And you're wrong. There are all sorts of ways to make a 1v1 a 2v1 without ever breaking parity.

For example, all those villagers who sit in the same room while their buddy is fighting a bard - there's almost nothing the bard can do without threatening the second villager in the room, except maybe spam roundhouse.

It's a fundamental design flaw, and a big part of the reason why so many people hate villagers. They're given huge mechanical power advantages to even up fights against powerhouses and massive gank squads.

And then people are relying on an iffy, poorly defined, and and rarely enforced concept like "parity" to regulate its abuse against the majority of the MUD, who are not powerhouses and almost never part of a massive gank squad. It's dumb. Battle parity enforcement is a dumb idea in the first place. Either tweak up everyone's powers to battle's level, so battle can strike freely and there's no lawyering on half a dozen interpretations of parity, or loosen up the RP restrictions on battle and nerf the powers to be in line with other cabals, so battle can attack freely and there's no lawyering on half a dozen interpretations of parity.

Afterthought: I remember Iunna joining battle a few years ago and enforcing rules a teensy, tiny bit more strictly as an active battle imm. And then a ton of seasoned battle players who had gotten used to breaking parity all the time got pissed at her because she enforced rules that they had previously been breaking all over the place. They threw a bunch of hissy fits on dios/officials.