Contractual Boss Immunity

"Boss: Immune to Stun, Sleep and Pissed, just because."

— South Park: The Stick of Truth

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

Any magician, fighter, or hero with powers, abilities, or weapons that enable them to cut through mooks like butter will rarely be able to use these skills on The Dragon or the Big Bad. In Video Games these enemies will be flat out immune to these attacks, or in the case of a first person shooter be able to take head-shots and keep on ticking, while (annoyingly) players have no such protection from their instant-death attacks. Where's the justice?

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 instantly lops off the enemy's head? A hero who can send the Big Bad into the Phantom Zone, turn them to stone, cleave them limb from limb, or otherwise kill/disable them in less than a heartbeat skirts dangerously close to an Invincible Hero.

However, this immunity can lead to a number of problems for players. It can cause Gameplay and Story Segregation or break Willing Suspension of Disbelief ("why is the Exploding Heart Technique incapable of harming this one guy?"). It can also lead to them wasting their resources if they put a lot of their XP into powering up these abilities; what's the point of using an expensive, powerful attack when it only works on enemies you can defeat with a weak, easy-to-obtain move? Boss immunity is often what puts the "useless" in Useless Useful Spell. Furthermore, bosses are typically used as a culmination of challenge to test the skills the player has used up to this point, so not allowing them to use said skill can feel frustrating for how at-odds it is to the rest of the game.

As always, Tropes Are Tools, and averting this trope can make for a different and entertaining atmosphere. Maybe doing the Exploding Heart Technique on the Final Boss will make them too easy, but with the right circumstances (making it hard to obtain, giving players limited uses of it that they must spend very wisely, or giving it a really cool animation), it'll be so awesome, players won't mind that it's just an instant-win button since it'll feel cathartic.

Some games employ a downplayed version of this trope, most of which have to do with expanding the options available to the player and the underlying systems which make them work, watering down the effects of these potent attacks instead of outright making them useless. One example is that, instead of instantly killing the boss, the Exploding Heart Technique does massive amount of armor-piercing damage when successfully applied while the boss is made vulnerable. Another is that, instead of being unable to inflict poison on a boss, it requires multiple casts of a poison spell (instead of the usual one on mooks). The Monster Hunter series loves this version, but even it has instances which play the trope straight.

Unrelated to Joker Immunity. Compare SNK Boss, which is a type of Boss for Fighting Games that really breaks the rules. Contrast Boss-Altering Consequence, which may allow the player to One-Hit Kill a boss depending on the objectives they fulfilled.

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Examples:

Action

• From the Batman: Arkham Series: Typical combat moves won't work on most bosses, but this tends to be justified given the nature of said bosses. If the battle is a fist fight, you can bet the Instant Takedown and Disarm and Destroy moves won't work on them. As for ones with other types of boss immunity:
  • Batman: Arkham City: The boss of the Catwoman DLC is Two Face, who is fought in a Predator Encounter. He is immune to all types of takedowns, and has a health bar instead. An endless supply of Mooks will come into the room to replenish the ones you defeat, forcing you to pick them off, attack Two Face, and then retreat before his men (alerted by you attacking him) can kill you. Rinse, repeat.
  • The Harley Quinn's Revenge DLC from the same game does the same thing, this time with Harley Quinn.
  • Batman: Arkham Origins follows suit with Deadshot, with the added complication that the Disrupter won't work on his guns. Fortunately, it does still work on the guns of any Mooks in the room.
  • Batman: Arkham Knight in turn, has this for the Predator battle with the titular Arkham Knight. He cannot be harmed by any takedown, and the disrupter won't work. You have to defeat or bypass any guards, sentry guns, or drones in the room. Fortunately while they come in stages, they aren't limitless. However, since this happens after you learn his identity (Jason Todd), you don't actually fight him. Instead,you instead get close enough to grapple up to his sniper perch, triggering a conversation. The conversation lowers his health bar, symbollically reflecting you destroying his will to fight.
• Bayonetta: Bayonetta's Torture Attacks don't work on bosses, or even the largest of the non-bosses. Fortunately, she has powerful attacks that are only for boss fights.
• Cave Story: Curly Brace's Air Tank generates a bubble shield that protects her from Quote's Missile Launcher.
• Darksiders: Chaos Form grants you invulnerability and increased damage for a short period of time, that allows you to make mince-meant out of any enemy, but its largely ineffective against bosses. Justified as most of them require an specific way and items you collected previously to defeat them. Even the Final Boss, which is a more conventional fight than other boss battles in game, is immune to it. Try to activate Chaos Form on him and he will immediately shrug it off as if it was nothing.
• Fury Unleashed: Bosses are immune to being frozen which normally renders an enemy completely helpless, additionally they (and the Elite Mooks) cannot be affected by Fury's Goomba Stomp which is a One-Hit Kill on normal enemies. Otherwise status effects like incineration and poison work as normal, so it's highly recommended you have a weapon that can inflict either of these afflictions if you face a boss.
• Ghostwire: Tokyo: Aim Assist does not work reliably on bosses and elite enemies. It especially does not work on Sanguine Dancers, which are airborne and highly mobile.
• Ittle Dew: The bosses can't be frozen, teleported, or launched by a portal block (an instant kill on anything else). While some normal enemies are immune to being frozen, none are immune to the other two.
• Jade Empire: The Harmonic Combos don't work on boss characters.
• Kirby: Bosses and minibosses generally cannot be inhaled until defeated, because they're bigger than Kirby. Meta Knight, however, is a little guy with cape and armor who is also immune to Kirby's ability. In the anime, Kirby tries to inhale him, but Meta Knight just stands still, saying that he has "other ways of defending himself".
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: To prevent the spell "Spell" from being a Story-Breaker Power, the bosses and strongest enemies are immune to it.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Link gains access to a One-Hit Kill move that, as you'd expect, cannot be used on most bosses. On some, the move can Attack Its Weak Point, but is merely a powerful attack and not a one-hit kill. The only exception is against Darkhammer, who actually goes down to it.
  • The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild:
    • Ancient Arrows are a One-Hit Kill weapon that will instantly vaporize any enemy they hit. Against bosses and overworld minibosses, however, they are effectively reskinned bomb arrows: they do a fair amount of damage, but nothing mind-blowing. They also aren't a guaranteed kill against Guardians: they can kill a Guardian in one shot, but you have to hit the Guardian directly in its eye for that to work, otherwise it will just do some basic damage.
    • Lynels are completely immune to all elemental effects. They cannot be burned, frozen, or electrocuted. Even explosive arrows will do little more than stun them, and even then only if you actually hit them directly in the face. They can still be one-shotted by the One-Hit Kill Ancient Arrows, but doing this means you won't get any of their extremely valuable item drops.
• Mega Man (Classic):
  • Attacks that hit the whole screen or disable enemies in some way tend to be ineffective against the vast majority of Robot Masters and bosses. That said, there's usually one Robot Master who isn't immune, and they tend to get completely screwed by it. A good example is Torch Man from Mega Man 11. He's a very difficult boss to fight unless you have his weakness, the screen clearing Tundra Storm.
  • Mega Man 8: Duo is immune to all secondary boss weapons.
  • Mega Man 10: The Mega Man Killers in the DLC "special stages" are completely immune to all of the secondary boss weapons (which you automatically receive when you begin the stage).
• Mega Pony: Discord isn't immune to any weapons per se, but there is no difference in the amount of damage they do on him.
• Metroid:
  • In several games, there exists a "Speed Booster" item that acts as an instant kill to practical anything it touches. However, in Metroid Fusion the SA-X, which was probably intended to be undefeatable, cannot be damaged by it (or by the derived ability called the Shinespark, which has the same effect on enemies as the Speed Booster).
  • The Screw Attack insta-kills normal enemies but doesn't work on any boss. It is not completely useless, but generally only causes very little damage to the boss and you take some damage yourself or it has to be very precisely aimed.
• No More Heroes: Bosses are completely immune to regular attacks, unless they are struck during specific times during their attacks. In the first game, they're all immune to Anarchy in the Galaxy, which one hit kills regular enemies.
• Sonic the Hedgehog:
  • Sonic Colors: Collecting all of the Chaos Emeralds allows you to turn into Super Sonic in the regular levels. However, you can't use this ability in boss fights, mostly because it replaces the Wisp gimmick, which most of the boss fights revolve around.
  • Sonic Lost World: The game will actively prevent you from turning Super against the Final Boss, putting a "no" sign over the Chaos Emeralds.
• Star Wars: The Force Unleashed: Sith bosses are immune (most of the time) to every of your attacks except standard lightsaber attacks and electrified lightsaber attacks. Thrown sabers will fall into the ground, they just stand against force pushes, block your lightning with open hands, pretend like nothing is happening when you pull of a force repulse and the impossibility of force grab and mind tricks should be obvious.
• Syphon Filter: The Big Bad is mysteriously immune to all attacks except gas grenades. Likely Story-Driven Invulnerability. Justified with the second boss, Girdeux, who wears full body armor, except for his flamethrower tank. The sequel's fully-armored final boss is impervious to all conventional weapons including grenades, so defeating him requires using an auto-shotgun to propel him into a helicopter's tail rotor blades.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: In the video game for Nintendo, Dizzy Devil's special ability is the Tasmanian devil tornado, which makes him invulnerable and kills anything that touches him. Except for bosses, which just hurt him as though he wasn't in tornado mode.

Fighter

• BlazBlue: Chronophantasma: Takemikazuchi is immune to grabs and immobilization effects. This includes a chunk of Distortion Drives and all Astral Heats. Several drives do not affect as well.
• Guilty Gear: In Guilty Gear XX AC, you can't activate an instant kill move against the Final Boss.
• Mortal Kombat 3 takes this immunity up a notch with the centaur boss Motaro. He's completely immune to projectile attacks including those that would stun or paralyze an enemy such as Subzero's freeze and Scorpion's spear. Projectiles hitting him simply bounce back at the caster making those attacks worse than useless. Additionally he can't be juggled either, moves that launch enemies in the air simply knocks Motaro down, preventing a possible combo on him. This immunity makes him possibly a tougher boss than the Shao Kahn for Mortal Kombat 3 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3.
• Soul Series:
  • SoulCalibur III:
    • In some Quick Arena battles, sometimes the conditions for winning a match are such that normally powerful attacks become useless or not worth it. This happens even if the attack is known to do 90-100% damage most of the time (matches where an opponent must be bounced off a wall, hit with a soul charged attack, while taunting, etc etc).
    • Optional Boss Night Terror can't be defeated by a ring out (he can fly).
  • SoulCalibur IV:
    • It's not uncommon for bosses and tougher enemies to be equipped with the Auto Grapple Break and Auto Nullify Ringout skills.
    • The final boss in the tower mode, Algol, has Nullify Ringout S equipped (S being better than the ABC ranks players can use), which essentially means you can't ring him out by any means. However, you can trick him into JUMPING out of the ring, making what is normally the hardest fight in the game an Anticlimax Boss (the level before him more than makes up for it in difficulty, though).
• In Tekken 6, NANCY-MI 847 J cannot be flinched by any attacks.
• War Gods: The final boss and his predecessor are both immune to throw attacks. Since throws are game-breakingly overpowered in this game, it is easy for a new player to exploit his way up to the boss and then be powerless when his only method of attack no longer works.

FPS

• In Borderlands 2, Maya's phaselock cannot hold most bosses and some large enemies in place... instead it just does a tremendous amount of damage to them (equal to 2.5 times her base HP).
• Command & Conquer: Renegade pulls a variation similar to its RTS predecessors. In most cases, if you have a tank or something, you can just plink away at a building with that until it's destroyed, but some mission-critical buildings have an Engineer with a repair gun turned onto its Master Control Terminal, which repairs it faster than you can damage it from the outside, requiring you to either shut off the power (if it's a defensive structure) or just get inside and blow up the terminal to instantly destroy the building.
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The bosses you have to kill usually can counter Takedowns. Jaron Namir is an exception, but only if you catch him immediately after he does a wall-mantle. Even this was only a bug that the Director's Cut removed.
  • They also cannot be knocked out by non-lethal weapons (such as gas grenades or the stun gun). To ensure that a player focusing on those weapons isn't simply screwed, they will be incapacitated for a surprisingly long time (10+ seconds, depending on the circumstances), allowing you to either look around for useful gear or pull out the combat rifle prepared for just such an occasion and empty the entire magazine in their heads.
• In Doom, the Cyberdemon and Spider Mastermind are immune to splash damage, which means they only take about 40% damage from rockets and 22% damage from Arch Viles. This is understandable to prevent the rocket-launching Cyberdemon from harming itself with its own rockets, but the Spider Mastermind had no excuse.
• Jacob Seed, one of the three main bosses in Far Cry 5, spends his Boss Battle sniping you from the top of a nearby mountain. You can see him long before he can see you (assuming your PC/console can render the distance), and it's fairly easy to headshot him with your own sniper rifle, but even the largest BFG will merely daze him for a few seconds instead of turning his head into Pink Mist. You must engage him in close quarters combat to take him down for good, which means you're forced to bolt from cover to cover to avoid his bullets while also shooting your way through a platoon of his goons. As of the game's release, he's the only character in the entire franchise to have this sort of immunity.
• Firestarter has special abilities (aka Artifacts) that give a significant boost. You can't use them during boss fights, but special abilities already in use (including one that slows all enemies) aren't stopped.
• Halo Infinite: Storyline bosses can't be killed instantly with headshots, even after you shoot off their helmets. Headshots do some extra damage against them, but you'll still need to pump lots of rounds into them to kill them. This doesn't apply to the assassination target HV Ts, who can still be taken out with headshots barring the usual energy shields or helmets.
• In Heretic and Hexen, if an attack would guarantee a one-hit kill or render the enemy as good as dead (such as by transforming them into something weak), boss monsters are either completely immune to it (in the case of special effects) or take a negligible amount of damage (in the case of literal one hit kills).
  • The Morph Ovum in Heretic turns most enemies into chickens with only 10 health, but it will not work at all against Iron Liches, Maulotaurs, or D'Sparil. The Firemace Tome Power shoots a giant cannonball that kills most enemies instantly (and continues through them onto the next one), but these cannonballs will only barely hurt these three boss enemies.
  • The Porkolator in Hexen will only turn lesser enemies into pigs; it will not affect bosses.
• The Ultor Personnel Suppression Combot in Red Faction is invulnerable to conventional weapons. The only solution is to Kill It with Fire by luring it into an incinerator pit. On the other hand, by the time you face the final boss, you have an instant-kill weapon and it is allowed to work.
• Sanchez, the first boss-type enemy in Soldier of Fortune II, is immune to bullets (for no particular reason) and can only be killed by electrocution.
• In Strife, the various bosses are immune to poison bolts, though most enemies besides Acolytes are immune to it anyway. All of the alien bosses are additionally only vulnerable to The Sigil, and Macil is inexplicably only vulnerable to Sigil blasts as well.
• In Syndicate (2012), all Agents are immune to your normal Breach applications, although some may have specific Breach-able functions that are essential to defeating them.
• Played with in the Mann Vs. Machine mode of Team Fortress 2: Backstabs against giant robots deal a fixed amount of damage that can be upgraded instead of the usual One-Hit Kill. And then there's the Tank, which not only can't be headshot or backstabbed, it is also completely immune to all negative effects like Jarate, Mad Milk, Burning, Sapped, Stun, etc.
• In the first two Turok games, the Nuke Weapon is useless against bosses. It can, however, be used to destroy Primagen's flyers at the end of Turok 2.

Gamebooks

• Blood Sword especially powerful enemies including the Final Boss of each book, are immune to the Enchanter spell of Servile Enthrallment which is a One-Hit Kill spell (the Enchanter will always execute any victim from it before the spell ends). However in almost every book, the Final Boss has a weakness or method that enables them to be killed instantly (such as placing a sliver of explosive kalium in the heart of Thyrm the Frost Giant king before he fully resurrects).
• More often than not, the Fighting Fantasy series of books will give you a powerful weapon that one-shots an enemy, regardless how tough their SKILL is... until you tried using it against the Final Boss.
  • Space Assassin has a Pan Dimensional Homing Device that can banish an enemy to another dimension, which works on most enemies except Cyrus, who can turn the device against you and kill you instead.
  • Legend of Zagor can have you purchasing a magic Genie in a Bottle that can paralyze an enemy, allowing you to kill them instantly... except the Great Mummy, the War Dragon, and Zagor himself, the three final bosses.
• In Way of the Tiger, if Avenger learns the Poison Needle skill or the nerve strike special skill of Yubi-Jutsu (from Book 3 onwards) expect that the Final Boss of a book is either completely immune to these One-Hit Kill attacks or only take some damage.

Roguelike

• Abomi Nation, like its inspiration Pokémon, averts this completely. All enemy Abomis play by the same rules as yours, and are just as vulnerable to Status Effects and Percent Damage Attacks. This hurts the Final Boss particularly badly, as his massive HP total can be shaved down enormously with a Percent Damage Attack.
• Unique monsters in Angband are immune to almost every status effect, besides any resistances the base monster might have.
• The Binding of Isaac: Zigzagged. All bosses can be affected by status effects (though it takes a few more hits than normal to inflict them).
  • The Bible kills Mom and Mom's Heart instantly, but trying to use it on Satan results in the player dying instantly instead.
  • The Chaos Card will kill absolutely anything in one hit, including most Final Bosses (it will skip 1 phase on most final bosses)... except Delirium, The Beast and Mother's Shadow.
  • The Plan C item, which will kill everything in the room instantly, including any boss in the game... but it really does mean EVERYTHING in the room, including the player. Assuming the player doesn't have a resurrection method handy, it's mostly used on Final Bosses, who die slightly before the player does, thus it still counts as beating them... except for Delirium, whose death animation takes a full five seconds to finish, meaning the player will die before Delirium does.
  • It's possible to gain so much attack power that bosses are taken out nearly instantly, but two of the Afterbirth bosses have a damage-blocking mechanic which rapidly scales up their armor when they take large amounts of damage in short periods of time. As a result, even runs that would instantly kill a normal boss can take a good deal of time to wear the boss down.
• In Bonfire, bosses are immune to Cursed Skulls, and Recurring Bosses (but not regular bosses) are immune to Nadia's One-Hit Kill Critical Hit. Averted in all other cases, however; there's no other general Anti-Debuff.
• Dicey Dungeons: Mostly averted, with bosses taking the usual effects from status conditions, except for Scathach. Scathach is a riff on the Wizard enemy, with a wide selection of potent effects but only one die. To ensure an interesting fight, Scathach is immune to Lock and Freeze, which would trivialise her by preventing her from attacking at all or forcing her to repeat her least damaging attack respectively.
• Dungeon Crawl: You can backstab, paralyze, confuse, or banish a lot of uniques. Many of them, however, will be immune to at least one type of special attack, more if they're undead or demonic. The exception is the highest-levels damage spells in the game: Fire Storm and Ice Storm are only 55% and 40% resistible, so even a completely fire- or ice-immune enemy will still take damage.
• Enter the Gungeon:
  • Bosses have a DPS cap so weapons with high fire rate or damage cannot quickly kill them. Zigzagged in that certain Purposely Overpowered weapons can bypass said DPS cap.
  • Forced Transformation effect of magic weapons do not work on bosses.
• FTL: Faster Than Light has the end boss be totally immune to killing off crew. If you manage to kill the crew, a superpowered AI takes over the ship, making your job even harder. You can, however, kill off all but one of the crew, leaving a single gunner manning an easily-blocked laser cannon in a room with no exits, allowing your boarding parties to disable the other systems at your leisure. Gets trickier in Hard mode, where said room is connected to the main ship area, allowing said gunner to repair the other systems.
• In Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja, you can use pills on bosses the first time around, but not in the optional refights. This is a big part of what makes those rematches harder (Charge and Sleeping Pills in particular are very helpful). In the sequel, pills don't even work on bosses the first time.
• The only way to truly get rid of a NetHack monster is to dispose of its corpse. The Riders save for yourself when you start spelunking have special coding that makes getting rid of their corpses nearly impossible and they are more than likely to revive under your disposal efforts. The Wizard of Yendor is similar as, after you have stolen a McGuffin from him, he will constantly revive no matter how many times he is killed and will make the remainder of your game miserable.
• In first two installments of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series the player is not allowed to use Orbs in a set boss battle, probably because things like the One-Shot Orb (that does exactly what it sounds like) and the Itemizer Orb (which turns an enemy into an item) would make it too easy. However, they're susceptible to every single status ailment in the book (Barring any immunities that might be granted to them by their typing or ability), which makes crippling them with moves or seeds an easy way to trivialize an otherwise difficult fight.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gates to Infinity does away the restriction on using orbs in boss fights. However, all standard bosses now recover from status ailments much quicker then normal enemies do, and are immune to things that cause a One-Hit Kill. Some of the later group boss fights also have the Prevention team skill, which makes it so you can only inflict one of them with a particular status ailment at any time. Lastly, the legendary Pokemon bosses are completely immune to all status ailments and also aren't affected by Endeavor (As reducing their 1K+ HP count to equal your generally 100ish HP would make things too easy).

Roleplay

• Destroy the Godmodder: The Godmodder has this. An attack that could kill another entity (like a headshot or being flung into a black hole) would do nothing to the Godmodder.

Role Playing Game

• AdventureQuest made a marathon Optional 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.
• Boss-type creatures in Albion are immune to most paralyzation and disintegration spells. There is one spell of each type that circumvents this immunity, potentially making the game Unwinnable, as one of the bosses carries a Plot Coupon that gets disintegrated along as well. The last boss is immune to everything (except Steal Life and lightning-based spells), but you don't have to actually beat it.
• Alpha Protocol: The big three bosses (Brayko, Deng and Marburg) can take multiple headshots, resist most gadgets, start alerted to Mike's presence and stay that way making stealth useless.
• Baldur's Gate II: The Big Bad in both Shadows of Amn and Throne of Bhaal is hard-coded immune to any instant-death effect, including the vorpal blade which otherwise has a chance to instantly kill by decapitation even dragons and demons.
• In Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, every single boss in the game is 100% immune to every status effect; the only exception is the two tentacles used by the Tree Guardian in Anuenue, though the boss itself is still immune.
  • This is changed in Baten Kaitos Origins, where many bosses are weak to knockdown, freeze, burning, etc. However, instant death and stun still do not work. (That) One boss, the Holoholobird, is vulnerable to sleep (sometimes), and abusing this is probably the most reliable and commonly used way of beating it.
• Downplayed in Cassette Beasts. The main bosses of the game, Archangels, though immune to stat debuffs, are vulnerable to status ailments such as poison and berserk.
• Justified in Chrono Trigger. If you recruit him and check his inventory, you can see that Magus equipped an accessory that nullifies status ailments.
• In MMORPG City of Heroes, Arch-Villains and Heroes (essentially big big bosses) have a system of resistances to controlling effects such as slows, stuns and immobilizes so high that they are all but immune. This presents a significant problem for characters who specialize in these effects, ranging from forcing them to game the system or use their secondary abilities, to making them outright powerless.
  • This is referred to as the "Purple Triangles of Doom" because of the aura of purple triangles floating around the Archvillain's head. When they point up he has magnitude 50 protection against most status effects on top of the magnitude 6 protection that he would have as a normal Elite Boss. When the triangles point down, then he only has the magnitude 6 protection. This up and down cycle is not very obvious with all the other visual effects going on during battles, so usually nobody notices that they are down unless the Archvillain is suddenly locked in a Hold. For reference, your average status effect tossed around by the player will at most have a magnitude of 3.
  • Get enough control specialists on your team, though, and the Useless Useful Spells become almost Game Breaking. Two Dominators or four Controllers can lock down almost anything in the game.
• Bosses in most of the Diablo franchise have some form of resistance to control effects such as freeze or stun; even if not totally immune they almost always have significantly reduced duration.
  • The first game had Stone Curse, which completely petrified an enemy. It was not effective against Diablo but did work against other bosses and was a common strategy to use against some of them.
    • Oddly, Diablo himself has an inversion of this. He is the only enemy in the final four levels of the game that can be affected by the Holy Bolt spell, which otherwise only works on undead targets.
  • Diablo II got rid of Stone Curse but introduced crushing blows and other effects that worked off a percentage of the target monster's health pool, rather than a fixed amount of damage. These obviously had to be nerfed when dealing with bosses. Diablo II also added the ability to freeze enemies, and although freezing attacks could stop normal monsters dead in their tracks like Stone Curse did, it would only slow down bosses.
  • Ironically reversed in Diablo III, where minions are virtually immune to damage from area of effect spells (to make up for their inability to avoid them), which are much more prevalent than in previous games. Since bosses tend to make heavy use of such skills, minions effectively have immunity to bosses (which of course doesn't help if the player dies anyway).
• Downplayed in Dragon Age: Origins: most boss creatures could be affected by almost any spell, but spells that weren't direct damage dealers tended to have reduced effects. For example, if you used Crushing Sphere on a boss monster, it would take the damage, but it would still be able to move. Paralysis, Freeze, and Stun effects tended to have much, much shorter durations on bosses than on normal enemies: most of the time they were good primarily for interrupting a grab attack. And Confusion and Shatter effects never worked on them.
• Most bosses in the 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 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.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
  • Tsun, the old Nordic god of "trials against adversity" and shield-thane of Shor, must be fought in Sovngarde to prove one's worthiness to enter Shor's Hall of Valor. He is completely immune to any stagger, knockdown, paralysis, or disarm attacks. If he falls into the chasm beneath the Whalebone Bridge, he'll reappear and exit from the Hall of Valor to continue the fight.
  • Mehrunes' Razor has a small chance of insta-killing an opponent with any given strike, up to and including even Alduin and the Ebony Warrior. However, Miraak, the Evil Counterpart Big Bad of the Dragonborn expansion, and Karstaag, the spirit of the Giant Space Flea from Nowhere from Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansion who can be fought as the Optional Boss of an unmarked quest, are both immune to the insta-kill chance of the Razor.
• Bosses in most of the Epic Battle Fantasy series tend to be immune to disabling status ailments (stun, syphon, freeze), and instant death. The Guardian in 2 downplays this at worst. After you destroy his arms (a tough task in itself), he can be syphoned or stunned to block his arm regeneration; however, these effects seem to be resisted.
• Played with in Etrian Odyssey: status effects besides instant death are only moderately less likely to work on FOEs and bosses than mooks, and are useful for doing things like wasting their turns, doing damage over time, or preventing them from using their most powerful attacks. However, status effects only last a few turns, and successfully applying one to a unit makes the unit more resistant to that status for about eight turns — applying the same effect twice is considerably harder than doing it once and it gets successively harder. In Etrian Odyssey IV: Legends of the Titan, the Arcanist has a spell that resets this resistance; it costs an extremely large amount of TP, but may still be worth it against particularly tough enemies. There are oddballs in many of the bosses that stand out: Manticore in the original is only vulnerable to brute force, being immune to ailments and binds. The Fallen One of IV resists instant death, but is not immune to it, meaning a lucky instant death attack will end the fight instantly.
• EverQuest introduced a number of these.
  • Many raid bosses in EverQuest were outright immune to spells that slowed their attack speed since such spells could reduce a monster's damage output by upwards of 60% or more. Notable examples for their time were Derakor the Vindicator and the Avatar of War, two end-game bosses in the Scars of Velious expansion that were notorious for their extremely high melee damage output. Eventually, Sony began allowing slow spells to work on many bosses, but with limited effect. Casters would receive messages such as "Your slow spell is only partially effective."
  • Likewise, many bosses were immune to root spells which prevented them from moving, which forced raid parties to keep tighter control over where the boss was positioned. Most bosses also tended to summon their primary target to them if said target moved too far away.
  • Another unusual immunity many bosses were given led to a tactic referred to by players as "belly-casting." Many named enemies and bosses were completely immune to all spells unless they were cast at point-blank range (belly-to-belly with them). This was particularly cruel when you take into account that most of these bosses also use powerful point-blank area-effect attacks.
• Most melee enemies in Fallout: New Vegas can be slowed by crippling their legs. Attempting this on the final boss has no noticeable effect. Also, the main boss and the 2 bonus bosses of Lonesome Road are completely immune to knockdown effects. For stealth characters, an easy way of killing enemies is to place an explosive in their inventories with reverse pickpockting. However, this doesn't work on Caesar or Kimball for some reason.
• Fate/Grand Order toys with this a fair bit. Bosses are completely immune to Instant Death, but can be targeted by effects like Stun, Charm, Buff Removal, Charge Drain, Skill Seal, or other such tactics (though they may have some form of status resistance). More recent bosses tend to be immune to anything that actively turns off their abilities, though (due to strategies making it possible for some teams to stunlock a boss permanently), leaving more mundane debuffs like Attack/Defense Down to do their work.
• In the 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 can bypass the resistance, though (mainly the ones that work like a Silence effect).
• Granblue Fantasy:
  • Specific boss battles, especially the Primarch and Xeno Raids have an increased resistance to elements which are not superior to theirs. In this cases, the game explicitly tells the players to follow the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors if they do not want to have a hard time.
  • Some bosses are immune to certain status effects (i.e. Justice Aracrum being Immune to Gravity, and Primarchs being immune to ATK/DEF Down) while others lower the success rate of being inflicted with a status effect (particularly the useful ones like paralyze) each time they're successfully hit with it. Some bosses play with this by becoming immune or vulnerable to certain status effects at certain HP thresholds. Ultimate Bahamut is a particularly special case. He's not immune to paralyze (though he does gain resistance to it), but it doesn't stop him from using attacks that are triggered at certain HP thresholds.
• Hilariously inverted in Hyperdimension Neptunia V where Pirachu, the boss, can inflict the Virus status on your CPU party which takes away their HDD form. The thing is, your playable characters are locked in HDD throughout the entire fight.
• In Black Isle RPG Icewind Dale, the final boss was flat out unaffected by any spell or other magical effect. He not only never took damage, but he also wouldn't even show the flinch animation if caught in an area effect burst, and when the characters and how they were affected by one spell or other was displayed at the bottom of the screen his name would be completely bypassed, unlike other enemies that had super magic resistance, like Iron Golems, which would display something like Iron Golem: Magic Resistance in response to being hit by a spell.
• The final boss of Jade Empire isn't immune to Focus mode, per se, but he is uniquely able to use it himself, acting normally (and making your movements extraordinarily sluggish if you don't use it). This is only to be expected since he taught it to you in the first place.
• In Legend of Keepers from Goblinz Studio, you benefit from a very limited immunity and if you had chosen Maug the Slaveholder Centaur, his interns also benefit from this. The one status ailment your Villain Protagonist of a Final Boss is immune is Stun. This makes sense as your character (and interns) are by themselves and the Huntress hero has the Game-Breaker passive ability of always stunning an enemy if she has at least one status ailment inflicted on her. Your Master and any Intern would be permalocked with stun if they weren't immune to it. That said every other powerful status ailment can be inflicted on them, includings penalties that stack with repeated casting such as Broken Armor (after armor is in the negative %, target takes increasingly more damage the higher the negative armor rating) and Tiredness (do increasingly less damage with repeated stacking).
• Strangely, Mario & Luigi: Dream Team has Contractual Metal Slime Immunity, with Gold Beanies being completely immune to the Luiginary Flame Bros Attack. Strangely being that this is the ONLY creature immune to this attack, even bosses are affected. And only that ONE attack, the Gold Beanie is still somehow weak to all other Bros Attacks, all badge effects, secret boxes, gear effects and everything else.
• Mass Effect 3:
  • You have The Dragon Kai Leng 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.
  • At one point in the game (the Prothean Archives) you have to chase an enemy boss (Dr. Eva Core). While you and your teammates have an assortment of powers that should slow down or stop that boss enough for you to easily catch up, none of them have any effect.
• Zigzagged in Mega Man X: Mavericks. Status effects actually could work on bosses in the first game, but this trope was played straight for all games afterward with a few exceptions. Most notably, you all but had to poison Hydra Sigma's core in the first game's remake in order to get past his Regenerating Health.
• Might and Magic: In Might & Magic X: Legacy, all Bosses have a special Passive Ability that is unique for Bosses; it grants them immunity to Immune to Lapse, Mana Surge, Sleep, Terror, Poison, Root, Push, and Stasis effects. (Basically, any attack that doesn't damage them directly won't work.)
• In Miitopia, "boss" monsters can't be affected by Status Effects (except Sweet Whispers, which is actually a Damage-Increasing Debuff). They're also immune to One-Hit Kill skills.
• Monster Hunter:
  • Elder Dragons cannot be captured and thus are completely immune to traps. Even if the Elder Dragon is weak to electricity and can be paralyzed, it will walk right through a shock trap like it doesn't exist.
  • Several large monsters are unable to be captured for various reasons and is forced to be slain by the hunter.
    • Vespoid Queen from the Freedom never touches the ground, rendering them immune to both Shock and Pitfall traps. Wind Serpent Ibushi, Thunder Serpent Narwa, and Narwa the Allmother from Rise also never touch the ground, so even if they weren't Elder Dragons they won't trigger traps.
    • Both Abyssal Lagiacrus and Raging Brachydios are unable to be captured due to being unable to set traps in the habitats they reside. Additionally in Iceborne the latter upon trapping the hunter, prevents the usage of any traps, forcing the hunter into a Duel to the Death.
    • The giant Kulu Ya-Ku in World that is encountered during the Final Fantasy XIV collaboration is immune to any stunning effects including traps.
  • The Final Boss of Monster Hunter: World cannot be mounted, presumably due to its sheer size. Apex monsters in Rise, Ibushi and Narwa also cannot be mounted. While Narwa the Allmother cannot be mounted, a monster that can be mounted shows up partway through the fight, enabling you to use Wyvern Riding against her that way.
  • All of the multiplayer-based monsters along with Xeno'Jiiva can't be forcefully turned nor be flinch shot into the wall to stun them for several seconds using the Clutch Claw from Iceborne. Shara Ishvalda, while not immune to it, resist the flinch shot effect unless it's sent into falling boulders.
• Moraff's World and Dungeons of the Unforgiven (Roguelike RPG of approximately 1990) have the Holy/Nuclear Hand Grenade which instantly kills the monster. Usually. Bosses catch it and give it back to you. If you try any instant kill/disable spell — they say right away that it won't work.
• 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.
  • Blackguard Aribeth, however, has no immunity to the spell Harm at all. This means that the entire boss fight can be resolved in twenty seconds or less if you brought along Linu as your companion, since Linu learns Harm automatically.
  • In Neverwinter Nights 2, particularly in Persistent Worlds, bosses may not be completely immune to instant death spells, but they have saves so high that they might as well. They will also typically have Improved Evasion with a high reflex save, making many spells useless against bosses.
• In Nocturne: Rebirth, this is only played straight for the second round of the Superboss. Every other boss of the game is vulnerable to exactly one or two status effects while being immune to all others.
• In Odium, almost all bosses are immune to stun effects like the tranquilizer gun. Strangely, the final boss has no such immunity, and thus becomes ridiculously easy if you know this.
• Pokémon:
  • Averted as far as Status Effects are concerned. No Pokémon (wild or trained) is immune to statuses unless their type dictates it (e.g. Steel- and Poison-types can't be poisoned) or an ability prevents it (e.g. Insomnia and Vital Spirit prevent sleep).
  • There are a few occasions where a player is completely unable to capture a wild Pokémon — even with a Master Ball — and has to defeat it:
    • In Pokémon Red and Blue (and their remakes), a Marowak ghost is fought in the Pokémon Tower. Any attempt to use a Poké Ball on it will fail.
    • When facing Black/White Kyurem in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, Ghetsis' staff prevents the player from using Poké Balls, thus Kyurem must be knocked out. It can be caught in its normal form later, after the main story is over.
    • During Pokémon Sun and Moon, UB-01 appears when visiting Aether Paradise. Despite being a powerful Ultra Beast at level 27, the entire island has a Poké Ball jammer that prevents people from using Poké Balls to capture Pokémon, you included. After becoming the Champion, however, you're able to encounter it somewhere else (which lacks the jammer) and catch it without issue.
    • Also in Sun and Moon are the Totem Pokémon; regular Pokémon that are far larger, can summon other Pokémon to aid them, and come with an aura that gives them at least one Status Buff right at the start of the battle. You're prohibited from capturing Pokémon in the area until the Trial is complete, and the Totem Pokémon can't be rebattled afterwards. Comments by the island captains imply that the totem Pokémon actually belong to them and thus probably couldn't be caught anyway.
    • Necrozma is battled three times over the course of Pokémon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon; the first time in its Dusk Mane/Dawn Wings forme, the second time when it's transformed into Ultra Necrozma, and the last time in its original forme. Except the last one, the game won't allow you to throw Poké Balls at it, forcing actual battles to happen.
    • Pokemon above the Trainer's badge-enforced catch limit in Pokémon Sword and Shield cannot be caught to prevent the player from breaking the power scale without voluminous effort in overleveling the Pokemon they do have. That said, Eternatus, Zacian (Shield only) and Zamazenta (Sword only) cannot be caught when you face them, either. That said, Eternamax Eternatus is fought as a Max Raid Battle, and you are both required, and cannot fail, to catch it when the fight is over.
  • In all games but Colosseum and XD, you can't capture another Trainer's Pokémon and use it as your own — not even with the Master Ball. Justified since, as the game points out, those are Pokémon that already have owners, and so you'd be blatantly kidnapping them. The aforementioned Orre games do allow this, but you can only snag Shadow Pokémon, which are implied^note Shadow Pokémon are the creations of Cipher, a criminal organization connected to the aptly-named Team Snagem to have been stolen from their true original trainers in the first place.
  • Played straight with Tera Raid bosses in Scarlet/Violet, which have a HP multiplier making them hard to beat down even with four players against them. Needless to say they are immune to one-hit-KO moves. They are not immune to major statuses like sleep (but can self-heal them) but are immune to an assortment of effects such as Torment (prevents a Pokemon using the same move twice in a row) and Trick (swaps items, so you could stick the target Pokemon with a held item that hurts it). When they put up their "Tera Shield" they become immune to *all* pure status and debuff moves, though not to moves that do damage and also inflict a status effect or debuff.
  • Also played straight with the Starmobiles in Scarlet and Violet. Since they are cars and not Pokémon, they aren't affected by any status effects.
• During boss fights in Radia Senki Reimeihen, the game won't let you use offensive Techs and items.
• Rise of the Third Power: Most bosses are immune to instant death, stun effects, and silence. These types of enemies are indicated by a brown stone in the status window. Strangely, there are some bosses like Selene and Noraskov, who are immune to instant death, but not stun and silence.
• All bosses in Rogue Galaxy are immune to Burning Strikes, generally because they're too big to accommodate for their animations: since normal enemies go down too quickly to warrant using them and charging them up tends to take too long, they only really see any use against otherwise damage-resistant Mimics that don't respawn, which is a shame since most of them look pretty good.
• Sea of Stars: The "Abacus" ring has the description "Displays non-boss enemies' HP in combat."
• The boss of Septerra Core was immune to insta-kill attacks and only flinched on high-power attacks. However, using the cloak spell prevented him from landing his one-hit party-kill attack against any party member.
• Shin Megami Tensei is unusual for a JRPG in that only bosses are outright immune to instant kills and incapacitating spells. All other enemies will be vulnerable to at least some of them, and in a good number of cases outright weak, translating to "one cast, one kill" against those types of enemies. As far as general gameplay is concerned, instakills are definitely NOT Useless Useful Spells (Being MegaTen, simply "attack"ing a random counter is a good way to die). Also, stat debuffs definitely do work on bosses (and are seriously necessary in most cases).
  • The first Shin Megami Tensei I game shows why this trope is in effect: bosses did not have blanket immunity to many status effects, so many otherwise difficult boss fights could be instantly trivialized by having your human party members open fire on the boss with Charm Bullets loaded in their guns. The bosses would then start beating on themselves.
  • Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne contains 5 elements for inflicting aliments (mind, nerve, death, expel and curse). All but 2 bosses (Forneus, who comes before the first instant death spell and Troll, who is weak enough to be a miniboss at most) are immune to death/expel and all but a handful of early bosses null or strongly resist the other 3. Most of the instant kill effects do work well on various flunkies however.
  • In Persona 3 and 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. Naoto specialises in Light, Dark and Almighty magic, which is great for mowing down large numbers of Mooks but utterly useless in boss fights. Persona 5 has series of damaging Light and Dark spells in addition to Hama and Mudo, so bosses no longer necessarily nullify Light and Dark, but the One-Hit Kill skills will just refuse to work.
    • Persona 3 does offer a highly entertaining exception though; the October full moon bosses can be, with some luck, locked into the "fear" status. If you happen to have "Ghastly Wail" — a skill that's guaranteed to kill anything inflicted with fear, you can trivialize this boss.
    • In Persona 4, Chie's Follow Up attack^note Follow Up attacks have a chance to be performed whenever an enemy is knocked down, Galactic Punt, insta-kills a random normal enemy. When done against a boss, it becomes Galaxy Kick which simply deals a large amount of damage.
  • Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth like the above has bosses immune to instant death but they can still be hit by most other status ailments. One really notable one is being hit with Panic which makes them unable to dodge, do anything other than basic attacks, and frequently target themselves. Binds can also lock up whatever the boss specializes in such as physical or magical attacks. While bosses tend to break out of these statuses quickly, they're also vulnerable to Stagnant Air which makes ailments last much longer.
  • The day 7 boss in Devil Survivor 2, Benetnasch, has a passive "Pacify Human". What this means is that your human player characters will not be able to scratch him, period, although your demon mons are not under such constraint.
  • Persona 2: Innocent Sin offers the fusion spell Armageddon, which kills anything including the final boss... except for the Superboss. Try it out on him, and he'll smack you back with it. You have to grind like mad to get it, since you need both Lucifer and Satan personas to cast Armageddon and they're far higher level than you'd get just playing the game normally.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei IV, the game offers a variety of conversation skills that allow you to make demons do things like give you items, healing, or money. All of them will, surprisingly enough, work on most bosses... except two particular skills, Scout (recruits an enemy demon) and Negotiate (makes enemy demons go away), because if they weren't, you could trivially end boss battles by bribing them until they agree to join you (although you can fuse most boss demons that you've defeated) or leave. Notably, one particular boss can be put to sleep, and while Sleep status guarantees that non-bosses will let you leave if you use Negotiate on them, this boss will somehow prevent you from escaping battle through this skill even after putting him to sleep.
  • Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse turns Light and Dark spells into standard-damage spells, with their One-Hit Kill properties only kicking in if the caster has Smirk status. While this does mean you can no longer insta-nuke mobs willy-nilly just by spamming Mahamaon and Mamudoon, this also means you can actually damage bosses with Light and Dark spells, and in fact some bosses are weak to either element. They're still immune to the Smirk instant-kill effect, however.
  • Shin Megami Tensei V has most bosses be resistant to all statuses, but not immune to them, so you can land them if you spam them repeatedly, and can even get a guaranteed success if you use your Limit Break on it. The instant-death effects of Light and Dark spells still don't work on bosses even if they're otherwise weak to them, though; they're still good for damage, just like the game before. On a side note, Abscess demons cannot be negotiated with regardless of lunar phase, requiring you to kill them, and they have the same boss immunity to instant death even if their species shows up later.
• Skies of Arcadia: Most of the bosses are completely immune to status ailments and instant-death spells. Even more annoying is the fact that all of the bosses have a sturdy magical defense, making the player rely on weapon attacks and items more. This is actually better in the long run; items that substitute for magic spells not only don't use spirit points and magic points, but they're usually stronger than the actual magic spells, even if Fina, the Squishy Wizard, casts it.
• South Park: The Stick of Truth has a status "Boss: Immune to stun, sleep, and pissed, just because." Additionally, each summon will tell you flat out that they refuse to go near bosses. When fighting against Craig, when he uses the "Clone Army" move, he says that he's immune to splash damage (which means that using abilities that target multiple targets will treat targeting as though you are targeting only one) because Clyde said he is."
• Played impressively straight in Spellforce III. Not only are bosses and many more powerful creatures immune to instant death effects, you will encounter plenty of enemies with this immunity long before you acquire any items or skills that could actually cause it in the first place.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic: Most bosses and many other champion-level enemies have a permanent buff named "Boss Immunity", which makes them immune to any sort of movement-impairing effect (stun, knockdown, push/pull, etc.) It's frequently, but not always, paired with another permanent buff that grants immunity to interrupts.
• Zigzagged in Summoners War: Sky Arena. Most bosses are immune to Stun, Freeze and Sleep effects (which are almost interchangeable anyway). However, they are not immune to other debuffs, most importantly Continuous Damage. Many late-game tactics for farming bosses involve stacking the Continuous Damage and watch as the boss' hp drains away magically. In fact, it is the only viable way to take out one of the weekly bosses.
• Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars:
  • Geno Whirl does 9999 damage when done with a 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.
  • Pure Water will instantly destroy undead enemies, but when used against undead bosses it will only deal a fixed (but still high) amount of damage.
• Bosses in World of Warcraft tend to be immune to incapacitating effects such as Polymorph, Interrupt and silence effects, and most notably stun effects. This is quite necessary, as if they weren't, every party would simply take as many rogues as possible to keep a boss stun-locked and incapable of doing anything. Similarly they're almost always immune to slow, to prevent them from being kited to death. There was a boss in The Burning Crusade whose movement speed was slow enough to allow kiting, and on heroic difficulty some people did indeed refrain from ever getting close to it.
  • 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 the most difficult at low health.
• In Xenoblade Chronicles 1, the only thing bosses are universally immune to is instant death. You can lock down the final boss with a Break-Topple-Daze combo just like any of the other enemies you've used them on (though you might need a chain attack for the statuses to take hold).
• In most Ys games, the Big Bad is immune to the Infinity +1 Sword.

Simulation

• Lobotomy Corporation has multiple damage types, with Pale damage being a Percent Damage Attack against employees. It works as standard damage against Abnormalities, however.

Strategy

• The Hero units in Clash of Clans such as Barbarian King and Archer Queen are not affected by the One-Hit Kill Spring Traps nor do they take as much damage from a Poison Spell as they do against regular troops.
• Command & Conquer: Tiberian Dawn plays a variation; in the GDI campaign, the Temple of Nod has way more HP than can be taken off with a shot from the Ion Cannon, and repairs fast enough to be at full strength by the time it recharges. You have to breach Nod's defenses and damage it normally before you can obliterate it with the Ion Cannon. The rest of the series usually makes sure you can't knock out the superweapon building or construction yard with only one superweapon attack, but the rest of the base used to power these weapons are usually fair game.
  • Tiberian Sun's expansion Firestorm had a curious glitch in the last mission of the game. While a single Ion Cannon blast won't destroy the mission objective, it can destroy the firestorm generator protecting it. Doing so bypasses the entire sidequest of having to capture the relay stations to shut the core off. In addition, while the Core Defender is resistant to all attacks, it was still programmed as a base land unit, so if you destroyed the bridge it was on while it was over water, it just dies due to the game not knowing what to do with a unit dropped into water.
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3: Commando units are immune to getting run over by vehicles (especially notable in Tanya's case, since she runs up to vehicles to instakill them with a C4 charge). However, they're just as vulnerable to anti-infantry weapons as other mook units.
• Cyrus in the Dawn of War II campaign gains an ability to use his sniper rifle to instantly kill any infantry unit. While it makes sense that it doesn't work on vehicles or Monstrous creatures like Carnifexes, it makes less sense that it doesn't work against bosses which are just more powerful infantry units (though it does do a lot more damage than his regular attack). Bosses are also immune to stun and knockback effects in the Dawn of War II campaign, making it impossible to disrupt them; this is removed in the expansion Chaos Rising, where most bosses, particularly infantry, can be stunned and knocked around at your leisure.
• The Super Agents in Evil Genius are capable of steamrolling entire hordes of your goons, and what's worse, they cannot be permanently defeated by any amount of conventional firepower or traps. They can only be knocked out and imprisoned in a holding cell. (And if you do that, torture won't make them talk or break them in the least.) Except the British agent John Steele who cannot be permanently defeated at all, all Super Agents must be defeated by completing highly specific optional objectives. However, once you succeed at these objectives, the Super Agent is removed from the game and never returns to pester you again. For example, the Russian agent Katarina is defeated by forcing her to watch as you mangle her childhood teddy bear, and the Chinese agent Jet Chan is defeated by arranging him to be humiliatingly curbstomped in a rigged sparring match. Oh, and that bit about John Steele being unbeatable? It's a Red Herring; he can be beaten, but the game itself doesn't specify it. You can actually beat him by holding him in prison until the final mission, where you launch him into space on a rocket.
• In Final Fantasy Tactics, some bosses are immune to status effects, especially petrify and instant death.
  • However, none of them are immune to Life Drain or Demi/Demi 2, and in FFT the spell always removes 25% (50% in the case of Demi 2) of max HP if it succeeds rather than current HP. This means that the final boss can be killed in less than 5 unit turns with the proper set-up^note the designated spellcaster is given Faith to make their spells have a guaranteed chance to hit, and then a unit wearing Reflect Mail moves between Altima and the spellcaster; then, on the spellcaster's turn, they target the correct tile such that Demi 2 lands twice
• In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, bosses and some leaders of enemy armies usually have ribbons marked by their names. Said ribbons make them immune to the laws that are constantly hounding your own characters (and any enemies without ribbons by their names). Characters who break the laws badly enough are carted off to jail — a "mission failed" scenario if it happens to main character Marche — and enemies without ribbons will never deliberately break the laws. But thanks to the ribbons, bosses can (and will) do anything they want without penalty.
  • although it should be noted that in this game and its sequel enemies can have either the normal ribbon accessory, immunity to all status effects as an equipped item, or in some cases have the "Immunity" passive which does the same thing but in a skill slot. Thankfully the player can get ribbons for their own team un each game although Immunity the passive skill is this trope incarnate.
• Boss enemies in Into the Breach are flagged as Massive, the same characteristic that gives the player's mechs immunity to drowning. Considering how most maps have water on them, many boss fights could be instantly resolved by shoving them into the ocean on turn one otherwise. They still can't attack from in the water, and all other status (freezing, fire and ACID) work as normal. The fact that they aren't immune to freezing means squads with a way to freeze them will generally find boss battles much easier, although freezing weapons are fairly rare.
• In the Turn-Based Strategy game Luminous Arc 2, anyone that is equipped with the Auto-Medic Lapis is completely immune to status ailments. Most, if not all, bosses are equipped with Auto-Medic. The player can win Auto-Medic Lapis as well, allowing your characters to get in on the fun.
• In Napoleon: Total Wars main campaign, Napoleon himself cannot be killed. Assassinating him is near impossible even with a good assassin, and even if you succeed, it just puts him out of action for a few months.
  • In Total War: Warhammer, lords cannot be assassinated, they simply get wounded and return to the pool of available lords after some time. They can, however, be killed in battle. Legendary lords, on the other hand, can't die at all; no matter what happens to them they will keep healing and coming back until their faction is wiped out entirely.
• StarCraft II
  • In the final mission of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Kerrigan only takes up at 10 damage points from any single attack, even a shot from a Wave-Motion Gun or a nuclear blast. Hence the only way to kill her is, ironically, rush her with a ton of marines. And even then she respawns. There is however -one- exception to this rule, the Ghost unit's "Snipe" attack, but because of branching paths in the storyline, there's no guarantee the player will have this option available.
  • In melee matches against human opponents, The Heroic attribute and the Frenzied passive trait confer limited immunity. The Protoss Mothership boasts the Heroic attribute which grants it immunity to Mind Control effects (Neural Parasites), while Ultralisks have the same immunity plus an immunity to snares, stuns, and movement altering effects with the Frenzied passive.
• All final bosses in Super Robot Wars get the "All-Canceller" ability, rendering them immune to Status Effects and Damage Increasing Debuffs. Lesser bosses may have this immunity too, or a lesser protection against certain effects. Thing is, they are not protected against a certain pilot skill that bypasses all defenses, including those immunities. This comes to a head mostly in the Original Generation games, where it is much easier to put an immunity-bypassing pilot into any mech with status-inflicting weapons.
• Warcraft III:
  • Hero units are immune to some of the more drastic spell effects like Doom, Possession or Charm, preventing said spells from becoming utterly gamebreaking. Most other debuffs, like sleep, and stun, do work on them, but wear off quicker compared to regular units.
  • Most high level creeps in the game have Spell Immunity (as do some low-level ones like golems), making them a real challenge to take down.
• In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the final boss is flat out immune to Mind Control, even if you somehow manage to overcome his terrifyingly high Will.

Shooters

• It's very common for Bullet Hell shooters to have the Optional Bosses and/or True Final Bosses become invincible when the player bombs, taking no damage from the bomb or any of the players shots until the effect of the bomb ends. Generally, a barrier of some sort will be placed around the boss to show when this is occurring, although other things have been known to occur to indicate that the boss simply is not taking any damage (for example in ESP Ra.De. the boss literally leaves the screen). Sometimes the standard Final Boss gets this type of invincibility as well when they're on their final pattern. Cave and Touhou Project games are prime examples of this.
• A few weapons in the PS2 Ratchet & Clank games. The Zodiac and RYNOCIRATOR are one-hit weapons against normal opponents, but take off very little if any HP from bosses.
• Some games, usually on-rails shooters like Star Fox, have area-effect attacks designed to destroy all on-screen enemies, but will only cause a comparatively large amount of damage to bosses.
  • Most Star Fox and Star Fox 64 mooks will die if you shoot them anywhere, and the rest usually die with only a few shots. Bosses, on the other hand, are usually invulnerable to laser shots and nova bombs, except for their easily-identified glowing weak spots. The bombs ARE the weakness for the first fight with Star Fox's Great Commander at Venom, and it's just a matter of timing it with when the cannons are open. However, the sequel does not impart nearly as much damage to bosses with nova bombs, and Star Wolf's advanced ships can even deflect them with barrel rolls.
  • Inverted with 64's Zoness boss, who is immune to regular shots and can only take damage from bombs.

Stealth

• Assassin's Creed:
  • In Assassin's Creed II all generic enemies are vulnerable to your Hidden Blade (and in particular to being counter killed), but the penultimate and final boss are conveniently immune.
  • Also played straight in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood: In addition to breaking free of grabs, the Kung Fu Proof Mooks and mini-bosses also can dodge or outright block counters; the final boss can as well. (There are two more story targets, but they're not so much bosses as "guys you have to kill without being detected, or mission failed.")
  • Averted in the first Assassin's Creed, where every boss, including the Made of Iron penultimate boss and the otherwise highly scripted final fight, can be instantly killed with the hidden blade counter.
• In Batman: Arkham City : The bosses in the Catwoman and Harley Quinn's Revenge DLC episodes have health bars. The player must drain them with attacks that would often knock out a henchman, even though the bosses have no physiological differences with their mooks.
  • Mr. Freeze is also an interesting example. He isn't immune to your best attacks initially, but adapts after you use them on him once.
  • However in Batman: Arkham Knight Two-Face comes in with an Elite Mook army and can be taken down as easily as anyone else, and at any time.
• In Dishonored, any character empowered directly by the Outsider is largely immune to Bend Time, Possession, or Windblast. They also can't be killed by most otherwise one-hit-kill attacks, including fatalities, fire darts, or spring razor traps. You can still backstab them, though.
• In Metal Gear, you can't break bosses' necks, nor can you slit their throats, and the KO is just minor incapacitation. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater plays with this: After a cutscene, Ocelot is unconscious, and you're able to shoot him... but doing so gives you a Nonstandard Game Over due to creating a 'time paradox'.
• Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor makes this into a core game mechanic. In addition to various weaknesses, Officers also have varying strengths, which can make them immune to anything from combat finishers to arrows, requiring alternate methods to kill them or using their Kryptonite Factor.
• In one mission in Thief II: The Metal Age, you have to abduct a certain individual, who patrols through the level with a couple bodyguards surrounding him. Normally this would be your cue to break out a Gas Arrow to take everyone out at once, but the target in question is immune, due to wearing a gas mask (explained as him being paranoid about the gas-belching Burricks that formerly infested the area). You can (and should) still use a Gas Arrow to drop his bodyguards, but you'll have to run up and blackjack him afterwards before he can flee^note Luckily he's coded as a noncombatant, meaning you can use your blackjack to knock him out even while he's in an "alerted" state.
• In Yandere Simulator, certain mechanics simply will not work on important characters, to prevent Yan-chan from getting lazy with sabotaging her rivals.
  • The 'send a student home' favor will not work on Rivals, because then you could just invoke it on Friday and easily prevent all your rivals from confessing to Senpai.
  • Masks normally allow you to get away with one murder spree (as long as you remember to burn the mask along with the rest of the evidence — it has your DNA on it), but it will not work on Senpai, since one way the rivals are protected is spending a lot of time with him. Senpai despises people who hide their identities while doing cruel things, so he'll instead run up and rip the mask off your face for an instant Game Over.
  • Nemesis-chan (in Mission Mode) and the Student Council are immune to non-sneak attacks. Nemesis will just overpower you if you confront her, while the Student Council members carry pepper spray and will always use it on you before you can hit them.

Survival Horror

• Eternal Darkness really only has two true boss battles. The first is immune to bullets and impossible to reach with melee attacks, and has to be killed by magic cast at just the right times. The second is mostly immune to everything, except assaults on his relic of power and attacks from spirits of those who came before. Until the very end, of course.
• In Galerians, the psychic protagonist can instantly explode the heads of ordinary enemies when his powers overload, but it doesn't work on other psychics, including most of the bosses — but not all of them.
• Resident Evil
  • In Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, Nemesis is encountered seven times, and no matter what Jill does to defeat him, he won't die, or even stay down long, the first six times. He can only be killed permanently the seventh time, in the Final Battle.
  • The final boss of Resident Evil 4 cannot be killed with the rocket launcher. He needs a special red rocket launcher, which you receive after you pummel him with regular weapons for a while.
  • The REMake of Resident Evil:
    • You can find the Self-Defense Pistol, a .22 magnum derringer that can only be fired once but will down any enemy in one single hit. Bosses are the exception of course, with it instead doing about the same damage as one of Barry's .44 magnum rounds. Granted this is still a significant amount of damage, making the weapon helpful in fighting the Black Tiger or Yawn, but don't expect it to take them down in one hit. In fact, it was actually deliberately coded to not be able to one-shot a "boss" type monster, even if its damage output is higher than the boss's health, instead doing a HP to 1 effect.
    • Subverted with the Crimson Head Prototype 1, one of two mandatory Crimson Heads encountered and the only one that you actually have to fight. Even with its massively balloned health compared to regular Crimson Heads (having between 2300 and 5200 depending on the difficulty, compared to a regular one which has between 300 and 2600) it's still as vulnerable to lucky headshots as any other zombie. One very easy way to kill him, at least as Chris, is to let the bastard grab you and use a flash grenade which will instantly kill him without wasting a single bullet.

Turn-Based Strategy

• In the Fire Emblem series:
  • Several games in the franchise have one boss who possesses an item or skill that nullifies effective damage against them: Michalis, Narcian, Valter, Walhart, Hinoka, Gwendal, Ladislava, Edelgard, Claude, Lord Arundel, Dedue, Ingrid, Seteth, Gilbert, Nader, Rodrigue, and the Immovable. Several of them allow you to either steal the item or simply pry it off of their corpses. In addition, in Awakening, Walhart's Conquest skill is also wielded by SpotPass Zephiel and DLC Ephraim, and Walhart himself comes with it when he joins you and can pass it along to Morgan if he is his father. Meanwhile, Three Houses allows any unit who achieves S+ rank in armor, flying, or riding to gain immunity to effective damage as an equippable skill.
  • Assassins, in the games that have the class, can randomly kill their opponent instantly, even if the attack would otherwise have dealt 0 damage. In Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade and Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones, everything but the final boss is fair game to be assassinated (albeit with the rates halved), but as of Path of Radiance, all enemies classified as bosses have contracted the immunity.
  • Lloyd/Linus in Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade and Caellach in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones have the Iron Rune and Hoplon Guard, respectively, which nullify critical hits. Fortunately, you can steal these or pry them out of their cold dead hands.
  • Another form of a boss immunity in the GBA Fire Emblem games is that thrones always cures status conditions of whatever unit is in it, usually being a boss on a Throne in a seize chapter (primarily (in addition to the great amount of evasion and a significant defense and resistance boost.)
  • The final four bosses in Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn all come equipped with either the Nihil or Mantle skills, which prevents attacking units from using their own skills against the boss (and in Mantle's case, Critical Hits). This is mainly to prevent them from being quickly dispatched by the Mastery Skills, many of which can reach ridiculous amounts of damage when used by a high-level character with an SS weapon. The majority of other bosses are still vulnerable to them, however, and the player even gets a few Nihil scrolls of their own.
  • Fire Emblem: Awakening and Fire Emblem Fates have the Dragonskin skill, used by all four final bosses between the two games, Validar on Hard and above and Apotheosis enemies in Awakening, and Gunter in Fates: Revelation. In addition to cutting your attack power in half, it nullifies Counter and Lethality (in both games) and Countermagic and poison skills (in Fates). It also weakens critical hits and offensive skills in Fates. Fates also has a weaker variant called Divine Shield, wielded by a couple of generic DLC bosses; it does mostly the same thing as Dragonskin, but affords no protection against critical hits and offensive skills.
  • Fates and Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia have the Immune Status and Nullify Ailments skills, respectively, which render the bearer immune to status effects in both games and stat reduction effects and poison skills in Fates. It is wielded by Gunter and Anankos in Fates: Revelation and by Jedah, Duma, the Creation, Mila's Servant, and Duma's Apostle in Shadows of Valentia. Fates also has a weaker variant called Resist Status, which merely halves those effects and is wielded by Ryoma in his final battle with you on the Conquest route.
  • In Fire Emblem: Three Houses, major enemy bosses have either the General skill (immune to instant death effects and half damage from enemy gambits) or the Commander skill (immune to instant death, movement effects, and status ailments, and 1/4 damage from enemy gambits). Major magic-wielding bosses also tend to have Unsealable Magic, which renders them immune to Silence.
  • In Fire Emblem Engage, on Maddening difficulty, bosses tend to have either the Unbreakable skill (immune to break) or the Veteran+ skill (immune to break and nullifies effective damage), the former on bosses without a type weakness and the later with at least one weakness. Hard difficulty downplays this, as bosses in this difficulty with weakness will have the Stalwart skill, which reduces damage effectiveness from 3x might to 2x might (however, they are still vulnerable to being broken by weapon triangle advantage).
• Disgaea has the Evility "Like a Boss", which nullifies Deathblows, prevents capture and greatly weakens the effects of certain status ailments. It usually has a cost of zero Evility slots, so boss-units tend to have it slapped on.
  • Later entries would further this by having the "Like a Boss" Evility have levels. The Level 4 version not only grants the previous immunities, but also complete immunity to poison, paralysis, and weaken. Many bosses would have the "Can't Fool Me" Evility too, which nullifies the ability to lift the boss (outright killing a common cheese strat in previous Disgaea games), and it also removes all possible damage from all sources except being attacked. Bosses also tend to have the "Theft Prevention" Evility as well, which nullifies your ability to steal their equipment mid-fight (thus weakening the boss). Other Evilities commonly popped onto bosses include "Can't Fool Me" (negate evasion buffs), "Three Laws" (cannot hit own allies with attacks), "Status Guard" (debuffs can only reduce stats by 25% max and no more), "Absolute Power" (negates lifting and knockback, and stats cannot drop by more than 5% from debuffs), and "Double Lock" (always hits guaranteed when attacking with the same attack as last time).
• In Pokémon Rejuvenation, boss pokemon - be they Rift Pokemon or just especially powerful ones like Geara's Giratina - have an aura that simply makes them immune to effects that would make for an easy or simple win. Some of these are understandable, with one-hit kill moves and moves that change the boss's core ability, but others are banned just because it would make the fight "too easy", like the use of Leech Seed, a move that slowly drains the boss's health over time, or Haze, a move that would clear all stat changes on the field. It also weakens toxic poisoning into regular poisoning, makes it so paralysis never prevents a boss from moving, and causes boss Pokemon to unfreeze immediately. Frustratingly, these status changes are never voiced to the player, not even through a message similar to what's received when the player tries to use a banned move.
• Sunrider 4: The Captain's Return: Crow Harbor's dreadnought, the Imperium, is completely immune to all status effects. You can't shut down his Deflector Shields, you can't disable him, and you can't lower his accuracy or evasion. If you try to do any of these things to him, he will literally laugh at you. And since his shields are maxed out, that means lasers and pulse weapons are completely useless against him.

Wide Open Sandbox

• Dwarf Fortress:
  • Traps are a vital part of any fortress's defense system; cage traps in particular amount to a One-Hit Kill against anything that triggers them. However, creatures with the [TRAPAVOID] tag will not trigger a trap while they're standing. In vanilla, this includes kobolds and gremlins, but also titans, forgotten beasts, werecreatures in their creature form, and the demons unleashed by Digging Too Deep. These enemies do trigger traps if they're stunned (by, for instance, putting giant cave spider webs on cage traps), as this cancels the effects of the [TRAPAVOID] tag.
  • Dropping a drawbridge on a creature will usually kill it instantly. However, if the creature you drop a drawbridge on is too large, the drawbridge will shatter harmlessly against their heads.
• Grand Theft Auto: The mechanics of the games usually allow anyone to be killed during gameplay (but may give you a Mission Failed if you kill them before their plot-driven death/wasted moment). Usual methods for killing mission targets include shooting their car until it explodes or running them off the road and carjacking them. However, there are rare instances in the series where key targets resist these methods. Occasionally, a target's vehicle may be invincible to damage and/or have locked doors. The most egregious offenders behave as an unstoppable force, knocking heavy semi-trucks off the road as if they were made of styrofoam to follow a scripted path.
  • Grand Theft Auto: Vice City: All enemy NPCs follow standard mortality rules except for three bosses. Ricardo Diaz, Lance Vance, and Sonny Forelli are the only enemies who cannot be instantly killed with a headshot.
  • Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has Tenpenny only appear in cutscenes, presumably so no clever player could kill him before he's supposed to die (also in a cutscene). During the one mission where he is in gameplay, his fire truck is invincible and follows a pre-determined path.
  • A case in many titles involves characters who undertake missions with you on your side, but are later fought as enemies. They'll go down from a small hail of gunfire when they're on your side, requiring you to protect them, but once it comes time to fight them they'll be able to withstand several headshots. One aversion to this is Ryder in San Andreas — since the intended method is a chase sequence in boats, he himself only has a regular amount of health. Combine that with the fact that he has to swim out to his boat before the chase sequence starts and that the mission gave you a sniper rifle to handle the first half of the mission, and you can skip the whole chase and gunfight by simply gunning him down before he reaches the boat.
• The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, during the final segment of the game when the player is chasing the Abomination, and is meant to fight him at set locations when he stops, which is signaled when his lifebar appears. It's possible to catch up to him before that, but the he can't actually be damaged until his lifebar appears.
• inFAMOUS: The final boss has this in spades. On easy mode all your attacks work, and he can be beaten quickly, and on normal mode your strongest doesn't work, but he can still be killed easily. On the Nintendo Hard mode? At least one of your skills will be below maximum level (assuming you chose an option to get a ton of XP), and all but your NORMAL ZAP and one (relatively weak) evil move work on him. Considering the sheer number of ways he can one-hit you if you're at less than full health? Painful fight to say the least. Can take over an hour, not counting the inevitable dozens of retries.
• Minecraft: The Ender Dragon, unlike every other mob in the game and even its fellow boss the Wither, cannot be hurt by any source of damage that doesn't come from the player, the only exceptions being explosions. This notably makes it immune to all damage from other mobs, no matter how powerful they are.
• [PROTOTYPE 2]: The end boss cycles between being immune to each of your five attack types without warning, and doesn't let the player fly around or consume lesser enemies in a game based on using mobility and healing breaks and stealth.

Game Shows

• Many Who Wants to Be "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" type game shows prevent the contestant from using their respective lifelines on the final question or task. Example: on The Cube, you can't use your Simplify or Trial Run on your final task. This, of course, is necessary not only because the show wants the contestant to earn their prize, but also because the networks can't afford to give away six or seven-figure payouts for every contestant.
  • On the other hand, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? itself usually inverted this rule because their million dollar questions are that difficult and often obscure. Given that in the current U.S. version, the contestants' lifelines are Ask the Audience and two copies of Skip the Question, one can assume that only Ask the Audience would be allowed at a high enough money question, depending on if any of the Skips are still available.

Tabletop RPG

• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Golems are flat-out immune to spells that allow spell resistance unless otherwise stated, and even then, it usually either slows it or heals/hastes it. Oh, and we can't forget epic-level golems! The Mithral Golem is only DE-HASTED by an actual slow spell, and the Adamantine Golem is straight-up immune to everything (most epic monsters have a ton of immunities on their own). Even this, though, doesn't stop creative wizards who can bypass the immunities by not targeting the golem itself. Image-creating illusions like silent image (mindless creatures don't have the reasoning capacity to disregard out of hand the river dancing gnolls that just appeared), buffing the meatshield, and simply "greater invisibility"ing past them are all accepted methods to defeat golems.
  • Any wizard can bypass SR if they're properly prepared, and there's a ton of spells that ignore SR anyways. But those tricks will not affect the Golem's immunity, which works off the original text. And in 3.0, Golems were flat out immune to ANY SPELL not listed in their entry, even new invented spells.
  • Every Elder Evil is immune to a slew of status conditions and magical effects, including petrification, anything that would alter its form or reduce its ability scores, and mind control. Your wizard will not be taking one of these down in a single round with a Save-or-Suck spell.
  • Fourth Edition largely avoids this by not having a lot of potential instant-kill tricks in the first place. Elite and solo monsters will be tougher than standard ones (to say nothing of minions) and may take less damage from some attacks, but outright immunities to things player characters are likely to use often are relatively uncommon and conditions can be inflicted on these creatures as normal. Most solo monsters are immune to the "stunned" condition or have some easy way to shake it off. Since all the PCs are focusing on one monster, it would otherwise be too easy to keep the monster disabled for the whole fight.
  • In the Fourth Edition Monster Manual 3, Lolth (the evil goddess of the drow) is given updated stats (she also appears on the cover). A sidebar describes an ability that Lolth and all actual deities have called Divine Discorporation which means that they can be defeated (even by mortals, though unlikely) but very hard to actually kill. If they are in danger of dying, this ability activates automatically, reducing the god's body to an incorporeal state that cannot be harmed, which reforms into his or her true body in anywhere from a few months to a few years. The only way to truly kill a god is to somehow neutralize this ability, and it can only be done by a method unique to each deity. (The book gives three suggestions for Lolth; apparently, such a method is supposed to be some Impossible Task similar to what is needed to destroy an artifact.)
  • In 5th edition, most monsters that could be considered high-level bosses have the Legendary Resistance trait, which lets them straight up succeed on a saving throw three times a day without needing to roll for it, even if they have already failed the roll. This is generally used to make sure they can't be defeated with some simple Save or Suck spells. Constructs like golems, animated armors and similar also have the Immutable Form trait, which lets them No-Sell any attempt at transforming them.
    • Deities like Auril in Rime of the Frost Maiden takes it a step further with not only legendary resistance, but the Divine Being trait, which renders her immune to all transmutation magic and makes her instantly aware of anyone trying to attack her, no-selling ambushes.
• Feng Shui has this built into the system. Enemies are divided into two tiers: Mooks and 'Named Characters'. Named characters (which include the Player Characters, The Dragon, The Big Bad, and other bosses) have Hit Points and are resistant or flat-out immune to many effects that instantly fell Mooks.
• Paranoia gives certain NPCs "GM fiat armor" as shorthand for "beating this guy would really mess up the plot, so whatever the PCs try, contrive some excuse for it to fail". Also applied to expies of Laurel and Hardy in one adventure, just to troll the players.
• Pathfinder 2nd Edition's incapacitation trait potentially grants 'any' monster this. If you use a spell or ability with this trait on a creature of a higher level than you, its degree of success will automatically be one step higher than what it rolls. This makes is impossible for higher level creatures to suffer a critical failure effect, and heavily reduces the chance of a normal failure. However, this is usually reserved for abilities that have traditional 'save or suck' effects that heavily debilitate a monster and its ability to fight — such as stuns, removals, or spells like Baleful Polymorph and Feeblemind that essentially render a creature ineffectual — so damage spells and spells with more minor debuffs (like penalties to rolls or stats) are still fair game (and are in fact encouraged to help beat major threats). In addition, incapacitation effects still work on equal and lower level creatures, and certain creature abilities will have this trait too, making them less powerful against players if you fight them at a higher level!
• Warhammer 40,000 has the Eternal Warrior rule, which renders models with it immune to Instant Death. This basically exists to stop expensive and powerful characters from being one-shot by a lucky Lascannon hit even if their Toughness isn't that good.

Exceptions:

Action

• Played with in Batman: Arkham City. The boss battle with Ra's al Ghul features you being attacked by a whole swarm of Ra's sand clones. The Instant Takedown move does work on them; but you have to defeat each one regardless.
• Batman: Arkham Knight: Two Face's side mission concludes with you fighting him and Arkham Militia in a Predator Encounter. Unlike the last time (see above), he's treated as just another enemy. It is entirely possible to use a Fear Takedown to defeat him in the opening moments of the fight. If Detective Vision is on, you might not even realize an enemy is him.
• In Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, all the non-optional bosses are immune to the power Standstill which stops time. The one exception is Baal who is affected by it...and he's the last boss in the game.

FPS

• In Painkiller, the bosses (even the final one!) are completely vulnerable to Daniel's Demon Morph.
• Inverted in the first Quake game — Shub-Niggurath can only be harmed by a Tele-Frag.
• In DUSK, any enemy can be one hit killed with the soap, and that includes bosses.
• In Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, while Viktor Marchenko does come with a larger-than-average healthpool and a unique weapon, provided that you either sneak up on him or remove his TITAN Armor he can be incapacitated via a Takedown.

Strategy

• In Xcom 2 there is an item called a Repeater that grants you a small chance of killing any enemy, even Alien Rulers as seen here. When it first came out, you did not even need to hit the enemy, thanks to an item which turns misses into Scratch Damage — a subsequent patch made it work only on actual hits.

Role Playing Game

• Brutal Orchestra: Every boss, including the final bosses, can be given status effects and can even inflict it on themselves, although they have a chance to remove them if they have a second phase.
• In Child of Light every boss in the game is vulnerable to bad statuses like Slow and Paralyze, which can trivialize many boss fights. Moves with an instant-death chance will not trigger.
• Code Vein: Except for the final boss, all bosses are susceptible to most status effects. Venom in particular works on almost all of them, and since it does percentage based damage it's incredibly useful against bosses.
• In the Korean Roguelike Darkness Survival, bosses are affected by status-effects whether it's burning, poisoned, paralysis and etc. This is balanced by how weak and poorly equipped your heroine is, she often has difficulty against Mooks let alone the bosses (who are all essentially Damage-Sponge Boss types to her unless she does something drastic to turn the tables).
• In Demon's Souls, a surprisingly large number of bosses and mini bosses are just as susceptible to the Poison Cloud spell as any normal enemy would be, but immune to the far worse Death Cloud.
• In Dragon Quest, the Dragonlord is not immune to Sleep/Snooze, as shown in this video. However, the low hit rate for Sleep makes this Awesome, but Impractical.
• The vast majority of Final Fantasy bosses are immune to any form of instant death attacks, status effects, and 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^note 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., though.
  • In almost all games, Slow is one of few effects that reliably works on enemies and bosses, which makes it one of the overall most useful status debuffs throughout the series.
  • Odin appears in many games in the series with a One-Hit Kill attack, often called "Zantetsuken", that usually doesn't work on bosses.
    • In Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy VII, Odin can be used to kill mooks instantly, but against 'heavy-type' enemies (including most, but not all, bosses) he will perform a powerful damaging move instead.
    • Though his instant death attack can't hurt bosses in Final Fantasy VI, its upgraded form Raiden has a chance to.
    • Zantetsuken in Final Fantasy VIII occurs randomly at a battle's start and will instantly kill the enemies unfortunate enough to get in its way, but when it occurs in a boss fight against Seifer, Odin himself gets killed.
    • In Final Fantasy XIII, with Odin's Gestalt Mode, Lightning can use Zantetsuken. It does fairly low damage, but has an instant kill formula that ignores immunity to Instant Death, the effect triggers if the enemy's HP is lower than the result of the formula's solution. This of course requires quite a bit of beating first, making it a Useless Useful Spell, Cid Raines being a notable exception.
  • Surprisingly, in the original Final Fantasy, it is possible to defeat elemental fiend Tiamat simply by having a Black Wizard cast Break on her and turn her to stone. Similarly, the boss Astos is a major pain unless you cast Silence on him, making him a pushover. In addition, the final boss can be killed by casting Bane, a One-Hit Kill spell. It doesn't always work, although that's no problem since you can infinitely cast Bane using the Bane sword as an item.
  • Final Fantasy II:
    • Many bosses don't resist the Matter/Dimension element, which includes five different spells that act as instant-death when used on enemies. The actual Death element, which is exclusive to the Death spell, is a different story.
    • With a Good Bad Bug in the Famicom version, it's possible to kill the Final Boss with a Level 1 instant-death spell. (He normally absorbs all non-attack elements, playing this straight.)
  • 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. Also, while several bosses ignore or are outright immune to the Poison/Venom spell, the upgraded Bio/Virus spell works on nearly everything (it technically applies the status effect Sap instead of Poison, and almost nothing has Sap immunity). Not only is it useful against nearly every boss, one particular optional Dual Boss becomes much easier to manage with proper use of it.
  • Most bosses in Final Fantasy V have at least one weakness to a crippling status effect or instant-death type spell. (notably some instant-death attacks don't check for regular 'instant death immunity', but whether the target's a 'heavy' enemy; some bosses aren't) Additionally, you can use one of the Mix combinations to grant your characters the 'heavy' flag that gives enemies their Contractual Boss Immunity, protecting them from a wide range of nasty death attacks and status effects.
    • The Lv X Blue Magic spells that inflict status effects ignore all forms of status immunity, including 'heavy'. Combo that with a Blue Magic that can manipulate an enemy's level and...
  • There's a glitch in early versions of 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.
  • Final Fantasy VII:
    • Flying bosses tend to take half damage from Gravity spells instead of being immune to them, and Emerald Weapon apparently counts as one. While you still can't inflict more than 9999 damage in one hit, at least you have a way of reliably inflicting 9999 damage per hit for a while. Note that Emerald Weapon has 1 million HP, so even at 9999 damage per hit it'll still take a while to wear it down.
    • Its fellow Weapon, Ruby Weapon, is susceptible to paralysis. This means the player can render it unable to attack at all.
    • During the caves of the Gi area as part of the main quest, the area boss Gi Nattak is vunerable to healing magic. A Phoenix down has a 1 in 4 chance of killing the boss, while an X-Potion which heals all life will instantly kill the boss. Two such potions can be found in the caves before the boss.
  • On the other hand in Final Fantasy VIII:
    • Selphie's hard-to-perform Limit Break "The End" works on bosses, including the final boss Ultimecia (assuming she's in her final form— using The End on a multi-stage boss only kills the current form).
    • The bosses Gerogero and Abadon, being undead, can be killed simply by tossing a Phoenix Down at them.
    • No enemy is immune to the status effect Vit-0, which causes the enemy to have no physical defense, thus dramatically increasing the effectiveness of Squall's, Zell's, and Irvine's limit breaks. This includes the Optional Boss Ultima Weapon and Superboss Omega Weapon. And it's relatively easy to get provided you play the card game (the card itself is a low level one) and have the appropriate crafting skill to turn cards into magic spells.
  • Final Fantasy X:
    • Yojimbo can perform One Hit Kills on any enemy, be it random encounter, final boss (not that you need it), and all the bonus bosses with his Zanmato move. However, this requires either understanding a farcically complex mathematical formula, or giving him more than half your money.
    • Evrae Altana, the zombified sequel to an infamous boss, which can be taken down with a pair of Phoenix Downs; it's generally considered the easiest boss in the game.
  • Final Fantasy XII:
    • The International Zodiac Job System and the The Zodiac Age Updated Re-release add the fight with the five Judge Magisters as stage 100 of Trial Mode. This fight is notable in that it's pretty much designed to be won by using status ailments and debuffs, short of simply cheesing the battle by manipulating the random number generator to have obtained a large amount of an item called Dark Energy, which deals 50,000 damage to all targets. The judges are extremely fast and can heal each other with Elixirs (though not themselves). Three of them, however, are vulnerable to the status ailment Disease, which prevents all healing and which they can't heal. Another of them can be inflicted with both Sleep and Silence, while another is vulnerable to Confuse, Blind and Immmobilize, in addition to the aforementioned Disease. A typical strategy involves hitting the three that can be with Disease, then repeatedly summoning Zodiark and using its Final Eclipse, which deals 60,000 damage to all targets in range. Once those three are killed, this leaves Gabranth and Zargabaath, Zargabaath being the one who can be hit with Sleep. The player can then simply keep him asleep. Gabranth's shtick is to repeatedly whack a character with strong physical attacks, but he is vulnerable to Wither to lower his strength to the point where his damage is negligible. Once he's killed, the player can then simply deal with Zargabaath at leisure, even still keeping him asleep if they want. There are a few other bosses that can be dealt ailments, but this is the one fight where it's truly necessary.
  • Final Fantasy XIII:
    • Also, only a few bosses are immune to all debuffs. Deprotect, Deshell and Imperil are very usual vulnerabilities: Deprotect and Deshell severely reduce the enemy's defence against physical and magic attacks, while Imperil lowers elemental defenses, reduces chain resistance and makes other debuffs more likely to stick. In the sequel, they're practically required for the DLC bosses. Played straight with Pain and Fog, as all bosses are immune to them.
    • Orphan's final form is not immune to Vanille's "Death" spell. It's a Shout-Out to SaGa (where you can kill God in one hit with a chainsaw).
  • Final Fantasy XIV zig zags around the trope. For very early game content, enemies and bosses will generally be vulnerable to almost everything. By the time you reach the harder content, bosses will be immune to Stun so that you can't cheese the fight by constantly interrupting their big attacks. They'll also be immune to Bind so that they can't be immobilized.
• In Golden Sun, while bosses tend to be at least fairly resistant (but not outright immune) to status ailments inflicted by items or psynergy, status ailments inflicted by unleashing Djinn tend to bypass these much easier, if not with full accuracy. You can take down the Storm Lizard by hitting him with Bane and letting him take around 500 hp twice per turn from the Deadly Poison it inflicts, or seal Deadbeard's psynergy by hitting him with Luff and reducing him to only a basic physical attack.
• In the Mother series, bosses are generally vulnerable to at least one status ailment. Two of the most debilitating effects are paralysis (which prevents the usage of anything other then PSI attacks in the first two games) and crying (which greatly reduces the accuracy of non-PSI attacks), yet numerous bosses are susceptible to one or the other, which can trivialize an otherwise difficult fight. There are even some that are vulnerable to instant death like Thunder & Storm or the King Pig Statue.
• Bosses in Octopath Traveler and Octopath Traveler II can be affected by all manners of debuffs and status ailments, though they'll often be more resistant to the latter. Poison notably, has its effects drastically nerfed on bosses, their damage getting reduced from 10% of their max HP to 1%.
• In Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, every boss you fight after getting the Garnet Star is immune to the OHKO move Showstopper, yet all of the sub-bosses in the Palace of Shadow (Gloomtail, Shadow Sirens + Doopliss, Grodus, Bowser + Kammy) all have a very small (1-5% chance) of being OHKO'd.
• Amusingly, Zelos, the final ship battle in Skies of Arcadia, and one of the strongest bosses in the entire game, is susceptible to Sylenis, which prevents it from casting magic attacks or status effects, which make up almost all of its moves.
• Most bosses in the Tales Series are vulnerable to a few status ailments, but can't be hit with instant death in the games that have it.
  • Tales of Symphonia has All-Divides, items which cut the damage taken by both allies and enemies in half. It slows the fight down, but effectively doubles the power of all healing spells and turns even the most difficult battle into an easy (if long) one. Even That One Boss isn't immune. The Playstation remake would make Abyssian, the hardest boss in the game, immune to them.
  • Richter from Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World has an unusually specific case of this, as any attempts to hit him with Emil's Ain Soph Aur mystic arte will simply result in a No-Sell and him countering with his own Eternal Recurrence mystic arte.
  • Same goes for Asch cancelling and countering Luke's Radiant Howl with his own Rending Saber mystic arte in Tales of the Abyss. You could still pull it off though launching it while Asch is airborne as a result of a nice combo.
  • The Fodra Queen from Tales of Graces f is vulnerable to almost every status ailment in the book while in her ranged attack mode. It doesn't stop her from being insanely difficult, however.
    • On the other hand, there's the Rockgagong, who's immune to time stopping effects and can't be hit with blast calibers; two immunities no other bosses in the game possess. However, it is vulnerable to artes with the "Chance of One-Hit Kill" property, though it requires you be at level 200.
  • In Tales of Xillia 2 virtually every boss being susceptible to everything in the book save for instant death, though the duration tends to be shorter and in the case of damaging effects, they generally deal very little damage compared to normal enemies (Though there are notable exceptions). This includes even the Petrify status (Formerly available only to enemies), which makes them completely incapable of acting for a few seconds and with the right setup, you can lock them down almost indefinitely with it.
• The majority of bosses in Terraria are vulnerable to debuffs, proper use of which can make them much easier. The Destroyer is an exception, being immune to all debuffs. The Moon Lord is another exception, having a tentacle that causes the moon bite debuff, which keeps Life Drain attacks from working. If you can outrun the tentacle however, you can use them.
• In Time and Eternity, any boss (including the final boss) fought in the regular battle style can be affected by any status ailment that you can dish out using the in-game Chemistry mechanic. It's avoided in the "giant" battles simply because none of the player's attacks even inflict ailments.
• Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines: Most bosses and comparably powerful monsters suffer only a moderate amount of Hit Point damage from One-Hit Kill Disciplines like "Vision of Death" and "Blood Boil".
• In WildStar, most status effects are resisted with Interrupt Armor. As long as an enemy has a layer of interrupt armor, they're immune to status effects. However, every status-inducing attack removes a layer of interrupt armor, allowing even bosses to eventually succumb to status effects with a coordinated effort. This is a major gameplay mechanic, as hitting an enemy with a status effect while they're casting an ability will interrupt the attack, and render the enemy helpless and doubly vulnerable to damage for longer than the duration of a normal status effect. Certain enemies will occasionally have infinite interrupt armor, making them immune to being interrupted. However, they will always conveniently become vulnerable to interruption just before using a particularly nasty attack.

Other

• Brought up as a plot point in Death March to the Parallel World Rhapsody, where in one episode, Satou is trapped inside of a Labyrinth by a Demon Lord; who could only be defeated if it's killed by a Holy Sword; which Satou has. But the only ones who could wield Holy Swords are those who possess the Title of "Hero"; Which Satou doesn't have. However, Satou quickly deduces that since Demon Lords are classified as "Near God"-Tier Entities: they can be defeated alternatively by a "God-Killer" wielding a Divine Sword: Both of which Satou possesses, which he uses to vanquish the Demon Lord and coincidentally earning him the "Hero" Title as a result.
• In Breach Wanderers a Roguelike Deckbuilding game by Baronnerie Games. No one is immune to any status effect unless they have benign status effect "Purify" on and purify only protects one time per rank. So all bosses including a Final Boss can be affected by anything you throw at them. This includes the assassin Mirley's unique card Assassinate - which is a One-Hit Kill if the enemy's health is low enough (some bosses have plenty of shields and low maximum health, so these can be instantly killed otherwise you need to whittle down their health to use Assassinate).

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