Contractual Boss Immunity: Difference between revisions

''The top-level bosses in a game will be immune to the player's most effective or strongest attacks.''

 

 

The reason programmers and authors do this is for game balance and narrative issues. Where's the big climactic and ''fun'' battle if the hero just lops off the enemy's head? A hero who can send the [[Big Bad]] into the [[Phantom Zone]], [[Taken for Granite|turn them to stone]], [[Made of Plasticine|cleave them limb from limb]], or otherwise kill/disable them in less than a heartbeat skirts [[Game Breaker|dangerously close]] to [[Boring Invincible Hero]].

 

 

However, [[Averted Trope|averting]] this trope ''can'' make for a different and entertaining atmosphere. Allowing players to [[One-Hit Kill]] any enemy, [[Cherry Tapping|Cherry Tap]] even the [[Final Boss]], or characters to use the [[Touch of Death|Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique]] on [[Kill Bill|Bill]] can be downright ''[[Showy Invincible Hero|awesome!]]''

 

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** But then any wizard can bypass SR if they're properly prepared, and there's a ton of spells that ignore SR anyways.

** There's also the psion-killer (psions basically being wizards using MP instead of [[Vancian Magic]]), a golem specifically designed, as one might infer, to kill psions (and by extension wizards/sorcerers).

** Fourth Edition largely averts this by not having a lot of potential instant-kill tricks in the first place. Elite and solo monsters ''will'' be tougher than standard ones (to say nothing of minions) and may take less damage from some attacks, but outright immunities to things player characters are likely to use often are relatively uncommon and conditions can be inflicted on these creatures as normal.

 

 

* ''[[Eternal Darkness]]'' really only has two true boss battles. The first is immune to bullets and impossible to reach with melee attacks and has to be killed by magic cast at just the right times. The second is mostly immune to everything, except assaults on his relic of power and attacks from spirits of those who came before. Until the very end, of course.

* Boss-type creatures in ''[[Albion]]'' are immune to most paralyzation and disintegration spells. There is one spell of each type that circumvents this immunity, potentially making the game [[Unwinnable]], as one of the bosses carries a [[Plot Coupon]] that gets disintegrated along as well. The last boss is immune to everything (except Steal Life and lightning based spells), but you don't have to actually beat it.

* In MMORPG ''[[City of Heroes]]'', Arch-Villains and Heroes (essentially big big bosses) have a system of resistances to controlling effects such as slows, stuns and immobilizes so high that they are all but immune. This presents a significant problem for characters who specialise in these effects, ranging from forcing them to game the system or use their secondary abilities, to making them outright powerless.

** This is referred to as the "Purple Triangles of Doom" because of the aura of purple triangles floating around the Archvillain's head. When they point up he has magnitude 50 protection against most status effects ''on top of'' the magnitude 6 protection that he would have as a normal Elite Boss. When the triangles point down, then he only has the magnitude 6 protection. This up and down cycle is not very obvious with all the other visual effects going on during battles, so usually nobody notices that they are down unless the Archvillain is suddenly locked in a Hold. For reference, your average status effect tossed around by the player will at most have a magnitude of 3.

*** In addition, the final boss can be killed by casting Bane, a ''[[One-Hit Kill]]'' spell. It doesn't always work, although that's no problem since you can infinitely cast Bane using the Bane sword as an item.

** See also the ones that are immune to [[One-Hit Kill|Power Word Die]].

* In [[Mass Effect 3]]:

* The boss of ''[[Septerra Core]]'' was immune to insta-kill attacks and only flinched on high-power attacks. However, using the cloak spell prevented him from landing his one-hit party-kill attack against any party member.

* ''[[Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne]]'' contains 5 elements for inflicting stats aliments (mind, nerve, death, expel and curse). that can all inflict various standard stats effects all but 2 bosses (Forneus, who comes before the first instant death spell and Troll, who is weak enough to be a miniboss at most) are immune to death/expel and all but a handful of early bosses null or strongly resist the other 3. Most of the instant kill effects do work well on various [[Flunky Boss|flunkies]] however.

** The day 7 boss in [[Devil Survivor 2]], Benetnasch, has a passive "Pacify Human".

* Bosses in ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' tend to be immune to incapacitating effects such as [[Baleful Polymorph|Polymorph]], [[Anti-Magic|Interrupt and silence effects]], and most notably stun effects. This is quite necessary, as if they weren't, every party would simply take as many rogues as possible to keep a boss stun-locked and incapable of doing anything. Similarly they're almost always immune to slow, to prevent them from being kited to death. There was a boss in ''The Burning Crusade'' whose movement speed was slow enough to allow kiting, and on heroic difficulty some people did indeed refrain from ever getting close to it.

** Bosses are almost always immune to silence, and some of their spells cannot be interrupted, though others can be, and indeed interrupting them can be necessary. Lady Deathwhisper's is a good example with her interruptable frostbolt of Kill the Tank. The game is helpful enough to provide a shield around the cast bar of uninterruptable spells so people don't waste an spell. A few spells also simply have a different effect on them (most notably the Deep Freeze spell of Frost Mages). And they are fully vulnerable to attacks or spells that can only be used on targets with low health or do more damage in that case. Those skills typically kill of a normal enemy right away, but against a boss they are still valuable, especially against the kind of boss that is [[Turns Red|the most difficult at low health]].

* In ''[[Neverwinter Nights]],'' it shows the results of the in-game die rolls on the game journal. It gets rather annoying when you see "Player casts Hold Person. Boss attempts Will save. Fail!" while the boss continues to attack.

* Subverted in the rogue-like ''Ancient Domains of Mystery''. Many of the game's most difficult bosses can be rendered impotent if the player uses confusion, blindness, darkness, poison, or stun on them.

* The only way to truly get rid of a ''[[Nethack]]'' monster is to dispose of its corpse. The [[Horsemen of the Apocalypse|Riders]] {{spoiler|save for yourself when you start out spelunking}} have special coding that makes getting rid of their corpses nearly impossible and they are more than likely to revive under your disposal efforts. The Wizard of Yendor is similar as, after you have stolen a [[McGuffin]] from him, he will constantly revive no matter how many times he is killed and will make the remainder of your game miserable.

* Mostly averted in ''[[Xenoblade Chronicles]]'', where the only thing bosses are universally immune to is instant death.

 

 

 

** ''Tiberian Sun's'' expansion ''Firestorm'' had a curious glitch in the last mission of the game. While a single [[Kill Sat|Ion Cannon]] blast won't destroy the mission objective, it can destroy the firestorm generator protecting it. Doing so bypasses the entire sidequest of having to capture the relay stations to shut the core off. In addition, while the Core Defender is resistant to all attacks, it was still programmed as a base land unit, so if you destroyed the bridge it was on while it was over water, it just dies due to the game not knowing what to do with a unit dropped into water.

* [[Difficult but Awesome|Cyrus]] in the ''[[Dawn of War]] II'' campaign gains an ability to use [[Cold Sniper|his sniper rifle]] to instantly kill any infantry unit. While it makes sense that it doesn't work on vehicles or Monstrous creatures like [[Boss in Mook Clothing|Carnifexes]], it makes less sense that it doesn't work against bosses which are just more powerful infantry units (though it does do a lot more damage than his regular attack). Bosses are also immune to stun and knockback effects in the [[Dawn of War]] II campaign, making it impossible to disrupt them; this is removed in the expansion Chaos Rising, where most bosses, particularly infantry, can be stunned and knocked around at your leisure.

 

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[[Category:The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard]]

[[Category:Plot Armor]]