Desperation Attack: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

 

In real-life, [[Combat Breakdown|most physical fights get less dramatic as time goes on]]. What started out as two guys in their physical prime going at each other, if it goes on for ten minutes, becomes two guys bearing the accumulated injuries of ten minutes of fighting going at each other. Big hits become fewer and farther between, there's a lot more slow grappling, and it just [[Wimp Fight|starts to look sloppy]]. Similarly if one opponent at any point becomes significantly more injured than the other, [[Unstable Equilibrium|that disadvantage persists throughout the remainder of the fight.]]

== [[Action Adventure]] Games ==

* In ''[[The Minish Cap]]'' Link learns, in addition to his normal full-health [[Sword Beam]], a beam attack that only works when his health is at or below 1 heart.

 

== [[Action Game|Action Games]] ==

 

== [[Beat'Em Up]] ==

 

== [[Fighting Game|Fighting Games]] ==

* In ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom 3]]'', Phoenix has to be knocked out with the super meter at [[Memetic Mutation|le-le-le-le-MAXIMUM]] in order to turn into Dark Phoenix. When she does, she gains an enhanced moveset as well as regaining full health. This health is meant to be balanced, as: Phoenix and Dark Phoenix each have 420,000 hp (the lowest for any other character, including resident [[Glass Cannon]] Akuma, is 800,000); the pair have pitiful defense; and Dark Phoenix's health drains constantly (though it alone can't knock her out). Both do have a Healing Field super, but it requires the opponent to be at close range, so it is either powerful or punishable.

** 3 introduces the [[Turns Red|X-Factor ability]], which is available to everyone on the cast. It can be triggered at any time but is best used as a Desperation Attack because the fewer characters you have, the stronger and longer the effect. Each character has a different effect suited to their style.

* [[Naruto Shippuden Ultimate Ninja Storm 2]]: All characters have "Awakening Mode", whereupon they transform into their respective Kickass modes. To wit: Naruto-->[[Super-Powered Evil Side|4 Tails form]], [[Lethal Joke Character|Tobi]]-->{{spoiler|[[Big Bad|Mad]][[The Chessmaster|ara]]}}

 

== [[First-Person Shooter]] ==

** The Mann-conomy update features the Battalion's Backup, which drastically boosts the defences of you and your party. It is charged by taking damage.

 

* In ''[[Guild Wars]]'', an elite Necromancer skill stole enough health from a target enemy to bring your own to 50%. Though double-edged (it could lower your health, and heal the enemy if used when you were above 50%), and originally intended as an "oh $(@#" skill, it was rarely used that way. The skill was used to destroy some otherwise very difficult bosses by pumping the Necromancer's max health as high as possible, having the Necro hurt themselves down to very low health, then hitting this skill to tear away a big chunk of a boss's health.

* In ''[[Runescape]]'', the full Dharok's armor set has the effect of increasing the maximum hit when all four parts (helm, platebody, platelets, greataxe) are worn and remaining life points are low. As this armor degrades if dropped on death, players will often enter safe minigames (where nothing is dropped on death), and intentionally reduce their health to near-zero in order to inflict massive damage and gain massive XP. A favorite trick of players who train combat with this armor is to get one's health extremely low, then activate a protection prayer to stop damage, keeping him or her locked in desperation mode.

 

== [[Platform Game|Platform Games]] ==

* Six of the first eight bosses in ''[[Mega Mari]]'' have these. A notable one is Reimu's, which continually spawns high damaging yin yang orbs until defeat. The orbs (and most attacks for that matter) can [[Kaizo Trap|kill you even after the boss dies]] as well.

 

== [[Racing Game|Racing Games]] ==

 

== [[Roguelike|Roguelikes]] ==

 

== [[Real Time Strategy]] ==

* ''Star Wars: Empire at War'' and its expansion have, for some units, the ability to self-destruct. The TIE Mauler was the only one to have this in the first game, and considering how pathetically weak its armour is, the self-destruct became useless unless the player managed to park ten of them at full health in the middle of an enemy formation first, just to ensure that at least ONE did some damage. The expansion gives this ability to the following Zann Consortium units: MZ-8 Pulse Cannon tank, Vengeance-Class Frigate, Aggressor-Class Destroyer. Much more effective for them since a. It's automatic and b. those units could actually survive long enough after taking a shitload of damage for the ability to be effective.

* In ''[[League of Legends]]'' there are several champions who get their stats boosted as they take damage. Karma gains ability power, Olaf gains attack speed and Tryndamere gains bonus damage. Poppy's innate ability will typically cause her to take less damage the lower her health is.

** ''[[Final Fantasy V]]'', has a [[Power Copying|Blue Magic]] spell called [[My Name Is Question Marks|???]] (which actually has ''no'' [[Calling Your Attacks|call box]]). It does damage equal to the difference between the user's max HP and current HP. Therefore, using it when you're at critical HP will do damage almost equal to your max HP. It shows up in many other Final Fantasy games after V, as a Blue Magic spell, either named "???" or "Revenge/Revenger/Revenge Blast". However, it's a bit of a [[Useless Useful Spell]], as enemies who have the move tend to have [[Health Damage Asymmetry|max HP many times higher than what you ever get]], making it a potential [[One-Hit Kill]] in their hands.

** ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'' introduced actual Desperation Attacks to the series, incredibly powerful attacks that can randomly occur when a character with critically low HP is given the "Fight" command. However, they occur ''so'' rarely that most people have never actually seen one. Plus the Valiant Knife which does more damage the lower Locke's HP gets.

** ''[[Final Fantasy VIII]]'''s Limit Breaks. The availability of the Limit Breaks is predicated on how much HP there is left ''proportional to your total HP'', so if your health stats were high, you'd still be able to access your Limit Breaks with a reasonable number of points. The game lets you know exactly when you can use them by turning the stat display yellow, and you can reset the ''Fight'' option an unlimited number of times per turn with the circle button until it changes to ''Limit''. This feature makes them your ''primary'' mode of attack, not a desperation attack, and all but renders them [[Game Breaker|Gamebreakers]].

** ''[[Final Fantasy IX]]'' has Steiner's Revenge ability.

** ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' has several "Last" abilities that cast a specific spell on the character at low health, such as Berserk.

** In addition, several of the games have skills that do a set amount of damage equal to a character's maximum HP minus their current HP.

** ''[[Dissidia Final Fantasy]]'' has a variant of this with the Cosmos Judgment rules. When a player is in danger of dying in one more hit, their EX Gauge will instantly max out, giving them a chance to turn things around.

*** There's also the equippable support ability 'Back to the Wall' (which increases the player character's critical hit rate when their HP is in the red). 'Cat Nip' (which increases the player character's critical hit rate when they're at risk of losing in one HP attack) can often count as this as well, but the nature of the battle system means that the attacker can potentially [[One-Hit Kill|win with one HP attack regardless]], assuming their BRV gets high enough to allow this.

* ''[[Kingdom Hearts]] II'' has * two* of these, in the form of equippable abilities. One is called "Crisis Half" which halves any damage when your hitpoints are below 25%, the other is "Exp+ " which gives double EXP.

** Considering that this is Final Mix+ , those two really help with the Critical Mode.

*** All the same, as they can create a nearly minute-long attack that can deal upwards of hundreds of times your normal damage output, they will often be your method of choice for dispatching tough enemies. That said, the effects--and therefore the effectiveness--differ from character-to-character. Some have to charge, while some just go berserk, some hit in a radius around them, some only strike forward, some are granted temporary invincibility, some are frozen in place, etc.

** Then, there's the [[Combination Attack]] Grand Dream, which is a massive, impressive ''three-character'' Desperation Attack. It's surprisingly effective against the final boss, simply because he has a habit of near-flattening you. Grand Dream contains Frog Squash as one of it's components.

** The similarly insane Frog Flare (a Combination Attack of Frog Squash and Lucca's * Flare) is universally acknowledged to be ''the'' best way to take out the final form of Spekkio, who uses [[HP to One|Hallation]] a lot - particularly if you're playing the DS version and got the [[Game Breaker]] armour for Lucca, which renders Hallation Spekkio's only attack capable of damaging her - and you're never going to die from HP To One attacks.

* The ''[[Fallout]]'' series of games have a few perks that reflect this ability, such as Adrenaline Rush (raising your strength if you drop below 50% hp), Die Hard (raising resistances to damage when you drop below 25% hp), and Nerd Rage! (increasing your strength to maximum if you dropped below 25% hit points--and requiring a certain amount of Science skill).

** Unfortunately, by that stage of any of the games, your character was likely to be wearing items boosting strength to 10 (absolute maximum, no temporary bumps over it allowed), or 8-9 if the starting build was really puny. Add to that the fact that the most successful melee and unarmed builds only required and effectively used medium strength scores, and it really seems pointless (melee and unarmed being the only usable attacks utilizing strength score bonuses, only other uses of strength were max carry weight and min score to wield weapon, as well as the really rare and optional quest and the absolutely buggy and random throw skill). Also, unlike Dungeons&Dragons, strength bonuses were small and rather linear, with the average weapon in the second half of a game dealing 10 or 20 times more base damage than the strength bonus. Furthermore, since enemies were plentiful and came in groups, which were defeated by a combination of strategy and predictable/expected critical hits, these strength bonuses really meant nothing whatsoever. A temporary increase in carry weight, only in the heat of battle and at the brink of death, also obviously provided little benefit in a world without encumbrance-increasing magic.

** Later in the story you can use the Lapin Angelique Suicide Special (LASS) strategy, which puts you in mortal peril at the start of battle. As the name suggests, all the gear you need is from the Lapin Angelique line, which tends to be oriented towards this trope anyways.

** The Dark Cannon dark chip in ''Battle Network 4'' did damage equal to the amount of HP you lost as well, capping at 999.

** If you haven't already used quite a few dark chips, you're only able to use them when you're taking a hammering, albeit [[Power At a Price|at the cost of losing 1 maximum HP permanently for every battle you used them]].

** Also, Lloyd's Falcon Crest, his deadliest attack, can only be used when his health is at 16% or less. In addition, Sheena's most powerful techs, the Summon Spirits, can only be performed while she is in Over Limit mode (Double desperation?).

** Most of the other characters can also only use their most powerful attack when in Overlimit or at low HP.

** This ability is also on the Ravager talent tree somewhere.

* ''[[Breath of Fire]]'' has your characters attack faster when their health points are dwindling.

 

== [[Shoot'Em Up|Shoot Em Ups]] ==

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

** The card [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=193467 Near-Death Experience] causes you to instantly win the game if you have exactly 1 life on your upkeep.

 

* ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' 9 and 10 have several abilities that improve stats when health is below a certain amount or percentage, usually only available to player characters and bosses.

** In a similar vein, ''Fire Emblem'' 4 has the skills "Wrath" and "Ambush", which activate when a character drops below 50% health, giving automatic critical hits and first strike, respectively. And "Prayer," which activates in the low single digits and greatly increased evasion.

* Adrenaline.

* When the battle became desperate for [[Imperial Japan|Japanese]] fighters in WWII, [[Honor Before Reason|rather than surrender]], [[Suicide Attack|they would fly their own planes]] into opposing [[The Alliance|Allied]] ships.

** A less extreme but still risky version of this is if a team has a tall defender, they will often be send to play up front of the attack as a target man. The team will attempt to punt, cross or lob the ball in a way that the defender can score a headed goal or knock the ball down to a team-mate. An example of the tactic is that Manchester United will often send their central defender Nemanja Vidic up front if they are down towards the end of the game.

*** An inversion of this tactic is when a team's attack has tall forwards who play the entire game as 'target men'. This is generally called the "long ball" tactic and considered to be a lower skilled and non-technical style that is often utilised by teams of inferior skill to others. It is often utilised in lower divisions where fast and technically skilled players are rare but physically strong and tall players are common.