Okay, so I ended up accidentally spiraling into a thing about everyone’s combat abilities, but then Prue’s got so long that I’m splitting them up. This mini-series of posts are gonna be a combination of canon and headcanons (look, I’m insisting that some of these people take a defense class, it makes sense), but Prue’s is entirely canon. I’ll eventually come back and link all of them together somehow.
Prue Halliwell
Initially, Prue is actually the sister seemingly most reliant on her powers when fighting. During the first two seasons, she primarily uses her powers to fight and only resorts to any type of hand-to-hand or self-defense when her powers are no longer an option, such as when she’s attacked by the Dream Sorcerer or dealing with Nicholas in season one. Furthermore, her focus tends to be getting away from the fight rather than full on fighting.
It’s really only after she gets her astral projection, a power that leaves her without her telekinesis, that she begins to deal with more nonmagical fighting. When she first realizes that her astral projection leaves her without her powers, she attacks Drazi with a block of wood in Heartbreak City.
Pretty much immediately after that episode, she begins to integrate some nonmagical aspects into her fighting style. What’s really interesting to me is that she mostly seems to be integrating the hand to hand in scenes where she’s reasonably sure that she can handle her opponent without magic. For example, she kicks one of the guys in Animal Pragmatism and does limited hand-to-hand combat with the Film Geek under a spell in Chick Flick, but has also already or does use telekinesis to win the fight.
The other times that she uses hand-to-hand when fighting is when she doesn’t have her powers and has no other options. Notably, she isn’t focused on winning the fight in those situations but getting away from her attacker. This includes her and Piper knocking the shelf over onto Cryto in How to Make a Quilt Out of Americans and her kicking one of the horror movie villains in the face and running in Chick Flick.
Season three is when Prue really incorporates hand-to-hand in her fighting style and also becomes such a skilled fighter. She uses telekinesis and nonmagical fighting in The Honeymoon’s Over, taking on multiple opponents at a time and winning. She uses her temporary empathy in Primrose Empath to augment her powers and fighting ability, kicking Vinceres’ ass in a super satisfying fight scene. There’s also the Wrestling with Demons match with Phoebe.
Prue continues incorporating hand-to-hand into her fighting style in season three, including kicking Belthazar in Power Outage and her interactions with Krell in Sleuthing with the Enemy. She demonstrates increased agility in Blinded by the Whitelighter. She’s flexible and does backflips or other acrobatic moves when fighting, as seen in both Primrose Empath and Wrestling with Demons.
She also demonstrates a passing knowledge of guns, being able to use them incredibly quickly in the Good, the Bad, and the Cursed when she and Cole go to the past. Along with guns, Prue has used knives several times and also used a crossbow.
By the end of season three, her fighting style incorporates both her powers and hand-to-hand combat and she appears equally comfortable with both. While she didn’t demonstrate a lot of fighting ability before roughly halfway through season two, I feel like it’s probable that Prue took some kind of self-defense or fighting classes previously, in part because of her personality. She’s one of the best fighters of the entire cast and of the Charmed Ones. Realistically, she seemed to surpass Phoebe, but due to Phoebe not dying in season three and Phoebe’s entire journey, I’m going to say that Prue is actually the second best fighter.