Contractual Boss Immunity: Difference between revisions

''The top-level bosses in a game will be immune to the player's most effective or strongest attacks.''

 

 

The reason programmers and authors do this is for game balance and narrative issues. Where's the big climactic and ''fun'' battle if the hero just lops off the enemy's head? A hero who can send the [[Big Bad]] into the [[Phantom Zone]], [[Taken for Granite|turn them to stone]], [[Made of Plasticine|cleave them limb from limb]], or otherwise kill/disable them in less than a heartbeat skirts [[Game Breaker|dangerously close]] to [[Boring Invincible Hero]].

Basically, they do it because [[Reality Is Unrealistic]]. However, this Contractual Boss Immunity ends up resulting in [[Gameplay and Story Segregation]] that will really bug players, or worse, ''harm them'' if they put a lot of their [[Experience Points|XP]] into powering up these abilities. Essentially, this is what puts the "Useless" in most [[Useless Useful Spell|Useless Useful Spells]], especially in [[RPG|RPGs]].

 

 

As you can see, this veers in and out of [[Acceptable Breaks From Reality]]. It can be fun to kill a [[Final Boss]] with the uber attacks that are normally useless; but it can also be rather boring to do so.

Unrelated to [[Joker Immunity]].

 

 

== Tabletop RPG ==

* The vast majority of ''[[Final Fantasy]]'' bosses are immune to any form of instant death attacks, status effects, and [[Percent Damage Attack|Percent Damage Attacks]]. There'll occasionally be one or two bosses in a game that the spells will work on, to reward players that [[Try Everything]], and there's frequently a slots combination that'll kill anything<ref>many games feature an attack that functions as a slots minigame, with the effect depending on the combination. The "you win" combination is invariably obscenely difficult to get, and often screwing it up result in ''you'' losing.</ref>, though.

** Surprisingly, in the original ''[[Final Fantasy I (Video Game)|Final Fantasy I]]'', it is possible to defeat elemental fiend Tiamat simply by having a Black Wizard cast Break on her and [[Taken for Granite|turn her to stone]].

** ''[[Final Fantasy IV (Video Game)|Final Fantasy IV]]'' has the Dark Elf, a challenging midgame boss, unless you cast Weak on him, which drops him to single digits. This weakness was removed in the remake.

** There's a glitch in early versions of ''[[Final Fantasy VI (Video Game)|Final Fantasy VI]]'' that can let you use instant death spells on bosses. There's still a boss vulnerable to X-Zone in recent versions, but he's supposed to be.

*** In ''[[Final Fantasy V (Video Game)|Final Fantasy V]]'' and ''[[Final Fantasy VII (Video Game)|Final Fantasy VII]]'', Odin can be used to kill mooks instantly, but against bosses he will perform a powerful damaging move instead.

** On the other hand, ''[[Final Fantasy VIII (Video Game)|Final Fantasy VIII]]'' has Selphie's hard-to-perform [[Limit Break]] "The End" works on bosses, including the final boss Ultimecia. Also, the boss Abadon, being a zombie, can be killed simply by [[Revive Kills Zombie|tossing a Phoenix Down at it or casting Full-Life]].

* Geno Whirl of ''[[Super Mario RPG (Video Game)|Super Mario RPG]]'' does 9999 damage when done with a [[He Knows About Timed Hits|frame-precise timed hit]]. All enemies have less than that; the [[Final Boss]] has 8000 HP. Most bosses are immune to this attack, however, save for one.

* ''[[Adventure Quest (Video Game)|Adventure Quest]]'' made a [[Marathon Boss|marathon]] [[Bonus Boss]] immune to elemental-resistance-shuffling after someone figured out that they could use a class ability that dealt percentage-based fire damage, and the monster's 1275% energy weakness, to one hit kill an [[Eldritch Abomination]]. It dealt ''billions'' of damage.

* In [[Mass Effect 3]]:

** You have [[The Dragon]] Kai Leng {{spoiler|The first time you meet him, he runs away, the second time, you fight him, but every time his shield is taken down he runs off and recharges, no matter how powerful the gun you have. Even in his last appearance you can't just hit him with everything you have and just win, he has to be taken down in stages.}} In addition, Stasis will never work on him, even though he is unarmored.

** In ''[[Persona 3 (Video Game)|Persona 3]]'' and ''[[Persona 4 (Video Game)|Persona 4]]'', instant kill spells return as Light and Dark magic. Some enemies can block either or both elements, but every boss is immune. This hits no-one harder than poor Naoto in ''[[Persona 4 (Video Game)|Persona 4]]''. Naoto specialises in Light, Dark and Almighty magic, which is great for mowing down large numbers of [[Mook|Mooks]] but utterly useless in boss fights.

** The day 7 boss in [[Devil Survivor 2]], Benetnasch, has a passive "Pacify Human".

** Bosses are almost always immune to silence, and some of their spells cannot be interrupted, though others can be, and indeed interrupting them can be necessary. Lady Deathwhisper's is a good example with her interruptable frostbolt of Kill the Tank. The game is helpful enough to provide a shield around the cast bar of uninterruptable spells so people don't waste an spell. A few spells also simply have a different effect on them (most notably the Deep Freeze spell of Frost Mages). And they are fully vulnerable to attacks or spells that can only be used on targets with low health or do more damage in that case. Those skills typically kill of a normal enemy right away, but against a boss they are still valuable, especially against the kind of boss that is [[Turns Red|the most difficult at low health]].

* Most bosses in the ''[[Dragon Quest (Video Game)|Dragon Quest]]'' series are immune to most or all status effects. Many of those that '''aren't''' immune to all of them can be made hugely easier by application of one they're not (For instance, a Troll King in ''[[Dragon Quest III (Video Game)|Dragon Quest III]]'' can be made trivial by silencing him so he can't cast his attack-buff spell), and virtually none are immune to effects that directly decrease their stats -- although a ''very'' rare few can nullify such effects after they're cast, for most bosses, these spells are outright essential -- and even for the ones that can nullify them, they have to waste a round doing so.

** For that matter, Random Encounter enemies are rarely, if ever, immune to status effects, and like in ''[[Shin Megami Tensei (Franchise)|Shin Megami Tensei]]'', some of these can be very difficult, such that simply going "attack, attack, attack" is little more than a way to get yourself killed.

* In ''[[Neverwinter Nights]],'' it shows the results of the in-game die rolls on the game journal. It gets rather annoying when you see "Player casts Hold Person. Boss attempts Will save. Fail!" while the boss continues to attack.

* In the ''[[Golden Sun (Video Game)|Golden Sun]]'' games, bosses seem to be immune because of how the Luck stat works: Luck increases a creature's chances to resist status effects. Since every boss in the game has a Luck stat of around 50 (or higher), their resistance to these effects is extremely high. Some of the Djinn attacks are able to bypass the resistance, though (mainly the ones that work like a Silence effect).

* Subverted in the rogue-like ''Ancient Domains of Mystery''. Many of the game's most difficult bosses can be rendered impotent if the player uses confusion, blindness, darkness, poison, or stun on them.

 

* In ''[[Assassin's Creed II]]'' all generic enemies are vulnerable to your Hidden Blade (and in particular to being [[Counter Attack|counter]] [[One Hit KO|killed]]), but the penultimate and final boss are conveniently immune.

* In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'', you can't break bosses' necks, nor can you slit their throats, and the KO is just minor incapacitation.