Talk:Vilgefortz/@comment-101.108.127.142-20161016202351/@comment-50.71.40.225-20190118085105

I suggest that you actually read the book, as it answers all your questions, but essentially it went like this:

After his discussion with Geralt preceeding the Thanedd Coup, Vilgefortz came to the conclusion that Geralt was overconfident in his abilities. Thus, when Geralt blocked Vilgefortz's path to Ciri (who was up at a portal that everyone thought was deactivated), Vilgefortz decided to humiliate him. The mage could easily have blasted Geralt to ashes with flame, but instead he summoned a staff (which, in keeping with Sapkowski's clever deconstruction of modern fantasy tropes, he called his 'wand') to beat the crap out of Geralt.

Vilgefortz spent years as a mercenary, so he had significant martial ability to begin with, but Geralt quickly realized that he had lost the fight before it even began, because the mage used magic to bolster his martial abilities to match the witcher's, essentially using magic to fill the gap between human and mutant. (He even used magic to make the staff's wood strong enough to face Geralt's metal sword.) Against someone as fast and as strong as he was, if not more so, Geralt was soundly beaten. Whether it was a fair fight or not is a matter of debate, but is ultimately moot; Geralt nearly died of a severe concussion, broken ribs, a broken arm, a broken leg, and various internal injuries. It took the magic of the dryads of Brokilon to restore him to health.

In their rematch later on beneath Stygga Castle, Vilgefortz decided that Geralt hadn't been sufficiently humiliated because he had come back for more, so the mage incapacitated Geralt's allies before summoning a staff to go toe to toe with the witcher again. This time, Geralt had a magic necklace that could make illusions, which he used to distract Vilgefortz at a crucial moment in the fight, allowing the witcher to eviscerate him.

It is worth noting that, after the battle, Yennefer noted that Vilgefortz was hampered throughout the rematch by his missing eye, and that his attacks frequently missed because of it. In other words, Geralt got lucky.

So is Geralt a bad warrior? Absolutely not. He isn't known as 'The Butcher of Blaviken' for no reason. He got that name for the events told in the short story "The Lesser Evil" (fourth short story in The Last Wish), where he singlehandedly defeated not one, not two, not even three, but seven veteran swordsmen. He is also frequently targeted by bravados hoping to prove their own martial ability by besting such a legendary swordsman. Frankly, his proficiency as a warrior seems silly to me when his skills are mostly specific to slaying monsters, but when you've been swinging a sword as long as he has (Geralt is either in his 50s or over 100, depending on which source you trust; he hides his age because who would give a monster-hunting job to an old man?), you can't fail to get pretty good at it.

So to bring it back to 'Why did Vilgefortz beat Geralt with his staff?', the answer is 'because he wanted to'. He's a mage who can literally incinerate you in the blink of an eye, are you going to tell him he can't fight you with a stick?