Combat Pragmatist / Web Original

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• Dream's Minecraft Manhunt: Oh, so very much, on both ends. On the hunters' ends, they won't just wait for Dream if they reach the End before him. They'll rig the portal with a trap to kill Dream instantly (with the two times they've done this varying wildly in terms of success). On Dream's end, he'll use strength potions to annihilate the hunters, rig explosions or lava to harm or kill the hunters in a chase, lock one of the hunters in close quarters to pick them off alone, use a splash potion of invisibility to make the hunters confuse each other for Dream himself, and many more. If a hunter's approaching fast? Sure, Dream could fight with a likely-diamond sword, but he could just as easily plug them full of arrows to buy him a brief amount time to prepare.
• The Evil Overlord List, as a how-to guide on Pragmatic Villainy, naturally contains numerous examples of this.
  • 4.) Shooting is not too good for my enemies.
  • 7.) When I've captured my adversary and he says, "Look, before you kill me, will you at least tell me what this is all about?" I'll say, "No." and shoot him. No, on second thought I'll shoot him then say "No."
    • 7.) (Depending on what site you're using) When the rebel leader challenges me to fight one-on-one and asks, "Or are you afraid without your armies to back you up?" My reply will be, "No, just sensible."
  • 11.) I will be secure in my superiority. Therefore, I will feel no need to prove it by leaving clues in the form of riddles or leaving my weaker enemies alive to show they pose no threat.
  • 39.) I will be neither chivalrous nor sporting. If I have an unstoppable superweapon, I will use it as early and as often as possible instead of keeping it in reserve.
  • I will only employ assassins and bounty hunters that work for "the money". Those who work for "the thrill of the hunt" tend to do stupid things, like even the odds to give their victim a sporting chance.
  • If I'm sitting in my camp, hear a twig snap, start to investigate, then encounter a small woodland creature, I will send out some scouts anyway just to be on the safe side. (If they disappear into the foliage, I will not send out another patrol; I will break out the napalm.)
  • 201.) Under no circumstances will I ever, EVER give a weapon back to the hero engaged with me in a duel. Sporting chances are for sissies.
• Alexis of A Grey World won't shy from doing what needs to be done to survive a fight.
• Humanity's space combat doctrine in The Jenkinsverse is basically this. Humans are the newcomers on the galactic scene so basic human technology lags behind galactic standard. They make up for it by using the technologies they reverse-engineered and mastered in highly unorthodox ways (e.g. using supercapacitors reverse-engineered from alien guns in conjunction with forcefields acting as solar panels on their ships to make up for their lower reactor capacity) and by playing very very dirty.
• Knowing that he'll likely be less powerful than those he'll have to fight thanks to his small mana reserves, Zorian — the protagonist of Mother of Learning — plans much of his fighting style around tricks and traps.
• Nightmare Time: In "The Witch in the Web," Miss Holloway points out to Wiley that he has no chance at winning their Battle in the Center of the Mind, since he's a Living Memory trapped in her mind. He freely admits that's true... "so I'm gonna cheat." Cue him using his limited powers to possess Pamela's body in the real world to force her to strangle Miss Holloway.
• In The Salvation War, the demons accuse the humans of fighting dishonorably by using long-ranged artillery, airstrikes, tanks, and long-range rifles rather than fight the demons in hand-to-hand combat. Or at least, the demons try to, but the humans are too busy slaughtering their Bronze-Age armies wholesale to listen. Of course, the demons' view on "honorable" combat is for humans to be crushed under their heels before becoming dinner.
• Things Mr. Welch Is No Longer Allowed to Do in an RPG — The titular Mr. Welch really doesn't think highly of fair duels.
  80. When accepting a challenge for a duel, I must allow the other guy time to find a pistol.
  194. When the other guy picks swords for the choice of weapons, that does not leave me pistols.
  363. When challenged to a showdown, I'm meant to face him at 10 paces with pistols, not 10 blocks with a Sharpe's Big .50.
  633. When told to choose my weapon in a duel with the assassin, can't pick his weapon.
  692. The Dr. Jones School of Swordfighting is not an appropriate Swordsman's School.
  767. When challenged to a high noon shoot-out, that means in the time zone I'm currently in.
  1753. No challenging sleeping people to a duel.
  2339. When providing pistols for a duel, they both can't be fingerprint locked just to me.
• Whateley Universe:
  • Sensei Ito, one of the martial arts instructors at Whateley Academy, has created an entire fighting style around this. He's a little old man with no mutant powers, and he can take down flying bricks, avatars, you name it. He's fighting (and training) mutants, so you know he isn't going to fight fair. One should note, of course, that some folks — including Ayla — doubt that Ito is actually just a Badass Normal. One of the prevailing theories is that he's also either a secret mutant, or very experienced at Ki manipulation. Odds are weighted towards the Ki manipulation.
  • Erik Mahren, before his emergence as a mutant. As one of the range instructors, he's the one who okays or used to what is and is not allowed to be used on the range. And he is a Badass Normal, and is more than capable of defending himself against most of the students at Whateley - even the ones who think it's funny to sneak up behind people and stab them in the kidneys.
  • Most villains, and plenty of heroes, are like this; Mephisto even explains that most of the 'narrow escapes' heroes have were actually planned as part of a Kansas City Shuffle, and that when villains really wanted their opponents dead, they ended up dead. Pretty much the only supervillain who doesn't kill is Mimeo, and he has an ulterior motive for that. Conversely, 'heroes' like the Dark Avenger, the Lamplighter, and Jack Rabbit are quick to put down their opponents in a permanent fashion, and even the Big Good of the series, Lady Astarte, sees Thou Shalt Not Kill more as a preferred outcome than a rule.
• Psycho Gecko of World Domination in Retrospect proclaims a fair fight to be the last act of a desperate man. He'll hide behind illusions, make use of deadly or incapacitating chemicals, hit any weak point he can find on a body, and will use anything as a weapon that he can get his hands on. He also keeps a mini-chainsaw called the Nasty Surprise hidden under one arm.
• Given that Worm takes place in a Crapsack World of superheroes and supervillains, a lot of characters develop a "whatever works" attitude towards combat, as doing anything else tends to end up with (more) people dead.
  • Because Taylor Hebert (i.e. Skitter) is a skinny teenager with the power of controlling insects, spiders, and the like whose first fight pits her against a pyrokinetic Hulking Out monster of a supervillain, she explicitly adopts "as far as bugs are concerned, at least, I figure anything goes"^note Quoted from Chapter 12.1 — spoilers inevitable 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 unpowered human being in charge of the government superheroes of Brockton Bay, approaches the fight against the Slaughterhouse Nine this way. The PRT takes fights against similar threats (like the Endbringers) with the same attitude, happily using basically whatever they can against the threats to hopefully save some lives.

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