Geralt of Rivia VS Clare (The Witcher VS Claymore)

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Geralt of Rivia, the White Wolf of Kaer Morhen.

Clare, the fastest sword of all the Claymores.

To be an outcast of society, to be treated as unequal, a mere nuisance to the very people you protect from the monsters that you slay. It is a fate that no one deserves. Even to these two stoic monster hunters, it creates a dent that no one can fix, or ever will. It’s conflicting, because if you ever put so much of your effort into protecting the people, yet all they do is spit in your face, then aren’t the beasts you slay just beasts, and the people the real monsters?

Well, no matter the injustices or deathly tasks they face, they do what is right, or whatever pays them well. But now the question is, if these two monster slayers were to go head-to-head, or blade-to-blade, who will continue on their path and who will become the hunted in a DEATH BATTLE!

Before We Start…

WARNING!: The Witcher and Claymore tackle some pretty dark topics and have various showings/mentions of blood, gore, abuse, and visible nudity. If you are uncomfortable with those topics, we recommend you don’t read this blog.

As for material, when it comes to Geralt, it’s rather complicated, given that the original author of The Witcher novels, Andrzej Sapkowski, stated that he doesn’t consider the games or other adaptations canon. But despite that, we will be focusing on the novels and anything that can reasonably be tied with the original novels, including the mainline The Witcher game series as well as connected comics and whatnot, because one, they follow after the books despite their separate canons, and two, it wouldn’t really be fair without them as they are a huge contributor to the series’ popularity as a whole. The Netflix show and animated movies (despite Netflix’s lack of respect for the material) will be used as supplementary evidence if needed, and any crossover appearances will not be included, so don’t expect any sneaky Soul Calibur or Fortnite scaling in this blog, that would be silly.

It’s also worth noting that some of Geralt’s equipment, abilities, feats and such are dependent on his choices made in the games. We’re not saying everything will be applied to Geralt in the fight, but it is worth mentioning these things at the very least, so they will be brought up for the sake of coverage.

Clare is a lot easier as the main focus will be the Claymore manga and databooks with the anime and DS game (yes there is one), Claymore: Gingan no Majo being used as supplementary evidence. Also to note that the DS game has never been properly translated to English so take any scans or links referenced in this blog with a grain of salt, if crucial to the debate at all.

Lastly, there WILL be spoilers for both series. You have been warned.

Background

Geralt

“Evil is evil. Lesser, greater, middling... Makes no difference. The degree is arbitrary. The definition's blurred. If I'm to choose between one evil and another... I'd rather not choose at all.”

Just who exactly is Geralt of Rivia? How did he obtain such titles as the White Wolf or the Butcher of Blaviken? You wouldn’t be blamed for asking such questions. Well, like every great warrior, he had a not-so-great past. Born to the sorceress Visenna in Kaedwen (ironically not Rivia), he had barely any time to grow before he was given to the School of the Wolf of Kaer Morhen. Now you may be thinking, “why was he given away so quickly?” Well, Geralt was chosen specifically for the purpose of becoming a mutant monster hunter known as a Witcher.

But where did the prospect of Witchers come from? It starts with a mysterious and cataclysmic event known as the Conjunction of the Spheres. For unknown reasons, entire worlds had collided with one another, causing humans, nonhumans, magic and monsters to be trapped with each other to deal with. The beasts were multiplying, slowly but surely overtaking the world. To counteract this, the northern rulers tasked their mages with creating superhuman monster hunters known as the Witchers. Unfortunately, the first Witcher was deemed a failure for their limited magic potential and banished from the castle, where they were found by other mages devoted to perfecting these experiments.

As for Geralt, he was anything but a failure. In fact, he was a prodigy. Like all Witchers, he was put through dangerous and downright impossible trials. Geralt persevered with the scars to bear, earned his Witcher medallion and set out to become a monster slayer for hire, with his trusty steed Roach. But despite all of his prowess, skill, and sheer endurance, beneath it all, he was a broken boy. Early in his training, he had the notion that he was needed in this world of turmoil and monsters. But when the time came to begin his career, he ran into not a beast, but a man attempting to take a young girl’s innocence right in front of her father. Geralt thought that he should step in, so he killed the man quickly, but instead of the gratitude he was expecting, the father had fled the scene and the girl, covered in blood, vomited and fainted just by looking at him. He knew then and there that this world didn’t need heroes. It needed professionals.

Since then, he rarely tried to intervene in others’ affairs if he could help it. Just take the jobs in front of you and reap the reward. That was all he lived by for the longest time, until he found himself in the town of Blaviken, where he was locked in a torrent of affairs between the mage Stregobor and the bandit leader Renfri. He could either kill Renfri, whom Geralt had gotten to know very well and yet was unapologetically a bandit, or kill Stregobor, who had played a part in ruining Renfri’s life. To them, it was searching for a greater good, but to Geralt, it was choosing between one evil and another. It didn’t make a difference to him, so what was the point of choosing?

He would soon find out that oftentimes, the stakes are too high in situations like this. Renfri had taken innocent people hostage with her bandit group. In the end, Geralt chose destiny and slaughtered every single one of the bandits, including Renfri herself, in front of everyone. He never returned after this. Nothing was truly gained from this encounter or the choices he supposedly had, only just a title that would forever haunt him: The Butcher of Blaviken.

But the butcher wouldn’t be completely without love and kindness in his life. Throughout his travels, he made many friends and family, including Yennefer of Vengerberg, who would be his one lifelong love amidst many other women, and Dandelion, a wayward poet who would not shut up, but was his greatest friend anyway. But eventually, he would find the one person that would complete the family he had created. At some point, he happened upon an ashen-haired girl named Cirilla or “Ciri”, who he would devote himself to training her in the ways of the Witcher and making sure that she would live happily, and yet, that would not be the case. Despite his efforts, he could not protect her from the torture of being a child of destiny. Not only was she born as an heiress to the Nilfgaardian throne, she was often threatened with experimentation because of her nature, and that’s just a taste of what destiny does to one person.

This was the heaviest weight on Geralt’s shoulders. From the day of his birth, free will was his only fantasy. Every sword he has ever swung, every contract he had ever taken, every icicle in his heart, was but another note in the book that is his destiny. If he truly had will of his own, would he put up with even a fraction of the prejudice he’s received? Would he have put down his cards for a game of Gwent at all? Would he have someone like you to make his choices for him? We don’t know for sure, but at the end of the day, he was born to be great, but forced to be made great.

But even in spite of everything, through the fire and the flames, and the townsfolk’s blame, he is still Geralt of Rivia. His choices may be more make-believe than the monsters he fights, but he will continue collecting his earnings and slaying the monsters that disrupt the world’s peace and his family’s lives, one hunt at a time.

Clare

“No. 47 in the Organization, Clare, successor of Teresa's flesh and blood, bearer of Irene's right arm, and the one who carries Ophelia's hopes and soul to hunt the Awakened Being Priscilla.”

Let us tell you a story. A tale of fantasy, tragedy, revenge, and monsters. In a world where villages are slaughtered by the dozens by the monstrous Yoma, it is this lurking threat that has led to women being taken in by a confidential Organization to become demon-infused supersoldiers known as Claymores. Despite being the only warriors in the world capable of defeating the Yoma, these “Silver-Eyed Witches” are hated by many and sometimes even banned from towns as a result. One of which, simply known as Clare, was no different.

Being tasked most of her life with killing Yoma, nothing seemed to phase this warrior. However, behind that cold calculating gaze is a broken woman who has suffered loss as far back as she can remember. Her life was rough from the start as she witnessed both of her parents killed by a Yoma who was impersonating her brother. Afterwards, she would be taken away by a Yoma who would abuse her physically, psychologically, and even sexually. Causing her to lose all emotion and stop speaking entirely.

Until she was rescued by the Number 1-ranked Claymore, Teresa. Despite forceful rejections and Teresa making it very clear she didn’t want anything to do with her, nothing would stop the young Clare from getting close, to which Teresa reluctantly lets her follow. Over time, Teresa starts to bond with Clare, becoming a motherly figure to her. Until Teresa kills a bandit leader, something that no Claymore should do, even if rightfully justified. This leads to Teresa being marked for death by the Organization, with a group of Claymores tasked with taking her down. Although Teresa had no issue taking down 3 of the 4 members in the squad, the last member, Priscilla, was persistent and wasn’t willing to let Teresa go. Priscilla’s desperation to kill Teresa led to her releasing more and more Yoki until she was too far gone, becoming what is known as an Awakened Being. She begged for death but Teresa let her guard down, and was decapitated. Priscilla flew off ignoring Clare, who was left alone once again.

Taking the head of her adoptive caretaker, Clare wandered aimlessly until she came across one of the Organization’s head honchos, Rubel. Clare offered him to plant the flesh and blood from Teresa’s head inside of her body, making her into a Claymore, This not only made her the first person to willingly become a Claymore, but also the first Claymore to be 1/4 Yoma instead of 1/2 Yoma like all the others. The experiment was considered a failure as Clare was incredibly weak and assigned the lowest rank among the 150th generation of Claymores at Number 47. Though this didn’t seem to bother Clare as her sole mission was that one day, she will come across Priscilla and take her revenge.

During her time as a Claymore she would come across a naive boy named Raki. After his uncle was killed by a Yoma disguised as his own brother, Clare took pity on Raki and allowed him to follow as her personal cook for the time being. Raki was not just someone Clare cared for but someone she needed as it was his love and humanity that gave Clare the strength she needed to overcome her Awakening, almost succumbing to the same fate as Priscilla. Flashforward a couple years to the Northern Campaign, an assignment that would change Clare’s life for the worse. 24 Claymores had been gathered to kill a horde of Awakened Beings, however, it resulted in a bloodbath. Only 7 of the assigned Claymores made it out alive. Those that came out alive deserted from the Organization, becoming the Seven Ghosts.

Training for 7 years with her new team, Clare would come across a being known as “The Destroyer”, a being created by the merged bodies of Luciela and Rafaela, and enter its consciousness. Rafaela explains that her body will die if she is killed in this world. Fighting and defeating her, Clare is left with the memories of the warrior. 

Clare attempts to keep as many people out of harm's way until she encounters Priscilla. She barely survives but after being absorbed by The Destroyer, her strong will allows her to take control and give her friends time to escape by restraining Priscilla. The Destroyer absorbs the surrounding forest, becoming a shapeless cocoon. She is later freed from the cocoon and reunites with her comrades in the final battle with Priscilla.

It was then she would come face-to-face with Priscilla. The two would begin their final battle, but Clare remembers the voice of Rafaela, Clare wasn’t trying to Awaken, but someone else inside her was and assisting her through their fight. As she discovers this, in an instant in Clare’s place stands Teresa of the Faint Smile, who had been with Clare all along within their shared mind. Teresa explains Clare’s ability to trust and fight alongside her comrades is her strength before she Awakens in the real world to continue the fight, and kill Priscilla once and for all. Teresa then wishes farewell as she goes back to spiritual form inside of Clare’s body.

Although her journey was full of pain and sorrow and the traumatic experiences she endured will follow her until the day she dies, putting down the Awakened Being that has haunted her for many years allows Clare to finally rest. But it’s ironic isn’t it? Even if the common perception of Claymores is that they eventually become that of the monsters which they fight, it was the bonds Clare made with Raki, Teresa, and many others that made her feel truly human.

Experience & Skill

Geralt

As a Witcher, Geralt’s expertise in the ways of killing until they’re dead is undefeated. Even by his fellow Witchers, he’s considered their superior in every way. Withholding the Witcher ways, he carries not one, but two blades. One is made of silver, material made for killing monsters, the other is steel for those of more natural blood. Being trained by the legendary Vesemir, he is damn near unmatched in the ways of swordsmanship, with only a select few being able to come close to him. In fact, he’s known for being “the best swordsman the North has ever seen”.

But it’s not just swords that make him as feared as he is. He is a master with anything that can be classed as a weapon. He is an expert marksman, using his varied crossbows to take out those nuisances from leagues away. His alchemy isn’t bad either, being able to create various potions that increase his capabilities, so long as he doesn’t ingest too many of them and give himself poisoning. And of course, if he needs to, he’ll make a weapon out of a shovel. Yeah, a shovel.

If all else fails, which in a Witcher’s case is slim to none, Geralt is a master when it comes to running the hands. He’s participated in many fistfights across the nation, and won all of them, even against monsters like striga and rock trolls.

Geralt is so good with his skills in these categories that he can act as if on instinct, even in his sleep, he can act against attacks. But that’s to be expected from those with lifespans as long as Witchers. Geralt himself approaches 100 years of age, but this is still young compared to older Witchers like Vesemir, who was allegedly over 400 years of age at the time of his death. Can you imagine fighting creatures and surviving on your own for so long, putting up with the townsfolk's berating just for doing your job? Any normal person would’ve lost their mind, but Geralt has remained the best damn Witcher the North has ever seen without so much as a dent in his mind.

This is made apparent with the several feats of intellect he has accomplished. Obviously we know of his survival technique, but he is more than just gifted in that. He is able to pick up the smallest details in anything, including his surroundings and the people around him, and deduce exactly what has happened prior. He has an entire library’s worth of knowledge on monsters and knows just what their weaknesses are, including werewolves, vampires, spirits, wraiths, necrophages, elementals, succubi, and even all-powerful Djinns. Speaking of all-powerful, his greatest feat of intellect was when he was to save Olgierd Von Everec from the clutches of the evil Gaunter O’Dimm, an otherworldly being that makes pacts with others in exchange for their very souls, said to be “Evil Incarnate”. Despite his fearsomeness, Geralt pushed through the world of O’Dimm’s creation and solved his riddle, freeing Olgierd and sending O’Dimm on his way.

When it’s all said and done, we can all agree that even among his own kind, Geralt stands out above the rest, with his unmatched skills in combat, decades of experience, vast amounts of knowledge, and cunning that rivals gods. What else can we expect from the White Wolf and champion of Gwent? He bets against impossible odds, plays his cards right, and he has the best deck.

Clare

As a Claymore, Clare is no stranger to combat. Despite being the lowest ranking Claymore at 47th, she is constantly moving from assignment to assignment with little break in between. Even though others look down on her due to her low rank, she surprises them with her skills in combat. Like all Claymores, Clare is part Yoma, making her a stronger warrior then humans, but unlike other Claymores, Clare is only 1/4 Yoma, as she is the only Claymore to have taken the flesh and blood of a fellow Claymore, Teresa, rather than that of a Yoma. 

Although she was considered weak at first, the experiment not only left her with the abilities of Teresa, but also made Clare a vessel for Teresa, who was the formerly ranked Number 1 Claymore of the 77th generation, considered by many to be the most powerful Claymore of all time.

Although considered skilled with swords by human eyes, fellow Claymores believed Clare to be bad. However, as time went on, she defied all odds and became one of the most skilled Claymore of her generation 7 years after the Northern Campaign, even being able to stand on equal ground with the Claymore, Miria, who was ranked Number 6 of the 127th generation of Claymores. Clare would soon come across and defeat Rafaela, a Claymore who was ranked at Number 5 in the 150th generation. After which, Rafaela would give Clare her memories and skills, giving her the ability to react to extremely precise movements as well as adding kicks to her already deadly fighting style, a fighting style that was made even more deadly once Teresa awoke and took control of Clare’s body in their fight against Priscilla.

Having taken Teresa’s flesh and blood, Clare’s body was left with a unique side effect. Teresa was revived, but shared the same body, and throughout Clare’s fight with Rafaela, she was helping Clare and trying to Awaken from inside all along. Teresa is the only one aware of the other’s fighting experience, having witnessed it from Clare’s perspective for years. So along with her own experience, she has Teresa’s and Rafaela’s experience on top of that. It’s difficult to find how long each Claymore generation lasts, however. Having the combined memories of 3 Claymores means Clare is more than capable of adapting to threats. Although Clare would have a bit more difficulty due to only having Rafaela’s memories and not Teresa's, she is a formidable warrior who can often rely on her intelligence and quick-wit to win.

Throughout her career as a Claymore, Clare has shown herself to be quite cunning, whether it would be distracting her rival with a rock in the final exam, using her own hair to lure in a Yoma so she can kill it, getting impaled by a Yoma and using that moment to hurl both the Yoma and herself off into a ditch in order to pin it down, hiding her sword inside of a statue, or when she manipulated her Yoki around herself and fellow Claymore, Jean, to attack the Awakened Being Dauf without Jean getting in the way.

She knows her strength can only get her so far, especially when she started out as the “worst” Claymore, and she isn’t the type to jump head first into battle and throw caution to the wind. This Silver-Eyed Witch is a force to be reckoned with.

Equipment

Geralt

Witcher Armor

What’s a Witcher without a fine set of armor? Dead, that’s what. Throughout his adventures, Geralt has acquired many sets of armor, but to keep it short, we will list off only the sets of armor made specifically for Witchers.

Geralt can temporarily buff his armor by 20% at Workbenches.

Armor	Description
Kaer Morhen Gear	The iconic chest piece worn by Geralt Has a better version called Warrior’s Leather Jacket +15% resistance to piercing and bludgeoning damage +25% resistance to slashing damage, damage from monsters, and elemental damage
Ursine Gear	Gear from the Bear School of Witchers +85% Adrenaline Point gain, +55% resistance to piercing damage, +40% resistance to bludgeoning damage, +70% resistance to slashing damage, +65% resistance to damage from monsters, +50% resistance to elemental damage Set bonuses: When a Quen shield shatters, there is a chance a new one will be cast at no Stamina cost. The bonus increases by 5% for each piece of the set. Damage dealt by Abilities involving Quen is increased by 200%.
Feline Gear	Gear from the Cat School of Witchers +85% Attack Power, +40% resistance to piercing damage, +50% resistance to slashing damage, +42% resistance to damage from monsters, +64% resistance to elemental damage Set bonuses: Strong Attacks increase Fast Attack damage for 5 seconds by 10% for each piece of the set. Rear attacks deal 50% more damage, and also stun the opponent at the cost of 1 Adrenaline Point(s).
Griffin Gear	Gear from the Griffin School of Witchers +85% Sign Intensity, +50% resistance to piercing damage, +27% resistance to bludgeoning damage, +60% resistance to slashing damage, +55% resistance to damage from monsters, +65% resistance to elemental damage After using Stamina to cast a Sign in its standard mode, the next Sign cast within 3 seconds will be cast in standard mode without using Stamina. The size of Yrden traps is increased by 40%. While you are within an Yrden trap, Stamina regeneration is increased by 5/s and Sign Intensity by 100%, and damage is reduced by 20%.
Manticore Gear	Gear from the Manticore School of Witchers +20 Maximum Toxicity, +40% resistance to piercing damage, +60% resistance to slashing damage, +45% resistance to damage from monsters, +65% resistance to elemental damage, +60% critical hit damage bonus, +12% critical hit chance Set bonuses: Critical hit chance and critical hit damage also apply to bombs. Bombs are thrown without any delay. The maximum number of charges for each alchemy item is increased by 1.
Wolven Gear	Gear from the Wolf School of Witchers +35% Adrenaline Point gain, +35% Attack Power, +35% Sign Intensity, +40% resistance to piercing damage, +27% resistance to bludgeoning damage, +60% resistance to slashing damage, +55% resistance to damage from monsters, +65% resistance to elemental damage Set bonuses: Each instance of Bleeding applied to enemies increases sword damage by 1% for each piece of the set. Each Adrenaline Point increases the possible number of Bleeding effects that can be applied to a single enemy.
Viper Gear	Gear from the Viper School of Witchers +100% resistance to poison, +50% resistance to piercing damage, +50% resistance to slashing damage, +44% resistance to damage from monsters, +60% resistance to elemental damage Set bonuses: Your set bonus is in another castle
Forgotten Wolven Gear	Gear from the ancient times of the Wolf School of Witchers +20% Attack Power, +20% Adrenaline Point gain, +12% Sign Intensity, +12% Yrden Sign Intensity, +12% Aard Sign Intensity, +34% resistance to piercing damage, +42% resistance to slashing damage, +4% resistance to bludgeoning damage, +48% resistance to damage from monsters, +60% resistance to elemental damage Set bonuses: Increases the duration of potions. The bonus increases by 7% for each piece of the set. Aard deals additional damage to enemies affected by Yrden.

Witcher Medallion

Upon completion of the Trial of the Grasses, Witchers are given special silver medallions as a memento of their struggles. These medallions don’t just look cool, they are also used as detectors of magic and monsters, vibrating and pulling on its chain when magic or a beast is present, although some monsters like Dopplers and Higher Vampires bypass this.

Dagger

Like every monster hunter, he carries a dagger that is pretty much obscured by everything else in his arsenal. He mostly uses it for quick kills or to make trophies out of monster heads, though he has used throwing daggers before.

Chain

In one of the game’s cinematics, Geralt uses a long, likely silver, chain during a hunting mission. It’s a decent ranged option.

Trophy Hook

Although he typically uses this to hang a monster’s head from his horse’s saddle, he has used this in combat before, such as when he fought the dragon Saskia and stabbed her in the head with it to disorient her flight and cause her to fall out of the sky.

Steel and Silver Swords

There are two types of swords he carries, silver swords are made to kill even the toughest beasts with ease, whereas steel swords are for any opposing humans and nonhumans. Like with the Witcher armor, we will be listing off only the swords that are part of the Witcher armor sets, given that they are the most unique and that they add to their respective set bonuses.

Geralt can temporarily buff his swords by 20% at a Grindstone.

Sword	Description
Ursine Silver Sword	Silver sword from the Bear School of Witchers +25% Adrenaline Point gain, +100% critical hit damage bonus, +5% critical hit chance, +14% chance to dismember, +20% bonus experience from monsters
Ursine Steel Sword	Steel sword from the Bear School of Witchers +25% Adrenaline Point gain, +100% critical hit damage bonus, +5% critical hit chance, +14% chance to dismember, +5% bonus experience from humans and nonhumans
Feline Silver Sword	Silver sword from the Cat School of Witchers +15% Aard Sign Intensity, +15% critical hit chance, +15% chance to cause bleeding, +10% chance to dismember, +20% bonus experience from monsters
Feline Steel Sword	Steel sword from the Cat School of Witchers +20% Aard Sign Intensity, +15% critical hit chance, +15% chance to cause bleeding, +10% chance to dismember, +5% bonus experience from humans and nonhumans
Griffin Silver Sword	Silver sword from the Griffin School of Witchers +25% Sign Intensity, +50% critical hit damage bonus, +10% critical hit chance, +10% chance to dismember, +20% bonus experience from monsters
Griffin Steel Sword	Steel sword from the Griffin School of Witchers +25% Sign Intensity, +50% critical hit damage bonus, +10% critical hit chance, +10% chance to dismember, +5% bonus experience from humans and nonhumans
Manticore Silver Sword	Silver sword from the Manticore School of Witchers +300 armor piercing, +50% critical hit damage bonus, +10% critical hit chance, +15% chance to cause bleeding, +5% bonus experience from monsters
Manticore Steel Sword	Steel sword from the Manticore School of Witchers +300 armor piercing, +50% critical hit damage bonus, +10% critical hit chance, +15% chance to cause bleeding, +5% bonus experience from humans and nonhumans
Wolven Silver Sword	Silver sword from the Wolf School of Witchers +15% Sign Intensity, +15% Adrenaline Point gain, +15% critical hit chance, +15% chance to cause bleeding, +20% bonus experience from monsters
Wolven Steel Sword	Steel sword from the Wolf School of Witchers +15% Sign Intensity, +15% Adrenaline Point gain, +15% critical hit chance, +15% chance to cause bleeding, +5% bonus experience from humans and nonhumans
Viper Silver Sword	Silver sword from the Viper School of Witchers +20% Aard Sign Intensity, +10% chance to poison, +20% bonus experience from monsters
Viper Steel Sword	Steel sword from the Viper School of Witchers +5% critical hit chance, +15% chance to poison, +5% bonus experience from humans and nonhumans
Viper Venomous Silver Sword	Silver sword from the Viper School of Witchers +25% Aard Sign Intensity, +75% critical hit damage bonus, +10% critical hit chance, +15% chance to poison, +20% bonus experience from monsters
Viper Venomous Steel Sword	Steel sword from the Viper School of Witchers +25% Aard Sign Intensity, +75% critical hit damage bonus, +10% critical hit chance, +15% chance to poison, +5% bonus experience from humans and nonhumans
Forgotten Wolven Silver Sword	Silver sword from the ancient times of the Wolf School of Witchers +10% Sign Intensity, +7% Adrenaline Point gain, +35% critical hit damage bonus, +15% critical hit chance, +10% chance to cause bleeding, +10% bonus experience from monsters
Forgotten Wolven Steel Sword	Steel sword from the ancient times of the Wolf School of Witchers +7% Sign Intensity, +10% Adrenaline Point gain, +20% critical hit damage bonus, +7% critical hit chance, +5% chance to cause bleeding, +10% bonus experience from humans and nonhumans

Special Swords

While most weapons he carries are mostly the same with one small effect, there are some exceptions throughout the series. These weapons have unique effects that make them stand out from the rest.

Sword	Description
Aerondight	A silver sword earned from the Lady of the Lake In Witcher 1, it has a 50% chance to cause incapacitating pain, blindness, fire damage, and landing a critical hit, though not all at once In Witcher 3, each hit increases the damage output of the sword by 10%, and charges are lost when damage is taken A fully-charged sword always deals critical damage, and killing a foe with a fully-charged sword will permanently increase the damage output
Moonblade	A silver sword gifted by the Royal Huntsman in Witcher 1, and found again in Witcher 3 through various means In Witcher 1, deals twice the damage of a normal silver sword In Witcher 3, increases the intensity of the Yrden Sign by 1%, adds 10-15% more critical hit damage, adds 1-5% to critical hit chance, and adds 1% chance to freeze
Iris	A steel sword gifted by Olgierd von Everec should he be saved from Gaunter O’Dimm Will flash red when attacking or blocking 3 times, and will deal intense damage and knockback when flashed red, but at the cost of 15% of Geralt’s health
Sihil	A special sword of Dwarven craft The runes on the blade is dwarven language that translates to “Death to the motherfuckers”
The Caretaker’s Spade	Oh, you thought we were kidding? When dealt damage, heals Geralt for 10% of the damage dealt by the shovel

Runes & Glyphs

Runes and Glyphs act as enhancements in the world of the Witcher. Runes can be inserted or branded into a Witcher’s blades and Glyphs on armor to give an additional effect to assist in battle, three seems to be the limit for them.

Rune	Description
Earth	In Witcher 1, increases damage by 10%, and offers a 25% chance to knockback In Witcher 2, increases Vitality by 25 points, and adds a 5% reduction on Block
Moon	In Witcher 1, increases opponent’s sensitivity to silver by 15% In Witcher 2, Signs deal an additional 4 points of damage
Sun	In Witcher 1, it has a 25% chance to cause blindness or incineration In Witcher 2, increases damage by 5%
Perun	In Witcher 1, it is a temporary rune that increases damage by 60%, increases accurate hits by 60%, and increases critical hit chance by 30% In Witcher 3, is a Runestone that increases Adrenaline Point gain by up to 5%
Svarog	In Witcher 1, is a temporary rune that increases damage by 40%, increases hit accuracy by 40%, and critical hit chance by 5% In Witcher 3, is a Runestone that increases armor piercing by up to 30 points
Vodon	Temporary rune that increases damage by 20% and hit accuracy by 20%
Fire	Increases resistance to fire attacks by 20%, adds a 10% chance to burn, and increases damage by 5%
Ysgith	Adds an 8% chance to cause bleeding and increases damage by 7%
Dazhbog	Adds a 5% chance to cause burning
Chernobog	Increases damage by up to 5%
Stribog	Adds a 5% chance to stagger enemies
Triglav	Adds a 5% chance to stun enemies
Veles	Increases Sign Intensity by up to 5%
Morana	Adds a 5% chance to poison enemies
Zoria	Adds a 5% chance to freeze enemies
Devana	Adds a 5% chance to cause bleeding
Glyph of Aard	Increases Aard Intensity by up to 10%
Glyph of Axii	Increases Axii Intensity by up to 10%
Glyph of Igni	Increases Igni Intensity by up to 10%
Glyph of Quen	Increases Quen Intensity by up to 10%
Glyph of Yrden	Increases Yrden Intensity by up to 10%
Glyph of Binding	Gives 5% resistance to bleeding
Glyph of Mending	Adds 3 points to Vitality regeneration
Glyph of Reinforcement	Reduces armor durability loss by 100%
Glyph of Warding	Gives 3% resistance to elemental damage

Crossbows and Bolts

It’s not all silver and steel for Geralt. When enemies tend to get a little too high for their own good, Geralt will knock them back down to earth with his crossbows and bolts.

Bolt	Description
Crossbow Bolts	Your average crossbow bolts
Blunt Crossbow Bolts	Crossbow bolts made for bludgeoning
Split Bolts	Bolts that can be fired as multiple bolts in one
Exploding Bolts	Bolts that explode on contact
Precision Bolts	Bolts that have a better chance of dealing critical damage
Tracking Bolts	Bolts that cause bleeding damage
Broadhead Bolts	Bolts that cause heavy bleeding damage

Bombs

In those cases where Geralt needs to deal some explosive damage, his variety of bombs will come in quite handy. He has quite the number of bombs that cause various effects.

Bomb	Description
Grapeshot	Deals shrapnel damage upon exploding, and slight fire damage
Moon Dust	Contains silver splinters that interrupt and prevent monsters from transforming and regenerating
Northern Wind	Freezes foes solid upon exploding
Dimeritium Bomb	Releases a cloud of dimeritium that nullifies magic and monsters’ magical abilities
Dancing Star	Deals heavy fire damage upon exploding
Red Haze	Releases a psychoactive gas, causing enemies to fight each other
Stenchbulb	Releases a gas so rancid that not even necrophages can handle the smell
Samum	Stuns and/or blinds all opponents within range
Devil’s Puffball	Releases a cloud of poison when detonated
Dragon’s Dream	Releases a cloud of flammable gas that will explode when ignited
King and Queen	Releases a gas that invokes fear in those within range
Zerrikanian Sun	Blinds all opponents within range
Flare	Illuminates the surrounding area when detonated

Potions & Decoctions

If blades, bolts, and bombs aren’t enough, Geralt has various potions and decoctions that he can consume to give him boons in combat, though he can’t ingest too many, as potions are quite poisonous, even to Witchers who are resistant to poisons.

Potions

Potion	Description
Swallow	Increases the rate of Vitality regeneration; pauses regeneration when taking damage Superior Swallow relinquishes the pauses
Thunderbolt	Augments muscle power and damage, but at the cost of Vitality and Vitality regeneration, and less effective dodges and parries Superior Thunderbolt increases critical hit chance by 100% in storms
Tawny Owl	Increases stamina regeneration and allows more frequent parries and Sign-casting Superior Tawny Owl never expires during night
Blizzard	Slows Geralt’s perception of time, increasing his reflexes tenfold Superior Blizzard relinquishes stamina cost with 3 Adrenaline points
Black Blood	Turns his blood into poison for monsters, like Vampires and Necrophages, that dare to drink it Superior Black Blood passively deals lingering damage to these monsters and knocks them back when drinking his blood
Full Moon	More than doubles Geralt’s maximum Vitality Superior Full Moon heals Vitality by an amount equal to current Toxicity
Petri’s Philter	Increases Signs’ effectiveness and damage Superior Petri’s Philter will always let Signs cast special effects
Reinald’s Philter	Increases Sign intensity and Stamina regeneration
Golden Oriole	Grants immunity to status effects like bleeding, burning, poison, and neutralizes already present effects Superior Golden Oriole will cause poison to heal instead of damage
Cat	Gives Geralt night vision and can see a being’s presence even through walls Superior Cat grants immunity to hypnosis and increased critical hit chance
Maribor Forest	Increases frequency of Sign-casting, parrying, and Adrenaline Point gain, but reduces Vitality and effectiveness of status effects Superior Maribor Forest grants an Adrenaline Point when ingested
White Raffard’s Decoction	Immediately restores some lost Vitality, but reduces damage dealt Superior White Raffard’s heals all damage taken, and grants immunity to damage for a short time
Killer Whale	Increases breath supply while underwater and improves vision underwater
White Honey	Negates the toxicity in a Witcher’s body, though it also negates the positive effects of potions as well
Gadwall	More potent Vitality regen than Swallow, though it lowers offensive and defensive capabilities
Brock	Increases effectiveness of status effects, but also halves Geralt’s status effect resistance
Rook	Increases power output, and at a lower cost than Thunderbolt
Tiara	Reduces loss of Vigor when parrying, but reduces damage output and durability
Stammelford’s Philter	Increases the intensity of Signs, though it slowly drains Vitality
Lapwing	Regenerates Stamina more quickly, but also reduces Vitality and resistances to status effects
Virga	Increases resistance to status effects, but also reduces effectiveness of his own status effects
Wolf	Increases precision and accuracy, critical hit chance, and status effects are more effective
Mongoose	Grants resistance to poisons bordering on immunity
Bindweed	Increases resistance to acid and acid-based attacks
Kiss	Reduces Geralt’s blood loss from heavy blows
Shrike	Mutates Geralt’s blood, to where if it makes contact with an opponent, it deals pain
De Vries’ Extract	Allows Geralt to see invisible enemies clear as day
Willow	Grants Geralt immunity to being stunned and/or knocked down
Perfume	Gives Geralt a nice aroma, but can induce intoxication Because drinking perfume is a Witcher’s pastime apparently
Wives’ Tears	Returns Geralt to sobriety Because drinking Wives’ Tears is a Witcher’s AA apparently
Wolverine	Gives Geralt Adamantium bones and- Increases attack efficiency and damage inflicted by 50% when Geralt's Vitality falls below half
Unnamed Painkiller Potion	Completely nullifies any pain he would’ve felt prior

Decoctions

Decoction	Description
Alghoul	Adrenaline Points are generated more quickly than normal until the first successful enemy attack
Ancient Leshen	Each Sign cast increases Stamina regeneration for the remainder of the fight
Arachas	Reduces damage received based on armor and inventory weight; less weight carried and lighter armor means less damage is taken
Archgriffin	If any Stamina is available, strong attacks consume all of it and reduce the struck foe's Vitality by 5% after their normal damage is calculated
Basilisk	Applies a buff increasing the intensity of a randomly selected Sign at dusk and dawn
Chort	Renders Geralt completely immune to being staggered
Cockatrice	All alchemy creations can be used one additional time
Doppler	Increases damage by 50% and further increases attack power from behind
Earth Elemental	Increases Geralt’s resistance to Vitality-draining effects, further increases the longer the effect’s duration is
Ekhidna	Performing actions that consume Stamina regenerates Vitality
Ekimmara	Damage dealt to foes regenerates Vitality
Fiend	Increases Geralt’s carry weight
Foglet	Increases Sign intensity in cloudy conditions
Forktail	Combining various attacks (strong strikes, fast strikes, Signs) grants a bonus that increases Attack Power for the next attack mounted or Sign Intensity for the next Sign cast
Grave Hag	Each foe slain accelerates Vitality regeneration for the duration of the battle
Griffin	Taking damage increases resistance to physical and elemental attacks
Katakan	Increases the chance to land a critical hit
Leshen	A portion of the damage dealt by enemies is reflected back on the attacker
Nekker Warrior	Mounts never panic; 50% increase to mounted combat damage
Nightwraith	Geralt's maximum Vitality is increased with each foe killed. This increase lasts until he meditates or fast travels.
Noonwraith	The duration of knockdown, hypnosis, stun, and blindness are significantly reduced
Reliever’s Decoction	Increases damage dealt and reduces damage taken from spiritual enemies like Wraiths
Succubus	Attack power increases throughout a fight until it reaches a threshold, or a climax, if you will ;)
Troll	Regenerates damage both in and out of combat
Water Hag	Increases damage by 50% while Geralt is at full health
Werewolf	Significantly increases Stamina regeneration during a clear, moonlit night; 50% Stamina regeneration in combat.
Wraith	Whenever a single hit drains more than a third of Vitality, a Quen shield is activated which protects against the next attack
Wyvern	Each blow landed increases attack damage either until Geralt takes damage or ends the fight

Oils

(He’s oiling up tho O_O)

Geralt has several different types of oils that he covers his blades with to deal more damage against certain foes, whether they be humans, nonhumans, vampires, necrophages, draconids, etc.

While most of his oils are situational, Geralt does have a handful of all-purpose oils to use in a pinch.

Oil	Description
Brown Oil	In Witcher 1 & 2, negates regeneration on enemies and causes their bleeding to accelerate
Crinfrid Oil	Causes afflicted enemies excruciating pain
Falka’s Blood	Increases damage by up to 20%
Whirl	Increases damage by up to 15%
Arachnid Oil	Poisons enemies by up to 50% of their health

Roach

Oddly enough, the stone-cold Witcher relies on a trusty steed (which he always names Roach) at his beck and call, quite literally, as he can whistle and call Roach from seemingly anywhere. Roach is a female (or male if you have no soul) horse that assists Geralt in travel or combat, but as much as he doesn’t like to show it, he does care for Roach.

While Roach is a valuable steed on her own, especially since she can see astral beings (we don’t know why either, just accept it), Geralt outfits Roach with various pieces of equipment.

Note: For trivia, The Witcher novels are Polish, and the Polish word for “female horse” is “Płotka”. This word is also an informal version of the Polish word "płoć”, which translates to “roach”, so surprise, your mare is a roach!

Blinders

Blinders not only look cool, but they are also designed to keep Roach’s fear from overcoming her in battle, because otherwise, Roach will freak out and toss Geralt off of her back and flee. Can’t blame her though, not everyone is a born warrior like Geralt.

Saddle

Naturally, a good horse needs a good saddle. Not only can Geralt sit comfortably while on horseback, saddles provide Roach with additional stamina while on the move. While most saddles are the same, with the only differences being the number of stamina given, there is one saddle that stands out.

Caparison of Lament

(Roach’s true and most terrifying form)

The Caparison of Lament is a unique saddle of demonic origin, given to Geralt by the otherworldly Gaunter O’Dimm, should Geralt let O’Dimm take Olgierd von Everec’s soul. This saddle gives Roach a demonic appearance, as you can see above, and not only does it give Roach the highest amount of stamina that can be received from a saddle, it has a unique effect, that being that it “addles the minds of nearby enemies”. 

What this means is that it can stun an enemy and lock them in place for a short time, possibly similar to Geralt’s Axii Sign. Additionally, this saddle can knock enemies off of their horses should they be mounted on one, and sometimes, the enemy can start panicking rather than being stunned, possibly acting as a psychoactive effect.

Saddlebags

Saddlebags, as you can imagine, are bags attached to the saddle of Roach, which allow Geralt to carry some items around should his inventory space be full.

Trophies

Sometimes a Witcher receives bragging rights for killing deadly creatures that should reasonably be above his pay grade, so he keeps the heads of these monsters as trophies, which are hung from Roach’s saddle. 

These trophies can also give him minor but welcome passive effects like finding additional herbs from sources, receiving more gold and experience from slaying humans and monsters, and a small percentage to dismember opponents.

Eye of Nehaleni

The Eye of Nehaleni is an artifact given to him by Keira Metz. This allows Geralt to dispel illusions of all kinds, though large-scale illusions like the Fablesphere are immune to it.

Fringilla’s Medallion

In the books, Geralt was given a medallion by the sorceress Fringilla. This allows Geralt to cast illusions, which was the only reason he managed to defeat the mage Vilgefortz, who far outclassed him in power.

Clare

Body Armor

A uniform worn by all Claymores. The uniform is simple with the shirt, leggings, and a dickie marked with a warrior’s symbol worn under the minimal armor plates which covers only the 7 vital areas of the body. Vambraces for the forearms, Spaulders for the shoulders, a buckle to protect the throat, the sword carrier which holds the sword and protects the spine, Faulds which protects the lower abdomen, Chausses for the legs, and Sabatons to protect the feet. Unlike other Claymores, Clare's Vambraces cover the wrists instead of the whole forearm.

Claymore

The sword that gives the Claymores their name. It’s a two-hand greatsword but Claymores are skilled enough to wield it with just one. It’s assumed to be made by a metal from another continent. The metal is hard enough that it will not chip or break, making the sword nigh-indestructible against the Yoma.

Cloak

Clare has worn a black hooded cloak to disguise herself during many missions. However, it is now a signature look for the Seven Ghosts, Claymores who have since departed from the Organization.

Grappling Hook

A tool Clare used in an espionage mission to swing from the roof of a building to the top of a bell tower without anyone noticing.

Twin Blades

A pair of long knives that Clare used during her espionage mission. They get the job done when her trademark Claymore sword isn’t obtainable.

Yoki Suppression Pills

Clare keeps a small container of pills with her during missions to help suppress her Yoki levels and also change her eye color from silver to brown in order to hide her Claymore identity. Right before the Northern Campaign, Miria states that only taking half of the pill will not weaken one’s Yoki energy or the ability to sense Yoki and that when unconscious, Claymores can essentially play dead when their flow of Yoki stops. The effects of these pills usually last up to half a day.

Abilities

Geralt

Witcher Physiology

Despite the harsh and damn near impossible trials he went through, the boons he received more than made up for his troubles. Natural Witcher abilities include…

• Longevity: Witchers have lifespans quite a ways beyond that of a normal human. While Geralt himself is approaching 100 years of age, he is considered quite young compared to other Witchers like Vesemir, who was implied to be around 400 years old at the time of his death, and even then, he was still just barely an old man.
  
  

• Pain Tolerance & Regeneration: Witchers are able to take many otherwise fatal wounds and keep up the fight, eventually regenerating the damage, such as when Geralt had a hole in his neck that regenerated in months-time, or when he got bitten in the neck by the Higher Vampire Dettlaff and still kept fighting as if it was a bug bite. Another Witcher, Erland of Larvik, had a hole put through his chest and he still continued to fight the manticore that did it, though he had died shortly after killing the manticore because of the blood loss and venom.
  
  

• Self-Sustenance: Witchers like Kiyan can be starved and dehydrated for weeks, and even years, yet they can still function as if they never needed it.
  
  

• Enhanced Senses: After the intense trials, a Witcher’s senses become far more broad than the average man. They can see in pitch-black darkness thanks to their cat-like pupils, hear the rising heartbeat of a liar, feel when the wind’s howling, casually sense multiple people aiming arrows at him and getting antsy while aiming, and can even pick up scents on things used quite a long time ago.
  
  

• Body Control (to some degree): Witchers have the innate ability to control the speed of their pulse and adrenaline at will, giving them far better reflexes and strength than most.
  
  

• Analytical Prediction: Given how much is learned from Kaer Morhen, Witchers are effective in predicting their opponents moves. Geralt can easily predict the attacks of a nimble creature and deliver counters. He also immediately knew the wrong move of a young Ciri before she performed it.
  
  

• Instinctive Reaction: The Witcher training also provides reactions from pure instinct. Geralt instinctively raised his blade against an attack in pitch black darkness. He can even instinctively dodge attacks in his sleep.
  
  

• Mastery of Stealth: Witchers are known to be able to make steps without making a single sound.

Signs

(Art by Svoby93)

Although Witchers have limited magic potential, they are trained to use more simple spells called Signs to assist them in battle, though they also have other non-combative uses. Signs are cast by a Witcher throwing certain hand-signs, hence the name. Signs have many uses in offense, defense, utility, and strategy, and naturally, Geralt is an expert in his usage of Signs.

Aard

By far the most commonly used Sign by Witchers, Aard is the blue Sign that is used as a form of brief telekinesis, knocking foes or objects back with a telekinetic burst. This can be used to stun, repel, knockback, or disarm opponents and disable barriers. It can be fired directly ahead or omnidirectionally. Furthermore, after Geralt received augmentations to his Witcher mutation, his Aard Sign now has ice properties, being able to freeze his foes solid.

Igni

Igni is the red Sign used by Witchers as a pyrokinetic attack. Igni can set foes aflame in an instant. This attack can be fired (heh) either as a short burst or as a steady and continuous stream for longer-lasting damage. The flames of Igni are so hot that they can even burn through steel armor.

Quen

Quen is the yellow Sign used as a defense mechanism, creating a protective barrier that shields Geralt from attacks. This can be used as a short-lived barrier that can shield against a few hits, or a bubble-like forcefield that can also act as a regenerator, absorbing attacks and restoring health, as well as reflecting half of the damage back at the attacker, though Geralt is unable to attack while using the bubble shield.

Axii

Axii is the green Sign used as a form of mind control. While Geralt prefers not to use this if he has other options, more often used for interrogation or to make things easier than anything else, there are times where he has used this in combat, like when going up against opponents with more troublesome abilities. Axii can be used as a mind trick to convince opponents not to attack, and is disabled after Geralt attacks them. 

It should be noted that while this can be effective, people with a lot of willpower or just a stronger mind in general can resist it.

Yrden

Yrden is the purple Sign used as a trap card. This spell casts a circle of runes on the floor that can either slow down enemies, or outright immobilize them, as well as turn incorporeal beings like wraiths corporeal. This can even be combined with Aard to force possessive spirits out of a person’s body. Furthermore, the trap can poison and drain the vitality of those caught inside.

There is also an alternative version of Yrden, which is a floating rune that fires lightning bolts to stun enemies and nullify projectiles.

Heliotrope

Heliotrope, or “Heliotrop”, is a defensive Sign used by Witchers. This is the only Sign that noticeably differs from adaptations. In the books, this is used as a lesser version of Quen, protecting against attacks for a brief period. But in the games, it is used as a trump card. When cast, it will create a large bubble that slows everything in the vicinity down except for the caster, acting as a pseudo-time-slow.

Note: Both versions will be accounted for, if any are curious. Putting aside the fact that we’re using any piece of Witcher media as long as it can reasonably be tied with the novels, like we said in the “Before We Start” section, an argument can be made for these two being one and the same. The majority of Geralt's Signs have been shown to have alternate methods of use, such as Yrden, which alternates from a circle of runes made to trap enemies, to a floating runic orb that shoots lightning bolts. If Yrden can differ this much, then you can argue that Heliotrope can have alternate versions of itself as well.

Somne

(source of image)

Somne is one of two lesser known Signs used by the Witchers as it was only seen in the books. When cast, it puts the opposition to sleep, and possibly even removes their memory of what transpired.

Supirre

Supirre is the other lesser known Sign. Now as you know, Witchers have enhanced senses, but in cases where their senses are disrupted (i.e. blindness and deafness, or too much noise in the area), Witchers can use this as either a hearing enhancer, or as an echolocator to find their way through without their sight.

Enchanting

(Art by Ástor Alexander)

By speaking to a Runewright, Geralt can have his weapons and armor enchanted with any Runewords or Glyphwords he pleases, though they will destroy any runes and glyphs currently fitted into his gear.

Runewords

Runeword	Description
Dumplings	Any food consumed increases Vitality regeneration by 4 times the normal rate.
Elation	Fatal blows dealt with your sword give 0.1 to 0.25 Adrenaline Points.
Invigoration	When at maximum Vitality, any Vitality regeneration turns into added damage (goes up to 50%) on your next strike.
Placation	Once they reach their maximum level, Adrenaline Points steadily decline until they reach 0.  During this time, Vitality and Stamina regeneration are accelerated and Toxicity declines more quickly.
Preservation	Armorer’s Table and Grindstone buffs never expire.
Prolongation	Any unblocked blow taken will increase the duration of potions by 0.5 seconds.
Rejuvenation	Any fatal blow dealt restores 25% of Geralt’s Stamina.
Replenishment	After Geralt casts a Sign, an Adrenaline Point is consumed and his next sword attack is charged with the power of that Sign.
Severance	Increases the range of the Whirl perk by 1.1 yards and the Rend perk by 1.9 yards.

Glyphwords

Glyphword	Description
Balance	All equipped armor items are treated as Medium Armor.
Beguilement	Enemies affected by Axii will be affected for 2 seconds longer for each blow they land.
Deflection	Armor deflects all arrows.
Depletion	Enemies hit with Aard have their Stamina reduced by 50%.
Entanglement	When a trap set by Yrden hits an enemy, an Yrden glyph is placed at that position.
Eruption	Enemies set alight by Igni will explode when they die and ignite nearby enemies.
Heft	All equipped armor items are treated as Heavy Armor.
Ignition	Enemies set on fire by Igni have a 25% chance to ignite other enemies in a 2 yard radius.
Levity	All equipped armor items are treated as Light Armor.
Possession	When an opponent influenced by Axii dies, the effect transfers to another nearby enemy.  The effect’s duration increases by 2 seconds for each blow the affected lands.
Protection	When entering combat, Geralt will receive a Quen shield with no cost of Stamina.
Retribution	Gives a 30% chance to return a portion of the damage Geralt takes back at the attacker.
Rotation	Igni can be fired in all directions.
Usurpation	When an enemy affected by Axii dies, the effect transfers to another nearby enemy.

Mutations

In the Blood and Wine DLC, Geralt had found a hidden laboratory with talks of enhancing a Witcher’s capabilities. Intrigued, he subjected his body to the mutations, became even stronger because of it, and unlocked many new abilities to help him in battle.

These act similar to Skills in that they require talent points, but they also require red, blue, and green mutagens to unlock these new abilities.

Mutation	Description
Toxic Blood	Each time Geralt is injured in melee combat, the attacking opponent receives damage in the amount of 1.5% of damage dealt for every point of his Toxicity level (currently 1.5%, to a maximum of 150%)
Euphoria	Each point of Toxicity increases damage dealt by swords and Sign Intensity by 0.75% (to a maximum of 242%)
Mutated Skin	Each Adrenaline Point decreases damage received by 15% (to a maximum of 45%)
Cat Eyes	Crossbow damage is now increased from 107 to 992 (values depend on crossbow used), and crossbow critical hit chance is increased by 50%.  Crossbow bolts pierce and knock down or stun opponents Opponents struck when they have full Vitality lose 15% of Vitality
Metamorphosis	Applying critical effects to opponents activates a random decoction for 120s with no Toxicity cost The maximum number of decoctions that can be activated simultaneously by the mutation is 3 Witcher Senses help Geralt see better in dark places
Deadly Counter	Sword attacks deal 25% more damage to human opponents immune to counterattacks and monsters  In all other cases, if the attacker's Vitality is less than 25%, a counterattack immediately triggers a finisher
Bloodbath	Each fatal blow dealt by a sword dismembers the enemy or activates a finisher  Each blow dealt by a weapon in melee combat increases Attack Power by 5% until combat ends (to a maximum of 250%) The bonus is lost if Geralt takes damage (not including damage from Toxicity)
Adrenaline Rush	At the start of combat, sword Attack Power and Sign Intensity increase for 30 seconds by 30% for each foe (after first). So, when fighting 11 foes, the bonus is 300% Once it wears off, sword Attack Power and Sign Intensity drop by 10% for each participating foe after first (modifier cannot exceed 70%) Duration is 30 seconds
Second Life	When Vitality reaches 0, Geralt becomes temporarily invulnerable and regenerates 100% Vitality The effect can only be triggered once every 3 minutes
Magic Sensibilities	Signs can deal critical hits; Their critical hit chance and damage increase with Sign Intensity (currently 40% chance to deal an additional 198% damage)  Opponents killed by critical hits from Signs explode
Piercing Cold	When the Aard Sign is cast, it additionally has a 25% chance of freezing opponents  Opponents knocked down and frozen simultaneously die immediately Opponents who are not frozen are dealt a high amount of damage
Conductors of Magic	When drawn, magic, unique and witcher swords increase Sign damage dealt by 50% of their own damage dealt

The Law of Surprise

This is more of a custom in the world of the Witcher than an ability, but when a person saves another person’s life, the savior can receive a boon from the saved person, which one or both parties don’t even know about until it comes about. What makes this noteworthy is that the result is often the firstborn child of the saved, whilst the person doesn’t even know about the child. Geralt, in particular, has used this not once, but twice, and both times involved his surrogate daughter Ciri. The first time was when he was owed a boon from Duny and Pavetta, the future parents of Ciri, and the second was when he saved a merchant from monsters, who was married to a woman who took Ciri into their home for a while.

This implies that Geralt has some form of fate manipulation, and can use this to his advantage. Geralt and Ciri are both considered to be servants of destiny in their stories, so it’s not impossible for them to have some form of control over it via the Law of Surprise.

Note: This is absolutely NOT combat-applicable, as the Law of Surprise is only invoked after the person has been saved, and it has never assisted in combat scenarios. Even if it did, it would require prep to be set up. Thus, it would not be able to work in a fight, and especially not this one. It is a noteworthy fact however, so it is mentioned for the sake of coverage.

Resistances

• Diseases and Poisons: Due to the ingestion of toxic and even fatal substances during the Trial of the Grasses, Witchers that survive have resistances to most diseases and poisons that border on immunity. Erland of Larvik was impaled by a manticore while also being injected with its venom, yet he still fought on long enough to kill it, albeit he succumbed to it and the injury afterwards.

• Mind Manipulation: It is stated that Witchers cannot be bewitched by mages, and at worst, can resist 30 straight minutes of attack of the mind.

• Extreme Temperatures: Kiyan, again, has been burned and frozen for weeks, and yet still continued to function.

Clare

Claymore Physiology

All of the chosen women are built the same through the experiments they undergo in order to become Claymores. Being taken in by the Organization, bisected, and implanted with Yoma DNA to become half-Yoma (or 1/4 Yoma if you’re Clare). Afterwards, Claymores are then divided into two types based on their fighting style: Attack and Defensive. Attack-type Claymores excel at… attacking, while Defensive Claymores have greater regenerative capabilities. 

Clare is classified as an Attack-type Claymore and as such, we will prioritize including abilities shown by other Attackers.

• Inhuman Stamina: Claymores can spend up to three days straight just walking without any kind of rest.

• Self-Sustenance: Because of their physiology, Claymore don’t tend to have the same appetite as humans, they only need to eat once every couple of days. As Clare puts it, Claymores ”can easily go a week without food and water.”

• Body Temperature Regulation: Because Claymores can naturally manage their own body heat, heavy clothing is unnecessary when in cold climates.

• High Pain Tolerance: Claymores are able to take massive amounts of pain from both the Yoma they fight and/or Awakening and distorting their body in grotesque ways. Claymores can shrug off losing limbs or getting impaled with little to no reaction and just keep on fighting until they are physically unable to do so. Jean’s signature technique, “Drill Sword” requires her to twist her entire arm 21 times in a row before releasing it into a powerful strike.

• Increased Reaction Time: Mere moments to Claymores last an eternity. This applies to Awakened Beings and Abyssal Ones as well.

• Regeneration / Reattaching Severed Limbs: Claymores are known for their ability to regenerate wounds in seconds. Clare regenerated from getting a hole punched through her chest, and also reattached her legs after they were severed by Ophelia, although it did take a long time and exerting a decent amount of Yoki to do so. Ophelia, who is another Attack-Type, was able to fix her own snapped neck.

• Note: As mentioned before, Defensive-type Claymores have shown greater regenerative abilities. One such Claymore, Deneve, regrew her entire arm after it had been cut off, Because Clare is an Attack-type Claymore, she would not be capable of this level of regen.

• Body Control: By releasing Yoki to a certain percentage, a Claymore’s appearance is altered. At a 50% Release, Claymores can extend their limbs for longer range. While it is the signature ability of Helen, Priscilla has also shown this ability in her fight with Teresa.

Yoki Manipulation

Due to being half-Yoma, Claymores possess what is known as “Yoki” or “Demon Energy”. A Claymore’s main use of Yoki is using it to increase their physical attributes such as strength, increase their mobility, or heal grievous injuries. Claymores such as Clare, can also use Yoki to do the following:

• Yoki Sensing: Claymores have the innate ability to sense the essence of Yoki energy, whether it be from Yoma or other Claymores even from long distances away. Sensing Yoki allows Clare to detect Yoma that are disguised as humans. Clare can even slow down her own perception, and predict enemy movements as such. The more Yoki they have, the easier their moves are to predict. Because Clare has the flesh and blood of Teresa inside herself, her Yoki Sensing is amped to an absurd degree compared to any other Claymore, with the exception of Galatea.

• Yoki Suppression: Along with sensing, Claymores can suppress their own Yoki energy so that they are undetected by other Claymores. Priscilla was able to kill a large number of Yoma without three other Claymores sensing her, later along with Teresa. Clare and the rest of the Seven Ghosts’ suppression abilities have become a lot better after the timeskip, eliminating any trace of Yoki they would have left behind.

• Yoki Synchronization: By analyzing her target’s Yoki (whether it would be a Yoma, Awakened Being or another Claymore), Clare can align her Yoki with theirs and essentially manipulate their Yoki aura. Synchronizers can control their target’s body, increasing or decreasing the flow of their Yoki or redirecting their attacks. An Awakened Being was able to manipulate other Claymores’ actions through the use of synchronizing Yoki energy.

• Yoki Reversal: An ability tied to Yoki Synchronization. Clare was able to hold back another Claymore, Jean’s, Yoki level to revert her back to human after she had already become an Awakened Being. It’s the same technique Galatea used on Clare when she was about to Awaken. It’s also possible that Clare was able to do this before as she was able to revert back to human with Raki’s support, implying it’s activated by Clare experiencing strong emotions such as love or determination.

• Yoki Membrane: After absorbing Rafaela’s memories, Clare is able to replicate her technique of coating her entire body in a small layer of Yoki energy, allowing her to sense incoming attacks, even ones outside her peripherals.

• Yoki Release: Claymores can “release” their Yoki in percentage levels to boost their power. With each percentage increase, the Claymore’s appearance will change drastically more than the last.

• 10% Release: Eyes change from silver to gold

• 30% Release: Facial muscles distort

• 50% Release: The whole body distorts

• 80% Release: The “theoretical limit” to a Claymore’s Yoki; Reverting back to human appearance is very difficult, if not impossible.

• 100% Release: Full Awakening

Quicksword

Taught to her by Irene, the Quicksword technique allows Clare to attack at blinding speeds. Using the Quicksword technique requires one to exert their Yoki into one arm and allow that specific arm to Awaken. Clare’s dominant arm was sliced off by Ophelia at the time of her training with Irene, so Irene cut her own arm off for Clare to reattach as her own, allowing her to properly master the Quicksword.

By manipulating her own Yoki, Clare can position the Quicksword so it can hit around people, so that they don’t get hurt in the process.

Windcutter

Invented and taught to Clare by Flora during the Northern Campaign, Windcutter is an accurate technique that involves drawing, swinging, and sheathing a sword faster than eyesight. Unlike other Claymore techniques, the Windcutter doesn’t require any Yoki, but Yoki can be used in order to increase the speed and power of the technique.

Voice Changing

By stretching out her vocal chords, Clare can alter her voice to sound like a man. She’d make a great voice actor.

Soul Link

A technique that involves two Claymores. The Soul Link allows for two Claymores’ minds to synchronize with each other, becoming one mind. By synchronizing with one another, a Claymore can enhance another Claymore’s Yoki energy, allowing the Claymore to willingly turn into an Awakened Being while being controlled by their synchronized partner. Not any two Claymores can simply access a Soul Link however as there have been very specific instances, such as with Alicia and Beth as them being twins naturally allows them to have a stronger mental connection with one another than most others. 

The second instance being Clare and Teresa. With Clare being 1/4 Yoma and having Teresa’s flesh and blood within herself, this makes her Soul Link greater than others and allows for Teresa to manifest in physical form from inside of Clare’s body. While Teresa takes over, Clare can still communicate with Teresa via some sort of mental landscape inside her own head.

Resistances

• Diseases and Poisons: Claymores can manage and eliminate poisons and toxins from their bloodstream. This includes alcohol, but that resistance is optional.

• Extreme Temperatures: Claymores can naturally manage their own body heat, meaning they are able to withstand living in cold climates for hours on end, such as how a large selection of Claymores were able to partake in the battle of the Northern Town of Pieta.

• This is also the case for hot climates as Clare was able to fight inside a volcano surrounded by lava in her final battle with Priscilla. (Anime Only)

Forms

Geralt

Shirtless Geralt

(would)

He doesn’t have any noteworthy forms so here’s shirtless Geralt instead.

Clare

Partially-Awakened Being

After one of her missions, Clare had a big discovery about herself. When she and her three teammates: Miria, Helen, and Deneve, finished their mission, Miria realized that the reason they all specifically were assigned the same mission was because they all had a secret. All four of them had undergone a full Awakening, surpassing their Yoki limits and became Awakened Beings, but were able to revert themselves back to their normal human appearance. They had become “Half-Awakened Beings”. 

Clare had become one during her espionage mission at the Cathedral, where she overexerted herself and became an Awakened Being, only to revert herself back with Raki’s help. Half-Awakened Beings, despite already turning back to human, are still able to Awaken again by releasing enough Yoki.

Dramatically altering Clare’s appearance, this “Partially-Awakened” form makes Clare seem a lot more Yoma-like. Golden eyes with slit pupils. Her face and body become distorted and less human. Her legs become hock-jointed, similar to that of a horse which makes her faster. Her left arm is replaced with large blades, seeming claw-like in their appearance. And her right arm has blades growing from it. However, unlike her left arm, it remains intact. This is likely because her right arm doesn’t belong to her, but rather Irene.

This Partial-Awakening gives her dramatic increases in stats, but also leads to her becoming angry, savage, and more animalistic, losing her calm cunning which allowed her to win so many of her early battles.

Awakened Teresa (See “Before the Verdicts”)

Given that Clare has Teresa’s flesh and blood inside of her, Teresa herself had been a part of Clare the entire time, eventually revealing herself in the final battle with Priscilla, ready to settle the score. Her Awakened State resembles the Twin Goddesses of Love, who both Teresa and Clare are named after.

Aside from gaining wings to fly, Teresa upon returning showed the profound ability to mimic abilities from other Claymores through sheer observation through Clare. She knows the aforementioned Quicksword and Windcutter, but she also has learned multiple other techniques. These include:

Helen’s Extendable Limbs

A technique that was unique to Helen. Teresa can stretch her limbs out to reach targets at a further range. She mimicked this technique and combined it with Flora’s Windcutter.

Miria’s Phantom Mirage

While she hasn’t done this technique directly, due to the nature of Teresa’s mimicry through looking out of Clare’s eyes, as well as her making afterimages casually, she should be capable of replicating Miria’s Phantom Mirage as well. The Phantom Mirage allows the user to create afterimages in order to confuse opponents and catch them off-guard.

Cassandra’s Dust Eater

Improvised by the new Number 1 Claymore, Cassandra, Dust Eater requires the user to anchor both feet to the ground and then move their head like a pendulum. Then, using the divergent force, the body is swung very close to the ground, and then at an awkward angle that would take the target off guard. The technique aims to immobilize the target by aiming for the legs and then the arms, although Teresa only used this to target one of Priscilla’s legs.

Ophelia’s Rippling Sword

Ophelia’s technique: the “Rippling Sword”, requires the wielder to focus Yoki into their arm, undergoing what is called “undulation” (fluid up and down movement), which is then generated to their sword. By doing this, Ophelia’s sword vibrates at a speed where it seemingly phases through enemy attacks such as Clare’s through a visual illusion. Teresa appears to use this or a similar ability during the final battle with Priscilla.

Jean’s Drill Sword

A technique where a Claymore twists their arm as many times as possible before releasing it, creating a powerful drill effect. Usually the technique is slow due to the preparation time but Teresa was capable of unleashing the technique quickly compared to Jean, the original creator of the technique.

Feats

Geralt

Overall

• Is considered one of the best Witchers the world has ever seen

• Became the North’s champion of Gwent

• Outsmarted the otherworldly reality warper, Gaunter O’Dimm

• Was deemed worthy to wield Aerondight twice

• Defeated an Archgriffin, Letho of Gulet, the Wild Hunt, the Higher Vampire Dettlaff

Power

• Defeated 6 swordsman said to have been able to solo all of Blaviken

• Can wrestle with creatures as big as dragons

• Can cut off a Fiend’s head in one sword swing

• The Aard Sign can clear rubble with ease

• In the Netflix show, Geralt uses Aard to destroy a stone floor (22.84 Megajoules)

• Can fight, damage, and knock out rock trolls while unarmed

• Can cut through steel plate armor like butter

• Is described as striking with the force of a lightning bolt (1.6 Gigajoules / 0.3 Tons of TNT)

Speed

• Can deflect crossbow bolts mid-flight

• He does the same thing in the Netflix show (as shown above) (Mach 0.4)

• Is described as appearing as a blur multiple times

• Swings at a man before he can even blink

• Killed 3 people so quickly that no one noticed for a few moments

• Is said to strike with the speed of a lightning bolt

• While this was likely intended to be hyperbolic, this is made consistent with Geralt being able to dodge and even parry lightning bolts from a close range

• Can move in tandem with one of Eredin’s meteors (Mach 0.3)

Durability

• Geralt’s Quen Sign can shield against a carriage being thrown at him (as shown above)

• Can jump from the top of a castle wall with no damage 

• Gameplay on the other hand…

• Got hit by a rapidly-growing beanstalk that grew up to the clouds in seconds, and got up like nothing happened (0.01 Tons of TNT)

• Quen can shield him from attacks from a Djinn

• His Heliotrope Sign cushioned the impact of being launched into a wall by a soundwave, which incapacitated him, as well as protected him from a spell cast by Yennefer

• Can tank one of Eredin’s meteors (1.4 Megajoules)

• In the guidebook for The Witcher 3, they are referred to as “ice-laden meteors”

Clare

Overall

• Is known as the fastest of all the Claymores

• Has defeated countless Yoma during her time as a Claymore

• A survivor of the Northern Campaign and one of the Seven Ghosts

• Took control of The Destroyer after being absorbed

• Defeated Awakened Beings, Ophelia, Rigardo, Priscilla

Power

• In the DS game, can effortlessly kill grown wolves

• Smashes through a wooden ceiling and destroys a stone floor

• Her Quicksword was able to tear apart the ground against Flora’s Windcutter

• By Awakening, releases a large amount of Yoki energy visible from kilometers away (0.172 Tons of TNT)

• In her Partially Awakened form, releases another large amount of Yoki (Anime Only)

• Lifts a large chunk of rock in her Partially Awakened form (Anime Only)

• Carves a hole through Awakened Cassandra’s chest

Speed

• Can deflect throwing knives, even while her back is turned

• Was fast enough to slam a Yoma’s arm into the ground before it could kill Galk (Mach 7.81)

• By sensing Yoki, could dodge multiple attacks from an Awakened Being

• Parried attacks from Awakened Ophelia

• Makes multiple slashes on a pond’s surface so fast that the first slash didn’t have time to close (Mach 2.31)

• Saved Galatea from one of Dauf’s flesh rods

• Deflects tendrils from Riful

• Intercepts an attack from Awakened Priscilla

• Reacts to and destroys Awakened Cassandra’s heads

Durability

• Got impaled through the chest by a Yoma (as shown above)

• As a child, survived a fall off of a cliff, albeit she was knocked out afterwards

• Got impaled and slammed to the ground by a Yoma and comes back shortly after

• Got thrown into the side of a cliff by an Awakened Being

• Survived plummeting into a ravine after having her arm cut off and several other injuries

• Was sent flying into a nearby townhouse by Awakened Rigardo

• This happens at least four separate times (at least she’s consistent)

Scaling

Geralt

Ciri

Cirilla is the princess of Cintra and heiress to the Nilfgaard throne. After Geralt lifted the king of Cintra’s curse, Geralt had the opportunity to take in Ciri to raise her as a Witcher and as a surrogate daughter.

Given that Ciri is merely an apprentice compared to Geralt, he should be comparable to the feats she has achieved… but only in her base state. (See “Before the Verdicts”)

• Can move as fast as a blur

• Geralt can recall Ciri deflecting a crossbow bolt

• Survived the explosion caused by Caranthir’s staff

Other Witchers

Obviously, Geralt is not the only Witcher. For centuries, Witchers have been bred and trained to be mighty monster hunters, and there’s no shortage of Witchers that Geralt has faced in combat himself.

• Cat School Witchers can move as a blur (seems to be a trend…)

• Letho uses an ice bomb to freeze an entire ship solid and shatter everything in the area (1.45 Tons of TNT)

• Lambert uses Quen to defend against a fireball that wiped out several Wild Hunt warriors

• Letho is said to have “lightning reflexes”

• Eskel fights on par with Caranthir for a while

• Vesemir uses Aard to disperse a swarm of bats, creating a large shockwave in the process (0.013 Tons of TNT)

• Vesemir uses Igni to melt a frozen lake (130.37 Tons - 23.14 Kilotons of TNT)

Mages / Witches

Naturally, in a fantastical world such as The Witcher, there exists powerful mages that can control the battlefield in a variety of ways thanks to their repertoire of spells.

Although there’s little to no proof that mages can physically scale to their magic, especially Geralt, Signs are more than enough to defend and attack against powerful mages and other magical beings. (See “Before The Verdicts”)

• Several mages in The Witcher are able to manipulate the weather

• Yennefer conjured a thunderstorm to demonstrate magic to Ciri

• Triss creates a hailstorm above Rivia, albeit it was a botched version of the “Alzur’s Lightning” spell

• Dethmold creates a mild rain over the battlefield

• Ermion, and a few other druids, calmed an exceptionally powerful storm that would’ve flooded all of Skellige (85.21 Gigatons of TNT)

• The most we see are four druids so we can assume each one was contributing their fair share (21.3 Gigatons of TNT per druid)

• Melusina creates a thunderstorm (461.41 Kilotons of TNT)

• Savolla blasts a hole through Kaer Morhen (0.4 Tons of TNT)

• Sabrina Glevissig cast a spell that rained down powerful fireballs for miles, incinerating 3000 men and creating ravines

• Vilgefortz casually deflects lightning shot by Yennefer

• Avallac’h created a blast that destroyed a stretch of forest

• Sabrina, Triss, and Keira together destroy Stygga Castle, which caused an explosion bright enough to be seen from Metinna and Geso, and heard from Maecht

• It also caused earthquakes that were felt around the world, including Oxenfurt (193.13 Gigatons of TNT)

• Energy divided among the three sorceresses (65.4 Gigatons of TNT per sorceress)

Beasts

After a large event known as the Conjunction of the Spheres, the world has been met with many powerful and dangerous beasts. Being a Witcher, Geralt has obviously hunted more than his fair share of beasts, some being more powerful than others.

• Fiends are such units that they’re immune to Aard

• Golyat the Giant crashes through a windmill, which falls on him, and then he emerges while reducing the whole thing to pieces

• An elder female Shaelmaar can dig large tunnels with enough force to cause tremors that collapse houses (2 - 84 Kilotons of TNT)

• Saskia the dragon smashes through a stone wall with its head, and then destroys more of it with its wings (1.9 Tons of TNT)

• A red dragon set an entire town on fire near instantly

• The Kayran can destroy gigantic pillars with a swing of its tentacles (1.9 Tons of TNT)

• Geralt’s horse, Roach canonically can cross oceans within seconds (Mach 112 - Mach 1576)

The Wild Hunt

The Wild Hunt were a powerful group of Aen Elle elves hailing from Tir na Lia. Their only goals were to recruit as many slaves as possible and capture Ciri to restore the Elder Bloodline to pure Elven blood and use the Elder Blood power to more easily travel across worlds with their forces. 

Geralt has faced each and every one of these powerhouses and killed them all, even their king Eredin. As such, he should be comparable to some of their best feats.

• Caranthir, Eredin, and Imlerith all survive Ciri unleashing the rampant Elder Blood magic for a time, though they all needed to retreat

• Eredin, in his boss fight, creates a thunderstorm and moves clouds to block out the sun (9.53 Megatons of TNT)

• Eredin can block Yennefer’s lightning after it had already been fired (Mach 15 - Mach 76)

• A mere projection of Eredin creates a blizzard in the surrounding area

• Although this took place in Jacques de Aldersberg’s mind, it’s consistent with what Eredin can do in the real world

Dettlaff

Dettlaff van der Eretein was a Higher Vampire who had haunted the city of Beauclair in search of his former lover, who turned out to have been a manipulator and a liar. 

Despite having been hesitant, Geralt faced the heartbroken vampire in a decisive end, ultimately defeating him in the toughest fight he may have ever had.

Note: He was not able to kill him, he had to have his friend Regis finish him, but that is only because Higher Vampires have specific immortality that says that only their own kind can permanently end them. Geralt can still fight him physically and defeat him.

• Easily survived being rammed through a wall (144 Megajoules)

• Would have burned down all of Beauclair if not stopped

• Boss music is peak, even appears in Cyberpunk 2077

The Genies

Genies are supernatural entities with control over the elements. There are four types of genies, the D’ao control the earth, the Djinns control the air, the Marides control the water, and the Ifrit control fire. 

Geralt scaling to these beings is dodgy at best, but the fact that he’s able to combat them at all is notable in and of itself.

• A Djinn created a massive thunderstorm (46 Petatons of TNT) (Debatable for Scaling, See “Before the Verdicts”)

• The storm also appeared in two frames (Mach 3213)

• That same Djinn teleported a massive chunk out of the sea, forming a huge crater

• A D’ao moved a mountain because it obstructed the view of Stammelford’s tower

Iris and the Painted World (Debatable)

Iris von Everec was the spouse of Olgierd von Everec, who had previously made a deal with the otherworldly Gaunter O’Dimm to make him unkillable, but at the cost of his heart, which was now stone, leading to Iris becoming so fearful of him that she now resides in a Painted World of her nightmares.

Geralt had defeated Iris as a wraith in the mortal world, traveled to the Painted World, and battled her fears, defeating them and meeting Iris one last time before leaving the world for good.

• Iris’ fears were so great that they manifested into an entire Painted World after her death

• This world has hills and a light in the sky that appears to be a moon (Debatable, See “Before the Verdicts”)

Clare

Teresa

(would)

The former No. 1 ranked Claymore, “Teresa of the Faint Smile” was a force to be reckoned with before she was killed at the hands of Priscilla. Because Clare has the flesh and blood of Teresa planted inside of her, Clare should reasonably scale to her former caretaker.

Not to mention by the end of the series, Teresa shares the same body as Clare and can manifest and fight in her place, so there’s that.

Pre-Death:

• Slices a man into a bloody paste

• Can slice and injure four trained Claymores faster than any of them could react

• Can keep up with and kill the Claymore, Rosemary even after she had turned into an Awakened Being

• Teresa only exerted around 10% of her Yoki to do so

• Her fight with Priscilla tears apart the ground

• In the DS game, kills a large Yoma the size of a building, possibly larger

• Can casually make afterimages equal to that of Miria’s “Phantom Mirage”

Awakening Through Clare:

• Can casually make afterimages

• Blocks Priscilla’s tendrils

• Shreds Priscilla’s entire Awakened body in one strike

• Uses Quicksword to disperse 5 Priscillas into dust (Mach 2146)

The Seven Ghosts

The Seven Ghosts were created after the events of the Northern Campaign, out of the 24 Claymores tasked with the mission, only 7 remained. They consist of their leader Miria, Cynthia, Deneve, Helen, Tabitha, Yuma, and Clare herself. 

During the 7-Year timeskip, this group of Claymores have trained like no other, even teaming up in the final battle against Priscilla and The Destroyer. Because of this, Clare should be equal to if not stronger than the rest of the Seven Ghosts.

• Miria’s “Phantom Mirage” allows her to make afterimages

• Miria was able to intercept an Awakened Being’s tendrils at a close range

• Deneve came back after plummeting into a ravine with her arm severed

• Deneve and Helen ran away from Isley’s arrows

• Tabitha severed the wings of an Awakened Hysteria

• Yuma effortlessly knocks out Claymores and humans without the use of her sword

Other Claymores

Aside from the Seven Ghosts, Clare should reasonably scale to other highly-skilled Claymores, whether she has fought alongside or against them, defeated them directly, or having defeated beings above that of other skilled Claymores.

• As the original creators of the Quicksword and Windcutter techniques respectively, Irene and Flora should be comparable to Clare’s versions of the techniques

• Double-digit ranked Claymores can effortlessly smash apart buildings

• Sophia sliced a stone column and the Yoma behind it in two

• Noel blasts through a window

• Ophelia upon Awakening, releases a large amount of Yoki energy (0.001 Tons of TNT)

• Galatea deflects Dauf’s flesh rods

• Alicia can shatter the ground with her sword

• Alicia and Beth can run at “extreme speeds” across the continent, creating what look like sonic booms (Mach 1 / Supersonic at minimum)

• Miata can rip apart Yoma with her bare hands

• She got that dog in her frfr

• Anastasia knocked the Awakened Being, Europa off balance by dragging its tendrils, with the help of another Claymore

Yoma & Awakened Beings

(no cool scaling image sorry)

Clare or any Claymore for that matter is no rookie to slaying the demons that roam the continent known as the Yoma. Despite constantly being slain by Claymores, the Yoma are exceptionally powerful in their own right. However, certain Yoma known as the Awakened Beings are in a league of their own, which Clare has had numerous tussles with and is very much comparable to.

• A Yoma destroys part of a stone pillar (0.002 Tons of TNT)

• An Awakened Being used her hair to destroy the town of Gonal (Town Level)

• An Awakened Being’s tendrils reached the town of Pieta from a long distance away (Mach 0.26)

• Dauf was able to kill a fully-Awakened Claymore

• Rigardo lifts and throws a stone column

• Rigardo releases a large amount of Yoki energy

• Awakened Beth can tear apart the ground with her arm blades

• Awakened Miata can destroy buildings with her tendrils

• Awakened Miata’s battle with Europa levels a city block (City-Block Level)

Abyssal Ones

The “Creatures of the Abyss” or “Abyssal Ones” are extremely powerful Awakened Beings. Prior to Clare’s generation of Claymores, there have been only 3 known Abyssal Ones: Riful of the West, Isley of the North, and Luciela of the South. However, after the 7-year timeskip, there are now 3 new Abyssal Ones: Elegant Hysteria, Cassandra the Dust-Eater, and Roxanne of Love and Hate.

Many Claymores are able to keep on par with the Creatures of the Abyss and can naturally scale to them. Clare has fought her fair share of those who can match the Abyssal Ones in power as well.

• The Abyssal Ones can move faster than the eye can see and wipe out multiple Awakened Beings in a single attack

• Riful destroys a hill upon Awakening (3 Kilotons of TNT)

• Riful’s tendrils sprout across a forest

• Riful can move fast enough to seemingly vanish out of thin air

• Luciela dodges Isley’s arrow

• Luciela catches all of Isley’s arrows with her weird mouths

• Isley and Luciela clash in their Awakened forms to produce a massive shockwave

• Earthquake: (22.07 Tons of TNT)

• Shockwave: (46.33 Kilotons of TNT)

• The clash was so grand that it caused an earthquake in the Southern part of the continent and could be sensed by Galatea all the way on the Eastern side (See “Before the Verdicts”)

• Cassandra can tear through a forest

• Cassandra survives Octavia’s tendril attack without a scratch

Priscilla

The one that kickstarted Clare’s revenge arc. Priscilla is one of the two beings known as “Those Above the Abyssal Ones”. Although Clare was able to defeat Priscilla at the end of the anime, in the manga, she was struggling to keep up with Priscilla even before she became the One-Horned Monster and needed Teresa to show up and defeat her.

Clare realistically shouldn't scale to Priscilla in base but Teresa was able to dog-walk her once she had Awakened through the Soul Link, so Teresa would be able to greatly surpass anything Priscilla has accomplished.

Human / “Human” Form:

• Formed a big gash in the ground during her first fight with Teresa

• Moves as a blur to attack Teresa from behind

• Casually stopped Clare’s Quicksword

• Decapitates Awakened Alicia with a headpat

• Severed Awakened Beth’s tendrils

• Shreds five Destroyer Drones to pieces

Awakened Form:

• Releases a large amount of Yoki energy visible from kilometers away (Anime Only)

• Destroys a giant chunk of rock thrown by a Partially-Awakened Clare (Anime Only)

• Dispersed an attack from The Destroyer’s true form

• Can move so fast she appears to teleport

The Destroyer

The second of the two beings known as “Those Above the Abyssal Ones”. The Destroyer is an entity made up of the Claymore, Rafaela, and the Abyssal One, Luciela in order to create a new Abyssal One. The Destroyer posed a massive threat to the cast, but Priscilla’s Awakened Form was able to destroy it easily.

As mentioned with the One-Horned Monster, while Clare realistically can’t scale to Priscilla or The Destroyer, Teresa, who defeated Priscilla with very little effort, should be able to massively upscale anything The Destroyer has accomplished. 

Confused? Well, to put it in perspective, the power hierarchy would look like this:

Clare < The Destroyer < Priscilla <<<<< Awakened Teresa

• Its size is comparable to mountains

• During its creation, its Yoki surpassed even Riful’s

• Its Crown attack shoots spikes that reach across every region in the continent (Mach 2.16 - 1186.42)

• Collapsed Riful’s castle hideout (59.22 Tons of TNT)

• Launched some Awakened Beings into the town of Rabona

• The Destroyer’s true form is that of a blob of black sludge that can grow this big (81.4 Kilotons of TNT)

Weaknesses

Geralt

While Geralt is among one of the best fighters in the world of the Witcher, he is not without his fair share of baggage. For instance, a lot of his greatest kills against beasts were done through a good amount of prep time, which is where Witchers truly shine. But given the rules of these debates, prep is not allowed. Thus, he can only do so much on his own. That’s not to say he’s incapable, but it is a notable disadvantage due to the rules against prep.

Onto utilities, while his potions are very useful, they are also highly toxic. Witchers do have great resistance to poison, but too much intake can overtax Geralt’s resistance, draining his health away and possibly killing him, so he has to use them with caution. As for his Signs, they all have cooldowns before they can be used again, so he often has to spread out their uses. His power multipliers, Euphoria and Bloodbath, while potent, have to have some conditions met, such as Euphoria requiring as high a Toxicity level as possible, which is very risky, and Bloodbath needs Geralt to land a combo of at least 10 consecutive hits before it reaches its full potential, which is not guaranteed if his opponent has a significant speed advantage.

Besides that, Geralt seems to have a sense of honor if he feels as if his opponents deserve it, which could cause him to let his guard down. Not that it’s a glaring weakness, but he’s not as ruthless as he’s made out to be in the world he wanders. He’s just someone who wants to make the world a little better.

Clare

Despite having accomplished so much, Clare is not without her fair share of weaknesses. A large one being her reliance on her Yoki sensing. While the Yoki sensing allowed her to win many of her early battles due to being able to predict her opponent's movements, however, opponents that suppress their Yoki could prove to be a problem, especially if they happen to be more skilled, as shown with her first fight with Miria, where she lost by attempting to read the Yoki flow around Miria, due to both suppressing their auras, she couldn’t get a good read and ended up losing to the more skilled warrior.

Another weakness comes from her Partially-Awakened state. Despite making her stronger and faster, this state also makes her more savage, angry, and predictable. She loses her cunning and charges head first into battle. A smart enough opponent could predict her movement and counter the attacks.

And finally, Clare’s biggest weakness is actually how she was created in the first place. This might sound harsh at first but this is a weakness for all Claymores, not just Clare. When the Organization experiments on Claymores, they have to bisect them from neck to the genitalia region and quite literally shove Yoma guts into all of their body parts. With how shady the Organization is, it makes sense that they would do such a half-hazard method considering how potent Claymore regeneration is. However, their regeneration can only get them so far as without the proper tools, Clare could die from blood loss if the wound can’t be restitched.

Before the Verdicts…

What’s The Deal With Cyberpunk?

For context, there is a scene in The Witcher 3 where Ciri explains an event where she time-traveled to a world where Eredin couldn’t find her. This “world” explained by her is similar if not directly to that of the world of another Projekt Red title: Cyberpunk 2077. Ciri even appears in a magazine as an easter egg.

Obviously, there is no evidence to suggest that Ciri scales to anything in the series, that being the original game and the anime, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, just because she was there. She never subtly references any main characters with her statement and it’s never implied that she ever actually fought anybody during her time there.

This conclusion is very obvious to most but if you’ve been in the VS community, you’ll know that people can take one-off statements like these and roll with them to the end of time. That’s why we decided to take caution and make this segment anyway. 

(It’s also worth noting that The Witcher generally has better feats overall than Cyberpunk, so this wouldn’t change too much about this match to begin with)

Ciri and the White Frost

(Art and Cosplay by Narga-Lifestream)

So you’ve read in Ciri’s scaling section that we could only scale Geralt to base Ciri’s feats, right? Well, there is a reason for that. 

At the end of The Witcher 3, Ciri has to face the cataclysmic White Frost, which, in the games specifically, is a worldwide apocalyptic winter that threatens to freeze entire worlds.

How powerful is the White Frost? Enough to where it reduced star systems to hunks of ice in just a few decades. If this included the stars themselves, then this would put the White Frost at Star level attack potency.

So what does this mean for scaling? While it is unclear as to how she defeated the White Frost, one such Elder Blood carrier known as the Winter Queen faced it directly, and while she failed to stop it, she did survive long enough to absorb its power and not die from it, meaning she can handle such power thanks to the Elder Blood.

Plus, given how Ciri’s Elder Blood powers are seen as extraordinary even by the standards of the most powerful mage in the Witcherverse, and the fact that only those with the Elder Blood can survive against the White Frost and stop it, this means that in the games, and other supplementary material, Elder Blood carriers can scale to possible Star levels of power.

What does this mean for Geralt specifically? Simple. Nothing. Not only is it apparent that Elder Blood carriers are far and away more powerful than anything the Witcher has ever seen, let alone fought, it is also made blatant that the White Frost is only able to be stopped by those with the Elder Blood. A Witcher isn’t about to go near something that powerful. While yes, Geralt has defeated Caranthir in combat, that was after Ciri had already broken the staff… which is tied to the White Frost… Caranthir’s main source of magic. You see where we’re going with this?

This could be big for Ciri specifically, but this blog isn’t for Ciri, is it? If further detail is needed, here is a link to the yap.

Overall, Geralt scaling to Ciri and the White Frost is a big NO! But if you’re ever interested in doing research on Ciri, now you have some time saved.

Does Geralt Scale to Magic Feats? (Mages, Witches, and Genies)

The White Wolf has a certain pull when it comes to magic. He’s come across many mages along The Path, and a good chunk of them have accomplished many high-end feats in the world of The Witcher. So the question is, since Geralt has defeated his fair share of mages (not all of them with his blade wink wink), does that mean he can scale to their feats? Well, yes and no.

First of all, that question opens up the already difficult question of “should mages themselves scale to their feats of magic?”, which often comes with the answer of “no”. Mages have little to no proof that they can handle their own power physically. Every one of the mentioned storm feats are accomplished through their magic alone, with no sign of them having to handle their own AP, so they’re mostly just average humans with really strong connections to magic.

And as for Geralt, it’s common knowledge in the Witcherverse that Witcher Signs, as busted as they are for Death March playthroughs, are brief and rudimentary compared to actual magic, and when Geralt fought a mage like Vilgefortz, he was lacking horribly throughout the fight, and Vilg was barely using his magic. So how would he scale to any spectacular feat of magic at all? Well, there are some ways.

The first route to scaling is the Djinns. Djinns are extraordinarily powerful, capable of casually deflecting spells that even the most powerful mages couldn’t cast, even if they had years to prepare themselves.

What does this mean for Geralt? Nothing much, just that Quen is able to defend him against such an attack and get not a scratch on him. If Geralt’s Signs can defend against a foe this powerful, then handling the power of other spells should be just as easy.

This isn’t even the only time Quen has saved a Witcher’s behind from magic. Lambert used it to defend against a fireball spell that wiped out a whole group of armored Wild Hunt warriors. For such a rudimentary form of magic, you’d think it would crumble like dust against that kind of power, and yet, it has saved Witchers plenty of times in rough situations.

Overall, the question isn’t “does Geralt scale to magic feats”. It’s a matter of “do Geralt’s Signs scale to magic feats”, and the answer, at least in our opinion, is “yes”. Just because they’re considered to be rather limited compared to other forms of magic doesn’t mean they can’t compare. You can always have your own take on this, but you can’t ignore the Signs…

The Art of the Painted World

In the Hearts of Stone DLC in The Witcher 3, Geralt is tasked with collecting a violet rose from Olgierd von Everec’s deceased wife, Iris. He manages to find a way into this alternate reality called the Painted World. This world was originally a part of Iris’ conscience in life, but in death, this conscious world gained substance and became a limbo plane of existence for Iris’ spirit. Geralt restored her memories one-by-one, fought through her fears that inhabited this world, and found Iris, given the choice of leaving the rose with Iris and keeping her trapped for eternity, or taking the rose and causing her and the world to be erased from existence, which is up to the player.

As for the Painted World itself, it consists of an exact copy of von Everec Estate, rolling hills, and a light in the sky that appears to be a moon. Would this mean that Iris has the AP to create a pocket dimension like this? Highly contentious.

For starters, feats like this are always iffy to scale, since these are mostly conscious feats rather than anything done through physical power, and this feat in particular wasn’t even accomplished until after Iris died, so she didn’t get to do anything. But for the benefit of the doubt, let’s say she does have this power. It wouldn’t amount to much anyway. At most, only the surrounding landscape would be scalable. The “moon” in the sky only shows itself as a big light, no big shiny ball of rock to be seen.

The other question is, how would Geralt scale? So far, his only arguments for scaling would be defeating Iris’ spectral emanation and her greatest fears that inhabit the Painted World, which are flimsy at best. Putting aside the fact that Iris clearly couldn’t accomplish something like this, there are arguments to be made that this world was actually a side-effect of the deal that Olgierd made with the otherworldly pactmaker Gaunter O’Dimm, which kills any arguments for scaling at all since O’Dimm is the god tier of The Witcher.

Even if Geralt could fully scale, it’d be extremely hard to believe. We know characters in The Witcher can potentially wield the power of celestial bodies like the White Frost so Iris creating a fully-fledged moon isn’t too far fetched to believe. The problem is that Geralt does not scale to the White Frost… like at all. It is stated in the lore that only people of Elder Blood are able to stop it, which Geralt unfortunately does not have. So if Geralt canonically is stated to be far weaker than characters on potential cosmic levels of power, then why would he scale to Iris? Considering most feats Geralt would likely scale to range from Building to Island, the jump from that to Moon level wouldn’t make much sense, resulting in this feat being unreliable for scaling.

Clare and Teresa

So at the end of the series, it’s revealed that Teresa’s soul had been inside Clare the whole time and fully Awakened in Clare’s place during the final bout with Priscilla. For the full context, Clare had started overexerting herself with Yoki but was stopped by Rafaela (whom Clare absorbed the memories of prior) who told her to use the Soul Link in order to Awaken another being instead of herself, that being Teresa. Clare can also still talk with Teresa inside her own mind while Teresa fights in her place.

But does Teresa count as outside help? In short, no. Clare and Teresa are two different people, but they share the same body. Miria even states that even though it looks like Teresa is fighting Priscilla, it is still Clare’s body. It is also a major part of Clare’s character and story so it wouldn’t make sense to omit it anyway. Especially considering Rafaela had to chime in and tell Clare not to Awaken but use the Soul Link instead. So even if you were to consider Teresa outside help, by that logic, Rafaela would most certainly count as outside help as well and it would be extremely unfair if Clare didn’t get that sort of support considering the context in which all of this occurred.

But would a situation like this even happen in a fight against a random monster slayer neither Clare or Teresa have met? Hypothetically, yes. Teresa had the entire manga’s story to learn and mimic techniques Clare had witnessed and build up enough energy to eventually Awaken through Clare. So for this fight, Clare would be near the end of her story for her to reach this point (in VS, you have to take your characters at their peak after all). Even then, Teresa likely wouldn’t need to step in unless Clare desperately needed help. This accompanied with Rafaela makes it more likely a last resort option if Clare was on the brink of fully Awakening or even worse, on the brink of death.

In conclusion, because they share the same body and it is a major part of Clare’s character and story, Teresa can Awaken through Clare at any time using the Soul Link and the “form” realistically should be used for this fight.

Isley and Luciela’s Clash

This is the feat we had the most trouble trying to figure out. To discuss what the feat is, essentially what happened is the two Abyssal Ones: Isley of the North and Luciela of the South had a massive battle that produced a massive shockwave and an earthquake across the entire southern part of the continent.

The first hurdle we went through was figuring out the size of Claymore’s continent. From what we know about the continent it isn’t actually a continent at all, it’s actually a small island as stated by Miria. However, the island is still big enough to have snowy biomes in the North and warmer biomes in the South. We are never given an exact size of the island and there have been numerous interpretations of this feat ranging from Island to even Country level! 

However, we are given an official map of what the island at least looks like and as you can see in the North end of the map, there is a volcano, the same volcano that the final battle against Priscilla happens at the end of the Claymore anime (obviously we are using the properly-finished manga as our primary research but this is just to add consistency). The volcano is very similar in structure to that of a Caldera volcano as it has a very clear dip in the middle. At minimum, Calderas are around 1 km tall so that is what we used to get an accurate measure for a few of the important calcs. Isley and Luciela’s clash being one of them.

Now a big misconception with this feat was that the shockwave caused the earthquake, it didn’t. If you actually read the manga panels, the earthquake happened while the two had already started fighting and the big shockwave happened later. The two occurrences are not one in the same and are two separate events within the same fight.

This is what brings us to the second hurdle when discussing this feat, a certain comment made by one of the Organization’s most skilled warriors, the Number 3 Claymore, Galatea. During Isley and Luciela’s fight, Galatea makes an interesting comment about how she can sense a large presence of Yoki all the way on the Eastern side of the continent. This comment tripped us up as she says herself in the same panel that “she wouldn’t be able to sense anything from that distance”. At first this made us try to calculate the limits to Galatea’s Yoki sensing range but to no avail. Then we questioned whether or not the shockwave even reached the East because Galatea’s comment happens right after that big clash but she neither comments on wind being moved or anything, just that she could sense Yoki in an arena that she couldn’t normally reach. We decided that this comment from Galatea can be shrugged off when it comes to Yoki sensing as it is very clear in the series that her ability to sense Yoki is unmatched by any other Claymore.

However, to give the benefit of the doubt, we will assume the shockwave reached the East but will give it a PSI of 0.15 as Galatea never mentioned a difference in the air when the shockwave happened.

Now onto the actual feats themselves, we’ll talk about the earthquake first as it is easier to calculate. The earthquake only affected the southern part of the continent which gives it a value of 22.07 Tons of TNT or City-Block level. Not as impressive as we had hoped but the shockwave got a better result of 46.33 Kilotons of TNT or Town level (sadly less than The Destroyer’s big blob but we’ll talk about that more in “Verdicts”).

TLDR: Claymore is never getting past Town level. Cry about it.

Verdicts

Cryotechnics

YAY! MY FAVORITE FRAUD-OFF!

In all seriousness, I love this matchup and the various parallels between both Witchers and Claymores, as well as more personal connections like them being more special than the rest of their kind and their surrogate children that they take care of. Along with the stellar sword combat and back-and-forth of abilities makes this one of my favorite VS matchups and I hope I can convince people on it too!

This debate was far from clear-cut. Starting with stats, both in base were relatively even with just their own direct feats as Geralt is around 0.3 Tons of TNT and Mach 0.4 while Clare is only around 0.17 Tons of TNT and Mach 7. Disregarding the vague lightning timing on Geralt’s end, this makes both Building level with Clare being comfortably faster. Scaling however turns the tides as Geralt can physically scale to Beasts such as the Shaelmaar who can make earthquakes ranging at minimum 2 Kilotons of TNT while Clare can deflect tendrils from Riful who destroyed a hill, which gets her to about 3 Kilotons of TNT or Town level, same as Geralt. Despite the clear power difference between Abyssal Ones and normal Claymores, your average Awakened Being can destroy an entire town with its hair, which Ophelia, someone who Clare has fought and defeated, was able to kill. So both are VERY even in strength and durability but speed is a bit trickier. Geralt for one, can likely be a lightning timer through statements of him “striking with the speed of a lightning bolt”, him parrying lightning from a Djinn (though it was Frame 1 so it couldn't be calced boowomp), and other Witchers like Letho have been stated to have “lightning-fast reflexes”. A member of the Wild Hunt, Eredin, was even able to block a lightning bolt shot by Yennefer, and Geralt has defeated Eredin in combat. All of this is rendered moot however as Geralt can possibly scale to the Djinns in which one of them created a storm at speeds of Mach 3213 or Massively Hypersonic. Scaling to the Djinns I think is fine as long as it is only through speed, the Djinns are very powerful and even though Geralt could keep up with one and defeat it, I don’t really believe that it should scale to his strength or durability, more on that later.

Now with Clare, Claymores are consistently shown to be extremely fast but very few feats could actually be calculated, Clare’s Mach 7 feat being one of the more impressive ones. However, there was one thing I haven’t mentioned yet. “Teresa of the Faint Smile”. Yes, even if Clare isn’t the most impressive on her own, once Teresa comes out, it is an entirely different story. Not only can Teresa scale above The Destroyer whose spikes can range anywhere from Mach 2 to Mach 1186, She also performed her own feat of slicing 5 Priscilla clones into dust with her Quicksword, which gets a speed of Mach 2146! It really is only a 1.49 times difference in speed, making Geralt still slightly faster, but is he really equal in strength too? Keep in mind that Clare needed Teresa to beat Priscilla, Priscilla was able to keep back attacks from The Destroyer’s true form, which has a value of around 81 Kilotons of TNT. The only way for Geralt to match that is by using the high-end of Shaelmaar’s earthquake, which gets around 84 Kilotons of TNT. However, Teresa was dominating Priscilla throughout their entire fight, so it’s likely her strength is even greater than that, and can theoretically be strong enough to one-shot Geralt if he isn’t careful. But there is again something that needs to be brought up, Geralt’s Signs. While he doesn’t scale to the Signs physically, his Signs can still be comparable to various magic users in the Witcherverse. This includes Melusina creating a large thunderstorm worth 461 Kilotons of TNT, or the group of sorceresses that created an earthquake felt across the world, in which each woman would need a power level of around 65 Gigatons of TNT! Again, I’m not saying that Geralt scales to these feats physically, hell not even the mages scale to their own magic physically. However, it can’t be ignored that Geralt’s Signs like Aard or Quen are able to match that of natural magic in strength and durability. Meaning that even though Geralt can get one-shot by Awakened Teresa in base, one good Aard or Igni blast can put the Claymore out of commission, and with his faster combat speed, he can likely pull that off.

Onto arsenal and abilities, I really don’t need to explain why Geralt takes this category lol. While Clare definitely has the better sword as Witcher swords tend to break more, Geralt’s plethora of potions, oils, and bombs allow him more options to control the fight with. Whether it be blinding Clare with a Zerrikanian Sun bomb, or negating her regeneration with his Brown Oil or Moon Dust bombs. Even one Blizzard potion can increase Geralt’s reflexes tenfold, dramatically increasing his speed, if he didn’t already have a speed advantage. Now Clare does have some advantages that Geralt does not. For one, Claymore regeneration is far superior to a Witcher’s, Claymores can close large wounds and reattach limbs in seconds to minutes whereas Geralt needed an entire month to regenerate a hole in his neck. However, the main issue with that is it requires a lot of Yoki energy to constantly heal those wounds and releasing too much Yoki can result in Awakening which Clare is very succumbed to do such as in her fights with the Cathedral Yoma and Rigardo. This segways into another huge detriment to Clare, although she has a very diverse spread of abilities in regards to sensing and manipulating Yoki, a lot of it is completely useless as Witcher experimentation has never had any demonic origins, it’s just mostly potions and concoctions that lead to the mutations. So even if you wanted to use series-equalization to equate other demonic auras to Yoki, Geralt doesn’t have any aura to give off, meaning all Clare can really do is use Yoki to amplify herself and heal, which does have its downsides.

Teresa can pose an issue for Geralt. Her mimicking ability allows her access to many Claymore techniques such as the Rippling Sword, Dust Eater, and Drill Sword. There’s even a small possibility she can mimic some of Geralt’s own sword techniques mid-combat, keeping him on his toes. However, while Teresa does allow for more versatility on Clare’s end, Geralt’s Signs just blow all of it out of the water. Whether it is placing a slowing trap with Yrden, putting Clare to sleep with Somne, Quen providing an unbreakable shield that can heal him. Geralt just has way more tools to help him outlast or immediately end the fight.

As for tertiaries, while Clare is an exceptional warrior among her generation of Claymores, Geralt is a lot more refined in his abilities. Claymore fighting is a lot more unpredictable but Witcher fighting is more tactical and laid out. Not to mention Geralt is kinda already near say… 100 years of age compared to Clare who is at least a teenager or at most in her early 20s through the course of the series. Granted Clare isn’t braindead, her early years under the Organization have demonstrated that she can think of really clever tactics on the fly like when she lured a Yoma with her own hair or kicked a nearby rock into someone’s face during combat. She can likely use her surroundings to get the jump on Geralt but I doubt she would be able to get the chance considering how much different stuff Geralt can throw at her.

In conclusion, while Clare can nab a few victories with her better regeneration, unpredictable fighting style, and mother figure she can literally summon to fight for her as she pleases, Geralt’s greater speed, arsenal, Signs, and overall tactical brilliance and experience allows him to win more often than not. My vote goes to Geralt of Rivia.

Door-kun

(Ichika is just like me fr)

Heeeey, it’s me, back again for another blog verdict! So, Geralt vs. Clare, eh? I personally think this is probably the best for both - thematically solid, has good fight potential, the comparison between Witchers and Claymores sells itself, isn’t associated with the Castlevania anime, it works really well and I like it quite a bit. But, you’re not here to see me sing the virtues of the matchup - you’re here to see who I think would win in a fight. And, well, let’s get to that!

Starting with stats, they should be roughly even across the board. Clare’s best is around 81 Kilotons, scaling to the Destroyer  while Geralt physically should be around 84 Kilotons from Shaelmaar’s earthquake. In terms of speed, the Djinn’s storms should get around Mach 3213, while Quicksword gets around Mach 2146, making Geralt slightly faster. Clare, however, should upscale her AP value comfortably, meaning she’d likely be stronger to a fair degree regardless. However, Geralt has potions and the like that can amp his speed further, giving him an advantage in that area. So, overall, Clare should be stronger, while Geralt should be faster.

…Except for a wrinkle. Geralt is physically weaker, but his signs should scale to Mages, considering the fact they can consistently match magical attacks, which can scale to various Megaton to Gigaton values, making them much stronger then Clare is. Not ideal, but hey, maybe Clare’s arsenal and abilities can help her keep up…

…Yeah, no. First of all, he just has way more weapons then she does - ranged options like the crossbow would make flight, a seemingly significant advantage at first glance, completely useless, and items like Brown Oil and Moon Dust Bombs could completely negate her regeneration. Doesn’t help that he also has Horse-sama - I mean, Roach. Why does that matter? Well, besides being able to summon Roach at any time, Roach has a travel speed at mach speeds from her flying across the sea, better than anything Clare has, meaning that Roach - and Geralt riding her - could literally run circles around Clare without her being able to keep up. Not great. 

Most of her Yoki based abilities are shut down due to Geralt not having Yoki, and Geralt’s signs have far more abilities and hax then Clare does. Clare’s mobility is certainly better, don’t get me wrong, and Teresa blows Geralt out of the water in terms of skill, giving her several techniques he’s never matched as well as being able to read his own sword based fighting style, and regeneration… but, then we have the real problem. Signs.

In addition to them one shotting Clare, they have a numerous amount of hax options she doesn’t have resistances too - freezing, mind manipulation, being forced to go to sleep, are all options Clare has no real way around, and combined with the range many of these have, this puts her in quite the pickle. This isn’t even getting into his various buffing items, or his ways of inflicting other statuses on her, but the point is pretty clear - Geralt’s abilities and arsenal far exceed Clare’s.

Tertiaries only make the picture worse. While Teresa I would probably argue is more skilled than Geralt in terms of raw swordsmanship, and definitely has a severe mobility advantage (excluding Roach), Geralt has far more experience against opponents like Clare then vice-versa and has generally lived longer, in addition to his obvious intelligence advantage in combat. All of this paints a pretty clear picture.

Clare’s stronger, sure, and could one-shot Geralt - but, Geralt has speed, enhanced by his various buffs and the like - and several ways to shut down Clare, while she doesn’t have many options beyond strength, which Geralt’s barrier signs would prevent as a viable way of getting to him, meaning she is definitely not winning here.

Clare’s strength, skill, mobility, and regeneration certainly would give Geralt pause - but his speed, intellect, and Signs would ultimately wear her down in the end. The only one claring their way to victory would be the White Wolf - toss a coin to the Witcher!

The winner is Geralt of Rivia.

Bowser The Second

(Call me Metal Sonic the way I carried Geralt’s side)

The first time I get to do my own verdict in a blog, and it’s for a novel character. (I can’t read)

Jokes aside, this was fun to look into, especially The Witcher. Now I get to yap about how these two will kill each other, so let’s begin. Naturally, we’ll start with…

Physical Stats

For AP, they’re fairly even in base to base. In regards to direct feats, they can output Building level AP or higher, with Geralt being able to output the force of a lightning bolt, which reaches 0.3 Tons of TNT, while Clare can output big columns of energy just by powering up, reaching 0.172 Tons of TNT. Pretty even, with Geralt having a slight edge. However, this is just their base states, and while they don’t have many high-end feats by themselves, if at all, they can be scaled to plenty of other characters in their series.

On Geralt’s side, he can compare to plenty of monsters that he’s fought and killed, such as Saskia and the Kayran, both outputting 1.9 Tons of TNT, but the best so far are monsters such as the Monster of Tufo, an elder female Shaelmaar that can output enough force to cause earthquakes that shake and collapse the houses above, which, depending on how structured the houses are, ranges from 2 Kilotons to 84 Kilotons of TNT, reaching Town levels of AP. In case you aren’t convinced, there’s spin-off material that makes this level of power consistent, such as a red dragon near-instantly setting a whole town on fire, and in Netflix’s Nightmare of the Wolf, Vesemir uses Igni to melt an entire frozen lake, which ranges from 130 Tons to 23 Kilotons of TNT. That’s all without various amps that Geralt can add to his power, the most prominent amp being from the Bloodbath mutation, which increases his power by 5% with every strike he lands, the maximum amp being 250%, meaning his AP can be multiplied by 3.5 times. At his best, that would be 294 Kilotons, or Large Town level, and that’s just one of the many things that Geralt can use to increase his AP.

Meanwhile, on Clare’s side, she can fight with many powerful Yoma, Claymores, and Awakened Beings, one of which destroyed the town of Gonal with just its hair. Clare, at least in her Partially-Awakened state, would scale to something like this, so Clare is Town level already. However, that’s still miniscule compared to other beings in the Continent, like Isley and Luciela, who clashed and created a shockwave across the Continent (so shut up, Goku, they did it first). The energy output of this attack would be around 46 Kilotons of TNT, solidly matching up with Geralt’s higher end scaling. But, this is still small potatoes compared to her secret weapon: Teresa of the Faint Smile.

After Clare and Teresa had discovered each other through their own mental landscape, Teresa realized that she could be reborn through Clare’s body via a Soul Link. This allowed her to turn the tide in the final battle. She was able to fight both of Those Above The Abyssal Ones, those being Priscilla and The Destroyer. The Destroyer, in particular, could create a gigantic blob of sludge that eclipses the whole forest. That’s an energy output of 81 Kilotons of TNT, well into Town level still, but this is still not Teresa’s best. Eventually, she managed to fully Awaken and demonstrate her full power against Priscilla, who had just previously destroyed The Destroyer. Awakened Teresa didn’t just defeat Priscilla, Priscilla was getting absolutely humiliated, not being able to land a single hit before getting utterly destroyed. This means that at her best, Teresa is leagues above any feat of power in the entire Claymore verse, which also means that Teresa far exceeds anything that Geralt can physically scale to. This also being somewhat generous to Geralt, as Town level feats are much more consistent in Claymore than in The Witcher. 

So while they’re fairly even base-to-base, it changes course once Teresa shows her full potential, giving Clare the edge in AP, at least physically, more on that later. Now let’s figure out how well that advantage can be used with their speed.

On Geralt’s side, his speed is already quite notable, ranging from deflecting crossbow rounds to dodging and parrying actual lightning, already putting him in the Massively Hypersonic ranges. Scaling to other characters only makes this level of speed more consistent, with Vilgefortz casually deflecting lightning from Yennefer, and Eredin doing the exact same thing here. Furthermore, Geralt was able to keep up with a Djinn, who was able to manifest a massive storm in a matter of 0.08 seconds, putting its speed at Mach 3213, well into the Massively Hypersonic+ range, and Geralt would be able to scale to this, as the Djinn’s attack speed should be no different than the speed at which it can manifest storms, as well as the fact that he could actively keep up with it. This isn’t the only MHS+ speed feat either, as this level of speed can potentially be matched by Roach. Yes, his horse is able to cross entire oceans when Geralt calls, putting her at speeds ranging from Mach 112 to Mach 1576. As I’ve said, this horse is built different.

So how will Clare or Teresa keep up with this? Well, for starters, Clare herself has a couple of Supersonic speed feats, such as creating multiple slashes at once on the surface of a pond, and blitzing a Yoma moving at subsonic speeds. Not to mention that the characters she scales to have shown very notable travel speed, such as Alicia and Beth travelling the Continent faster than the eye can track. But besides that, they don’t have very many feats that get above Supersonic, if at all, so it’s up to Teresa now. In her final battle against Priscilla, Priscilla had split herself into 5 clones in hopes that she could solo-jump Teresa. However, Teresa does the reverse and performs the peak of not just her speed, but the speed of any character in the verse: the Quicksword. This technique was the best she could muster, and she managed to swing her sword so fast that she cut every single Priscilla into dust.

As infamous as this feat is, we’ve managed to find a reliable calculation for this feat. In order to produce this much Priscilla dust in that small timeframe, she must’ve swung at speeds of Mach 2146, reaching Massively Hypersonic+ territory. This isn’t such a big outlier, as the previously mentioned Destroyer could shoot spikes all across the Continent, which ranges from Mach 2 to Mach 1186. Ultimately, while these feats are impressive, they come up short in comparison to Geralt’s speed. While you could say that this is barely even an edge for Geralt, recall how this is Teresa’s absolute best when it comes to speed, whereas this is Geralt’s average combat speed, and it goes without saying, but he has several means of increasing his speed, such as the Blizzard potion giving him a 10x increase in reflexes, which would get his combat speed up to Mach 32130, or his Heliotrope Sign slowing Clare down exponentially.

While it’s no secret that Clare (or Teresa should I say) can keep up with the Witcher, Geralt solidly takes the speed advantage. So overall, Clare has AP while Geralt has speed, a tale as old as time. Clare has the means of putting down the White Wolf in one hit, yet Geralt’s tremendous speed advantage makes that very difficult for the Claymore to pull off. Naturally, with a stat comparison like this, we’ll have to look into other means of one character defeating the other. So, let’s look towards…

Arsenal & Abilities

Now as much as we can go back-and-forth on their scaling, I can assure you that this is a lot more cut-and-dried. Don’t get me wrong, Clare is no slouch with her weapons. Her Claymore sword alone is more suitable for a long-term fight since it’s not prone to breaking apart like Geralt’s swords. But a big sword by itself won’t pull Clare through, especially since the other pieces of equipment she does have are essentially meaningless.

Meanwhile, Geralt has, in no specific order, silver swords, steel swords, crossbows, runestones, glyphs, potions, oils, bombs, an illusion-making medallion, and even the aforementioned Roach, which he can call from literally anywhere, even across the ocean. Hell, Roach herself has more equipment than Clare. As awesome as having a big sword is, it can only get Clare so far against the myriad of Geralt’s gear, such as his bombs blinding her or freezing her solid, or being able to hit her at a range via his chains or crossbows.

This becomes a bit more interesting when we look at abilities though. Now when it comes to their physiologies, they’re pretty dead even. Both Witchers and Claymores have high pain tolerance, inhuman stamina, the ability to control their own bodies, and regeneration. There are some key differences though, such as Witchers having such advanced senses that they practically can’t be snuck upon without any useful illusion magic, whilst Claymores have much faster regeneration.

But that’s where the similarities end. Looking into Clare’s unique abilities, she has the ability to manipulate Yoki, or demonic energy. It can be used to sense the Yoki in a being’s body to predict their moves, suppress their Yoki to be undetectable by others, synchronize their Yoki with their foes to control their movements, the list goes on. However, there are a couple of drawbacks to this. The more Clare abuses Yoki control, the bigger risk she runs of Awakening, which is detrimental to her fighting ability as a whole. The other drawback? Geralt doesn’t possess Yoki…at all. Witchers are not at all created like Claymores. While Claymores were created by infusing Yoma DNA into their bodies, Witchers are mutated through being injected with a concoction of dangerous substances, essentially a Super Serum. This also means that Clare’s Yoki manipulation has little use against Geralt, which forces her to fight instinctively throughout most of the fight. Unlike Clare though, Witchers like Geralt have the ability to just read their opponents’ muscle movements and counter on the fly, no Yoki required.

Now onto Geralt’s abilities. I’ll start with Signs, since they’re the easiest to cover. In fact, I made a chart right here for each Sign and how Clare could combat them.

Sign	Function	Clare’s Counter
Aard	Aard uses a strong telekinetic force that knocks down foes and objects; Additional upgrades give this ice properties and AoE.	Bulky enemies like Fiends can resist the telekinetic force of Aard, so if Clare is durable enough, she could probably resist it. However, the freezing mutation for Aard would likely not be resisted since Claymores have never shown to resist immediate freezing, just intensely low and natural temperatures. Additionally, Aard could be dodged since it initially is a straightforward burst, but Geralt can use it as an AoE attack, so Clare wouldn't be able to avoid it. Overall, not much of a way for her to counter.
Igni	Igni releases flames that can burn through steel plate armor; It can be fired in a short burst or a steady stream.	Claymores have been shown to manage being in intense heat, but Igni is hot enough to burn through steel plate armor, meaning he can burn through her armor and possibly her sword, if given enough time.
Quen	Quen creates a temporary shield that protects the user from powerful attacks; It can be used as either a one-hit shield, or a forcefield that can absorb damage and heal the damage, as well as explode and reflect the damage back.	Quen can be broken through by powerful enough opponents, like when fighting Dettlaff, meaning if Clare was strong enough, she could break through it. However, Quen is able to defend against attacks from Djinns, which are powerful to fling off spells from mages, even with years of preparation. Mages can pull off feats more powerful than anything seen in Claymore so far, so it's gonna be very, very difficult to get through. Additionally, Quen can reflect damage back at the attacker, so it'll be even worse for Clare, who relies entirely on physical attacks.
Axii	Axii acts as a form of control over unprotected minds; Initially, it’s rather weak, but prolonged use can directly control minds no matter how strong-willed they are.	Axii can be resisted by people with strong enough minds and/or willpower, so no doubt Clare would resist it, right? Yes, at least initially. However, more experienced Axii users, like Geralt, can hold Axii for longer to take direct control over minds instead of just a simple Jedi mind trick. So far, Clare has never resisted direct mind control, so it'll be rough for her.
Yrden	Yrden creates runes that can either protect the user from monsters, or inflict paralysis and overtime damage onto attackers caught inside; Alternatively, it can create a runic orb that fires beams and eliminates projectiles.	Yrden is said to be circumvented by just being fast enough, so if Clare is fast enough, she can blitz through Yrden's effects. But so far, The Witcherverse has better speed feats than Claymore, so she's not in a good spot.
Heliotrope	The novel version of Heliotrope isn’t very noteworthy, as it’s really just a very brief Quen; However, the variant seen in Witcher 2 is much more potent, as it can create a bubble that slows down all enemies in the vicinity.	The novel’s version of Heliotrope wouldn’t help Geralt much against Clare, but the pseudo-time-slow effect seen in The Witcher 2 significantly lowers Clare’s, and even Teresa’s, chances to land a fatal hit.
Somne	Somne upon use will put the user’s foe to sleep, and potentially revoke them of their memories.	Clare has never been shown to resist forcefully being put to sleep, so one use of that, and Clare is going night-night.
Supirre	Supirre is used as a sensory enhancer, such as a temporary hearing aid that blocks out surrounding noises, or as an echolocator that helps the user navigate through dark places.	This isn’t really a factor, unless Clare somehow blinds Geralt and tries to sneak up on him, which is…very unlikely, so let’s discuss something better.
Aard + Yrden (Soul Removal)	Through a combination of Yrden and Aard, Geralt was able to separate the possessive Red Miasmal from a deceased Witcher’s body and soul.	This combination of Signs can force possessive spirits from a person’s body. Now would this work on Clare’s Soul Link? Potentially. The argument for it working would be that since Teresa is bonded to Clare and could take over her body to fight for her, it could remove her spirit from Clare’s body. The argument against it is that Teresa is technically bonded to Clare genetically rather than spiritually, so it wouldn’t be able to separate Teresa since she doesn’t qualify as a possessive spirit. Overall, this is up to interpretation, so believe what you want.

In summation, it’s not looking good for Clare. To add onto this even further, do you recall when I said Clare was physically stronger? The reason being that Geralt’s Signs are built differently than physicals. That’s because Geralt’s Signs can defend, and even attack, against most magical beings seen in The Witcher, like against Djinns, who can fling off spells from the most accomplished mages in the verse. This would mean that Geralt’s Signs can scale much higher, such as scaling to several storm feats, one of which would’ve flooded all of Skellige, and at least four druids in the area stopped it within minutes, which would’ve taken a combined power of 85 Gigatons of TNT. Need more proof? Three sorceresses were able to create an explosion powerful enough to cause earthquakes felt as far as Oxenfurt, which would take a combined output of 193 Gigatons! That is leagues above any feat in Claymore. And just in case you doubt that Signs can scale to the higher end feats of magic, even just scaling to casual feats like Eredin moving clouds, they’d still scale to an energy worth 9 Megatons, which still exceeds the best feats in Claymore.

Even then, Geralt doesn’t need to have all of that scaling anyway, since his Signs already provide Geralt with multiple ways to end the fight, like freezing Clare into an ice sculpture, incinerating her beyond repair, and messing with her head either by putting her to sleep, or controlling her outright. On the contrary, Clare’s abilities are rendered moot due to Geralt lacking Yoki. That and Geralt has items that can outright negate a lot of the advantages that Clare does have, such as her regeneration being countered by Geralt dousing his blades with Brown Oil, or setting off Moon Dust or Dimeritium bombs that can prevent her from transforming.

Oh, and secret weapon? Horse. Seriously though, even Geralt’s horse has the potential to prove a threat to Clare, especially in the case of having the Caparison of Lament, a saddle that can cause mental damage to any foes in the surrounding area, completely addling their minds. As we’ve discussed, Clare has no resistance to such attacks, and to be fairrr, it’s not like Teresa is infallible against horses either, sorry not sorry.

So with all of this in mind, while they are physiologically similar in many ways, Geralt simply takes the edge in general abilities and tools, and unlike Clare, he can access the majority of his best stuff with fewer and easily preventable drawbacks. But does this mean Clare is completely screwed? Well, to give her one more chance, let’s observe their…

Tertiary Factors

When it comes to this fight, I imagine the most important tertiary factors consisting of their skills, experience, tactics, and endurance. Starting with their skills, it’s surprising to say that both of them have their own unique advantages. For example, Claymores like Clare have their own special techniques to catch their opponents off-guard, such as Irene’s Quicksword or Jean’s Drill Sword. On the other end, Witcher techniques are more refined, performing elegant strikes combined with well-executed feints. It’s safe to say that, given their unique advantages, they both can equally combat each other in skill.

The same cannot be said for experience. Clare is seemingly a young adult in the story of Claymore, albeit she does cheat a little by absorbing the memories of other, and more talented, Claymores. Geralt, meanwhile, has been alive for nearly a century while studying and slaying a large variety of humans, non-humans, other Witchers, animals, werewolves, vampires, necrophages, demons, golems…yeah, you can tell who’s more experienced on Geralt’s repertoire alone.

With their tactics, they’re fairly even, at first. Both are able to read their opponents’ moves and weaknesses, and provide countermeasures, and both have used many cunning methods to lure out their monstrous targets. However, unlike Clare, Geralt’s analytical prediction isn’t tied to a specific form of energy detection. It’s all through his observational skills alone. Even that aside, Geralt was able to outsmart otherworldly beings like Djinns, Hyms, and even Gaunter O’Dimm in his own game, which was literally made for him to fail. Not that Clare is lacking in intellect, but compared to “Evil Incarnate”, she might as well be a stone wall. 

Not only that, but Clare actually loses her tactical comprehension the more a fight goes on, as her Partially-Awakened form distorts her mind into that of an animal, giving Geralt even more of an advantage, as he has no such drawbacks. Granted, Teresa can negate these drawbacks, but it’s still putting Clare into a bad spot, and given Geralt’s massive speed advantage, it's a possibility that he could end the fight before Teresa even comes out. Did I mention that when Partially Awakened, Clare gets a taste for blood? With that, Geralt has the perfect counter via Black Blood potions, which makes his blood dangerous for monsters to consume, putting Clare at an even greater risk.

Finally, our last main factor is endurance. At first, Clare has solid advantages, such as quick regeneration and stamina that lasts for days, even in harsh conditions. But as we’ve examined before, not only does Geralt have counters for these advantages, Geralt comes with more or less the same abilities, and then some. We’re talking potions and mutations that can heal him, nullify pain, restore lost stamina, or even bring him back from the brink of death, becoming invulnerable for a few moments and giving him the opportunities he needs for a killing blow.

Conclusion

So that’s the debate of Geralt VS Clare. While Clare has the power and unpredictable nature to prove a tough fight, Geralt frankly has every other advantage. It may seem absurd that a grounded character such as Geralt could defeat a powerhouse like Clare, but if you really think about it, fighting a monstrously powerful enemy and having to rely on reflexes, tactics, and weaponry are exactly what Witchers are made for. Dare I say, they do this every day…yeah.

Though Clare can give Geralt the fight of his life, the White Wolf’s superior speed, repertoire of weapons, busted abilities, and tactical genius will be the Claymore’s downfall (if the anime’s abrupt ending didn’t do that already).

Try as she might, Clare was awakened to Geralt’s Sword of Destiny. Call it Clare’s Last Wish to burn out like a Baptism of Fire.

The winner is Geralt of Rivia!

YaBoiGh0styy

Writing a verdict for a fight between two badass fantasy characters? Sign me right up, baby. I think this matchup is pretty cool, and I wouldn’t mind seeing it happen one day. But let’s get to the point—who would win? 

At first glance, Clare seems to have more advantages. Geralt’s Soul Removal wouldn’t work for separating Clare and Teresa in my opinion since they are bonded genetically rather than spiritually. Clare can endure hits that would be fatal for most people, including Geralt, and she’s willing to get hurt to gain the upper hand. Her Partially-Awakened form would definitely overwhelm Geralt in sword-to-sword combat—I mean, just look at it. Not to mention her techniques would catch Geralt off guard and would be devastating on a hit such as Dust Eater which would prove difficult to defend against, Phantom Mirage to confuse and catch Geralt off guard, and the Rippling sword which phases through enemy attacks and the drill sword which is performed much quickly by Teresa than Jean who created the attack and of course extending her limbs to attack at further ranges. She’s also much more mobile, even without Teresa’s Awakened form and flight. But that’s really where most of her meaningful advantages stop. 

Geralt and Clare are both highly skilled swordsmen, but Clare doesn’t have nearly the same level of experience as Geralt. Although she inherited Rafaela’s memories and should theoretically have her experience, Geralt likely still surpasses her in this regard. It’s not until Teresa enters the picture. Having witnessed Clare’s growth and being aware of Rafaela’s memories that they become roughly equal in overall experience… or so it seems. 

Even though both have been around for a long time, Geralt is the only one who has consistently fought against other swordsmen. Claymores are forbidden from fighting humans. While they can battle each other, those encounters are rare, and by the time they do, one of them has often already Awakened. Geralt, on the other hand, has faced numerous skilled swordsmen throughout his life. He is also considered to be the best Witcher, being better than that of Vesemir, a Witcher that is over 350 years old. This means he would adapt to Clare and Teresa much faster. 

Despite their experience, skill is a different matter. Geralt has spent his entire life hunting a far wider variety of monsters and humans. Whether it’s with swords, fists, or magic, he’s done it all. This means he’ll adapt to Clare and Teresa quicker than they can adapt to him. Even if you argue that their overall experience is roughly equal, Geralt still takes the edge due to his extensive combat history against other swordsmen. After all, Claymores are strictly forbidden from killing humans, and Teresa is one of the very few exceptions who engaged in combat with them. It’s doubtful that Clare, Teresa, and Rafaela combined could match Geralt’s experience in fighting skilled warriors. 

Speed was honestly the biggest surprise. Despite being the fastest Claymore, Clare is still just a bit slower than Geralt. Both of their top-speed feats are impressive, but Geralt has the edge. Comparing Teresa slicing up the Priscillas at Mach 2146 to the Djinn’s storm speed at Mach 3213 Geralt would be 1.49 times faster. He wouldn’t be blitzing Clare, but she wouldn’t be able to rely on her speed against the White Wolf—especially given Geralt’s training, which allows him to react to attacks purely on instinct. He can even predict his opponent’s next move, like when he recognized a young Ciri’s mistake before she made it. Combined with his speed this would make techniques like the Quicksword and Windcutter less effective against a faster opponent who can instinctively dodge some attacks 

Now, what about strength? This part is tricky. Claymore doesn’t shy away from showing how inhumanly powerful its characters are, while The Witcher, despite being fantasy, tries to be more grounded. Clare likely holds a physical strength advantage over Geralt since all of the feats Clare scale to she scales Physically such as the Destroyer’s true form at 81 Kilotons. GG, right? Well… not exactly. Despite being physically weaker, Geralt is more powerful. His magic has matched powerful sorcerers and mages, and he has even defeated Djinns capable of creating massive storms that gets to 46 Petatons even ignoring that Eredin of the Wild Hunt could make a storm that could block out the sun just by existing at 9.53 Megatons over 110 times greater than the best Clare can scale to and Geralt is able to block their attacks with his blade and shield himself with Quen and also beat them. These attacks Geralt can block outright surpass anything seen in Claymore. Unfortunately for Clare, she doesn’t have many ways to counter Geralt’s Signs. 

Claymores have resistance to intense weather like being in snow or in the anime being in a Volcano in close proximity to lava, but there’s no way Clare or Teresa could withstand Igni, which can melt steel. Aard would easily catch Clare off guard the first time, leaving her open for a counterattack. Quen has protected Geralt from mages with far greater destructive power than anything in Claymore and can even reflect damage back at his opponents. Yrden would slow Clare down even further, widening the speed gap between her and Geralt. And then there’s Axii. While people with strong willpower can resist it, Clare has shown she’s susceptible to mental interference. She wasn’t even aware that she had inherited Rafaela’s memories, nor did she realize Teresa was within her until the final battle against Priscilla. This means Geralt could do whatever he wants with Axii—whether that’s making her stand still while he continuously attacks her or pulling a Frieren and making her kill herself right then and there. He could also achieve a similar outcome with Somne, putting her to sleep and finishing her off instantly. 

Physically speaking, Geralt’s attacks would hurt Clare more than vice versa due to her inferior armor. Her defenses aren’t nearly as solid, and that’s a major issue for her. Geralt, having strong offensive and defensive options makes him more comfortable no matter what end he is on whereas Clare would struggle when not on the offensive. Usually when she has to, she would allow herself to be wounded to gain an advantage, that would be difficult against someone as versatile as Geralt. 

And speaking of versatility Geralt massively outmatches Clare in that department. Her sword techniques might give him pause, but his sheer range of abilities is something she wouldn’t be able to keep up with. Crossbows with exploding bolts, bombs, enchantments on his weapons and Armour that could change the entire fight by themselves by freezing Clare in place, and potions that can boost his stats, heal him, or slow his blood loss. Not to mention oils that increase damage or, more importantly, Brown Oil, which outright negates regeneration, making Clare much more vulnerable as she relies heavily on her healing when her opponent outmatches her. The crossbow would be especially damaging to Teresa as Geralt often uses it to bring down flying opponents so despite having mobility without the speed, she would be ground really quick. 

Geralt simply has too many counters for Clare to overcome. Despite being physically weaker, his magic alone is enough to end the fight in seconds. Whether it’s negating her regeneration with Brown Oil, shooting Teresa out of the sky with his crossbow, reflecting her own attacks back at her with Quen, slowing her down with a well-placed Yrden, or using Axii or Somne to leave Clare defenseless, Geralt has more than enough ways to put her down. 

Clare thought she’d take home the gold, but all she got was Geralt’s silver. 

Tario

Verdict Time! Big fan of this mu, honestly kind of glad that Guts fought Dimitri instead of Clare, just so this has more of a chance to happen.

Anyway, onto the debate part, I will be dividing this into 3 Categories, Stats, Hax & Arsenal and Tertiary Factors so without further ado let's start with our first category…

Stats:

Let's start with their own direct feats, Clare should get to 0.17 Tons of TNT from her awakening transformation, while Geralt gets a comfortable 0.3 Tons of TNT from being stated to hit with the speed and force of Lighting. This gives Geralt an edge in AP. Onto speed, Claymores are often depicted as being super fast, so the fact that Clare gets to Mach 7.81 is no surprise. Geralt's best direct speed feat is Mach 0.4. This should give Clare the speed advantage… right? Not exactly. I personally do not see a problem in using the statement of Geralt hitting with the speed of a lightning bolt for speed, if we do the same for AP, especially since this feature is supported by him being able to parry and dodge lighting. So Geralt takes the edge in both Strength and Speed for direct feats.

But what about scaling?

Like I said earlier, Claymores are always portrayed as being extremely fast. Clare should be comparable to killing the Pricillias, which gets to Mach 2146. Geralt on the other hand can scale to Djinns, whose storms can reach a speed of Mach 3213, if you find this iffy to use because of the Djinns nature of being specifically built to control the weather and forces of nature, other feats, such as Roach crossing the ocean in seconds which gets up to Mach 1576, support this level of speed. Geralt can also increase his speed tenfold with Potions, making him more than able to keep up, even with lower ends. So I give Geralt the edge in Speed. As for Strength, Clare's best source of scaling should be scaling through the destroyer's true form at 81 Kilotons of TNT. Geralt on the other hand is a lot harder to pin down. The best physically performed feat he can scale to would be scaling to Elder Shaelmaar which can cause tremors by digging. This feat can get up to 84 Kilotons. Keep in mind however that this is the highest interpretation, and other methods would get this only to 2 Kilotons. So the question remains, how strong is Geralt? If we look at feats performed by magic users, we get a better picture. Some druids claim they could flood skellige, which would get to 21.3 Gigatons of TNT, other mages, such as Melusina, have created storms with an output of 461,41 Kilotons of TNT. An earthquake caused by Triss, Sabrina and Keira lands him at 65.4 Gigatons. Eredin’s storm would get 9.53 Megatons. And, if you buy Geralt scaling to djinns, which I do, the Djinns have a feat worth 46 Pettatons. Now if you have read the BTV section on this, you might say that Geralt only scales to these feats via his own signs and magic. Which i only partially agree with, while i do think Geralt shouldn't fully scale to these feats physically, he should at least down scale. He has survived magic based attacks from the people responsible for those feats and can physically kill people that are able to survive attacks from his signs.If you disregard scaling to Djinns, Geralt should still be physically stronger and Faster than Clare and only furthering the gap with Signs, this is factoring that he downscales already. This all means Geralt takes stats comfortably.

Hax & Arsenal:

Yeah, Clare doesn't stand a chance in this Category. She does have some advantages like her Swords being less prone to breaking, her Regeneration being better or being able to copy Geralt's techniques mid-fight. Geralt has a counter to almost all of these advantages, he often carries more than enough swords so even after breaking some, he would still be able to fight on. He also carries more than swords, his crossbows and signs would allow him to keep a distance even if Clare managed to break all his Swords. Additionally the durability of his swords can be improved with Magic. Geralt can also just negate Clares regeneration with the use of brown oils and Moon Dust Bombs. It doesn't help Clare that she can't really use any manipulation of Yoki on Geralt, as he has no demonic Aura. Geralt on the other hand can use all his magic on her, barring the exception of soul removal, which probably doesn't work considering Clare and Teresa are a genetic bond rather than spiritual. His Potions can be used to buff himself, Oils and Bombs can be used to debuff Clare and negate some effects she inflicts on herself with Yoki, making her lose Yoki for nothing. Clare just lacks too many counters to really be able to keep up here, giving Geralt the edge in this Category.

Tertiary Factors:

As for tertiaries, they should be roughly even here. Geralt should be smarter, more tactical and have more experience, being nearly 100 years old and training and fighting from a young age. Clare however is a lot more used to fighting unusual enemies, Geralt often relies on prior knowledge of his opponents to directly counter them and use their weaknesses. Geralt should outskill Clare but not Teresa, who also has a mobility advantage. With all this in mind, I would say this category is a Tie.

I don't think a long verdict is needed, while Clare could keep the witchers on his Toes, the sheer stat gap, amount of counters and abilities and flexibility in fighting style, should be too much for the Claymore to Handle

The winner is Geralt of Rivia

Conclusion

“To be neutral does not mean to be indifferent or insensitive. You don't have to kill your feelings. It's enough to kill hatred within yourself.”

Advantages:

• Stronger and more durable with Signs

• Faster, enhanced by buffs from potions

• Has a far greater arsenal

• Better ranged options

• Potions and Mutations allow for better chances of outlasting

• Signs alone severely limit some of Clare’s options and can end the fight easily

• Brown Oil and Moon Dust Bombs can negate Clare’s regeneration

• More experienced

• Outskills in most categories…

• Will solo Clare in a game of Gwent

• Read/Play The Witcher…

Equal:

• Base strength and durability

• Hot

Disadvantages:

• Can get one-shot by Teresa in base

• Weapons are more prone to breaking

• His regeneration isn’t as quick as Clare’s

• …although Teresa’s mimicry can keep him on his toes

• Most tactics require prep time

• His yeeyee-ass haircuts

• …but stay away from the Netflix show

“Don't be so quick to throw away your life. No matter how disgraceful or embarrassing it may be, you need to keep struggling to find your way out until the very end.”

Advantages:

• Teresa can one-shot Base Geralt

• Naturally resists Geralt's poison effects

• Claymore swords aren’t prone to breaking

• Teresa’s mimicry can keep up with Geralt…

• Superior regeneration to Geralt’s…

• Watch/Read Claymore (the manga’s way better)

Equal:

• Base strength and durability

• Hot

Disadvantages:

• Slower, made even worse with potions

• Can get one-shot with Signs like Aard or Igni

• Has no way around Quen

• Signs like Axii and Somne can incapacitate her

• Completely outshined in arsenal

• Has little to no ranged options

• Yoki Manipulation is essentially useless since Geralt does not possess Yoki

• Partially-Awakened Clare is much more animalistic

• Less experienced

• …but Clare is outskilled otherwise

• …but her regeneration can be negated by Geralt’s Brown Oil and Moon Dust Bombs

• Anime ended abruptly

Final Tally

Team Geralt [5]: (Cryotechnics, door-kun, Bowser The Second, YaBoiGh0styy, Tario)

Team Clare [0]: (at least she beats Guts now… i think?)

Thank You! (from Cryotechnics)

Hi it’s me, Cryo, back with another VS Blog.

For some of you wondering how this came out so early right after Mii-nifigures (Miis VS Minifigures) in which I have to say that this was actually being worked on during the 9 months that the last blog was being worked on because I had severe burnout and needed to work on something else. And here it is!

I have desperately wanted to do a Claymore blog because the series has needed a deep dive for a long time and Guts already had a blog with Dimitri so I went with the other option I thought was interesting in Geralt (whose series is also underresearched) which after having worked on this blog, it is 100% my fav for both now! The connections while seem like it only focusing on their “kind” which the parallels are already enough to make me like this, the discrimination Witchers and Claymores have to deal with is a big part of Geralt and Clare’s characters and their adoptive child figures in Ciri and Raki are the cherry on top to this frankly, really badass matchup.

A big thank you to the research team as always, Bowser singlehandedly carried The Witcher side of things, Ghosty for their Claymore knowledge, NormallyNormal for doing a majority of the calcs for this blog (they didn’t want to write a verdict or vote), and Tario and Door for helping out when they can. This being the starting point for both underresearched series to get concrete stats and detail into their abilities is awesome and I’m happy to be the progenitor of that. Now onto that next time…

Pray for me please, this one is a doozy.

Next Time…

Credited Sources:

• VS Battles Wiki

• The Witcher Wiki

• Geralt of Rivia Respect Thread

• Claymore Wiki

• Claymore Respect Thread Key