EDIT: Hm, I didn't realize his reconsider tell always happened twice followed by an attack. I'm guessing that messed up my earlier notes and his tells don't actually get rerandomized.
For the fight logs, Capital letters are his actual attack and lower case are his end-of-round messages. Asterisks mark where my response was less than perfect, in case that matters for slowing and so on. R=Reconsider.
Perception: 51 (54)
Reflexes: 40 (36)
Strength: 50 (46)
Will: 52 (58)
| P, Q, W | blink | P, Q, W |
| P, Q, W | laugh | W, P, Q |
| P, Q, W | scratch | RscratchW, RscratchP, RscratchW(2)† |
| P, Q, W | thoughts | Q, W, P |
†The last attack may be randomized; parentheses indicate number of times encountered
If we want to be obsessive fights 3 and 4 can give us some data on how long it takes the player and hermit to slow, and how long it takes a move to become stale.
I'm guessing stale moves only lose you the fight if you're tired. Reconsidering might work the same way (since fight 1 data suggests that reconsidering doesn't refresh your 'tired counter' if you're not already slowed down, so it wouldn't be a way to stay invincible.)
What I'd like to do is find a technique that lets me interrupt his reconsidering without winning the duel, letting me find an alternate "hermit collapses from exhaustion" ending. But I don't think that technique exists.
In the beginning, men were mortal.