Nemesis (Evil): What to do with it?

[Doctor Despair]

You mentioned Mighty Works Mastery II. One thing to note is that, due to the wording, any attack that stuns a target can deal Str damage, instead, not just Stunning Fist.

Note that there is no mention of "Stunning Fist," but instead it's "stunning attack." Sure, it's likely bad editing -- which WotC is absolutely notorious for -- but all we have to go off of is the RAW, and here, they say "stunning attack."

And since the prereq (MWM I) is about as useful as hiding in a fridge in the middle of a nuclear explosion, if you have to take useless prereqs, you might as well get something nice out of it...

I agree that it should apply to any stunning attack. I was hoping to combine it with Pharaoh's Fist to inflict the damage on multiple enemies, but I don't think the word "target" is that generous. :/

Something I DID find, though, is Mind-Shattering Strike. There is no immunity to it that would apply apart from getting incorporeality or some other way to prevent us from actually hitting the target.

Before making an unarmed strike, a Kuo-Toa monitor can choose to use this feat, consuming one of the monitor's daily uses of the Stunning Fist feat, if a Kuo-Toa monitor next unarmed strke hits, the struck opponent must make a Will save (DC 10 + 1/2 the Monitor's HD+it's Wis Modifier). On a Failed save that foe attacks the closest non-kuo-toa on its next turn. This feat also grants 1 additional use of the stunning fist feat

It prevents enemies from any spellcasting or abilities that require a standard or full-round action, as they must attack themselves, which is pretty notable as a debuff. We can also conserve our Stunning Fist charges by using Kuo-Toa Monastacism, which allows us to guarantee a subsequent hit if the first hit of our Flurry of Blows hits. It's not as valuable as inflicting stun, or nauseated, or staggered, but it is immunity-proof.

It does, however, require us to be Kuo-Toa, which is a non-started without level-buy-off rules. They're LA+3 with 2RHD. You can buy that off by late-game, but you'll likely never catch up in XP, it'll be painful all game, and you'll be missing two class levels. It's... not ideal. I wish there was a better option for stunning fist. MWMII and Rattlesnake Strike let you use it to do physical damage (still doesn't help with constructs or undead), but we already have Touch of Golden Ice for rider effects. It's the lack of CC support that's disappointing.

A crit-based build capitalizing on Favored Critical struggles because crit immunity is fairly common among creature types and abilities. Deathstrike Bracers let you crit those immune by creature type 3x/day, threatening a Resounding Blow, but that's just 3x/day. There are also as few items, I suppose, that let you ignore specific immunities; A Greater Truedeath Crystal or Greater Demolition Crystal let you crit undead and constructs respectively. I'm not sure how common evil constructs would be, so that really just requires the former, although that still leaves oozes and plants. The Staff of Rapture has a critical threat range of 17-20 against evil creatures, so Favored Critical would bring it to 13-20, but as it only deals nonlethal damage, I'm not sure it would work. A few melee weapons have 18-20 naturally though, so keen and favored critical on them would get you to a range of 12-20. Bloodstorm Blade 2 would let you throw weapons as if they were melee attacks to trigger all this. I'm not particularly a fan of this school of build though, as there are just so many ways enemies could be immune to crits, even if you can reliably hit them and force the save.

Smite-based builds seem to just be baiting me into doing ANOTHER incorporeal build, but I'm hopeful I can find some sort of way to establish cover/concealment relative to enemies consistently to capitalize on Awesome Smite. Shadow Sun Ninja can establish total concealment for everyone 50% of the time... The Paladin Awesome Blow ACF could be neat terrain-dependent, and it can force enemies prone fairly consistently, so there might be something there, but it'll mean we need a dip into cleric to get turn undead back.

I feel like these are the main strategies to consider for Nemesis (Evil), and none of them are super exciting. Even the Kuo-Toa thing, while super unique, is going to end up pretty bad because of the crippling LA and RHD. I feel like smite is the most viable technique, and even that's going to end up usable 2 + cha times/day, so maybe one fight? Two if you're very conservative? I can't help but feel like we're hitting a wall. Maybe Favored Enemy (Arcanists) is the best way to use it...