One hit at his head and one “left, right, down left” Kombo and he was done 
i did it with a 1 1/2 hander
So. After yelling at my computer for I don’t know how long I figured out a simple way to do the Archer trick. Run around the post and I mean plant tour whole body against the post runt can hardly get enough time to land a strike. So yeah if you are having trouble do this. Took me three hits w hunting arrows
1 Hit is all you need to defeat Runt , but how you might ask ?
Easy , Just Apply a lulliby potion to a weapon and hit him with it.
All I needed was one hit too. …
And it was quite funny, because I’ve read some walkthroughs, so I trained combos like crazy before the quest, bought better armor, packing lot of bandages and potions in case the bandits would harm me before the fight. But since I was careful, i came through the battle without injury. Now the chase on the top of the church, nice cutscene…my heartbeat was skyrocketing as the cutscene was nearing toward the big fight! I was thinking to myself: “Okay, here we go, you have the best armor, good weapon, combos trained, you can do it!” Here we go … I blocked Runt’s first attack with a perfect block and pressed button for stabbing which resulted in Runt laying dead on the ground :)) I was sitting on the couch both happy and shocked. 
Big 3 second fight indeed
Me too, just one hit.
Drank all buff potions I had, attacked him, he parried everything i threw at him and then slash to his side chest and he was dead. Pretty lame. (hope the new patch on ps4 will fix this)
That’s funny.
But truth be told, you shouldn’t even really be able to use a bow at all wearing “full plate armour”. If it were truly realistic, you just wouldn’t have the range of motion to allow it, let alone “run around peppering his head”. Hahaha.
I tried to kill runt many different ways. At one point I blocked all his attacks (the damaging ones) for like… atleast 7 minutes. Eventually I got tired. loaded an earlier save and actually decided that I wanted to be a ranged, so I dropped EVERYTHING heavy, took off all my plate armor, dropped my swords and picked up light armor, took on the style of a ranger, got in there and drew my bow, released my grip on the arrow and that first arrow hit him hard in the head, he came charging and I dodged his first attack, he began to back me up but my reload was too fast, I sent another arrow straight into his face (again). It was quite pleasing.
If you loot bodies before hand they have potions that give you 50% more damage and I used two of them and I killed him in one shot to the head with the bow from the hunting mission and poor quality arrows
Just surrender and it won’t hurt at all. 
A little late, but regarding this if you haven’t been told already; the purple bar on the left of your health and stamina is Henry’s guess at the life of your opponent
Arrow to the face worked a treat!
With a sword skill of 5, a Strength of 10 and a longsword called “Saving Grace” I used master strike on him once, the screen faded to black and Henry murdered him. Quite anticlimactic.
In case you don’t know “Master Strike” is a skill you can learn after you have patrolled Rattay with Nightingale. (Can’t remember the quest name.) Just talk to the master at arms, or whatever his title is, Bernard. He’s normally at the fighting arena outside of Rattay at 11 am. I hope this helps!
This was on my second playthrough. On the first, he handed me my ass and Henry’s so I was looking quite forward to beating the ever-living shit out of him, so I was a bit disappointed. But nice to know he diededed.
What about your fighting skills?
It was always a tough fight but I played the main story 3 times, he killed me at the first meeting but i won the „rematch“ and the other 2 at my first try!
But I trained HOURS with Barnard to level my Henry in fighting skills! I think training in everything is still a big part of the game!
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I found out on the second try that there’s a bug if you kill him with a couple of master strikes, where you end up trapped without a cutscene activating. Lower his health and then use a normal hit/stab to murder him. Might take a few tries, but I found it to be the easiest way by far.
As many here have already pointed out, if you don’t want to reload an old save and train for ages with Bernard to beat him in melee, just take a bow and shoot an arrow into his face. Works like a charm in many situations, not just against Runt, and should probably at some point be addressed because it’s just one of those things that makes the combat really easy to break.
wow you must suck at the game. cos i just arrowed him once in the face and he went down haha.
go to rattay or talmberg and train in the combat arenas ,train as much as you can with robard and bernard
A weapon with Bain on it ( pro-bain mod , quicker, if on PC) will do it once you draw blood.
I also killed him with a beat down with my fists with high unarmed skill and high on rage potion to the point of the cut scene (%$$##%^^&%@**!!! didn’t let loot him).
I backed him into a corner of the loft and stayed RIGHT NEXT TO HIM, in his face. Jabbing at his head and not letting stamina drop below 1/3
@Hitman It makes it seem like that, but you can easily go off on your own right before you find Ginger. It’s what I did. And then right before I completed Nest of Vipers I went back to Bernard who is back at the combat arena at this point and leveled up mace. It COST a lot due to armor wear and tear, though.
Yeah, it’s kind of hit or miss, though because of how armor and weapons work. If you play a character who uses a sword to slash, you might have trouble here. I did.
This time, I used a piercing sword and put some bane on it and just kept jabbing at him. I had to hit him about 6-7 times. But it finally worked. Headcracker popped and the cutscene took over.