Scratch Damage: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''All successful attacks must inflict some measure of damage, no matter how minor.''}}
You've gotten the [[Infinity+1 Sword]] (or plus more, even), the spikiest, [[Power Glows|glowiest]] armor and trinkets in the game, and your [[Made of Iron]] stats make you an almost [[Implacable Man]] under most circumstances...
...But [[The Goomba|the snail]] that [[Random Encounters|randomly appears]] outside your hometown still does a measly
For some reason (probably due to the original ''[[Dungeons
In some games, weak enemies will only manage to inflict damage by landing the occasional [[Critical Hit]]. But unless there are other game mechanics at work, like self-inflicted damage caused by a distracting or disruptive attack, they shouldn't be able to hurt you ''at all'' with their furry paws while you're wearing your Flaming Armor of Awesomeness, [[Critical Hit]] or not.
Fortunately for you, many RPG systems apply [[Scratch Damage]] both ways: Your [[Squishy Wizard]]'s fragile fisticuffs may not be a useful weapon, but even they can be counted on to deliver the token 1 point damage per hit (that is, ''when'' they hit), making him [[Not Completely Worthless]] even when he's been [[Standard Status Effects|Silenced]] or [[Mana Burn|drained]] of his [[Mana|MP]]. Likewise,
But this is by no means universal, and other RPG systems will happily reduce your attacks to zero points or "no effect" if your attack power is too low or the opponent's defense too high.
Occasionally, [[Metal Slime|rare and elusive monsters]] may be designed entirely around the concept of
[[Scratch Damage]] is also common in [[Fighting Game
Guaranteed to drive a [[Munchkin]] all the way up the wall (and probably through the ceiling due to his optimized Strength...) and is also the bane of those attempting a [[No Damage Run]], especially when coupled with [[Random Encounters]].
If someone dies from this, it's a [[Death of a Thousand Cuts]] or [[Cherry Tapping]].
{{examples|Exceptions}}
== [[Tabletop RPG]] ==
* ''[[Dungeons
** ''[[Pathfinder]]'' (aka [[Fan Nickname|D&D 3.75]]) changes this. Minimum damage before DR is 1 point ''non-lethal'' damage. Because of low strength, house cats are now incapable of killing commoners in combat. The best they can achieve is knocking the commoner unconscious.
* [[Exalted]] has ping damage, which is the minimum damage you can do (assuming you've hit the target at all, that is.)
** On the other hand, a heavy suit of artifact armour gives you Hardness, which incoming damage has to beat to have a chance of hurting you at all. Although you will still take ping damage from anything that beats it.
* ''[[Champions]]''/''[[Hero System]]'' have the "Penetrating" modifier for attacks, which when applied guarantees that every hit will do at least 1 point of damage to its target, regardless of its defenses.
== [[Video Games]] ==
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* In addition to normal blocking, many fighting games provided a "powerblock" feature: If the player defended against their opponent's attack with ''exact'' timing (generally right before or upon impact), they would receive zero damage from it, even if it was a Special Attack (which would normally inflict scratch damage). ''[[Street Fighter]] III'' had this in the form of parrying, and ''Garou: Mark of the Wolves'' had it in the form of Just Defend.
* In the third ''[[Star Ocean]]'' game, it's possible to get defense stats high enough for attacks to cause zero damage. Getting hit with such a weak attack doesn't even stun you or interrupt your attacks.
* The ''[[Paper Mario (franchise)|Paper Mario]]'' titles calculate damage simply as "Attack minus Defense", for both Mario and all opponents, making [[Spam Attack
** ''[[Super Mario RPG]]'' generally permitted
* The [[
** Other examples of enemies that only take scratch damage from attacks include the tree thing on Trunkle's head (killing it is actually the quickest way to defeat said boss, presuming you use attacks that hit multiple times) and Boos (which have something like a thousand for their defense stats and can only be fought 'normally' at really high levels).
** ''[[
* ''[[
** In ''[[Mother 3]]'', they replaced the battle skipping with the dash attack: if you dash into an enemy far enough below you, they disappear. You don't gain any experience or money, probably to give people an incentive to fight higher level monsters as opposed to grinding on low risk enemies.
* In the NES game ''Crystalis'': if you have strong enough armor and/or a high enough character level, the game's weaker enemies will simply bounce right off you without damage.
** Of course, the inverse of this is that if you haven't reached an entirely arbitrary level, you will be completely unable to hurt bosses, and unable to run away from the battle, making most of the game a [[Guide Dang It]].
*** Or an exercise in continuous [[Level Grinding]], which was somewhat necessary ANYWAY to get the higher-level armors. The [[Guide Dang It]] only comes in the endgame, where you MUST have hit the level cap (and/or found the [[Game Breaker|Power Ring]]) in order to do any damage to the last several bosses. And then there's enemies that won't take damage at all unless you have the [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors|right elemental sword equipped]].
* ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' averts
** ''[[Fire Emblem Jugdral|Fire Emblem 4: Seisen no Keifu]]'' plays it straight though, no matter how much defense or how weak a character is, they will do at least 1 damage with every successful hit.
* In ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'', certain abilities can reduce damage all the way to zero, although pure defense can't reduce damage below 10 (out of HP totals in the thousands or tens of thousands, mind).
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* ''[[City of Heroes]]'' decreases accuracy and damage per level of difference between player and critter: while there's always a 5% chance for a given attack to hit (or miss, on the other end), the damage they do decreases so much there's often no chance for it to register before the player's health regenerates. Aside from that, the game deals with the issue by having the critters ignore the player if the difference in levels passes a certain threshold. They'll only attack (ineffectively) if they or a member of their spawn take damage from the player or a teammate first. At a great enough difference, they'll all run and not even try to attack back. It, also, of course, works the other way - and much higher-level critters generally will be ''more'' aggressive toward player characters (based on distance to first aggro) than even-level critters.
* ''[[Champions Online]]'' applies this rule. Especially in the case of the defensive ability of [[Nigh Invulnerability|invulnerability]], which directly subtracts a flat value from all incoming damage, even enemies tens of levels below you will still be able to hit you for one damage.
* Damage calculation in the ''[[Wild
* All the [[Metroidvania|RPG]] ''[[Castlevania]]'' games have a minimum damage of 1 regardless of the attack and defense values involved, unless you use an item that has the absorb or nullify properties for the attack's element. Monsters aren't immune either, and a determined player can eventually kill any enemy with a series of 1-damage attacks.
** The extreme examples of these being Aria/Dawn of Sorrow's iron golems, who always take only 1 damage from attacks, and Dawn of Sorrow's Dead Crusader soul, which reduces damage by a flat number, making you invincible to weaker enemies. Their attacks still connect, but it does 0 damage and you don't flinch. Comically, the hit effects still occur, which means Soma will still bleed like a stuck pig when hit by an attack that does no damage.
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* ''[[Fallout]] 2'' featured the famed "You are critically hit for 0 damage and die from the pain." - instant death is also an effect that can occur by critical.
* ''[[Fallout]] 3'' had scratch damage outright due to the removal of armor classes and going to a system where armor simply mitigated damage by a percentage. This was not one of the more popular aspects of the game to say the least. Armor classes returned in ''[[Fallout: New Vegas]]'', but scratch damage still applies: weapons are guaranteed to do at least 20% damage through armor, which will always means you're going to take at least a point or two of damage from weapons. Given enough BBs and repair kits, you can kill a [[Powered Armor|Brotherhood Paladin]] with a [[Joke Weapon|BB gun]].
* A prime example of ''why'' [[Fighting Game
* In the three ''[[Touhou]]'' fighting games, neither player can be killed due to chipping damage. However, because blocking attacks continually drain the defender's Spirit, a player who can capitalize on chain attacks and Guard Break attacks can win anyway.
* Avoided in popular text-based MMORPG ''[[Gem Stone]] IV'', which based damage on a set of calculations that it actually showed you in game: The attacker's strength minus the target's defense, plus a weapon-versus-armor modifier, plus a random d100 dice roll. If the final number is over 100, then a strike is landed - if the number is only around 100-110, it will be a weak hit, while if it approaches 200 you might be removing some important body parts. If the roll ends up under 100, even at 99, then the strike misses completely: for example, if the target's defense is too high for the attacker, and/or their armor is strong against the attacker's weapon. Yes, oddly enough, very strong armor simply causes the attacker to miss entirely.
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* ''[[Chrono Trigger]]'''s [[New Game+]] mode largely averts this - many of the early enemies can do zero damage, and the right combination of armour and equipment can get you about a third of the way through the game without ever losing any HP.
* Rare [[Fighting Game]] (partial) aversions: The ''[[Rival Schools]]'', ''[[Melty Blood]]'', and ''[[Arcana Heart]]'' games have chipping damage from special attacks, but chipping can't finish someone off. In the latter, Niptra's "Arcana Force" ability is immunity to chip damage.
* In the ''[[Atelier
* ''[[The World Ends With You]]'' has your characters completely ignore attacks if they do zero damage.
* ''[[Parasite Eve]]'' averts this trope. When Aya's defense reaches its higher levels (at least 200 points or more), most enemies, including bosses, will literally do no damage to you.
* ''[[Jagged Alliance]] 2'' has break lights, when thrown at a character do one point of damage... and cause him (or her) to bleed, requiring basic medical attention to prevent continuing health loss.
** ...'''and''' it's possible to pester NPC's without aggravating them by trying to throw an object (a toolkit, a bottle, a ''bit of string'', or whatever) ''through'' them. The thrown object will conk them on the noggin for -1 HP instead. They may eventually even die from bleeding out of their bit-of-string-induced injuries if you stay in that sector long enough.
** Similarly in ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'''s Adventure mode a character with good stats and throwing skill can damage opponents by throwing pretty much anything, including things like berries or clods of dirt.
* All [[Nippon Ichi]] games (the ''[[Disgaea]] series, ''[[La Pucelle]]'', ''[[Phantom Brave]]'', ''[[Makai Kingdom]]'' and ''[[Soul Nomad and The World Eaters]]'') avert this trope: With a high enough defence, incoming damage can be reduced to '0'. Piling up the combos can allow otherwise too weak characters to deal damage anyhow, though.
* There's a certain condition in ''[[Ragnarok Online]]'''s damage formulas that allows for 0 damage (all attacks that would hit, but deal no damage, will show up as "miss"): Normally, no matter how much DEF or MDEF you have, all attacks will still do a minimum of 1 damage... unless you have special buffs or equipment that reduces damage from a specific source by a percentage (examples: Beret reduces damage of all attacks from [[Demi Human|Demi Humans]] by 10%, changing your armor element will alter how much damage each element does to you), which reduces your final damage even further, rounded to the nearest whole number. This is probably due to the same logic that makes all enemies with the Poison armor element take 0 damage from Poison element attacks, [[Department of Redundancy Department|because Poison attacks are reduced to 0% effectiveness versus the Poison element on the elemental damage table.]]
* Some fighting games (''[[Mortal Kombat]]'', I'm looking at you, although ''[[World Heroes]] 2 Jet'' did this too) will not only have chip damage from special moves, but will also chip when you block a regular punch.
* ''[[Front Mission]]'' wanzers could be chipped to death by much weaker enemies, but later games threw in a skill that would prevent or vastly lower it - damage prevention for attacks below a certain amount, and locking the damage to a lower number for attacks between a certain span.
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* ''[[Xenogears]]'' is a prime aversion, since it does allow for 0s, and in this game, leveling up is almost painfully easy, so power gamers see 0s a LOT...
** On the flip side, scratch damage becomes a ''valid tactic'' against certain enemies that are resistant to heavier attacks but have limited HP.
* Originally avoided in ''[[Kingdom of Loathing]]'', but the game was patched with
** Also, any damage of a type an enemy is resistant towards (fire against a hot-aligned creature, a physical attack on a ghost, etc.) is reduced to 1 point per hit.
** [http://kol.coldfront.net/thekolwiki/index.php/Frosty One particular boss] takes only scratch damage from ''any'' single damage source. In order to beat it, you have to stack up enough different damage sources to deal 350 HP of scratch damage in the 30 rounds given to you before the fight ends in a draw. Fortunately, the boss takes 3 points of scratch damage from [[Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors|elemental attacks it's weak against]], and [[All Your Colors Combined|prismatic weapons]] deal separate scratch damage for every element involved.
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* ''[[Zeliard]]'' has the player obtain stronger shields later in the game, which will eventually be completely impervious to the game's weakest enemies. An attack from behind will always cause damage though.
* ''[[Shining in the Darkness]]'' gives enemies that can't overpower your defense an increased chance to miss and do no damage, but they may still hit for 1 damage every so often. Annoyingly, this does not work in reverse: early on, when your [[Squishy Wizard|mage]] is still puny, enemies with sufficient defense will be said to 'shake off the attack' and never take damage.
** ''[[Shining Force]] Feather'' sees a lot scratch damage as well: due to the vastly increased HP counts, the ability to grind yourself stupid with little effort and the fact that attacks never miss completely, any enemy is able to consistently hit you for 1-3 damage per turn since everyone has multiple physical attacks per turn. It's ultimately helpful though, since [[Action Command
* In ''Jade Cocoon'', even if you have the greatest defense stat over the enemy's attack stat, you will ''still'' take damage. Even though the damage is so tiny you won't see any change in your HP bar, over time it will go down.
** Also, the game averts this: if you are a high enough Cocoon level, the enemies will be afraid and run away from you before you even encounter. Note that you must be a very high level to get the enemies in the later/end stages to do the same.
* In ''[[Kirby]] [[Kirby Super Star|Superstar]]'', both Kirby and his helpers can guard, but depending on the nature of the attack they'll still take some damage or full damage from certain boss moves. A few copy abilities like the parasol gives him an improved guard mode that fully cancels out damage except for the boss moves. In fact, these guards damage enemies on impact, making it possible to beat some bosses purely by
* [[
** It IS half a point, actually, as it will sometimes make 0 damage. Basically by all units the damage done alternates between some 80% and 100% percent of possible damage (the more kills the more precise the unit) and "high" damage will correspond to such 1 hit, whereas "low" corresponds to no hit.
** Even more interested in Warcraft 2: all units with damage low enough to be fully overtaken by some armor (buildings have the best) have a part of damage as "piercing one", which penetrates as if no armor were present. The units with BIG damage don't, so if you tinker armor stats you can achieve that, say, Battleships cannot do even a 1 point damage - but grunts still can do 3-4.
* ''[[Secret of Mana]]'' averts this in the form that your characters will simply ninja dodge all weaker enemy attacks. Unfortunately this gets annoying if an enemy can hit fast enough.
* The ''[[Pokémon]]'' series's internal damage formula basically boils down to "(attack power / defense power) * (long list of possible modifiers) '''+ 1'''", thus guaranteeing that all attacks (regardless [[Status Buff
** This is used in the "FEAR" (Focus Sash + Endeavor + Quick Attack + Rattata) strategy. Focus Sash will [[Last Chance Hit Point|leave you with at least one HP]] if you were at full health when you took a hit; combine it with Endeavor to make your opponent's HP [[HP to One|match your 1 HP]]. Add in Quick Attack (which strikes first) and the
** This is averted in the ''[[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]]'' spinoffs, which uses a different damage algorithm; most of the time, enemies weaker than you will do no damage or miss with their regular attack, and even using moves does extremely low damage if they connect at all.
* In ''[[Gaia Online|zOMG!]]'', the weakest enemies can still hit a player at the level cap for minimal damage (though the player's innate dodge stat will make half of such attacks miss anyway). Similarly, a low-level player in a high-level area can still hit enemies for 1 point of damage. It ''is'' possible to zero out damage, but this is a chance-based property of certain buffs and is not limited to weak attacks.
* Darth Vader or Yoda blocking with their lightsabers in ''[[Soul Calibur]] IV'' can still take the damage everyone else does while blocking. It's anyone's guess why ''they'' get hurt when some guy [[Violation of Common Sense|punches them in the lightsaber]].
* ''[[Final Fantasy XIII]]'' has no defense stat (unless you are a sentinel or wearing special armor, at which point you take damage based on a percentage), so creatures that were doing 30 damage to you at the start of the game will still do 30 damage even with your levels maxed.
* ''[[
* ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'' In certain jobs and at high enough levels, enemies just won't deal damage to you. This also means that you cannot do damage to certain monsters, as well (Like [[Bonus Boss|Omega]], when you first meet him.)
* Fully justified in ''[[Crush Crumble and Chomp]]''; since you're a [[Kaiju|giant rampaging monster]], everyone else is inevitably weaker than you... but those scratches add up.
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* In ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'', the police, who have a weak little pistol that you can't even obtain due to its uselessness, will always cause at least a bit of damage to a fully-armored Alex. Averted with Alex's powers: punching a tank, even with your superhuman strength, is quite pointless. Only certain powers or combat moves can damage armor. The same goes for hunters, who are immune to bullets and Alex's baseline strength.
** [[Prototype 2]] will avert this, however. James Heller ''can'' become completely bulletproof.
* Averted in ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' and ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics
== Literature ==
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