.
- This lowers the chance that Oryx can get a successor and therefore proc his type 6.
- This boosts the sword logic of the Guardian dramatically. By killing these Hive champions, you inherit every death from what they've killed, adding on to your own. In doing this, you're now more or less comparable to the Warpriest.
So in the actual raid, Warpriest starts out invincible as usual, and the mechanic to stop that opens up after killing a bunch of dudes. This is because by the time you're ready to assault the Ascendant Realm of Oryx, you're close enough to the Warpriest in terms of this that you don't need that many more kills to override him. As such, his invincibility is disabled so long as the brand holder keeps killing enemies (you can just look up a Warpriest guide to see the mechanic if you want). However, after a while of taking damage, if he's still alive he battlefield wipes with the Occulus, killing anything not in the shadow of one of 3 pillars. This includes other hive. This bumps him back up to invincible.
Basically, throughout the fight, there's a tug of war going on between the two parties for who is superior in the eyes of the Sword Logic, and by winning you can hurt and kill him. No resistance or PIS or whatever shenanigans here, all it is is using the fact that the Sword Logic is a neutral ability (the Hive are just best at it) to your own advantage. The mechanic of the hax itself is what allows Guardians to win. Ofc its pretty insane on site since not a lot of people kill that many dudes nor have some higher dimensional lawhax or whatever, but it's limited by itself in verse, and the fact that anyone can do it.
So, funny enough there is a puzzle right before the Warpriest where if you mess up, you get killed by the Deathsingers.
Deathsingers are the second to last raid boss. Remember the whole sword logic explanation on Warpriest? Deathsingers are after him and another boss, Golgoroth. The Light also flows into the Guardian in the face of adversity, so they're drawing on more of their power than they ever have before at that point, excluding maybe the other raid bosses. As such, they can hold out against dying to the singing of the Deathsingers for a minute. That minute is all you need, and it makes for a frantic but quick encounter once you know what to do.
So in the beginning, someone gets BFR/Pnulled with the "Torn Between Dimensions" debuff. However, due to a combination of Sword Logic and Light, with the assistance of their fireteam that Guardian is able to assert their existence and resync themselves with the ascendant plane, and from there steal the Aura of Immortality of one of the Daughters. That means that Daughter actually takes damage now, and they don't have as much health as the other bosses so you can burn them down pretty fast. The nice thing about stealing the aura besides that is it actually gives it to you, and you and your teammates inside it are immune to everything. This includes the deathsong of the second daughter, so she can't even stop you from killing her sister. Do this again, and the daughters are dead.
Kairos Fateweaver:
To preface this, Kairos Fateweaver is the strongest tzeentchian daemon. Including the likes of Magnus. Kairos is basically a minor god in his own right as is, acting as an extension of Tzeentch and probably being superior to some of the actual minor chaos gods. So Kairos being insane makes sense given it's status. While nowhere near as strong in the materium, it's still around the same level as current primarchs, if slightly weaker physically.
So for one thing, Tzeentch can see the past and (almost) all of the present perfectly, but future is more difficult and Tzeentch can't see it with 100% accuracy at his level. Tzeentch wants to be able to do this, so he goes to the well of eternity. However, it contains secrets even tzeentch doesn't know about, and tzeentch doesn't want to try to enter it himself, so he starts sending his strongest Lord's of change. Kairos was the only one to survive, and came out mutated giving him the extra head. One sees the past perfectly, one sees the future perfectly, but he can't see the present (pretty easy to fill in the blanks yeah but we'll get to that). Since Kairos now knows things even tzeentch doesn't know, it generally makes a lot more sense to keep it in the warp as an oracle to help out Tzeentch then it does to send him to obliterate a battlefield, because mass destruction isn't unique to Kairos while this perfect future sight is.
Now the fact that Kairos doesn't fight that often due to being more important elsewhere already serves as a non applicable weakness, if you want something more applicable its weirdly enough his precog. You know how I said that he can't properly perceive the present? While ordinarily that's easily filled in, with the absurd levels of skill and experience Warhammer characters have that small lapse can matter immensely. Basically, if you can close the gap and are comparable to him, which you'd need to do to have survived his everything, you'll probably win the fight. Khornate daemons comparable to Kairos like
Skarbrand should win a melee fight,
Abaddon the Despoiler should win even discounting Chaos God interference,
Roboute Guillima was clearly too much for Kairos to actually try fighting fairly with and as such Kairos won through being a shining example of what it means to be Tzeentch, etc. Of course he's far from a pushover in melee. He's still scaling to gigafoe, can warp opponents into Chaos Spawn with a touch, precog that amazing is still precog, but he's not unbeatable. I realize that this is more a weakness in the sense of "it is possible to defeat Kairos Fateweaver at all" rather than a "doing this means you will easily defeat Kairos Fateweaver" but when you're basically the hand of a god, your opponents will take what they can get.
Third, Kairos is kind of a (apparently fandom doesn't like female dogs). If Kairos takes a good hit, he usually just leaves the fight entirely. While its smart to not want to stick around when you're as important as Kairos and there exist weapons like Vulkan's hammer, Gorechild, the Emprah's sword and some others that can permakill you even from the materium, it does mean that scaring Kairos off is viable for people that would have no hope of killing him in a prolonged fight. Once he got hit, was like "wtf Tzeentch why are you gimping my precog **** this I'm not fighting under these conditions" and left to go yell at Tzeentch I guess. Tzeentch intentionally messing with his servants also extends to Kairos even though Kairos is a part of Tzeentch in the literal sense as well. None of his servants are equipped with the means to actually complete Tzeentch by gathering all his missing pieces, as that has the potential to make them stronger than even he (
Especially with Kairos already being basically a minor god).
Kairos is used more as an oracle of sorts then for combat if he's in the material. There's this thing going on with the heads that's pretty interesting. One head will tell something about the future that is definitely true, barring the intervention of something like The Emperor, and the other head will tell something incredibly false, which usually results in some horrible fate for the listener should they heed it. Both prophecies will would equally true to the listener. Kairos was used to manipulate Lorgar into joining Chaos (though this was the one time both heads told the genuine truth), manipulate Ahriman into doing a lot of stuff, Kairos manipulated Skarbrand into trying to fight Khorne, manipulated a thousand son into changing a line in The Book of Magnus, and a lot of other things.
