History CombatPragmatist / Literature

** The Nac Mac Feegles are this to a tee, partly because they're fairies (of the Scottish type, i.e., neglectfully dangerous at best, ranging on down to pure evil) by origin, and partly because when you're six inches high, fighting 'fair' is actually rather difficult all around. The fact that they view the Disc as a sort of heaven (i.e., having been good in the past life they can let themselves go in this one) probably helps as well.

** Also ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'': ''"Cohen had heard of fighting fair, and had long ago decided he wanted no part of it."''
** There's also one of the Silver Horde squaring off against a ninja in ''Literature/InterestingTimes''. After pretending he's getting ready to break a block of wood barehanded and making sure the ninja is watching his hands, he [[GroinAttack kicks him in the treasury]] and whacks him over the head with said block. Should've watched the leg, indeed.
*** Later on in the same book, one of the local lords shows off his Samurai by having him throw a handkerchief into the air, and slice it cleanly in half. Cohen then throws ''his'' handkerchief into the air...and then chops off the Samurai's head as he's watching the handkerchief.

** 71 Hour Ahmed from ''Literature/{{Jingo}}'' is likewise although it's fully justified when you're chasing desperate criminals into the far reaches of desert land by yourself. 71 Hour Ahmed is a MeaningfulNickname. 72 hours (ie 3 days) is the honorific [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Klatchian]] period of time you ''have'' to wait before you would attack your guests, or hosts. Anybody you meet in the desert? Is either your guest or your host. Ahmed is a NotSoDifferent counterpart to Samuel Vimes. He's a copper. Vimes' beat is Ankh-Morpork. Ahmed's beat is all of the desert of Klatchistan. He found a particularly bad sort of criminal after a heinous crime, and... Well, you can extrapolate with insufficient data.

--->'''Vimes:'''''"And for close-up fighting, as your senior sergeant [[CouldSayItBut I explicitly forbid you]] to investigate the range of coshes, blackjacks, and brass knuckles sold by Mrs. Goodbody at No. 8 Easy Street at a range of prices and sizes to suit all pockets, and should any of you approach me privately I absolutely will not [[SuspiciouslySpecificDenial demonstrate a variety of specialist blows suitable for these useful yet tricky instruments]]." ''

*** "[[GroinAttack Make a sudden move, and neither are you]]."

** Also applies to Vimes' [[BattleButler butler]] Willikins, who is arguably Vimes' equal, less artful, but less constrained in his choices of weapons and methods. [note]Translation: Vimes tries to avoid killing; Willikins does not[/note]

--->'''Vimes:'''''"And for close-up fighting, as your senior sergeant [[CouldSayItBut I explicitly forbid you]] to investigate the range of coshes, blackjacks, and brass knuckles sold by Mrs. Goodbody at No. 8 Easy Street at a range of prices and sizes to suit all pockets, and should any of you approach me privately I absolutely will not demonstrate a variety of specialist blows suitable for these useful yet tricky instruments." ''

*** "Make a sudden move, and neither are you."

--->'' Two Grins was the dirtiest fighter Vimes had ever met. Anything was a weapon, anywhere was a target. Two Grins was a kind of genius in that limited area. [[ImprovisedWeapon He could see the weapon in anything]] -- a wall, a cloth, a piece of fruit. . . He wasn't even a big man. He was small and wiry. But he liked fighting big men, [[ManBitesMan on the basis that there was more of them to bite.]] ''
** Also applies to Vimes' [[BattleButler butler]] Willikins, who is arguably Vimes' equal, less artful, but less constrained in his choices of weapons and methods.

* The only magical ability AlexVerus has in a world full of mages who want him dead is the ability to see the future. As such, he uses this ability to either avoid fights entirely, or sneak up on the bad guys and kill them before they know what's happened. He states outright in the second book that killing people is often safer than trying to disable them as half the time they come back to try again.

** In ''[[ComicBook/XWingSeries Starfighters of Adumar]]'', Wes Janson winds up in a duel using a blastsword, a weapon he has very little idea how to use. What Janson ends up doing is parrying his opponent's first strike, then knocking the sword out with his hands and [[GoodOldFisticuffs beating the crap out of him in unarmed combat]].
** In the ComicBook/XWingSeries, both Rogue and Wraith Squadrons are completely happy to use any unfair and probably illegal methods they can think of, including pretending to be the enemy, flying false flags, and acts of piracy. Note that in RealLife, all three of those are HIGHLY illegal. Hell, Wraith Squadron was BUILT on this, using random misfits and Special Forces soldiers as pilots specifically so they wouldn't fly and fight like pilots.

** There's also one of the Silver Horde squaring off against a ninja in ''Discworld/InterestingTimes''. After pretending he's getting ready to break a block of wood barehanded and making sure the ninja is watching his hands, he [[GroinAttack kicks him in the treasury]] and whacks him over the head with said block. Should've watched the leg, indeed.

*** Vimes' opinion on Fantailler seems to have softened slightly by the time of ''Discworld/{{Snuff}}'', at least to the extent where he's prepared to offer the use of the rules when challenged to a duel. But this is simply one of many ploys used to try and scare his challenger, treating the challenge as a deadly serious endeavour, which means offering the man the chance to choose the rules of the duel.

*** But ''Discworld/MenAtArms'' shows that if Carrot needs you dead, there will be a foot of cold steel through you before you realize there is even to be a fight. Sometimes a sword ''is'' enough to win a gun (or gonne) fight.
** Vimes' antagonist in ''Discworld/NightWatch'' is Carcer, whom Vimes describes as a "bottle covey". The guy who'll take every possible way to kill you, just because he likes it, and takes advantage of the system whenever he can. [[{{Foil}} In some ways Carcer is "evil Vimes"]], which is hinted at several times in the book.

*** He also ended a battle with an all-powerful reality-warping [[Discworld/{{Sourcery}} Sourcerer]] not with magic, but with a half-brick inna sock. Granted, it was a highly ineffective weapon, but it ''did'' end the battle.

** 71 Hour Ahmed from ''Discworld/{{Jingo}}'' is likewise although it's fully justified when you're chasing desperate criminals into the far reaches of desert land by yourself. 71 Hour Ahmed is a MeaningfulNickname. 72 hours (ie 3 days) is the honorific [[FantasyCounterpartCulture Klatchian]] period of time you ''have'' to wait before you would attack your guests, or hosts. Anybody you meet in the desert? Is either your guest or your host. Ahmed is a NotSoDifferent counterpart to Samuel Vimes. He's a copper. Vimes' beat is Ankh-Morpork. Ahmed's beat is all of the desert of Klatchistan. He found a particularly bad sort of criminal after a heinous crime, and... Well, you can extrapolate with insufficient data.
** Sergeant Jackram and Lieutenant Blouse from ''Discworld/MonstrousRegiment'' both have aspects of this, namely Jackram is prepared to go to any method to win a hand-to-hand fight, while Blouse is quite capable of using every advantage to further his strategic aims. To a lesser degree this also applies respectively to Tonker and Polly, and a little to Maladict too.

* Given that ''Literature/{{Worm}}'' takes place in a CrapsackWorld of superheroes and supervillains, a couple characters develop a "whatever works" attitude towards combat:
** Because Taylor Hebert (i.e. Skitter) is a skinny teenager with the power of [[TheMinionMaster controlling insects, spiders, and the like]] whose first fight pits her against a [[PlayingWithFire pyrokinetic]] HulkingOut monster of a supervillain, she explicitly adopts "as far as ''bugs'' are concerned, at least, I figure anything goes"[[note]]Quoted from [[http://parahumans.wordpress.com/2012/06/26/plague-12-1/ Chapter 12.1]] -- spoilers inevitable[[/note]] as a survival strategy. It ends up being deconstructed, though. Her willingness to immediately escalate to terrifying brutality when she gets in a fight really doesn’t help her reputation with the rest of the world, and results in law enforcement prioritising her over far worse villains (who are at least less likely to make a swarm of bugs chew your genitals off as their opening move).
** PRT Director Emily Piggot, an [[BadassNormal unpowered human being]] in charge of [[HeroesRUs the government superheroes]] of [[TheCity Brockton Bay]], approaches the fight against [[spoiler:the Slaughterhouse Nine]] this way.

* In ''AHarvestOfWar'' all fighting characters are this, with clear nods to HEMA.

** When [[spoiler: Cersei]] orders [[spoiler: Bronn]] to be killed, Balman Byrch realises that he would be no match for such an experienced killer in a sword fight. Consequently he challenges [[spoiler: Bronn]] to a joust on horseback (thinking that the ex-sellsword would lose because he would have no experience of jousting,) and plans to kill him while he's lying stunned on the ground. [[spoiler: Unfortunately, Bronn proves himself to be a better Combat Pragmatist than Balman; [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome Bronn aims for his horse rather than Balman himself both more quickly and accurately than the older knight could try pulling the same tactic, and kills him while he's lying stunned on the ground]].]]

* Corwin in ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' is big on this. For example, in his climactic duel with a master swordsman who'd been foreshadowed a book earlier, Corwin runs away, rounds a corner, throws his cloak into the other man's face as he follows, then stabs the guy while he's blind. He then whines about how Corwin beat him by cheating.

* Corwin in ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfAmber'' is big on this. For example, in his climactic sword duel with a powerhouse foreshadowed a book earlier, Corwin runs away, rounds a corner, throws his cloak into the other man's face as he follows, then stabs the guy while he's blind.

** "Not the Winter Olympics" indeed.

--> '''Darth Wannabe''': Defend yourself! (draws out a wand)\\

*** Harry has also found out, and demonstrated, that {{Groin Attack}}s work just as well on trolls and grendelkin as they do on humans. The fact that he does it using ColdIron on the former--resulting in said troll's bits ''bursting into flame''--lets him hold off a whole bunch of them, who wisely do not try to press their luck after seeing what happened to the first one.
*** In ''Literature/GhostStory'' Harry interrupts the BigBad in the middle of a villainous monologue with a blast of fire. When she voices her outrage, he does it again. When she still doesn't get the idea he hits her with a ''third'' blast. [[spoiler: Turns out she's a bit of a pragmatist herself, luring Harry into wasting precious memories casting spells, and nearly reducing him to a mindless wraith. She can afford to take the hits better than he can afford to throw them.]]
*** In ''Literature/StormFront'', he gains the advantage against [[spoiler: Victor Sells]] with [[spoiler:a ''cleaning spell''.]]
** Ebenezer [=McCoy=] [[spoiler:[[ColonyDrop drops a satellite]]]] on a difficult-to-kill vampire's remote fortress.

** Molly isn't a magical brawler who can throw around [[PlayingWithFire massive amounts of fire]] the way Harry is, so she instead uses every horrible sneaky trick you could expect from a MasterOfIllusion. [[DoppelgangerSpin Appearing in about twelve places at once]], blinding enemies, tricking them into shooting each other, creating fake obstacles to corral them into where she wants them to go, the whole bit. And if you pair her with a wizard who has ''actually'' deadly magic at his/her disposal, well, the opposition needs to be more careful, lest an "illusory" wall of flames proves to be the real deal....

* Present in ''Literature/ThePyrates'' in the form of Colonel Thomas Blood, skilled swordsman and master shin-kicker. His dirty fighting is enough to let him keep up with classical master (and deliberate CanonSue) Long Ben Avery, despite being slower, weaker, and far less fit. Also averted by pirate swordmaster Black Bilbo:

-->'''Caine:''' Get it? "Other things" are ''never'' equal.