DHE: Hence the "Meeple claims" part. Everything being fixed damage squares with my recollection as well, but according to Meeple that changed in the GBA version or something, and the magic stat was in the SNES version.
Pyro: Raine's defense buff is +15% DEF, actually. Which.... apparently makes her above-average defense, but just barely. I guess I have to math this out after all. I'd see Ox's damage as around 0.45 PCHP, Raine has .85 PCHP ... hrmm, I suppose Ox barely, barely, barely maintains his 2HKO then (although random variance might screw with it a little). For Raine's damage... blargh ToS mages. The way I'd see it, they either have "good" damage but are insanely slow (the no-combo average) or have meh damage and are only a little slow (the combo average) or somewhere in-between (the mix). If we even gave Raine free choice, she either gets the 3HKO but far fewer doubles, or gets some doubles but is 4HKOing (unless the GBA BoF1 Ox is used, in which case he's still 3HKOed due to awful MDef). Either one is a tad problematic.
I suppose Ox has a better argument than expected since yeah, I expected Raine's defense buff to be a bit more effective than it actually is, and he's in one of those "barely turns the dial from 3HKO to 2HKO on healer" positions, but eh. Both the BoF1 & ToS casts cheat the averages a tad (ToS with all the humanoid-killing nonsense, BoF1 because Karn-food Mogu & Gobi exist), but I'm still probably more inclined to just gut respect check respect Raine in the fail-off. Fair points though.