History Main / LastChanceHitPoint

* The "Guts" ability and "Angel Curio" items in ''ValkyrieProfile'' enable this, giving the character a chance of surviving any attack with a few hitpoints. Notably, it doesn't have a lower threshold for working, so it's possible for a character with 3 HP to survive attacks dealing hundreds of thousands of HP worth of damage round after round.

This can be an excellent opportunity to unleash a DesperationAttack of the highest order, but unless the player is prepared ot improvise a NoDamageRun (or at least quickly end the fight with a finishing blow), the safer course of action is to extricate the character from combat (if possible) and HealThyself before attempting to continue the fight.

Note that this trope only applies to cases where a character endures an ''otherwise lethal'' amount of damage without a knockout. If an attack happens to leave the player at 1 HP by sheer coincidence (say, they have 50 HP and a given attack inflicts 49 points), that's not an example, but ordinary math.

Note that this trope only applies to cases where a character endures an ''otherwise lethal'' amount of damage without a knockout. If an attack happens to leave the player at 1 HP by sheer coincidence (say, they have 50 HP and a given attack inflicts 49 points), that's not an example, but [[PeopleSitOnChairs ordinary math.]]

* In MabinogiFantasyLife, there is a small chance that a lethal attack will send your health into negative values but not kill you, creating what is known as Deadly status. The Will attribute increases the chance of invoking this.

* ''MegaManBattleNetwork'' has an equippable program ("Undershrt") providing this effect.
** This can lead to a GameBreaker in the right circumstances. If you use a Wood style (which regains health while standing on grass), and turn the stage to grass, and your opponent has no way to change the stage tiles and no fire attacks (which burn grass) - then you become impossible to kill with Undershirt. Whenever your opponent hits you with a mortal blow, you'll hit 1 HP for a split second, then immediately start gaining health before they can hit you again. (That said, many opponents do have ways of changing the stage tiles, so you'll have to use one of the other many game breakers in the Battle Network series against them.)

* In ''MetroidOtherM'', BulletTime accompanies the warning that Samus's HP is now flickering between 0 and 1 and the next hit will be fatal. Averted on hard mode.

* The "Guts" ability and "Angel Curio" items in ''ValkyrieProfile'' enable this, giving the character a chance of surviving any attack with a few hitpoints. Notably, it doesn't have a lower threshold for working, so it's possible for a character with 3 HP to survive attacks dealing hundreds of thousands of HP worth of damage round after round. Properly employed in conjunction with other abilities, it's practically impossible to lose a battle.
** Unfortunately, the game ''expects'' you to do this. The final bosses have multiple attacks that either deal several times more damage than your HP cap or kill you outright without a miss chance.

* ''{{BioShock}}'' series: On easy and normal difficulties, any hit that would kill you instead reduces you to 1 [=HP=], requiring another hit to kill you outright. In the sequel, getting dropped to 1 [=HP=] activates one second of invincibility. Averted on hard.
* In the VirtualOn lookalike ShootEmUp [[XMeetsY meets]] FightingGame [[{{Wartech}} Wartech: Senko no Ronde]], each player is given a last chance hit point when their lifebar is zero, indicated by a full flashing bar and the pilot exclaiming something. This not only gives them more maneuverability, but also makes their hitbox smaller and maximizes their energy bar (This is called "Vanish" mode). If they have at least one [[FunWithAcronyms B.O.S.S.]] [[SuperMode Stock]] left, the B.O.S.S. Mode will be inordinately stronger, gains new and more powerful attacks, and the energy bar depletes slower. This allows for very cinematic (and sometimes frustrating) comeback battles. Savvy players use their B.O.S.S. Mode when their opponents reach this last chance hit point, to utterly seal their fate. Of course, if the opponent is skilled enough, they might survive anyway.

* The "Persistence" passive ability in {{Lost Odyssey}} has this effect once per life (i.e. the character must die and be revived to reactivate it)

* In [[TouhouProject Phantasmagoria of Flower Viewing]], the characters have hit points, but the last hit point (or rather, half a point) is special - anytime a character would've lost all her HP while having more than half a point, she would instead keep that last half a point until she gets hit again, and her spell gauge will max out (rather than increasing by one level as per when she's hit otherwise).
* The Rogue class in WorldOfWarcraft has access to a deep Subtlety talent called [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTim Cheat Death]]. If an attack would kill the rogue, they have a set chance to survive it with a small portion of their total health remaining. An internal cooldown prevents this from happening too often.

* {{Lufia}}: Curse of the Sinistrals has this for three of the six characters - Maxim, Selan, and Dekar can, after specific story events, obtain titles that give them this property.
* ''TheGuardianLegend'' has your character's shields. If you took an otherwise lethal hit with shields remaining, they would drop to zero. You would be killed if you got hit by anything at zero shields.

Note that this trope only applies to cases where a character endures an ''otherwise lethal'' amount of damage without a knockout. If an attack happens to leave the player at 1 HP by sheer coincidence (say, they have 50 HP and a given attack inflicts 49 points), that's not an example, but ordinary math.

* In the VirtualOn lookalike ShootEmUp [[XMeetsY meets]] FightingGame [[Wartech Wartech: Senko no Ronde]], each player is given a last chance hit point when their lifebar is zero, indicated by a full flashing bar and the pilot exclaiming something. This not only gives them more maneuverability, but also makes their hitbox smaller and maximizes their energy bar (This is called "Vanish" mode). If they have at least one [[FunWithAcronyms B.O.S.S.]] [[SuperMode Stock]] left, the B.O.S.S. Mode will be inordinately stronger, gains new and more powerful attacks, and the energy bar depletes slower. This allows for very cinematic (and sometimes frustrating) comeback battles. Savvy players use their B.O.S.S. Mode when their opponents reach this last chance hit point, to utterly seal their fate. Of course, if the opponent is skilled enough, they might survive anyway.

* {{Lufia}}: Curse of the Sinistrals has this for three of the six characters - Maxim, Selan, and Dekar can, after specific story events, obtain titles that give them this property.

*** As of generation 5, the ability Sturdy allows a pokemon to survive any attack from full health with at least 1 HP, and it will work an infinite number of times, as long as the pokemon gets back to full health beforehand. This allows a level 1 Aron in sandstorm to sweep an entire team by using Endeavor to cut the opponent's health to 1, holding a Shell Bell (which restores HP equal to a portion of the damage taken, almost always enough to refill Aron's health), and then letting the sandstorm finish the job.

In most games with HitPoints, zero means death, and any character displaying this number in their LifeMeter will immediately collapse from CriticalExistenceFailure.

But this isn't always the case: Sometimes, when struck by an attack that would normally cause their HitPoints to bottom out at zero, the character endures the hit, then stands back up with just a trickle left on their LifeMeter, often exactly 1 HP. They are not defeated just yet; they're standing on their LastChanceHitPoint and they can still continue to battle.

Although this is an excellent opportunity to unleash a DesperationAttack of the highest order, any further injury to a character on their LastChanceHitPoint -- even ScratchDamage -- will invariably be fatal. So unless the player is prepared to improvise a NoDamageRun (or at least quickly end the fight with a finishing blow), the safer course of action is to extricate the character from combat (if possible) and HealThyself before resuming the fight.

This can occasionally be {{Hand Wave}}d if the character has multiple layers of HitPoints [[CallAHitPointASmeerp with different explanations]], such as a character with a "Shield" or "Armor" meter that must be fully depleted before they can receive a lethal blow.

Sometimes, a game may place restrictions on when characters are allowed to have a LastChanceHitPoint, such as requiring the character to be in good health or requiring that the attack would have inflicted significant damage in the first place (or a OneHitKill). Otherwise, this can lead to GameBreaker situations where a character who can perform even trivial healing is NighInvulnerable since they cannot receive a KO unless their HP is first reduced to one, and they are never at that threshold long enough to receive a second hit.

One way to determine if this trope is in effect is if the game is NintendoHard and the player is reduced to their LastChanceHitPoint by a variety of attacks, and too often to be explained by simple coincidence. Naturally, games featuring a OneHitPointWonder cannot exhibit this trope, since any damage results in the loss of [[VideoGameLives one life]] (and/or current PowerUp).

AutoRevive is related, but takes effect ''after'' a KO, while this trope takes effect ''before'' it. The two are rarely combined.

See also HPToOne, a specific enemy attack whose sole purpose is to reduce the player to this status.

* In Descent, the player can survive if an enemy hit was enough to get him/her down to exactly zero shields. Once at zero shields, anything can kill the player (some people even say bumping into walls hard enough can kill them, but I haven't been able to confirm that). If the enemy hit would get the player down below zero shields, then the player dies anyway.

* In ''MetroidOtherM'', BulletTime accompanies the warning that Samus's HP is now flickering between 0 and 1 and the next hit will be fatal.

* ''{{Earthbound}}'s'' [[LuckStat Guts]] stat, among many other things, gives a character a small percentage chance to survive an otherwise fatal attack with 1 HP. Failing that, the rolling HP meter mechanic allows the player to avoid a KO if they can finish the battle before the character's HP actually rolls down to zero.

** The Focus Sash can also be abused with a metagame strategy called [[FunWithAcronyms "FEAR"]] ('''F'''ocus sash, '''E'''ndeavor, Quick '''A'''ttack, '''R'''attata), where a very low-leveled Rattata wearing the item would get hit, survive with 1 HP, use Endeavor (which cuts their opponent's HP to match their own), then Quick Attack (which always hits first) to deal the ScratchDamage needed to KO the opposing pokemon. However, it's fairly easy to avoid if you know what's coming.

** also in Kingdom Hearts (II), the {{Bonus Boss}} Sephiroth will remain on his last HP for an EXCRUCIATINGLY long time. This troper has reduced him to his last HP and battered away at him for a good five minutes, without success. [[hottip:*: That's the same for all bosses. You're supposed to use either magic or a finisher on them.]]

** also in Kingdom Hearts (II), the {{Bonus Boss}} Sephiroth will remain on his last HP for an EXCRUCIATINGLY long time. This troper has reduced him to his last HP and battered away at him for a good five minutes, without success. [[hottip: That's the same for all bosses. You're supposed to use either magic or a finisher on them.]]

** also in Kingdom Hearts (II), the {{Bonus Boss}} Sephiroth will remain on his last HP for an EXCRUCIATINGLY long time. This troper has reduced him to his last HP and battered away at him for a good five minutes, without success.

* In ''LeagueOfLegends'', the ultimate ([[UnstoppableRage Endless Rage]]) of the champion Tryndamere, the Barbarian King, removes crowd control effects on him and makes him unable to have his health reduced below a single hitpoint for 6 seconds. This works in conjunction with his passive, which increases his CriticalHit chance by 0.5% for each percentage of his total health currently lost. This can allow him to mostly annilating teams when [[ClothesMakeTheSuperMan he's got some good items]] or using the time to escape.

* In ''LeagueOfLegends'', the ultimate of the champion Tryndamere, the Barbarian King, allows him to endure all damage that would normally kill him, leaving him at one hit point. This works in conjunction with his other abilities, which pump up his damage output the lower his health is.

* ''AstroBoy Omega Factor'' has this happen, but only on Easy mode. If Astro takes a hit that would drop him to 0 hit points, he stays alive with his health at exactly 1, and will only go down if he gets hit again before finding a health item. It comes across as an exceedingly overt shift in your favor since Astro starts with 30,000 hit points and everything deals damage in units of 100 or more, but you'll wish it still applied on Hard mode when the enemies start killing you in one or two hits.

* The Rogue class in WorldOfWarcraft has access to a deep Subtlety talent called [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTim Cheat Death]]. If an attack would kill the rogue, they have a set chance to survive it with a small portion of their total health remaining. An internal cooldown prevents this from happening too often.