Mutual Disadvantage

"So what now, Jack Sparrow? Are we to be two immortals locked in an epic battle until Judgment Day when trumpets sound?"

— Captain Barbossa, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

A Mutual Disadvantage is a scenario in which two (or more) sides in a fight are unable to gain an advantage over each other due to both being equally disadvantaged against one another in either offensive or defensive abilities. This can come in two flavors:

• Mutual Invulnerability: Both participants are offensively disadvantaged — neither of them can meaningfully harm the other, as they are both immune or resistant to each others' attacks. The result is a battle between two Stone Walls, making for a stalemate unless and until someone else intervenes.
• Mutual Weakness: Both participants are extremely susceptible to each others' skills, essentially making it a fight between Glass Cannons. The result is either a standoff wherein both sides try to avoid Mutually Assured Destruction, or a fight that could go either way, but is very likely to be one-sided in favor of whoever gets the first strike. Compare Mexican Standoff, where the stalemate is the result of the participants all being perfectly matched. Often happens in fights against Evil Counterparts.

Note that any RPG system with pair-based Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors will naturally display both types, with equal elements creating mutual invulnerability while opposing elements have mutual weakness.

Like Cannot Cut Like and Takes One to Kill One are Sub Tropes. If the disadvantage both participants share is that they have the combat skill of a small orange and can only ineffectually slap at each other, that's a Wimp Fight. Compare Symmetric Effect for when an effect in a game affects everyone in the same way.

---

Mutual invulnerability:

Anime & Manga

• In Bleach, Hitsugaya and Harribel are both capable of transforming each other's attacks into their own, resulting in repeated No-Sells against each other throughout much of their battle. To Harribel's credit, the stalemate continues even after Lisa and Hiyori arrive to back Hitsugaya up.
• One Piece:
  • Smoker and Ace prove unable to hurt each other, due to both being Logia Devil Fruit users with elements that do not naturally interact: Ace's flames equalize with Smoker's smoke; all they achieve is a huge pillar of smoke and fire. It happens again when Ace fights Kuzan and their respective fire and ice Devil Fruits powers nullify each other.
  • Kuzan and Sakazuki fight for ten days on the island Punk Hazard to a stalemate because their Devil Fruits are opposing elements, ice and magma. In the end, they use their powers so much that the halves of the island inhabited by them get permanently altered into a frozen tundra and a volcanic wasteland. Sakazuki eventually cripples Kuzan and wins the battle.
• Fairy Tail
  • The fight between Natsu and Totomaru starts out this way. Totomaru has power over all flame, including that of his opponents, which allows him to redirect Natsu's attacks. Natsu is not only immune to fire but eats it to restore his strength. Of course, Totomaru has the small advantage that one type of his fire smells (and tastes) horrible and makes Natsu gag. Natsu finally breaks the stalemate by making a fireball so big that Totomaru couldn't control it, though he still technically didn't "win": Natsu's goal was destroying the valuable piece of machinery Totomaru was guarding (which he did) and Totomaru went down from a sneak attack via the arrival of Gray and Elfman.
  • The fight between Wizard Saint Jura and Oracion Seis member Hoteye ends up this way. Both men are masters of Earth Magic but in different forms: Jura uses it to harden the earth into forms tougher than even solid iron than he then controls, while Hoteye uses Liquid Ground to soften the earth into a muddy quicksand form that he then controls. As a result, both men can cancel each other's attacks out before they even properly hit. Ultimately, the fight is resolved through outside means where Hoteye during a moment of clarity about his villainy is affected by Nirvana's initial start-up, resulting in him having a Heel–Face Turn and joining the heroes to stop his former guild mates.
• In My Hero Academia, there's the Eijiro Kirishima vs. Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu match. Both of them have similar powers (Eijiro can harden his skin into something about as strong as steel while Tetsutetsu can turn his body into steel), so both whale on each other without hurting the other. They eventually knock each other out at the same time.
• Fate/Apocrypha: The brief fight between Siegfried and Achilles goes this way. Both are invulnerable except for their back and heel respectively, but neither of them know of the other's weak spot. Siegfried's invulnerability can be bypassed with enough brute force and Achilles' invulnerability can be bypassed if his opponent has Divinity, but Siegfried doesn't have Divinity and Achilles isn't strong enough to break Siegfried's skin. Their fight gets interrupted by outside forces.
• In the final battle of Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory, both Kou's Dendrobium and Gato's Neue Ziel have I-fields that nullify the other's primary weapons. The Dendrobium had more physical ordinance, giving Kou the advantage until one of Gato's wingmen destroys Kou's generator.

Comic Books

• An issue of Billy Batson and the Power of Shazam; Captain Marvel and Black Adam are evenly matched and cannot harm each other; likewise Mary Marvel and Black Adam Junior seem to be immune to each other's punches. But Black Adam Junior can injure Captain Marvel.
• X-Men:
  • The brothers Havok and Cyclops are both immune to each other's attacks, because their powers work in the same way, and each can use the other's attack as an energy source.
  • The same is true of Sean Cassidy (Banshee), and his cousin Thomas, neither's powers can affect the other. This is believed in both cases to be due to their genetic relationship and can apply to other related mutants as well.
• Batman & Captain America: The Joker becomes furious after finding out that his collaborator the Red Skull is a Nazi; the two villains try to use their own weaponized toxins on each other to no effect. Since both Joker and Red Skull are immune to their own toxins and both Joker Venom and Red Skull's "dust of death" are remarkably similar, both characters are also immune to each other's toxins.
• In Dynamite's The Shadow #7, the Shadow and Red Raja, having trained under the same old masters, No-Sell each other's supernatural powers. They end up settling things in a Sword Fight.

Fan Works

• At one point in One Eye Full Of Wisdom, Hidan and the High Priest of Jashin get into a fight but both are immortal.

Films — Live-Action

• Pirates of the Caribbean:
  • Barbossa and Jack Sparrow fall into a mutual invulnerability version of this trope for a short while, during Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl both with a curse that makes them immortal undead.
  • Again in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, though here imposed by terrain. Calypso hated both ships and their captains, so she created a huge maelstrom that made maneuvering impossible (removing the Black Pearl's speed advantage) and made firing the cannons impossible (removing the Flying Dutchman's firepower advantage). Thus it came down to a brutal ship to ship fight between crews she hoped neither would survive.
• The Matrix Revolutions: Neo has fully embraced his 'The One' status and therefore can do just about anything in the Matrix and can withstand an almost limitless amount of damage. Agent Smith has infected everyone, human or machine, in the Matrix and can also do anything and withstand anything. The actual fighting basically amounts to nothing, and the real deciding factor is Neo allowing Smith to take over his body, allowing the machines Neo was hooked up to to kill both.
• The Golden Voyage of Sinbad. The eternal battle between Good and Evil is personified by a combat between a griffin and a centaur at the Fountain of Destiny. Neither one can prevail on its own, but "The deeds of weak and mortal men can tip the scales one way or the other."

Literature

• Animorphs:
  • Avoiding this trope is reason behind the Cosmic Chess Game the Ellimist and Crayak are playing. It's unclear whether it's even possible that either one can be killed in their present state, but neither particularly want to try, since the collateral damage from such a fight would almost certainly annihilate the galaxy (at the very least).
  • Megamorphs #2: The crab aliens can't get to the ant aliens' base without getting shredded by their energy weapons, the ants can't penetrate the crabs' force field.
• The Witchlands:
  • No Threadwitch can see Threads (emotions and connections) of another Threadwitch, leaving master manipulators essentially incapable of acting against one another.
  • Voidwitches can't use their powers on each other, so Bloodwitches can't puppet Weaverwitches and Weaveriwthces can't puppet Bloodwitches. Bloodwitches can handle any army Weaverwitches can throw at them, and Weaverwitches can keep throwing armies at Bloodwitches, leaving both in a stalemate.
• In Nineteen Eighty-Four, it's stated that each of the three power blocs is functionally invincible through a combination of geographic and demographic factors, and that therefore none of them are capable of winning the Forever War between them. Through the art of Doublethink, the leaders of each power delude themselves into believing the war is winnable so that they'll genuinely try to conquer the others, even as they subconsciously recognize that the war is unwinnable and that they need it to continue forever as their excuse to keep the lower classes under their oppression.
• Rhythm of War: According to Raboniel, the reason the war between the singers and the humans never ends is because neither side can permanently take out the other's champions. If a Knight Radiant kills a Fused, the Fused can simply kill a singer, take its body, and be reborn. If a Fused kills a Radiant, another human can swear the Oaths and bond that Radiant's spren. Short of complete extermination, there is no way for either race to win a lasting victory and end the fighting.

Live-Action TV

• In an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, the ship's doctor, a hologram-based artificial intelligence, encounters another such computer program that has become unhinged. When it strikes out at the Doctor's holographic image, the Doctor merely flickers. To demonstrate the futility of the situation, he tosses a nearby object at the other program, who also flickers. "This could get tedious." However, the other program then simply strikes the Doctor's portable holoemitter, knocking it off of him and deactivating him.
• In one episode of Charmed Piper and Cole have a fight while both are invulnerable; Piper because her obscenely powerful unborn child was protecting her with a forcefield, and Cole because of the Nigh Invulnerability he acquired as part of the powers he absorbed while in the demonic afterlife. It took Leo chastising them on the pointlessness of their battle to end it.
• In an episode of Lois & Clark, some random dude off the street ends up with a carbon-copy of Superman's powers due to lightning. Said random dude then starts a Hero For Hire business, charging people premium rates for applying his superhuman powers, in between using his X-ray vision to check out girl's changing-rooms. Supes gets fed up with this pretty quickly and starts actively interfering in the 'business' (and pleasure), causing the dude to lose his temper and start a fight. Both of them, of course, are super-strong, but entirely invulnerable - and they're more invulnerable than super-strong, resulting in a mutually invulnerable brawl... the only possible loser being the surrounding area.
• Caprica at one point had Zoe and Tamara fighting in V-World. In this case, they can hurt each other all they want, but neither of them can die since they're both digital avatars. The fight only ended when Zoe talked Tamara into an alliance.
• Battles between Ascended beings usually work out this way in the Stargate-verse. Since they're Energy Beings of equal stature, neither one can do anything to overpower the other, but they can keep the other sufficiently distracted as to be unable to do anything else. Both Anubis and Adria are taken care of by getting locked into an eternal fight with another Ascended.
  • It is implied that Ascended beings can kill one another but only if one is vastly more powerful than the other, which is a very rare case but not impossible: belief can empower an Ascended, which is why they insist to everyone on the mortal planes that they're not gods. That was one of the causes for the ideological split between the Alterans and the Ori: the latter formed Origin specifically to gain even more power, but the distance between the Ori galaxy and the Milky Way meant they were still too weak to overpower the Alterans... which is why they started converting the Milky Way's native population to Origin as well, abusing the Alterans' Prime Directive to build up a power base in plain sight without a Deus ex Machina to fear from.
• On Preacher (2016), angels have the ability to instantly respawn, good as new, after dying. This gets Played for Laughs as Jesse and two angels get in a fight with a Seraphim, as they keep killing each other over and over again only to reappear and go right back into the fight while their dead former bodies keep piling up all over the place. They finally manage to restrain the Seraphim without killing her, and then Cassidy shows up and shoots her in the head, starting the whole thing over again.
• For most of the final season of Lost, the battle between the Man in Black and the heroes is a stalemate because the Man in Black is an Invincible Villain who is invulnerable to all conventional attacks but is also forbidden from killing the heroes by the rules of his conflict with Jacob, forcing him to find more creative means of defeating them, such as by tricking them into killing each other. In the finale, when the Heart of the Island is turned off, the Man in Black loses his powers but the heroes also lose their protection, allowing Jack and the Man in Black to have their climactic showdown.

Pro Wrestling

• In ECW Rob Van Dam and Jerry Lynn usually started their matches with a series of Chain Wrestling moves which the other countered pretty quickly.

Tabletop Games

• In Dungeons & Dragons edition 3.5, Damage Reduction involving alignments were included. There is a lot of infighting between demons and devils both between the two species and within their own ranks. However, high-level demons and devils tend to have a lot of damage reduction, which can only be overcome with weapons that have the Good subtype. The same is true for Celestials vs. Celestials, but they're less likely to fight.
• In Warhammer Fantasy Battle if two units both have Always Strike First, they either fight depending on their initatives or fight at the same time, depending on editions. Similarly, if two units both have the counter rule Always Strike Last, the same thing occurs. Note that in both cases, if the combat involves other participants who have neither rules, these occur before (if it's First) or after (if it's Last). If a model is granted both rules, they cancel eachother out (this usually occurs with any model armed with a great weapon and innately have Always Strikes First).
• Units with high toughness and/or good saves but poor strength in both WHFB and Warhammer 40,000 tend to bounce off each other and do little damage. For example, when melee weapons got AP ratings instead of just modifying or ignoring saves for 7th edition, units of Terminators with lightning claws became largely incapable of meaningfully harming other units of Terminators due to claws only being AP 3; only one wound in six would actually deal damage.

Video Games

• In Magical Starsign, elements have an Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors going on, with exception of Light and Dark which are mutually weak to each other.
• In Team Fortress 2 this is the case with a few of the classes.
  • Two Pyros will be resistant to each other's signature ability (setting each other on fire), their unlockables are useless as the Flare Gun and Axtinguisher require their opponent to be on fire , meaning the winner is decided by either shotguns (if either has one equipped), flamethrowers (which would require either participant to move into the range of the other's flamethrower) or melee weapons (which do have some advantages over each other but don't make all that much difference).
  • Demomen equipped with the Chargin' Targe will have increased resistance to explosives in exchange for losing the Stickybomb Launcher's larger capacity and traps. Two of them fighting each other will need to land direct hits with three of their grenade launcher's four rounds to kill. They'll also have a Dash Attack that either one could use to run away.
• Pokémon:
  • Many elemental types (fire, electric, ice, and so on) are resistant to attacks of their own element (receiving half normal damage). Bug and Fighting types are resistant to each other's element, and Normal and Ghost types are completely invulnerable to the other's element. Oddly Ghosts and Dragons are weak to their own element! A fight between such types, especially at low levels (where they're unlikely to know any other attacks), will often result in this. Some matchups involving Dual types can also cause mutual weakness.
  • Wobbuffet is another example, as it learns no direct attacks whatsoever and is capable only of various Counterattacks. Pitting one Wobbuffet against another Wobbuffet will result in a stalemate where neither one can harm the other in any way (and in Generation 3, neither could be switched out for another fighter due to the ability Shadow Tag preventing doing so). However, once they both deplete their PP (which is going to be a while) they will be forced to use Struggle. If they both held Leftovers, the damage taken from struggling was mostly negated, making the battle endless. This was rectified in Generation 4.^note  In Diamond/Pearl, using Struggle causes 1/4 of the user's max HP in recoil to the user, meaning any Pokemon with no remaining PP will faint quickly. Shadow Tag was fixed so that it is negated if the opponent also has it.
  • Pit two Smeargle together and they can't do anything except futilely try to copy each other. Fortunately unlike with the Wobbuffet case, they only have 1PP, so they start struggling quickly.
• In Escape from Monkey Island, you engage in a giant statue fight with the villain. Your life bars regenerate too fast for either side to win, so you have to figure out an alternate means to proceed.
• In Touhou, mortal enemies Mokou and Kaguya, while not invulnerable as such to each other's attacks, are both immortal and will regenerate the wounds inflicted by the other. The result is a long-term stalemate where no matter who wins the individual battles (usually Kaguya), either of them will be back to start again in no time. Yet they keep on fighting to the "death", partly because Mokou just hates Kaguya that much and partly because they really don't have anything better to do.
• Knalgan mirrors in Battle for Wesnoth - a mirror match with a faction composed of highly defensive and slow dwarves, and fast but low-damage or frail outlaws. Neither side has and magic or poison needed to dislodge the other's defensive dwarves, and neither side has any Time-of-Day based powerphase advantage over the other. As a result, neither side has much incentive to attack.
• In the vast majority of MMORPGs there's the quintessential healer vs healer "battles". Extended in some cases when defensive non-healing classes and setups have some mean of regeneration and extreme defense (as opposed to healer's low defense and extreme regeneration).
• Protoss/Protoss and Zerg/Zerg Mirror Matches in Starcraft 2 are currently like this. Both tend to result in either one player losing almost instantly to a savvy rush (mutual weakness, more often in ZvZ) or both turtling massively for an excruciatingly long period until one makes a small mistake - and loses almost instantly (mutual invulnerability, more often in PvP). Terrans have a comparatively vast range of options for breaking a stalemate.
• This video should be a good demonstration of why holding a Mirror Match between two Exdeath players in the Dissidia Final Fantasy series is a bad idea. For context, Exdeath is a character whose entire gameplan is focused around counters, and his non-counter versions of his attacks are all pitifully slow and thus, easily countered. This forces him to resort to his pitifully slow and weak teleport attack to combo into something that can actually deal damage, which is unsurprisingly very, very slow at defeating the opponent. It's entirely probable that an Exdeath mirror could last hours if both players know how to use him, as nothing else Exdeath does can get around his own defensive abilities. Duodecim helped solve this problem by allowing Exdeath to cancel almost all his moves into a counter, so an Exdeath mirror match revolves around baiting out the opponent's counters to counterattack them when they whiff.
• The starting positions of England and France in Europa Universalis mirror the real life example below. France has the stronger army, but cannot bring it to bear because England the stronger navy. Can also happen when two nations share a more powerful ally. Neither can attack the other, because their shared ally would side with the defender.
• Romancing SaGa 3 has a borderline Easter Egg example: If one takes Flurry to fight Aunus and the Sinistral of Fire kills the rest of the party leaving only the living snowman alive, the fight will reach a stalemate as Flurry is immune to fire and Aunus is immune to ice. Flurry will then sacrifice himself taking Aunus with him.
• In Axiom Verge 2, the fight with Amashilama possessing Indra's body takes place in a room with a respawn point that both combatants can use. The battle ends when Amashilama realizes trying to kill Indra would just go on forever and leaves the fight.

Web Comics

• The titular characters of the webcomic Bob and George were immune to each others' powers due to being brothers. This is in turn a reference to Scott and Alex Summers being immune to the other's superpowers for the same reason.
• In El Goonish Shive, the Immortal Pandora, and the Emissary of Magic confronted each other inside of Grace's dreams. Pandora was by far the more powerful of the two, so the Emissary could do nothing against her. However, as an Immortal, she was bound by rules preventing her from striking first, meaning that she could do nothing against the Emissary. When they realized that a fight wasn't feasible, they instead decided to talk.

Real Life

• England vs. Louis XIV's France, ignoring the participation of Austria & co. for a moment. England had a very large, good navy and a tiny army; France had a large, okay-ish navy and a very large, decent-to-good army. Rinse and repeat right up to the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Britain vs. The Dutch was the reverse, however; Holland had a tiny army, but Britain's navy was unable to get its act together for the most part. If there was a narrative pattern to Britain's participation in wars, it'd be having a great big navy that protects it from foes with great big armies — but, conversely, doesn't allow it much chance to really take the war to its land-based foes. A major factor in this was that as an island nation, a powerful and well-trained navy was a necessity, while the long-standing English distrust of standing armies made building a powerful army not just difficult but when not actively involved in a war undesirable.
• A mention of the Peloponnesian War could probably go along with that France/England Hundred Years War example. Athens was a sea power and Sparta had the best land forces in Greece (Athens' walls prevented a direct Spartan attack). Sparta had to build a navy before it could successfully choke off Athens, almost 30 years in.
• The United Kingdom (and allied Commonwealth countries) versus Nazi Germany fell into this situation from 1940 (the fall of France) to the end of 1941. Both had to rely fighting around the peripheries (North Africa, and the North Atlantic Ocean) because neither could attack the other directly aside from bombings which didn't have that much of an effect. The Allies could have controlled the English Channel to allow an attempted landing, but had nowhere near the ground forces or equipment necessary to make it successful. The Germans had enough troops to conquer Great Britain, but had no way of forcing a crossing of the Channel to get them there.
• The Battle of Hampton Roads, a naval battle of the American Civil War, featured the first engagement between ironclad warships — the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia (formerly the USS Merrimack). Each had thick metal armor, but their cannons were not capable of breaking through the armor of the other. The two ships spent three hours No-Sell-ing each other's attacks before withdrawing, each ship thinking it had "won" the engagement.

Mutual weakness:

Fan Works

• Blood Man Luffy:
  • Luffy and Crocodile both have devil fruits that exploit the weaknesses of each other. As a blood man, Luffy can easily coat himself (or Crocodile) in blood so Crocodile can't disperse into sand, but as a sand man, Crocodile can completely dry out Luffy with a touch of his hand.
  • The first fight between Blackbeard and Luffy shows each can completely shut down the other's Devil Fruit powers using their own. Blackbeard because his touch negates Devil Fruits and Luffy because he can freeze Blackbeard's blood in place.
• When they finally fight in Free from Force, Anakin and Palpatine are incapable of predicting each other's attacks due to Anakin temporarily cutting himself off from the Force to save Padme's life. Since Anakin can't use the Force, he can't use Combat Clairvoyance but neither does he have a presence in the Force to sense.
• A variation occurs in A Hero Rises during the Heroes vs Villains exercise. Each scenario is a simulated mission that one of the teachers have been involved with and the second match is Kaminari and Todoroki versus Satou and Koji on Midnight's mission. Midnight acts as a chemical weapon of unknown composition and fills a building with her Quirk. Since both sides have to wear gas masks, Satou can't consume sugar to empower himself and Koji can't talk to animals (which would fall asleep in the gas anyway). Meanwhile, the heroes don't know the composition of the gas and thus cannot use any flame or electricity based attacks in case it's flammable. As a result, only Todoroki isn't forced to fight Quirkless.
• Pokémon Wack:
  • Thanks to a Balance Buff, Water-type attacks are not very effective against Ice-type Pokemon. The reverse is also true, just like in canon.
  • Light- and Dark-type attacks are super-effective against one another.
  • Tech- and Grass-type attacks are super-affective against each other.
  • Water-type Pokemon resist Grease-type attacks and vice versa.
  • Virus- and Cyber-type attacks are super effective against each other.
  • Rock- and Fabric-type attacks are super effective against each other.
  • Fairy- and Ogre-type attacks are super effective against each other.
• No-Sell: Due to various new types being added, as well as changes in the type chart:
  • Bug is immune to Nuclear.
  • Ghost is immune to Fear and Blood (as well as Normal and Fighting, just like in canon).
  • Psychic is immune to Cosmic.
  • Dragon is immune to Magic.
  • Rubber is immune to Electric.
  • Cosmic is immune to Wind.
  • Food is immune to Chaos.
  • Zombie is immune to Fear.
  • Nuclear is immune to Steel.
  • Glass is immune to Water.
  • Void is immune to every type except Wack.
• In Shine A Little Light, both Lucifer and Crowley are afraid of each other. Crowley is terrified of Lucifer because the King of Hell is powerful enough to end him on a whim. Lucifer knows that Crowley is cunning and manipulative (not knowing that Crowley took credit for humanity's atrocities), and fears for his mortal friends.
• In Traveler, Karen's usage of crippling status moves can completely dismantle teams of powerhouses like Ash's and Lance's. However, her pokémon are relatively frail so a single solid hit from said powerhouses can take them out of the fight entirely.
• Vow of Nudity:
  • While fighting Haara in the volcano mines, Umbra cast darkness to blind her, relying on her True Sight to see. But Haara negated that advantage by breaking nearby machinery and filling the room with steam, ensuring both parties remained fighting blind.
  • After Serris challenged him to a duel, Faelar chose the center of town at high noon as the location, knowing Serris had sunlight sensitivity as a drow. But then Serris cast darkness once the duel began, blinding both parties and ensuring they fought on an equally-disadvantaged level.

Films — Live-Action

• In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the still badly-damaged Enterprise leads the less-damaged Reliant into the Mutara Nebula. When Saavik points out that the nebula will disable shields and sensors on any ship that enters, Spock answers "Sauce for the goose, Lieutenant. The odds will be even."

Live-Action TV

• On The Big Bang Theory, Sheldon and Barry compete over who gets a new office. Since there is not much either one is equally good at, they decide to settle it at something they are equally bad at - namely, sports. So they head to the gym to play a one-on-one basketball game. Unfortunately, they are so equally bad at it that neither one can score a single basket. Eventually, they settle on bouncing a ball in the air and whoever bounces it higher gets the office. Sheldon wins by sheer luck. ("Who's unsatisfactory in P.E. now?")
• One episode of Merlin has Morgana fight a magical duel against Merlin in his aged "Emrys" form after finding him rummaging through her house. She's been having recurring nightmares that Emrys is destined to destroy her, and is so scared out of her wits at coming home to find her personal bogeyman in her living room that she's practically frozen stiff. He, for his part, is suffering from all the pangs and aches of old age and can barely walk. The result is the most pathetic magical duel in history, wherein they both spend very little time throwing spells at each other and a lot of time struggling to overcome their mental and physical (respectively) hindrances enough to even move.
• The final battle between The Punisher and John Pilgrim occurs while they are both so badly injured from previous fights that they can barely stand, leading the whole thing to be an ugly, staggering affair where they compete to see who'll keel over first.

Video Games

• Pokémon:
  • Ghost- and Dragon-typed Pokémon are notably vulnerable to their own element, especially the Dragons, as they are the only element that Dragon-type attacks get an advantage against at all. It is also common competitive practice to teach a given Pokémon moves from other elements specifically to counter the types they are weak against (such as giving a Fire-type user the Grass-type "Solar Beam" for use against Water-, Rock- and Ground-types).
  • When you start dealing with dual-typed Pokemon, there are a lot of possible matchups between different Pokemon that are weak to one of their opponent's types and strong against another (like the Dark/Fire Houndoom versus the Water/Ghost Jellicent - Water beats Fire and Dark beats Ghost).
  • Pokémon Diamond and Pearl's use of dual-typed starter Pokémon provides an interesting scenario, where each member of the starting trio ultimately acquired a secondary type that could counter the opposing element: Torterra's Ground typing can counter Infernape's Fire, Infernape's Fighting type can counter Empoleon's Steel, and Empoleon's Steel at least removes its normal weakness to Grass (but also adds in a weakness to its Ground). Infernape was still the fastest of the bunch, though, sometimes capable of knocking the opponent out before they could even throw their first attack. As well, Empoleon could easily learn Ice Beam, letting it deal four times normal damage to Torterra, as opposed to the normal two times a regular Grass-type would suffer.
  • The Gastly family is interesting in particular in that the only targets they deal super-effective damage to with Ghost-type attacks - that is, Psychic and Ghost - do super effective damage to them as well.
  • Water Pokémon are weak to Grass moves. Nearly all Water-type Pokémon can learn at least one Ice-type move, which Grass-type Pokémon are weak to.
  • In generation 1, Bug type Pokemon were weak to Poison attacks, while Poison type Pokemon were weak to Bug attacks. In Generation 2, this was changed to Bug being resisted by Poison and Poison doing neutral damage to Bug for reasons unknown.
  • Due to the complicated nature of Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, Pokémon with dual elemental types can in fact become vulnerable to one of their own elements (like the Rock+Flying Aerodactyl being vulnerable to Rock attacks, or the Fighting+Steel Lucario being vulnerable to Fighting attacks).
• The Undead and Drake mirrors in Battle for Wesnoth - most Undead units are vulnerable to the same faction's magical Dark Adept unit and its Arcane damage, and similarly all Drake units are vulnerable to that faction's magical Cold damage dealing Saurian Augur. Both the Adept and the Augur, however, are Squishy Wizard units vulnerable to the conventional attacks of their respective faction. The result is Mutual Weakness.
• Class versus Class battles in Team Fortress 2 not described above are more of a mutual weakness, coming down to who has the better aim, ping, and/or luck (Sniper wars in particular). The Half-Zatoichi deliberately invokes this, as it has a special ability where it will One-Hit Kill anyone else who also has the weapon out.
• In many Final Fantasy games, the air/wind element is often vulnerable to itself, inflicting greater damage on flying enemies. Also, Fire and Ice elements are usually vulnerable to each other.
• In Final Fantasy Tactics characters could receive attack (or defense) bonuses depending on each fighter's astrological sign — however, the bonus always applied both ways.
• In the Dissidia Final Fantasy campaign modes, the player would sometimes happen upon a golden Manikin piece (generally optional encounters guarding valuable equipment). These units tend to be equipped in such a way that their health is critically low, but are augmented in other ways (such as having nigh impenetrable Bravery defense, or having summons that they immediately use to send their own Bravery points through the roof), meaning that the first HP attack to connect is generally the one that wins the match.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Divine Dragon manaketes are specialized in dealing damage against other dragons/manaketes. While Divine Dragons are never enemy units in the main game (save for DLC chapters and the Wellspring of Truth), both Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and Fire Emblem: Awakening have a multiplayer where Divine Dragon Manakete units can face against each other. The latter also introduces the Taguels who deal effective against all beast units. Like the Manaketes, they're only encountered as enemies in multiplayer SpotPass material, Yarne's recruitment chapter, and the Wellspring of Truth.
  • Fire Emblem Fates introduces the new class Kinshi Knights, which are essentially Pegasus Knights that can wield bows, the very weapon they are most vulnerable to. Their Air Superiority skill also makes them very effective against other flying units, but it cancels itself out if both sides have it.
• A common tendency in the Shin Megami Tensei series is the tendency for demons with a clear specialty in one element to always be weak to its opposite. For instance, Pyro Jack is clearly a fire demon while Jack Frost is clearly an ice demon, and both are weak to each other. Hence, the only advantage one of the two would have over the other is for Pyro Jack to typically be at a higher level. A similar occurrence happens between lightning demons and wind/force demons as well as between expel demons and death demons. Do NOT take this as a rule for the whole game though. That would likely result in a very quick death if one isn't careful.
• In Dungeon Fighter Online, two classes (intended for use as alts) are banned from PvP because fights involving them won't be much fun for anybody. Dark Knights can throw powerful combos out with minimal player effort (after preparation pre-fight) but have a very limited moveset in any given fight and will quickly become predictable. They're also dependent on flashy powerful combos, with limited defense past that spectacular offense. Creators, despite having plate-equivalent armor and decent health, have relatively limited damage output and no real mobility or evasion powers; they need time to finish an opponent and likely won't last long after receiving an initial hit. They also can wall their opponent away from them, can hit from any relative position on the screen, can likewise grab from anywhere, and a Creator's basic attack is an infinitely-chainable telekinetic strike which acts as a Combo Breaker, can air juggle, and is useable while in stunlock, prone, asleep, confused or paralyzed. "Sudden death" is an apt description of a hypothetical match against a Creator, one way or another.
• Insurgency:
  • As the game aims for realism, the characters are so weak that everyone, even armored targets, are frequently killed with one or two shots, especially if armor-piercing ammo is used.
  • The position of enemies can be revealed with flashlights more easily at the cost of exposing your own position.
  • Tracer rounds help show when you're running low on ammo at the cost of showing when you're running low on ammo.
• XCOM: Chimera Squad has the Gray Phoenix Praetorian, who can use their Duel ability on a member of your squad. This ability make it so attacks from one of the "duelists" against the other will not miss. Annoying when they decide to attack your squishies, borders on Too Dumb to Live when they decide to target one of your heavy hitters like Godmother or Blueblood.
• Gundam Evolution: Gundam, GM, and Sazabi all have shields, but also Unblockable Attacks. Gundam and Sazabi each have a thrown projectile that stuns through shields, while GM has a Shield Bash that does the same and an Area of Effect firebomb.
• The Tree of Life: Token II buyables are nerfed by ones which are in the same row, for example levels in Up Quark weaken Down Quark and vice versa. Some of them are mitigated by upgrades that make their effect based on their peak even if you reset quarks and don't have levels in them.

Western Animation

• Captain Planet is weakened by pollution and empowered by clean natural elements while his Evil Counterpart, Captain Pollution, is weakened by clean natural elements and empowered by pollution.
• Winx Club, played with. Both the series' protagonist, Bloom, and the third season Big Bad, Valtor, share the same divine-originated power: the Dragon's Flame. Yet they are not immune to the other's attacks but certainly share the same devastating weakness: the Water Stars, their opposing divine-originated element and, as for Valtor, the only thing able to inflict real damage on him. The Water Stars can only be activated by the Dragon's Flame itself, therefore Bloom has to expose herself to their monstrous backlash in order to wield them against Valtor. It's implied that the Dragon's Flame in its elemental state would deliver the same kind of harm against a supposed Water Stars' bearer.
  • Also, neither force, Water Stars or Dragon's Flame, can exist in the same dimension at the same time during prolonged periods by the risk of universal disequilibrium.

Real Life

• In Real Life, the concept of idea of mutual assured destruction is the reason the Cold War "remained cold"; if either the U.S. or Russia launched a nuclear attack, the other side would have enough time to launch a nuclear counterattack and hit the other side just as hard.
  • This was part of the reason why both the arms reduction treaties were so fiercely contested and submarine-launched missiles were so nerve-wracking, as both of them threatened to eliminate this mutual disadvantage (the former by getting one side or the other to start thinking "Hey, maybe we won't lose everything if we attack right now", the latter by potentially reducing the amount of time you have to detect a hostile nuke heading for you to detect it and respond from an hour to just fifteen minutes).
  • This is still generally the reason nobody uses nuclear weapons in the modern age: even if you did launch a nuke at somebody else, they'd just lob a nuke right back before yours got there, and then you'd both be dead.
  • This also served as the central conflict in the film WarGames when the WOPR supercomputer (with access to real nukes) was instructed to play a simulation called "Global Thermonuclear War". In the end, it memorably declared "The only winning move is not to play."
  • To a lesser extent, chemical weapons. Their main tactical benefit rather quickly shifted from killing huge numbers of enemy troops outright to forcing enemy troops to cover themselves in heavy, encumbering protective clothing that hugely reduced their combat-effectiveness... But unfortunately this inevitably meant that friendly troops in the same area were equally encumbered, and some of the nastier and more persistent agents like VX would hang around for weeks after deployment and were even more ecologically destructive than nuclear fallout, rendering the newly conquered territory pretty much worthless.^note This latter point was especially important to the Soviet Union, with their centrally-mismanaged agricultural sector and the constant spectre of food shortages it created.
• Any duel with lethal weapons where the participants are not wearing armor can become this, especially if the weapon style is focused on offense. For example, a LOT of serious rapier duels ended with either two people dead, or one dead and one crippled. In modern times, it is said that the loser of a knife fight dies at the scene, and the winner dies in the ambulance.
• After the invention of the firearm, open field battles became this as armor capable of stopping a bullet was usually too bulky to be practical until the invention of kevlar, so infantry would fire at each other, with the only defensive moves being retreat, ducking under cover, or killing the other guy before he had a chance to kill you.

Pair-based systems

Literature

• Genocide Online: Each faction gives buffs and debuffs against opposing faction members:
  • Order deals and receives bigger damage to Chaos, and vice versa.

  • Neutral deals and receives bigger damage to both Chaos and Order.

Tabletop Games

• In Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition:
  • Fire/Cold, Good/Evil and Lawful/Chaotic effects are particularly effective against creatures who embody the opposite element, and do not affect creatures who embody the same element. A creature who is both Good and Evil or Lawful and Chaotic (such as a Fallen Angel or Ascended Demon) gets both sets of vulnerabilities, but a creature who embodies both Fire and Cold is immune to both.
  • Living creatures (and deathless) are powered by positive energy (which heals them) and harmed by negative energy, while undead are affected in the opposite manner. Undead who can manipulate negative energy are more common than living creatures who can manipulate positive energy, however.
  • Some Air creatures take penalties when defending against Earth effects and vice versa, but this is applied less consistently than the above dualities, largely because Earth and Air rarely exist as Pure Energy.

Video Games

• Chrono Cross had three sets of opposing elements (Red/Blue, Green/Yellow, Black/White), each dealing increased damage to its opposite and reduced damage to itself; every character in the (rather large) roster was assigned an elemental affinity.
• CrossCode: Heat and Cold are weak to each other, as are Shock and Wave.
• Final Fantasy X and its sequel, although the player characters were Non-Elemental by default, elements were arranged in pairs (Fire/Ice and Water/Thunder) with each doing increased damage to its opposite. The player could also find (or customize) weapons and armor with elemental affinities, which could create scenarios of mutual weakness or invulnerability depending on what was equipped at a given time.
• Honkai Impact 3rd has three character types that form an Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, along with two extra types called Quantum and Imaginary, which deal extra damage to their own kind and reduced damage to each other.
• The Legend of Dragoon had pairs of opposing elements (Fire/Water, Earth/Wind, Light/Dark) doing increased damage to each other, reduced damage to itself; the Thunder element had no opposite, but also shared reduced damage against itself. Every character (and most monsters) had an elemental affinity, and each character's strongest armor (the "DG armor" series) would completely nullify damage from their own element.
• Shadow Hearts has Fire/Water, Earth/Wind, and Light/Dark. The pairs do increased damage to each other, and there are spells that add elemental status to your weapons. In each game, you acquire one character of each element (and in the second and third game, a Non-Elemental character); each character's ultimate armor allows them to resist their opposing element.

---