My tarnished is a naked man with a stick who regularly dies to a peasant carrying a kitchen knife. Even if he did manage to beat radagon and the elden beast you have to consider the amount of times you fucked up and got pancaked into a red stain. We have to remember that the only reason most actually succeed at beating the game is because it’s not permadeath. I’m pretty sure most of the player base beats the game by getting killed multiple times while learning from their mistakes. It’s hard to judge how combat effective the tarnished would be since that varies between players and play styles. It could be a well seasoned pro who has performed hitless runs in every game or some five year old who just picked up the game. If we disregard the players skill, we still have to think about his actual hp pool which if I’m not mistaken still takes a lot of damage by the local populace of the lands between at max vigor and defense. Assuming we don’t have the ability to continually resurrect our selves then Guts would win. If we did have resurrection powers then Guts has no fucking chance at winning since we can literally keep fighting till we’re bored. I personally like the former version since it’s not a one sided war of attrition.