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Lord British Postulate: Difference between revisions
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That said, the [[Lord British Postulate]] has less grounding in reality than one would assume. A great deal of NPCs are free to walk around unmolested, safe in their invulnerability. However, the more important the NPC is, the more likely it will be the target of a creative assassination attempt. A king is a bigger target than the common baker, and much more satisfying to dispatch.
This trope can be an applied form of [[Loophole Abuse]] with how you go about killing [[Lord British Postulate]].
[[Genre Savvy]] developers will actually [[The Dev Team Thinks of Everything|code in what happens]] if you ''do'' manage to defeat them.
Contrast with [[Invulnerable Civilians]]. A [[Hopeless Boss Fight]] or [[Invincible Minor Minion]] is seen as a challenge to these people. [[I Thought That Was|This has nothing to do with]] the other ship from ''[[Gradius]]''.
{{examples}}
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== [[MMORPGs]] ==
* Lord British, of course, from the ''[[Ultima]]'' series, who just happens to be one of Richard Garriott's two in-game [[Author Avatar|Author Avatars]]. The postulate itself stems from [http://www.gamestooge.com/2009/01/02/feature-the-day-lord-british-died/ a time] during the ''[[Ultima Online]]'' beta test where, following a crash, Lord British forgot to set his invulnerability flag when he signed back on, and a player killed him with a hastily-stolen firefield spell on the spur of the moment during a public gathering.
** A special pair of leggings were introduced to [http://www.uoguide.com/Royal_Leggings_of_Embers "commemorate" the event].
** There was an event during the early weeks of ''[[Tabula Rasa]]'' that was about killing General British. Well, clones of him, actually, there were dozens of them.
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** Some players expand this to include other players when not in PvP situations that allow deaths. Duels end with the other player having one hitpoint, but using knockbacks or mind control during the duel it is possible to kill via fall damage.
*** Perhaps the worst incident of this behavior was the Corrupted Blood Plague. Players discovered they could bring a highly-contagious disease to their home cities, where it would promptly spread and kill characters who were ordinarily protected from other players.
** Early in the Mists of Pandaria beta there was a bugged version of Chi Wave. The spell is supposed to bounce between [[PCs]] and [[NPCs]] healing if friendly, damaging if an enemy. Earlier versions bugged so it would damage all [[NPCs]].
* In ''[[Guild Wars]]'', a well-placed herd of Necromancer minions can sometimes kill exactly the wrong person during a mission cutscene.
** 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.
* Kerafyrm the Sleeper, the [[Sealed Evil in a Can]] from the "end" of the original ''[[
** 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.
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* In the MMORPG ''[[Runescape]]'', one update brought a seemingly invincible enemy called the Vyrewatch. They've got a combat level, so they must be killable somehow, right? Someone went to the trouble of getting one to attack him while a group of friends dropped him rings of recoil and massive amounts of food. Eventually, the Vyrewatch died, with no death animation and no drops, proving that they really were intended to be invincible.
** They're now killable if you use a weapon you get from the Legacy of Seergaze Quest.
** And likewise, Runescape used to(?) have random events that would punish you if you were botting or doing nothing but practicing a gathering profession for hours-on-end. River trolls would attack fishers, wood spirits would attack woodcutters, and golems would attack miners. They were intended to be invincible to kill the player and force them to drop all their items (thus punishing botters) but people would actually turn around and kill their attacker, which would often drop something (But nothing ''really'' good, mostly bones or something like a fishing net that you likely already have or don't need)
* ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'' has the ostensibly killable Absolute Virtue, which does in fact have death animations, text, and very valuable (and exclusive) drops... but every time it's been killed so far, [[Square Enix]] respond with something along the lines of "No, that's not how you kill it" and patch it. Sometimes they ban the players who killed it, too.
** Also notable is the actually newsworthy superboss Pandemonium Warden. When it was first patched into the game, it was deemed truly unkillable, and one linkshell group spent 18 consecutive hours in a single fight against it and could not continue. Since then SE patched it to make it actually very possible to kill, but it is still comparable to Absolute Virtue in difficulty.
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* 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.
* [[Implacable Man|Phanto]] in ''[[Super Mario Bros. 2]]'' can be killed by exploiting a glitch. If you have a Toadstool Block (one of those mushroom shaped things you usually need to climb on), you can throw it at the key making it jump in the air. If you do it about a dozen times, the key stops reacting, and instead glows and makes an impact sound. You can then hold the key as long as you like, and Phanto will never show up. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwQ5yVgcjIQ You can see it in action here.]
** [[The Angry Video Game Nerd]] also found out a way to kill Phanto through a similar glitch. You had to get four cherries, pick four large vegetables, pick the fifth to get a clock to stop time, get another cherry to get an Invincibility Star, and while you're invincible, slam Phanto. However this is a more specific version.
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* ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' games were notorious for this, especially ''Morrowind'', where everyone and everything was killable. Including plot-requirement NPCs.
** It is actually possible to finish Morrowind's main quest even if all "plot critical" characters but one are dead, but doing it without being told how in advance requires incredible luck.
*** Fortify Intelligence with Ash Yams. Fortify Health with Vampire Dust. Retrieve Sunder and Keening. Go to Red Mountain. [[Beyond the Impossible|Wield Sunder and Keening bare-handed]] against Heart of Lorkhan. Win @ Morrowind.
** Which may have spurred Bethesda to make pretty much every "important" NPC in ''Oblivion'' unkillable. If they "die", they drop to the floor unconscious and rise again when the coast is clear. With very little health. And often the coast isn't ''that'' clear. Plug-ins remove this invulnerability, as do certain console commands.
*** In some cases, you can simply wait until they're no longer relevant to the plot, in which case they're [[You Have Outlived Your Usefulness|fair game.]] Other NPCs never have their 'essential' flags expire.
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* ''[[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.
** The series also features a few [[Hopeless Boss Fight|Hopeless Boss Fights]] that you must lose to advance the plot (Etna and Laharl in Disgaea 2, for instance). These enemies are never truly invincible, just ''way'' more powerful than your party is expected to be. This being Disgaea, you ''can'' stop and level grind for ages until you are capable of winning. Typically results in a [[Nonstandard Game Over]]. Since seeing [[Multiple Endings|all the different endings]] is a frequent goal of players, plenty of people actually do this.
* Most of the townsfolk that aren't important in some way or merchants can be killed in ''[[Final Fantasy Adventure]]'' if you have the patience to do so.
* 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."]]
** Almost the exact same instance occurs in ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius|Radiant Dawn]]'', possibly making it a [[Shout-Out]] - the [[Big Bad]] appears in chapter 4-3 amongst his hordes of Mooks. He's supposed to flee once a certain ally appears during the battle, but it's possible to get to him and take him out first. As above, he makes a pompous exit and returns later in the story no worse for the wear.
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** 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 first edition of ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' gave the gods stats. This led a lot of players to treat them just like really tough monsters and try to kill them. Later editions generally avoided statting the gods themselves, and if they needed to make a personal appearance, would send [[God in Human Form|an avatar]] with a fraction of their powers (but still really tough).
*** 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.]
** The ''[[Planescape]]'' entity known as the Lady of Pain has no stats for this very reason. The fans wouldn't have it any other way, to the degree that when the 3rd edition Planar Handbook statted her [[Character Alignment]] and nothing else it was met with disapproval.
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* On the non-D&D front, the crew at Pinnacle would recite the adage about statting things in the first edition of the [[Deadlands]] books. They would refuse to stat certain characters in order to railroad people into sticking with the metaplot. Seems to have been reversed in the Reloaded release, though.
** Stone in ''[[Deadlands]]'' has no stats for this exact reason.
* The ''[[Shadowrun]]'' module "Harlequin" refuses to stat the title elf, and explicitly calls this out as the reason. (Great Dragons, meanwhile, avert the Postulate not by not having stats, but by having a mechanic in their stats that allows them to say [[The Battle Didn't Count]], to appear dead but actually survive, and then destroy the PC party via manipulation from a place of complete safety.
** 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.
* One ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade]]'' book has a section called "Rules for Fighting Caine", the first vampire, specifically for this purpose. It consists of the [[Two Words|two words "You lose."]]
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** 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
* ''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.
* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening]]'', chicke... er, [[Call a Rabbit a Smeerp|Cuccos]] and dogs can't be killed with the sword, attacking the former enough causes a whole flock of Cuccos to start swarming Link (as is the norm in Zelda games), and attacking the latter triggers a counterattack. Use the Fire Rod or Magic Powder, however, and not only can you kill them, but an active Cucco swarm will ''stop''. (There's loyalty for you!)
* ''[[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.
* In ''[[Age of Mythology]]'': The Titans expansion, one level has you scrambling to revive a giant Guardian statue in Egypt, because an equally giant Titan (Cerberus) is coming who is designed such that killing him should only be realistically possible using this guardian, due to his massive damage and hp. However, using vast number of priests, who gain damage bonuses towards creatures of Myth, it is quite possible to kill him without awakening the guardian, though he does tend to kill a lot of them before he goes down.
* 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.
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