How Much More Can He Take?: Difference between revisions

When two supercharged beings hit each other with enough force to shatter a brick wall, but can take it because they are [[Nigh Invulnerable]], we have no way of knowing if the blow was significant or not. The character may reel, but after a moment he's back in the fight as if it had never happened. This is easy to accept at first, but if the fight goes on too long, you start getting lost, and the end of the fight becomes somewhat anti-climactic, since -- unlesssince—unless the writer finds an elegant way to make the fight's conclusion clearly decisive -- itdecisive—it's just an exchange of blows until one of them randomly [[Critical Existence Failure|takes a blow seemingly no different than any other and collapses.]] This can be especially damaging to the [[Willing Suspension of Disbelief]] when the [[Sorting Algorithm of Evil]] is in play: you never get to ''personally'' witness the [[Informed Ability|assured growth in potency]] of the heroes and villains alike.

* It's a good thing people watch ''[[Bobobobo Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo]]'' for the humor, because the bizarre fighting styles make it almost impossible to tell what moves are supposed to be powerful enough to finish off an opponent. (In early episodes, it was usually by following up a particularly confusing sequence with a direct nose hair attack.)

** This is averted Advent Children Complete. Many scenes were revised, and fights now show battle damage.

* ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'', the battle between Sanosuke and Monk Anji has the two trading Futai no Kiwami blows, each supposed to be able to pulverize rocks into dust. The final blow? Sano develops the sucession move to the Futai no Kiwami on the spot.

* Happens between Shirou and {{spoiler|Kotomine Kirei}} in the finale of the Heaven's Feel route of ''[[Fate/stay night]]'', while both of them are virtually dead, nonetheless - {{spoiler|Kirei's heart was destroyed by Sakura ''two days'' ago,}} and Shirou {{spoiler|is all but overtaken/corrupted by Archer's arm, which is quite literally ''turning his body into swords'' because he used its projection capacities}}. The fight is basically two walking corpses brutally beating each other to death. {{spoiler|Shirou wins, but only because Kirei's time runs out first, just as he's about to kill him. Shirou ([[Multiple Endings|possibly]]) follows suit under a minute later, though, and the [[Tear Jerker]] ending [[Killed Off for Real|expands on this concept...]]}}

* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' has normally made sure to emphasize the character's mortality during combat (such as things like sharpened stone spears being fatal like they should be). Then the match between Negi & Kotaro against Kagetaro & Rakan came about and threw all that out the window. {{spoiler|The match started with Raken being pummled by [[Full-Contact Magic|magically-enforced]] punches moving at [[Super Speed|over lightning speed]], being driven into the ground with a concentrated blast of [[Blow You Away|tropical squall-level winds]], then culminating in being at the center of an explosion of [[Shock and Awe|lightning]] [[No Kill Like Overkill|with enough heat to vapourize small mountains]]. [[The Juggernaut|He got back up]]. Then proceeded to beat the person who did it to him with punches of enough strength to kill high-level dragons and shatter large sections of earth. Repeatedly (supposedly by this point his organs should've been turned to mush; a [[High-Pressure Blood|High Pressure Bl]][[Blood From the Mouth|ood From The Mouth]] was in order). On Kotaro's end, he was stabbed through his arms, legs, and torso, then later got slashed at several key points on his body by a [a lot of[[BFS|BFSs]]s, ultimately being impaled through his back-to-chest with a sword larger than his head ([[One-Winged Angel|at the time]] [[Big Badass Wolf|this was saying something]]). His answer? Really good [[Healing Factor]]. The person who stabbed him? Currently pinned to a wall by [[Anti-Magic|magic-canceling]] [[BFS]]}}. This battle is still going. {{spoiler|And [[The Hero]] ''still'' has one more trumpcard. Always one more trumpcard}}. Of course, Rakan is essentially [[Beyond the Impossible|physics and logic defying power]] distilled into human form, so this kind of thing is really to be expected from him. From Negi, however...

* [[Batman]] has also suffered phenomenal physical trauma and kept going.

* In ''[[Troper Works/Ultimate Sleepwalker|Ultimate Sleepwalker: The New Dreams]]'', the battles between Sleepwalker and Psyko tend to be vicious bloodbaths from which the participants emerge more dead than alive. It's made worse by their [[Reality Warper|ability to warp physical objects]], which lead to them flaying each other with sharpened steel spikes, smashing each other through concrete walls, electrocuting each other with high-voltage wires, and catching each other in the middle of exploding sewer pipes and tanker trucks, oftentimes all in the same battle.

** [[James Bond (film)|Bond]] and Trevelyn's fight at the end of ''[[GoldeneyeGoldenEye (film)|GoldenEye]]''.

* ''Fudge'' is one of few tabletop RPGs that actually weakens people as they get beat up, using a wound track (boxes under wound categories that get filled in), with hurt and very hurt wound boxes. A hurt is a significant penalty, and it will be obvious, a very hurt is a huge penalty, and will be just absurdly obvious.

** ''[[Mutants and Masterminds]]'' does the same thing. It seems that in the games where systems other than hit points are used this is extremely prevalent.

*** Although, in the default implementation, wounds and bruises only affected your ability to take further damage. An optional rule (usually invoked for Iron Age games) stipulates that all rolls suffer a penalty. Taking a significant enough blow can leave you stunned, staggered, unconscious, disabled, or dying (specific states that hamper your actions).

** ''[[Champions]]'' uses two stats; Body and Stun. An attack that inflicts Body damage has actually injured the character; enough injury results in the character's death. Stun damage can leave the character dazed (lose an action) or result in the character becoming unconscious.

** ''[[Shadowrun]]'' uses a two stat wound tracking system - lethal and nonlethal damage. Characters accumulate ever greater penalties to all actions as those tracks fill up.

*** The old Alternity system had ''four'' stats for wound tracking. Damage in some of them came with associated penalties to all actions; damage in others didn't.

** ''[[The World of Darkness]]'' games track "health levels", with descriptions of what each means (Bruised is the first level of damage, for example). The more damage you take, the greater the penalties to your rolls; once you're down to one level left, you can barely walk.

** ''[[Exalted]]'', which uses a similar system, does have this problem with high-powered exalts fighting. Since raising your damage is much easier than raising your resistance to damage, and perfect dodges and parries are cheap and reliable, most fights between non-lunar celestials are utterly bloodless until one runs out of juice and is summarily splattered all over by the opponent's Ultimate Doom-combo. This is even worse since you don't necessarily know how much juice your opponent has left.

** Interestingly, in the PDQ system this is the only way damage is tracked at all - damage is taken directly off of your skills and you lose the fight when you have none left.

** ''[[GURPS]]'' notes shock penalties for each hit (pain from being struck), crippling damage (broken bones or joints) and has penalties causing by losing too much HP.

** ''[[Dungeons and& Dragons]]'' has a rarely-used optional rule: The Clobbered rule. Taking half your hit points in physical (non-magical) damage, total, in a single round, reduces your ability to act in the next round. However, since no-one uses that rule, most of the time D&D uses the traditional [[Critical Existence Failure]] rule.

*** The D&D Miniatures game follows the RPG's lead. Most creatures have to make a morale roll after losing half their Hit Points, or run off the battlefield. Otherwise, there's no difference between being at full HP or nearly dead. By contrast, games like [[Hero Clix]] or [[Mage Knight]] have characters get progressively weaker (and lose special abilities) as they take damage.

** ''Star Wars Saga edition'' battles can either follow or avert this trope depending on how much damage is being dealt per attack. Lots of weak attacks can bleed off hp without any noticeable effect until you suddenly drop dead from being hit with a toothpick but powerful attacks will move your character down a condition track, making you suffer penalties to everything until you've recovered.

* ''[[Burning Wheel]]'' has a wound meter, but rather than filling up with damage, you just mark each hit under how much incapacitation it inflicts. It's actually very difficult to land a killing blow; most combat ends when one fighter's will breaks and he flees or surrenders, but between strong-willed fighters, they can keep going until one is so penalized by wounds that he can't move.

* ''[[Heavy Rain]]'' averts this to the point that quite a few of the injuries the 4 heroes receive last ''the entire game''. It's quite obvious when the player is failing too many [[QT Es]]QTEs.

* Lampshaded by ''[[8-Bit Theater (Webcomic)|Eight Bit Theater]]'' in [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2007/05/22/episode-849-wherein-no-ones-power-level-is-9000/ this comic].

** It bears mentioning with the above fight that Tennyo is an intentional [[God Mode Sue]]; the writer attempts a [[Deconstruction]].

[[Category:How Much More Can He Take?{{PAGENAME}}]]