Health Damage Asymmetry: Difference between revisions

* MMORPGs tend to play this one straight, with players being able to deal ''more damage in one hit than their max HP can take'' and bosses having as much HP as a significant portion of the server's population ''combined''.

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' plays this straight with bosses, particularly raid bosses, which under most circumstances deal only a tiny fraction of their health as damage. However, since they're supposed to be fought by groups of 10, 25, or in the past ''40'' players to one, this tiny fraction is still enough to [[One-Hit Kill]] anyone not [[Stone Wall|built to take it]], and even they can expect take many, many times their total health in damage over the course of a fight. From the player perspective a respectable end-game damage output would enable many damage-focused players to kill themselves, on average, in about 5 seconds. Indeed, some of the most consistently dangerous abilities in the game are variations on the theme of reflecting players' attacks back at themselves or their allies.

* In ''[[Billy vs. SNAKEMAN]]'' Phase Battles, Phases have 5000 to 21000 HP and have a small chance of dealing one damage (two if it's the final boss) on any given turn. You have 1 to 6 HP and deal hundreds of damage a turn.

 

== [[MMORPG|MMORPGs]] ==

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' averts this with normal enemies, they have about the same hit points and damage as a player of the same level. (Somewhat lower on both to allow players to kill stuff of equal level.)

** Blizzard has had to address this issue a few times in general. In the first expansion, stamina was put on nearly every item in bigger chunks than the other stats, and for Cataclysm, health pools are planned to grow a lot again to combat this creeping up in nearly every gameplay aspect.

* ''[[Adventure Quest Worlds (Video Game)|Adventure Quest Worlds]]'' has recently done a move away from this trope in regards to boss fights. While player characters go over the 1,000 mark in terms of hit points and can do triple-digit damage to their enemies, the bosses do nasty damage in the triple digits (Wolfwing was doing about 300 damage with every hit), and will kill you quickly if you do not have a healer, a suitable plan or both.

* [[Mon]] games in general tend to avert this for the same reason tactical RPGs do.

** The ''[[Monster Rancher]]'' series averts this trope even with the rare non-recruitable bosses. They have the same stat cap as any monsters you can raise.

* ''[[Shin Megami Tensei (Franchise)|Shin Megami Tensei]]'' largely averts this by having the enemy and your HP be on the same page. The randomly generated enemies will all have the same HP as you, and in many games, even the rare marks will never break the HP caps that your character normally has. This is only challenged when you come across enemies that are labelled as "bosses" but that generally is still limited to HP. The damage that is done is still the same for both sides because of the shared statistics. However, this does serve to throw a lot more problems at you in terms of boss fights. Since they damage that you deal is generally the same, boss attacks will hurt a lot MORE for you than for them. Even if your hits exceed 1000 damage, they not only can do the same to you, but for them it is a strong poke. For you it is a deathblow.

* The ''[[Valkyrie Profile]]'' series averts this, occasionally inverting it, with some enemies doing just as much, if not more, damage per round to you, while some bosses will [[There Is No Kill Like Overkill|hit you for several times your maximum HP]] ''per round'' while you have to whittle away at them.

[[Category:Role Playing Game]]

[[Category:Health Damage Asymmetry]]