the mage bane will knock and keep them unconscious. if your combattant is unable to kill an unconscious opponent w/ a 10 damage sword (ie. +str vs armor...), then things won't turn out all that well
once I had a ghost king, but he was in enemy dominion, so w/ his low strength it must have taken him 20 rounds to kill his unconscious opponent. A high regen target might just laugh you off; or at least have nice fuzzy dreams about doing so.