Line #43 Main/FairyBattle


1	So, you're walking around on the world map, and there comes [[FightWoosh that flash that signifies that you're under attack]]. Get ready for another {{random encounter\|s}}! Except, what's this? Seems you're not in any danger after all. Congratulations, you've just run into a Fairy Battle.
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3	Occasionally showing up in {{role playing game}}s, the fairy battle is something that makes itself look like a battle, but turns out to be, well, something else.
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5	Compare PopQuiz, HelpfulMook.
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7	Not to be confused with a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Battle Fairey Battle]], ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' (where the title can be taken literally), or a battle with TheFairFolk.
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9	!!Examples:
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11	[[foldercontrol]]
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13	[[folder: Action Game ]]
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15	* The boss fight with Mysterio in ''VideoGame/SpiderMan2''. After the appearance of his abnormally large health bar filling up three times, he doesn't actually do anything but throw increasingly desperate threats until he gets KO'd with a single punch.
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17	[[/folder]]
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19	[[folder: Action Adventure ]]
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21	* ''Franchise/TheLegendOfZelda'':
22	** You'd be forgiven for thinking this trope was named for ''VideoGame/ZeldaIITheAdventureOfLink'', where fairies occasionally pop up on the World Map alongside normal Wandering Monsters, and touching one sends Link to a "battle" screen with nothing but a healing fairy hovering in midair. An easy way to avoid random encounters when low on health in the same game is to move onto a road tile after the RandomEncounters pops up. Being touched by an enemy while standing on a road takes you to a one-screen wide sideview area with no enemies that can be left by simply walking off-screen.
23	** ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaPhantomHourglass'' has Jellyfish that occasionally pop out of the water, but do not attack, and can be shot for free Rupees. They return in the Ocean sector map of ''[[VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaSpiritTracks Spirit Tracks]]''.
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25	[[/folder]]
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27	[[folder: Adventure Game ]]
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29	* If you are wandering out in the grasslands in ''VideoGame/QuestForGloryIII'' and are [[WizardNeedsFoodBadly hungry enough]], you will encounter the Awful Waffle Walker, which is basically a giant [[AnachronismStew waffle]] covered in butter and syrup. It has its own theme music, and will follow you relentlessly until you eat it.
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31	[[/folder]]
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33	[[folder: Card Game ]]
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35	* In the game ''VideoGame/YuGiOhGXSpiritCaller'', selecting a person (all represented by a triangle with a circle on top) talks to them. Usually this challenges that person to a duel... unless it is the Dark Magician Girl, who will instead give you a rare card.
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37	[[/folder]]
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39	[[folder: [=MMORPGs=] ]]
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41	* ''VideoGame/AtlanticaOnline'' has treasure chests that spawn for players that use a treasure map. The chest appears as an enemy... but goes down in one hit.
42	* ''VideoGame/KingdomOfLoathing'': The "Rampaging Adding Machine" [[DownplayedTrope borders on this]]. It's also an enemy, but it mainly exists to combine scrolls.
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44	[[/folder]]
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46	[[folder: Role Playing Game ]]
47	* ''VideoGame/{{Fairyside}}'': Sometimes, rooms can generate with no enemies.
48	* The ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series has this trope in spades:
49	** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' has Soul enemies, DemonicSpiders that absorb all elemental magic and bombard your entire party with elemental attacks. Rarely you can encounter Green Souls, which instead ''cast Cure on your party members''.
50	** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' had something like this. If you walk around in the developers' room you'll run into random encounters with monsters named after developers. You can fight them, but they don't do much to you besides talk.
51	** "Magic Pots" first appeared in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'', where they asked the player to GiveMeYourInventoryItem, and variations of them appear in most subsequent games. This entry also had a HiddenElfVillage that was randomly encountered in a certain patch of forest, with the usual FightWoosh (though this effect was somewhat spoiled in the remakes, which altered the FightWoosh for actual battles, but not the one for the village, making it obvious that something was fishy).
52	** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'''s Magic Pots simply ask for Elixirs... while using Elixirs on you.
53	** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII'' had the first PopQuiz encounter, plus later encounters with [=PuPu=].
54	** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' is the TropeNamer, whose theme song for such encounters is aptly named "Fairy Battle". The monsters in question appear similar to ordinary monsters, but with slight differences, and they do not attack you. Some just ask for a specific type of gem, and there's even one that just gives you a {{pop quiz}}! The "Fairy Battles" were a requirement to be able to physically attack a side quest boss.
55	*** There is another monster called the Gimme Cat that pretends to be friendly and demands a rare gemstone from you. However, instead of the Fairy Battle theme playing, it's the standard random encounter battle theme, which should tip you off. [[SchmuckBait If you actually give the monster your diamond,]] [[UngratefulBastard it'll run away after mocking you and you gain nothing from it.]] If you attack it, it will fight back.
56	** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'': You can encounter fiends called Magic Pots in the Cavern of the Stolen Fayth; instead of attacking you, they tell you to select an eye on their pot to hit; if you hit the correct eyes, you get increasingly rare and useful items. Hitting the wrong one will lead to it exploding for large damage, but try to steal from it and... [[TotalPartyKill well...]]
57	** Specifically, Steal, Mug, Doublecast, Wakka's Attack Reels Overdrive, and Kimahri's Self-Destruct Overdrive all trigger the significantly stronger explosion.
58	** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI: Wings of the Goddess'' has Sprites appearing in the past. They spawn like normal mobs, but actually use spells helpful to players. Even Raise!
59	** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'''s Magic Pots just want to be given Elixirs... [[LuckBasedMission assuming you can actually find them first]]. And assuming you switch off your party's Gambits[[labelnote:+]]or have them tuned to only target enemies targeting the party[[/labelnote]] so you don't accidentally attack them, because you will ''[[DemonicSpiders really]]'' [[TotalPartyKill regret it]] if you do.
60	** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsA2'' has some encounters that don't involve any fighting at all, especially the Bonga Bungle reports that task you with digging for treasure or making interviews. The repeatable airship cleaning missions may or may not have enemies.
61	* ''VideoGame/TheHauntedRuins'': There's a few.
62	** There's the mice, which, when encountered, are just spoken to.
63	** The wizards give a spell when encountered, then disappear. Once you get all the spells, they're encountered in a floor filled with them, where they're used to give backstory.
64	* ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'':
65	** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI'' has [[FriendlyEnemy White Mushrooms]], which reward you for hitting them with whatever spell corresponds to their miming act; and blue mushrooms called Rare Truffles that reward you for juggling them in mid-air, without them touching the ground. Subverted with Black Fungi, which ''do'' attack you and behave more like {{Metal Slime}}s.
66	** There's also the Bulky Vendor in [[VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII the sequel]], whose HP goes down ''all by itself'' after it appears. By using a Re{{action Command}} on it, depending on how low its HP is (the lower the better), it'll drop an assortment of munny, health/magic/drive replenishing items, and an item or two that can be used for synthesis.
67	** And ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'' has a special rare encounter where sometimes, in certain preset locations, you might encounter an enemy variant that does nothing but drop ice cream components for you. These can be traded in for ice cream, which only have tangental use. Though, it eventually rewards you with a LethalJokeWeapon of a Keyblade.
68	* The Pig Noise in ''VideoGame/TheWorldEndsWithYou'' have distinctive green scan symbols and don't attack, instead trying to simply escape by running offscreen. You are guaranteed a usually rare or high-value, occasionally unique item drop if you defeat them before they get away, although the means of defeating them vary from pig to pig.
69	* In Torneko's chapter of ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIV'', he occasionally runs into traveling merchants on the world map, or even a traveling innkeeper.
70	* In ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'', in the ruins near Petalburg, there is a Thwomp who, despite appearing to be a mini-boss, actually just gives you a pop quiz. If you lose, however, he does make you fight a handful of enemies.
71	* In the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series, it's quite common for random encounters to set you up against... a travelling merchant? A rave party in the wilderness? Series/DoctorWho? How dangerous random encounters are depends on your "Luck" stat and, to a lesser degree, the Outdoorsman skill[[note]]The Luck stat affects probabilities for which encounter is encountered, while Outdoorsman affects which random encounters you get the option to avoid or enter at your discretion[[/note]].
72	* One encounter in ''VideoGame/NeverwinterNights2'' is a literal Fairy Battle. With fairies. You can still kill them if you want to, but they are just pranksters and will reward you if you play along.
73	** To be specific, they want your pants...
74	* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' had SavePoint {{Chest Monster}}s in Magus's Castle... which fluttered around doing nothing in particular until you killed them. They're evidently there just for the free experience and tech points...
75	* In ''VideoGame/{{Mother 3}}'', there's an enemy called the "Walking Bushie" that casts Lifeup on the main characters in battle and never attacks. After a few rounds of healing, the bush walks away, ending battle. If you attack the bush, it runs away without healing you.
76	** ''VideoGame/EarthBoundBeginnings'' featured an enemy called Groucho. While it could attack you, if you let it live, it would say "Hello" and then leave, giving a random party member a fair experience bonus.
77	* In some dungeons in ''VideoGame/{{Xenogears}}'', you encounter repair bots that will simply heal your HP, and can't attack you. You can still kill them, though, and get some cash.
78	* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfDragoon'' has a "boss fight" in an early dungeon (the Shrine of Shirley) which is actually just a series of questions about your party's motivations and so forth. Just Guard in between each question to [[AfterBossRecovery heal all the damage you took during the normal boss fight right beforehand]].
79	* In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOrigins'' you can occasionally encounter a dwarven vendor as a "random battle" when travelling on the map.
80	** Since all the RandomEncounters are actually scripted, as you finish sidequests he effectively becomes the ''only'' "random battle" near the end of the game. Which wouldn't be so bad if he wasn't accompanied by AudibleSharpness and the crossed-swords icon appearing.
81	* ''VideoGame/LostOdyssey'' features [=NPCs=] that challenge you to play music by hitting cubes in the battle interface.
82	* ''VideoGame/AtelierIrisEternalMana'' has the "[[BlindIdiotTranslation Ware Cat]]", I mean, "Were Cat",[[labelnote:note]]Actually a {{pun}} on "wares"[[/labelnote]] who befriends [[CatGirl Norn]] and will often appear to offer her items or healing in the first battle upon entering Poto's Forest.
83	* In ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarZero'', you may occasionally come across a group of Rappies, who are much less aggressive than most monsters. They also come with their own, more upbeat battle theme.
84	* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' now has Audino and Alomomola, Pokémon that have attacks that can heal your Pokémon and yield a crapton of experience points.
85	* In ''VideoGame/AdventureQuest'', you can get treasure chests instead of random encounters. This is how you get Blade of Awe pieces.
86	* ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'':
87	** In many early ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' games, your first encounter with demons will just be a tutorial for how to talk to them.
88	** ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIV'' has the first encounter with Mastema. He threatens you, the boss theme starts playing... nah, he's just trolling you. He lets you pass without incident.
89	** The rare battles in the ''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'' subseries involve the battles against Omoikane in the both games and Jack Frost's quiz questions in the second.
90	*** The second game also has several forced encounters against singular Karma Soldiers at the end of the Karma Society Tower. Unlike the others, these ones only tell you to move along and then run away.
91	* The battles of ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'' are so unorthodox as is that an encounter where your regular interface is useless or inaccessible to progress is not a wildly unusual situation at all, and the battle start animation is used more than once before entering a mock DatingSim interface with a friendly character instead. The game does play the trope completely straight as [[spoiler:you are traveling through New Home to meet with Asgore]] and various monsters along the way take it in turns to reveal the backstory of [[spoiler:Asgore's son Asriel]] to you, with each chunk of the story being presented in the format of a random encounter fight screen. The entire sequence is startlingly emotional, considering the unorthodox presentation. In a [[LeaveNoSurvivors Genocide Run]], this sequence of quasi-encounters is replaced with [[spoiler:a cynical rant from Flowey]]. A more sinister version is found in if you kill enough enemies in a particular zone: all random encounters in that zone will be replaced with the ominous message, "But nobody came." With fittingly ominous music to boot.
92	* ''VideoGame/BoxxyQuestTheGatheringStorm'':
93	** There’s a big ring of flowers along the road between two sites in Chapter 6. If you walk around inside the ring for a few moments, you’ll enter a random encounter with a pile of enchanted gold, and defeating it will net you a rare [[CollectionSidequest Bitcoin]].
94	** The final dungeon has the eerie “Unheard Plea” enemy, who sometimes shows up alongside other enemies and casts healing spells on your party.
95	* In ''VideoGame/PathfinderKingmaker'', you'll sometimes encounter a skeleton merchant on the road. Several quests also have scripted "random" encounters.
96	[[/folder]]
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98	[[folder: Tabletop Game ]]
99	* Random encounter time! Declare marching order, roll initiative...and then there is no enemy, or an "enemy" that never attacks. Occasionally useful as a break from combat. Not to be confused with a PuzzleBoss that happens to be fought in initiative order.
100	[[/folder]]
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Context Main / FairyBattle