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Contractual Boss Immunity
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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 him or her 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?
So when the hero throws their best punch, casts a massively destructive spell, or just plain shoots them, the villain will just laugh and dust off their armor. The justification, if one is given, is that these enemies are usually Crazy Prepared and have acquired nullifiers for the hero's abilities, or have so much raw power that the One-Hit Kill barely registers as a punch when it isn't shrugged off entirely.
The reason programmers and authors do this is for game balance and narrative issues. Where's the big climactic and fun battle if the hero just lops off the enemy's head? A hero who can send the Big Bad into the Phantom Zone, turn them to stone, cleave them limb from limb, or otherwise kill/disable them in less than a heartbeat skirts dangerously close to Boring Invincible Hero.
Basically, they do it because Reality Is Unrealistic. However, this Contractual Boss Immunity ends up resulting in Gameplay and Story Segregation that will really bug players, or worse, harm them if they put a lot of their XP into powering up these abilities. Essentially, this is what puts the "Useless" in most Useless Useful Spells, especially in RPGs.
However, averting this trope can make for a different and entertaining atmosphere. Allowing players to One-Hit Kill any enemy, Cherry Tap even the Final Boss, or characters to use the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique on Bill can be downright awesome!
As you can see, this veers in and out of Acceptable Breaks from Reality. It can be fun to kill a Final Boss with the uber attacks that are normally useless; but it can also be rather boring to do so.
Interestingly, a boss with a built-in Weaksauce Weakness can also benefit from this trope. The weakness just has nothing to do with the hero's natural strengths, much like Revive Kills Zombie allows any hero with a Healing Potion to cripple a zombie boss. Compare Contractual Immortality. The Kung-Fu Proof Mook is a, well, kung-fu-proof mook.
Compare Joker Immunity, which is when a particularly popular villain benefits from this repeatedly.
Examples:
Tabletop RPG
- In 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.
- But then any wizard can bypass SR if they're properly prepared, and there's a ton of spells that ignore SR anyways.
- There's also the psion-killer (psions basically being wizards using MP instead of Vancian Magic), a golem specifically designed, as one might infer, to kill psions (and by extension wizards/sorcerers).
- "Thrice-cursed Spell Resistance! It's almost like the universe is trying to deliberately force some form of arbitrary equality between those of us who can reshape matter with our thoughts and those who cannot."
- Fourth Edition largely averts 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.
- 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".
- 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.
Video Games: RPG
- Averted in most Might and Magic games, which don't feature climactic battles and subverted in 'Might and Magic VI', where you are told, in-game, that the final battle will require the blasters, since the final boss is resistant to almost anything and quite hard, but it's pretty much One-Hit Kill
- Averted in Pokémon. The Gym Leaders, Elite Four members, and so forth just use powered-up versions of the Pokémon you can find throughout the rest of the game, so anything that can theoretically work on another Pokémon will work on them as well.
- There is an instance where this trope is played straight in the games - read about the Mean Look/Perish Song move combination under the Pokémon section of The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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, sleep, and stun still do not work.
- 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 specialise 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.
- 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*
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.
- Surprisingly, in the original Final Fantasy I, it is possible to defeat elemental fiend Tiamat simply by having a Black Wizard cast Break on her and turn her to stone.
- 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 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.
- Averted to some extent in Final Fantasy V. L5 Death works on any monster that has a level divisible by five. Although few bosses have levels divisible by five, there are also a few spells (Black Shock and L2 Old) that can alter the target's level. Furthermore, a few bosses can be petrified (which results in instant death on enemies), and there is a spell (Break Sword) that petrifies the target with nearly 100% success rate.
- In fact, it might even be a subversion the way most bosses are weak to status effects of some type. Poison works on nearly everything, shortening boss battles. Wizards can be muted or berserked so they can no longer cast spells. With enough know-how and luck, the game can be beaten with levels in the single digits due to so many bosses having fatal flaws.
- 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.
- Odin's 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.
- On the other hand, Final Fantasy VIII also contains a notable aversion: Selphie's hard-to-perform Limit Break "The End" works on bosses, including the final boss Ultimecia. Also, the boss Abadon, being a zombie, can be killed simply by tossing a Phoenix Down at it or casting Full-Life.
- Final Fantasy X gives us Yojimbo, who 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.
- Yojimbo is actually quite a Game Breaker, if you got at least one million gil.
- Sometimes the only reliable way to defeat a boss is to Try Everything, and in the case of FFX, most bosses are susceptible to at least one status effect. For example Bio works on Seymour Flux and Zombie works on Jecht (although Elixirs and Phoenix Downs don't work on him).
- Averted in Final Fantasy XIII, Orphan's second form is vulnerable to Vanille's death spell. But it only works 1% of the time anyway.
- Averted in Final Fantasy Legend, where bosses are vulnerable to the insta-kill super-weapon due to a programming oversight. As a result, you can kill the final boss in one hit!
- To elaborate, the saw weapon was supposed to one-hit KO enemies that were significantly weaker than the player. Unfortunately, a bug in the game caused it to work on enemies much stronger than the player.
- This bug was kept when Final Fantasy Legend was remade for the WonderSwan handheld game system.
- Geno Whirl of Super Mario RPG 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.
- Adventure Quest made a marathon Bonus Boss immune to elemental-resistance-shuffling after someone figured out that they could use a class ability that dealt percentage-based fire damage, and the monster's 1275% energy weakness, to one hit kill an Eldritch Abomination. It dealt billions of damage.
- 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 Pokémon Mystery Dungeon 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.
- You can use seeds though.
- 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: Nocturne contains 5 elements for inflicting stats aliments (mind, nerve, death, expel and curse). that can all inflict various standard stats effects 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.
- 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).
- 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.
- 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.
- Inverted in Kingdom of Loathing: there's a particular item (known as the "Smurf" in the chats to avoid spoilers) which affects all enemies equally... except for the final form of the final boss. Previously you had to use it, but nowadays, as long as you're carrying it, you automatically win the fight.
- We should note that it is a weapon, that by the time you get the components for it is extremely weak. The boss fight is the only reason to make it.
- Mercifully averted (mostly) in Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City. Main bosses are still immune to Petrification and Death effects, but are still susceptible to everything else, from stun to poison to curse. The F.O.E. mini-bosses are affected by all status effects (including death and petrification) as well. Unfortunately, this is because, unless you've min-maxed your party and/or done massive level grinding, the bosses are big and bad enough to give you plenty of trouble anyway.
- Averted to the point of being pathetic in the second-rate Gamecube RPG Gladius. Every single enemy in the game was vulnerable to the instant-death effect of the Executioner Sword weapon. It only happened on 5 to 10% of the weapon's hits, but some attacks could do 5 or 6 hits in a single turn, increasing the probability significantly. It even worked on every single part of the multi-stage final boss, making the ending rather anticlimactic.
- In Dragon Age: Origins, the Archdemon leading the Darkspawn is a Darkspawn-corrupted High Dragon, but it counts as neither a darkspawn nor a dragon for the purposes of weapons that do extra damage to those creature types. However, it is NOT immune to all status effects. Hexing it is fun..
- Knights of the Old Republic somewhat averts this; the final bosses of each game have incredibly high saving throws, but afflicting them with your best force powers is still possible if you dedicate everything towards your wisdom stat. (This troper killed Kreia in two hits with Force Kill.)
- 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.
- For that matter, Random Encounter enemies are rarely, if ever, immune to status effects, and like in Shin Megami Tensei, some of these can be very difficult, such that simply going "attack, attack, attack" is little more than a way to get yourself killed.
- In Neverwinter Nights, it shows the results of the in-game die rolls on the game journal. It gets rather annoying when you see "Player casts Hold Person. Boss attempts Will save. Fail!" while the boss continues to attack.
- In most Ys games, the Big Bad is immune to the Infinity+1 Sword.
- Partially averted in the Golden Sun games. While the bosses appear to be immune to nearly all status effects, they technically aren't. They seem to be immune because of how the Luck stat works: in the Golden Sun series, Luck increases a creature's chances to resist status effects. Since every boss in the game has a Luck stat of around 50 (or higher), their resistance to these effects is extremely high. Some of the Djinn attacks are able to bypass the resistance, though (mainly the ones that work like a Silence effect).
- Used and subverted both in Super Robot Wars. The various debuff weapons will work on anything they hit, with the exception of enemies which have a special skill which protects them from the effects (like "Break Block" which negates armor debuffs). However, in at least some of the games, there is the Spirit "Fury", which lets its user disregard all special defenses (such as "Invincible", which reduces the next attack's damage down to 10) and deal their full damage and inflict any special effects on their target.
Video Games: Action
- In several Metroid games, there exists a "Speed Booster" item that acts as an instant kill to practicaly 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).
- Same thing with Screw Attack. It instakills 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 (in this cases, though, it does deal MASSIVE DAMAGE).
- In Diablo, any given monster type will generally be resistant to whatever kind of magic it happens to sling at you, logically enough. Expect unique versions to be flat-out immune. Also, Diablo himself and other such hefty bosses are immune to all kinds of magic that have an associated element.
- Inverted with the second game on the highest difficulty. Only the Big Bad bosses lack the suddenly common mook immunities save for one who is immune to poison but sports a weakness to fire. They still have heavy resistance to the damage types, at varying percentages, but are killable with technically anything you can throw at them. The HP-heavy boss of the expansion can even be One-Hit Kill defeated by a measly poison dagger stab if the skill is beefed up via perfect character twinking.
- This is the reason why the so called Hammerdin (a Paladin using the skill Blessed Hammer as his main attack) was ridiculously strong during 1.10. On Hell difficulty all mooks have at least one immunity, bosses tend to have high resistances. Blessed Hammer does Magic damage, a damage type where resistances are highly uncommon, and on top of that ignored all immunites from demons and undead. Because of this there was only ONE type of enemy in the whole game which was immune to blessed hammer, and that was a lowbie mook deep in the bowels of a rarely visited part of Act III.
- Bosses in No More Heroes are completely immune to regular attacks, unless they are struck during specific times during their attacks.
- In Cave Story, Curly Brace's Air Tank generates a bubble shield that protects her from A) drowning and B) your Missile Launcher.
- The bosses of the DLC "special stages" in Mega Man 10 are completely immune to all of the secondary boss weapons (which you automatically receive when you begin the stage). Giving them no special weakness would have been one thing, but it's irritating that you can't even access those weapons' interesting attack patterns doing normal damage.
- Actually, they are weak to each other's master weapons, (Enker beats Punk, Punk beats Ballade, Etc.) but they are indeed immune to the regular 8 bosses' attacks.
- The final boss in inFamous 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.
- In Syphon Filter 1, 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 immune to all weapons, defeating him requires using an auto-shotgun to knock him into a helicopters blades.
- The Harmonic Combos of Jade Empire don't work on boss characters.
- Partial aversion in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: the Silver Arrows do enough damage to one-shot just about any normal enemy, and a few of the bosses are not immune. Normally, however, by the time you get the Silver Arrows you would have killed those bosses already. Normally.
- Played straight in The Wind Waker, where the Light Arrows are a One-Hit Kill on any normal enemy, but they will only stun Ganondorf.
- Averted by Phantom Ganon, for whom the Light Arrows are still a One-Hit Kill. Especially satisfying considering his final attack is right after you get the item.
- Inverted in Majora's Mask with the Fierce Deity mask, which can only be used against bosses, but makes short work of pretty much all of them.
- In the Kirby games, bosses and minibosses generally cannot be inhaled, 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 "special defenses".
Video Games: Fighter
- Happens in Soul Calibur 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).
- Also, Bonus Boss Night Terror can't be defeated by a ring out (He can fly).
- Likewise, in Soul Calibur IV it's not uncommon for bosses and tougher enemies to be equipped with the Auto Grapple Break and Auto Nullify Ringout skills.
- In Guilty Gear XX AC, You can't activate an instant kill move against the final boss (believe me, you want to), partially justified as one of her favorite attacks can end with you stood right next to her for more than long enough to prepare the attack while she can do nothing.
Video Games: FPS
- In any shooter, no matter how realistic, it is almost guaranteed that a shot or explosion that would instantly kill a typical enemy will not do so to a boss, for no other reason than because he is a boss.
- Averted in Operation Flashpoint, but don't avert it too early; the final boss is General Guba and you need to take him into custody.
- The FPS Black averts this by simply not having traditional bosses. A 'boss' encounter will be a setpiece battle against superior forces, rather than a single powerful enemy.
- Most realistic shooters don't have boss enemies you can fight outside of interactive cutscenes.
- There's a boss in Counter-Strike: Condition Zero Deleted Scenes who can survive 14 shots (two whole clips) from the Desert Eagle (the gun that kills every player in 2 hits in the original mod) directly to the face.
- Towards the end of Half-Life 2, Gordon has several opportunities to take care of Dr. Breen, but he's as invulnerable as a peaceful NPC.
- However, use cheats to give yourself a weapon before Kleiner's teleporter goes nuts at the beginning of the game, and you can indeed shoot Breen dead in his office (which will force a reload).
- Firestarter gave special abilities (aka Artifacts) that gave a significant boost. You couldn't use them during boss fights, but special abilities already in use (incuding one that slows all enemies) weren't stopped.
- 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).
- On the subject of the engine, the Icon of Sin of Doom 2 is outright invincible to every weapon except the rocket launcher. INCLUDING the BFG-9000. It is only that specific boss, tohugh - you can kill the Spider Mastermind in the original game at point blank with the BFG with one shot.
- This trope is both played straight and averted in the Modern Warfare series:
- In Call Of Duty 4, Al-Asad dies after Price ties him to a chair and shoots him in the head once he gets his supplier's name. Zakahev's son goes down with one shot as well while chasing him - you shouldn't shoot him, though, because you need him alive for interrogation. Unfortunately, when you corner him, he fatally shoots himself in the head. Zakahev shows up and starts executing your squadmates at the end of the game - but he and his bodyguards go down in one shot from the .45 Price passes to you.
- In Modern Warfare 2 Makarov and his henchmen is invincible during the airport massacre. Attempting to shoot any of them will make Marakov declare "Traitor!" and kill you. As well, shooting Shepard at the start of the game will result in a friendly-fire game over. When you face him at the end of the game, he counters all your attacks until you kill him with a knife yanked from your own chest.
- 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.
- 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.
- Sanchez, the first boss-type enemy in Soldier of Fortune II, is immune to bullets and can only be killed by electrocution.
- Dead Island averts it with the Warlord Afran. He wears body armor and a bullet-proof faceplate, making him immune to the otherwise one-hit kill of headshots other mooks are and to instant death via dismemberment. He is still, however, capable of being one-hit killed by a close proximity grenade.
Video Games: Strategy
- Command & Conquer plays this straight; in the GDI campaign, you can't one shot the temple of Nod with the Ion Cannon. The rest of the series made 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 were fair game.
- The Core Defender in Tiberian Sun: FireStorm didn't have anti-air; or if it did, it wasn't very effective.
- The game had a curious glitch in the GDI portion of the game. While a single Ion Cannon blast won't destroy CABAL's core, 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.
- Starcraft Broodwar had the Zerg turn against the Protoss and Terran allies. The named characters had much more hitpoints than normal, but were still vulnerable to one-hit kills.
- In Starcraft 2 Kerrigan will loose not more than 10 Hit Points from any attack. Yes, even from a nuclear blast. The Immortals (protoss units) have a similar feature for their shields, so both can be countered with large quantities of small-arms units (bunkered Marines, for example).
- 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. (Does this go here or under RPG?)
- 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 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.
Video Games: Shooters
- Some games, usually on-rails shooters like Starfox, have area-effect attacks designed to destroy all on-screen enemies, but will only significantly damage bosses.
- This generally applies to most Shoot 'Em Ups; bombs usually inflict minor damage against the boss, but at least clear the screen of bullets.
- Averted to a point in Touhou Eiyashou ~ Imperishable Night. The normal bomb attack inflicts minor damage, but the retaliatory bomb inflicts heavy damage...except on the Extra boss, or when bombing is disabled.
- It's very common for Bullet Hell shooters to have the Bonus 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 notable aversion is Hibachi in Dodonpachi DaiOuJou, which is immune to bombs, but not immune to your ship's Hyper mode.
- Another aversion due to the game mechanics is Marisa in Fairy Wars - Perfect Freeze (Cirno's bomb equivalent) will damage her just like anything else through the freezing.
- 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.
- Averted hard in Mass Effect 2. The MP-920 Cain, a railgun that is often mistaken (with good reason) for a nuke launcher, can be used to do massive damage to the Thresher Maw and the Human Reaper. It can't one-hit kill either on normal and above, but it does do the proportion of damage that would be expected. It may work on the Colossus as well, I've never tried it.
Video Games: Stealth
- 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.")
- And averted in the original Assassin's Creed, where, with the right timing, you can counter the final boss's first attack with the Hidden Blade, instantly killing him and avoiding all of his tricks.
- In Metal Gear Solid, you can't break bosses' necks, nor can you slit their throats, and the KO is just minor incapacitation.
- Aversion in MGS3: In one scene featuring The End, well before the actual boss battle, it is possible for a quick and prepared player to pick him off with a sniper rifle.
- In Metal Gear 2 : Solid Snake, you have to defeat a normal scientist who has no super powers or attacks for that matter with landmines and/or remote controlled missiles. Many of them.
- Also in Metal Gear 2 after you destroy Metal Gear, its pilot, Gray Fox, will stand completely unharmed in front of you, while you are burning without any reason as to why you are burning.
- Possibly or partially applies to Hitman 2. Even though he can die in only a few hits, you can't surprise him, and he can very quickly use his quick-kill attack before you can use yours.
- Averted in Tenchu:Return From Darkness. Ayame and Rikimaru's ultimate attack, called Wrath of Heaven, is a one-hit kill attack that works on every enemy, including bosses all the way to the Final Boss himself. The downside is that it drains your HP to 1, so you'd best hope they don't one-shot you while you're charging forward.
- Splinter Cell both plays this straight and averts this in Double Agent. In the fight with Emile Dufraisne, Sam's position is always known by Emile and so he is immune to stealthy approaches. However, Dufraisne is still vulnerable to frag grenades and flash bangs, making the fight easy if enough of these were spared for it.
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