"Fair" Fights

"Your enemies want you to be stupid and ineffectual, just like them. Well you know what? Screw them, that's what." -Xulthar the Reviled

The same mouth-breathers who complain about your actions being "wrong" and "evil" will also rail against your so-called 'dishonourable' acts. This generally boils down to the fact that an Evil Overlord will under no curcumstances 'fight fair'. Your job is not to engage in fair fights. Your job is to win. Therefore you will make the fight as unfair as possible. The last thing you want is a level playing field.

How many times has my Army of Doom captured some hapless hero and brought him to me (rather like a cat with a rodent, actually; distasteful, but they mean well), whereupon the prisoner demands I fight him in 'honourable combat' or some other version of the same?

First, honourable combat is a feature of the code of chivalry, which is reserved for the nobility. I am not a member of the nobility. By the fool's own rules I'm not obliged to comply with his request. Second, even if I was nobly born, I'm not stupid. He's spent his whole life training to stick a sharp length of metal into his enemies, whereas I had better things to do with my time. How on earth would that ever be a 'fair' fight?

It boggles the mind. Like I'm actually going to tell my troops to stand aside while I fight this muscle-bound ox one to one. Look, Sir Whatever of Wherever, you were captured. You already lost. You are, essentially, already dead. So why on earth would I allow you the opportunity to cut me in half with that humping great longsword my men have already taken away from you? Do I look like I was dropped on my head as a child?

I mean really. Have some class. Your whining about me being 'dishonourable' is really you whining about the fact that you aren't getting a second chance that you simply don't deserve. Be a man and go get beheaded without all the snivelling.