Lord British Postulate: Difference between revisions

== First Person Shooters ==

* The Jedi Heroes in the first ''[[Star Wars Battlefront]]'' game were invulnerable to normal weapons; they would deflect blasters and simply get knocked down by splash damage. It is possible to kill them by using grenades or heavy weapons to knock them into environmental hazards: off the edge of Cloud City, into the Sarlacc pit, or into the Carbonite Freezing chamber. It is also possible to kill them by landing aircraft on them or ramming them them with a speeder bike.

** An even easier method is to get them between a few turrets firing at the right rate. The flinch effect will keep them immobilized long enough for you to take them out. Sadly, they'd just respawn like Agents in ''The Matrix''.

** You could (if I recall correctly) also do this by using a vehicle to push said Jedi off the playable area; though this will kill you eventually, it'll also kill the Jedi, which will (for whatever reason) not damage your vehicle whatsoever. This works great with the Galactic Republic's tank.

* Prior to being patched out, it was possible to kill Eli Vance in ''[[Half Life]] 2''. The player's attacks don't hurt him at all... but if you grabbed a sentry gun from earlier in the level, carried it all the way to Eli, and set it down facing him, it would quickly blow him away.

** Another fun thing to do? Start a new game, get God mode going, Get the HEV suit THEN use ''Impulse 101'' running. Get ammo and the crossbow, and follow the steps up to the teleport cutscene. As you are transporting from place to place, you can ''headshot Breen'' either place; when he first sees you and you fade out, or when he rounds his desk.

** The ''Eye of the North'' expansion is far more explicit with this. If an allied NPC is killed, it will either return hale and hearty on the next dungeon level or, more commonly, wait until its aggro circle is clear before standing back up, dusting itself off, and running back to your location. Quite a few NPCs will rubberband back up to about 30% if their health drops below this threshold, even if the damage they receive puts them deep into negative health. Of course, it was possible for decorative player minipets and certain resurrection NPCs to be accidentally killed by rolling ice boulders when they shouldn't, but this was quickly patched.

** One month it was discovered that a specific buff could be used to spawn minions in some outposts by gaming to system slightly. As players do not have access to skills in outposts, the minions would quickly kill them, and their corpses would spawn more minions.

** Also a particularly lasting example of [[Lost Forever]] -- Kerafyrm could only be awakened ''once'' per entire Server, meaning a failed attempt prevented all others on the server from ever being able to do the event.

*** The issue here is that Kerafyrm was specifically designed to appear to be killable, so people would trip the sad story event caused by the failure. People were supposed to think they could win, and be on the end of a giant [[Player Punch]] when they inevitably lose. They couldn't make him actually unkillable, because once the first group to wake him found out, no one else would do it, because there is no benefit from trying and failing.

** And while we're on the subject, Verant had to make characters used in GM events untargetable specifically ''because'' of this problem.

** ... Except the one time they accidentally botched the ship to be crewed by just 8 skeletons.

** Further, the hardest defeat so far, 100 skeletons versus a full Grand Frigate of top players, had one of the [[Game Master|Game Masters]] fighting on the Black Ship, for full [[Lord British Postulate]] goodness, no less!

** [[City of Heroes|CoH]] also has Riechsman, who's supposed to be completely invincible... however, when he first came out, he was still susceptible to Sleep abilities, which, while not killing him, completely mitigated him. Also, later on in the same set of missions, you get the means to defeat him... which you can keep, then do the story over again, and use the same weapons to defeat him when you're supposed to be helpless against him!

** The Rikti Invasion events in City of Heroes feature dropships, which the dev team made virtually unkillable, with oodles of hit points, powerful attacks, and a tendency to simply fly away and escape before anybody can kill it, and which give no rewards for defeat, specifically because they were not intended to be defeated. When the Issue that introduced the Invasion events was in beta, a group of players took this as a challenge, banded together, and killed ''nine'' of them. The devs then made them even tougher, but still not unkillable.

** Another instance of this were statues in one of the endgame lairs. These statues were immune to all damage types, and shot lasers out of their eyes when approached, which the player had to use a mirror to reflect back at the statue to destroy it to progress through the lair. However, characters who had [[Counter Attack|Parry]] could actually guard to ''penetrate the statue's immunity to normal damage'', allowing players to bypass complex mirror puzzles by just waiting in front of statues while blocking.

== Platformers ==

* In ''[[Sly Cooper]]'', the [[Sympathetic Inspector Antagonist]] is a fox named Inspector Carmelita Fox who is invulnerable... except in ''[[Sly Cooper]] 3'', the Gadgeteer Genius's "Shrink Bomb" works on her, and takes away her infinite HP.

== Role-Playing Games ==

** [[Forgotten Realms|Elminster]] is completely unkillable, even with the game's cheat/debug mode autokill feature on. [[The Dark Elf Trilogy|Drizzt]], on the other hand, can actually be killed in a fight, though, in the first game, not a fair one; you could lure him out onto a peninsula in the middle of a lake, then have your characters plink away at him with arrows for twenty minutes or so while he strains vainly in their direction. However, a later patch gave him the ability to go around the lake.

** [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=181917 this article] details all of the ways that Lord British can be turned into a horse and shipped to Nebraska in the ''Ultima'' series.

** Lord British didn't appear in ''[[Ultima VIII|Ultima VIII: Pagan]]'', but there was Beren, the town sorcerer, who punished any misdeeds the Avatar committed by blowing him up. He couldn't be killed by normal means, but that didn't stop [http://www.it-he.org/u8_beren.htm some players] from exploiting the game's [[Super Drowning Skills]] against him.

**** Or you can just [[Cherry Tapping|hit him until he dies]]. Takes a while, but totally possible if you yourself are not susceptible to being killed first.

* The ''[[Fallout]]'' series is pretty creative with this, even allowing you to passively overdose NPCs with various harmful drugs.

** Another way of killing people without "being responsible for it" is to pickpocket THEM and use the interface to move an armed explosive to their inventory, then leave the area and wait. Once you return after waiting long enough, you'll find a dead NPC and nobody's blaming you. Clearly it was a freak case of spontaneous detonation.

*** In ''Fallout 3'' there's even an Achievement/Trophy for doing this, and the game keeps a tally of "Pants Exploded." On the GNR program "The Adventures of Herbert Dashwood," Argyle calls this technique "the ol' Shady Sands Shuffle."

*** That same game, however, follows the same "essential NPC" rules as ''Oblivion'' -- plot-critical characters do not die (and, since this is a ''Fallout'' title, they must and do have protection from possible dismemberment). Children cannot be targeted at all; they have no collision detection for attacks, melee or ranged, and they can't be targeted in VATS mode.

** The Overseer in the original [[Fallout]] is the only character you can't kill (in a game where you can kill everyone in the entire game,) as he has infinite health and will [[One-Hit Kill|kill you in one hit]]...until at the end of the game, when he finally steps out of his death chair and becomes vulnerable (in fact, if you have the Bloody Mess trait, the Berserker title, or have low karma, you'll kill the Overseer automatically.)

* In ''[[Fable]]'', your weapons are taken away from you in Bowerstone, which is merely cosmetic because you can't beat anyone to death there, either (naturally, that's where the game puts all the [[Hide Your Children|children]]). Unfortunately for the people of Bowerstone, the game is only nerfing ''your'' damage, and if you can bring in and subsequently protect a mercenary or two, you can murder your way across town all you like!

**** It's worth noting that KoL has no policy against botting and no real technical measures against it.

***** To be fair, the limits placed on adventures and consumption each day do restrict how effective botting is in regard to leveling, so long as the multi-account policies are followed.

** Amusingly, it's also possible to level-drain two of the three until they become weak enough to enslave with Charm Monster. ''Now'' you're playing with power!

** Some players like to take this to the next level, and kill entire ''species''. This is easy for most monsters, as almost any monster that is created 120 times<ref>3 for the Erinyes, 9 for the [[Lord of the Rings|Naz'gul]], and never for the Keystone Kops</ref> is considered extinct by the game, and will never be randomly generated again. You'd think this wouldn't apply to unique monsters-- by definition, they are created only once, yes? But in fact, a monster that is brought back somehow counts as a new monster for extinction purposes. [[Taken for Granite|Stoning]] and unstoning a monster counts. For monsters that resist stoning, a wand of undead turning will resurrect the monster. For those few stone-resistant monsters that leave no corpse, an [[Auto Revive|Amulet of Life Saving]] will also increase the extinction counter<ref>gathering 120 of an already-rare item for each unique monster is an exercise in madness, but can be done-- by invoking [[Debug Mode|Wizard Mode]], if nothing else</ref>. But there is one monster, [http://nethackwiki.com/wiki/Juiblex Juiblex], who is unique, stone-resistant, leaves no corpse, ''and'' will never pick up an amulet, and thus cannot be made extinct. But even he can be killed again, just the one extra time, if he randomly spawned with the amulet in his inventory.

* The first ''[[Valkyrie Profile]]'' game has Brahms, Lord of Vampires. You are [[Hopeless Boss Fight|not supposed to beat him]]. If you do through luck, [[Level Grinding]], or cheating, the game just deposits you back into the Overworld without ever mentioning it again, and the game pretends that you had chosen the "don't fight him" option. He appears again in the [[Bonus Dungeon]], but by that time you are expected to be strong enough to match him.

* In the original NES version of ''[[Final Fantasy]] III'', you have what is supposed to be a [[Hopeless Boss Fight]] against Bahamut early in the game. He has 65535 [[Hit Points]] (an absurd number for that game), and fully heals every single round, but it is still possible to kill him. If you do, not only do you get no reward, but you get ''punished'' -- it becomes impossible to get him as a summon later in the game.

* In ''[[Earthbound]],'' Giygas is supposed to be killable through one means and one means only: Paula's "Pray" command. While he does have a "real" HP value, calculational trickery otherwise keeps him alive. However, in the [[Game Boy Advance]] [[Compilation Rerelease]], using a Viper on Giygas can poison him... and the poison will eventually kill him. On the other hand, since the battle wasn't ended the scripted way, glitchery ensues and you end up in a world preconfigured for the game's ending... an ending which won't happen now.

** Master Belch is immune to damage of any kind until you use the Fly Honey on him. However, the Hungry HP-Sucker doesn't ''count'' as damage, because it's a draining effect. It's possible to kill him the long way by exploiting his vulnerability to status effects and drawing his hit points out the long way.

* ''[[Secret of Mana]]'' has Charon, the guide who takes you to the Moon Palace, who is actually just a common enemy called a Robin Foot locked into a position where he cannot attack the player. He can't be hit with weapons, but magic can kill poor Charon. Additionally, the final boss is ''supposed'' to only be damaged under very specific circumstances ( {{spoiler|having the hero hold the Mana Sword and having both of his sidekicks cast Mana Magic on him}}), but his defenses are not impenetrable to normal weapons when charged to sufficient levels.

* ''[[Disgaea]]'' has another example of this. [[NPC|NPCs]] are everywhere across the castle - Running the hospital, the shops, even the portal that takes you to the storyline maps. Now, you can't attack them in the castle.... or can you? (Here's a hint: You can.) All you have to do is call an assembly. If one of the [[NPC|NPCs]] shows up, you can happily beat the tar out of them. Then when you get back to the castle, you'll find a little gravestone where they were. Wait a minute.... you just killed the demon running the Hospital... how are you supposed to heal? Just save, reset, and they'll be back in their spots again.

* It's actually possible to kill Fargus in ''[[Fire Emblem]]: [[Fire Emblem Elibe|The Blazing Sword]]''. You're warned ''not'' to do so because it's a [[Hopeless Boss Fight]] otherwise, but people have managed to defeat him legitimately. Alas, it's not a good idea to do this because this causes a [[Nonstandard Game Over|game over]] just for attacking him.

** In ''[[Fire Emblem Jugdral|Geneology of the Holy War]]'', the [[Final Boss]] appears on the map in Chapter 10. This is supposed to be a [[Hopeless Boss Fight]], but you actually ''can'' [[Cherry Tap]] or if you're lucky, Holsety them to death. [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|If you manage to do this, the boss even says "Playtime is over - I'm going home."]]

** This may be why various RPGs avoid starting certain characters. For instance, ''[[Spirit of the Century]]'' gives only a few ballpark skills for Dr. Methusala, but only as a last resort. GMs are encouraged to treat him as an event, rather than a character.

** Similarly, the tongue-in-cheek First Law of [[Munchkin|Munchkinism]]: "Any finite number can be reduced to zero."

*** The 3rd ed book ''Deities and Demigods'' contained almost exclusively stats and info on most gods in the game, including the Faerunian pantheon and the Greek, Norse and Egyptian pantheons. A majority of them are grossly underpowered and badly built, ripe for having player parties kill them and steal their divine powers unless the DM enforces the [http://www.d20srd.org/srd/divine/divineRanksAndPowers.htm special rules for deities.]

*** In the online novel "Fire and Dust", the villain is convinced her gamebreaking macguffin will allow her to defeat even the Lady, {{spoiler|although we never see that plan played out}}.

**** {{spoiler|Well, the Lady is seemingly still alive, and she has a habit of sending people who annoy her on VERY long, lonely and unpleasant trips. So...}}

** A fourth Edition Ritual called Loremaster's Bargain grants you an audience with one being with information that you need, often a deity or extraplanar being. Part of the ritual description states that [[Defied Trope|they cannot be attacked or physically interacted with.]]

** In a variation, the Tarrasque is designed to be the most powerful monster in the game - it's huge, it's strong, and it regenerates any damage quickly. Theoretically, you ''could'' beat it, but the rules are stacked against you, so players gave always been trying to come up with creative ways to fight it. One thread on rpg.net described how the rules make it entirely possible to have a city capture the Tarrasque and use it as a neverending supply of food, since it'll always regrow what it loses.

** Stone in ''[[Deadlands]]'' has no stats for this exact reason.

** One of the Shadowrun developers used to recount an incident when a fan described how his party had setoff a Briefcase Nuke the moment they met Harlequin, sacrificing themselves to [[Beyond the Impossible|kill the unkillable]]. Their GM had let it work because "there was no way even Harlequin would be walking around with a custom anti-nuke protection spell". The developer responded that he would have ruled that knowing Humanity the way he did & being the kind of guy he was, Harlequin would have dropped everything to create an anti-nuke protection spell about 10 min after the first test in 1945 & would not have let it lapse since then.

** The third edition of the book made sure to give all vampires of third generation and below at least one Plot Device power to keep the players from just killing them willy nilly.

** The same "rules" are used in the ''LotR'' RPG to describe fighting Sauron.

*** The older ''[[MERP]]'' gave statistics for him in the ''Necromancer of Dol Guldur'' supplement. He's immensely powerful at 240th level (for comparison, Nazgul are 20th level in the original book or 40th in the supplements and Gandalf et al are 60th level), but since ''MERP'' has open ended rolls and instant-death criticals, even the lowliest hero could get lucky and kill him with a lucky combination of 96-100 attack rolls and a decent critical hit, assuming they could get into combat with him in the first place.

** Early editions had Cthulhu eating 1d4 PLAYERS a round.

** Just ''seeing'' Cthulhu forces a character to lose 1d100 SAN (sanity). The maximum SAN is 100. Do the math.

** Though the thing that makes him this trope is what happens if you do kill Cthulhu. He reforms a few minutes later, fully recovered. Nuke him and he comes back radioactive.

* ''[[Seventh Sea]]'' has one of its most infamous villains, Captain Reis, on the cover. He has stats. He's also nearly impossible to hit... with a sword. However, he doesn't wear armor and you can't block bullets. Shoot him and throw in all your drama dice and you can put a hole in his skull.

== Other ==

** Back in the 2D era, the Hidden Fun Stuff automatically killed you in just a short time after you mined the first [[Unobtanium|cotton candy]] ore. The 3D version remedied that problem. Now you can exploit this trope to the max.

*** Toady's stated design intent to make it possible to annihilate all life on a generated world, ushering in the Age of Emptiness, makes this the most complete aversion. (Versions 31.16-.18 have made this impossible, but may become doable under later implemented conditions.)

* In an unusual case of a strategy game, ''[[Command and Conquer]] Tiberian Sun: Firestorm'' has two of those. The CABAL Core Defender (a boss actually) who should be unbeatable except when abusing his [[Super Drowning Skills]] or using stealthed [[One-Hit Kill]] capable WALLS and the super-charged veinhole monster from a GDI mission, which will die when you fire long enough on it. ("Long enough" being a ''long'' time.)

* ''Alter Aeon'' seems to enjoy tormenting players with this: in the starting city, there is an NPC called "The Captain of the Guard". The message for the area explicitly tells the player (paraphrased) "This is the Captain of the Guard. He cannot be killed. No matter how many players you bring, you will not kill him". Naturally, many see this as a challenge.

* ''[[Metroid]] Zero Mission'': During your [[Sudden Gameplay Change|steath escape through Chozodia]], you'll spot a Power Bomb Tank held by a statue in a spot just above the room you're in. A few seconds later, you get there to find it gone, and a Space Pirate a couple screens up above is absconding with the prize. Sadly, [http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=4TZi3OtsZb8#t=1511s not even tool-assisted speedrunners] [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|are capable of catching up with him.]]

* ''[[Immortal Defense]]'' has a boss at the end of the second campaign who's supposed to be a [[Hopeless Boss Fight]], but players who are just that good have gotten him. The developer didn't think anyone would be able to do it and the game assumes the normal events happened where the boss wins and continues from there. The rest of the game, heavily psychological, goes on to make near-record amounts of no sense.

* One of the missions of [[Dark Is Not Evil|Necropolis]] scenario in ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]] V: Tribes of the East'' features a fortified Orc town with a '''huge''' army<ref>and "huge" means "at least several hundred cyclops, and according number of other creatures"</ref>. This army never leaves the town, and the game specifically warns you that you don't have to and shouldn't attack it. However, it is possible to destroy it, by prudent use of Dark magic (specifically, [[Unstoppable Rage|Berserk]] and [[Mind Control Device|Puppet Master]] spells).

* Cap'n Hector from the [[Escape Velocity]] games was an NPC who would remind players to register (pay for) the shareware game. After the 30 day trial period ended, the Cap'n would start warping in to attack your starship every chance she got, usually resulting in a very quick death. However, while Hector was invincible to conventional attack, it was possible to kill or disable her with splash damage in the original game.