Elemental Rock Paper Scissors - Television Tropes & Idioms

Kingdom Of Loathing's elements are...different.

If there's one thing I know, it's water beats fire. But grass beats water, and fire beats grass. Good God, it's like a never-ending circle!

-Daichi, Yu-Gi-Oh GX The Abridged Series

Many video games (and anime set in a Role Playing Game Verse) use traditional magical "elements" to assign and define the powers of various characters. Energy for attacks or defense are based on these elements, and thus subject to the differing strengths and weaknesses.

There are two primary systems:

Western (European). Usually diagrammed as a square or an equal-armed cross. Elements opposite each other are "hostile", and those adjacent are "friendly". The four elements, in sequence, are:

Earth
Water
Air
Fire

Some systems of Western magic, most notably Wicca, also include Spirit as an element, and use a pentagram (five-pointed star) instead of a square/cross diagram. The native Japanese system also uses these four plus Void, but elemental usage in Japanese media varies widely.

Eastern (Asian) has five elements, called "Wu Xing", which appear in Taoist philosophy, the I-Ching, and Asian alchemy, among other traditions. They are:

Earth
Fire
Water
Wood
Metal

Unlike the Western elements, the Eastern elements are not in a static arrangement of opposition and alliance, but define a process or cycle that runs along a five-pointed star (and may well have influenced those European systems that also employ five elements). See here

◊.

The name of this trope comes from the tendency for each element, regardless of originating magical system, to be strong against some of the other elements, and weak against others. Which is which greatly depends on the individual universe and the system(s) from which the alchemical symbolism was lifted. And often, the interpretation of an element either in or out of context can change its attributes or purposes. (As can the needs of the story!) The complexity of the system gets really fun when you come up with a coexisting "antimatter" set of elements directly opposed to the normal ones.

Some elements may have attributes strong or weak against something not necessarily primal.

Common strengths/weaknesses often include (but are not limited to):

Fire — usually strong against wood, ice, or the undead. Weak to water.
Ice — strong against fire, except in cases where it's weak against fire. The rule of thumb is pretty much "If water is a separate element, then fire will be weak against water, but strong against ice. If water isn't a separate element, then fire will be weak against ice." Fire and Ice will also often be conflicting, like Light and Dark mentioned below.
Electricity — usually strong against water, but otherwise benign against fire and ice. May be weak or strong against machines.
- Electricity can be viewed as divine. Divine electricity shares traits with Light, and also works against undead, the latter does not.
Water — usually strong against fire, weak to electricity or wood/grass.
Light and Dark are conflicting forces. They are strong against each other as attacks, and weak as defense.

Elements are almost always immune or resistant to themselves; and sometimes even heal the entity in question. Using fire against fire, for example, rarely works. Except when it does. However if there are Non Elemental powers, they sit in the corner and wonder why no one wants to hang out with them.

Compare Tactical Rock Paper Scissors. May result in a Shapeshifter Showdown. Not to be confused with Fire Ice Lightning, which is only sometimes a case of Elemental RPS.

Examples

Anime

The assignment of magical powers and Senshi names in Sailor Moon comes from a mix of European and Chinese astrology and alchemy that sometimes seems almost random. (Mercury gets fresh-water ice powers from Asian symbolism, while Neptune gets ocean-themed water powers from Western... Meanwhile, Jupiter gets powers from both sides, with an elemental affiliation to Wood that shows up in later seasons and manga issues, but she started out with lightning powers from her Roman god namesake)
Naruto has this in their elemental jutsus. It's a somewhat different cycle though (element points to one it beats) Fire—>Wind—>Lightning—>Earth—>Water—>Fire.) Also, this only appears to apply to the effect of jutsu on each other, not with regular materials.
In One Piece, a number of occasions show up that set two Devil Fruits against each other with surprising, yet still logical, outcomes. For a few examples, the abilities of 'Fire Fist' Ace and Commodore Smoker canceled each other out, the supposedly godlike abilities of Enel were completely canceled out by the allegedly weak powers of Luffy, and the previously unbeatable poison-based powers of Magellan were easily blocked by the considerably weaker wax powers of Mr. 3.
- At least until Magellan made an even stronger poison.
  - As of Chapter 573, we have learned that Magma has an advantage over regular Fire.
In Bleach, when Harribel reveals her water abilities, Hitsugaya proudly declares that he wins at Elemental Rock Paper Scissors: No mater how much water she throws at him, he can just turn it into ice and use it against her. Harribel reveals its really more of a tie, because she can attack with HOT water, allowing her to turn his ice into water and use it against him. Then Hitsugaya seems to re-negate that water and prepares to finish the duel by... using more ice.
Interestingly, the five Gundam Wing Gundams were each given an elemental association in the design phase: Deathscythe is Wind, Heavyarms is Fire, Sandrock is Earth, and Shenlong is Water. Wing is unmentioned, but as the "unifying" aspect of the team as well as the only dedicated flyer, probably represents Void.
The original Mew Mews symbolise the four basic Western elements (Mint = Air, Lettuce/Retasu = Water, Pudding/Purin = Earth and Zakuro = Fire) with Ichigo symbolising Light.
An episode of the Toei Yu Gi Oh animé had Yami Yugi playing a magical game where he and his opponent controlled dragons that represented the five Eastern elements. A bit more complex than most examples, since the dragons not only had dominance against other elements; they could also be joined with complementary elements to gain more strength, like in the Chinese philosophy of the five elements.

ComicBooks

The Fantastic Four have often been compared to the four Western elements:
- Mr. Fantastic: Water (powers of flexibility)
- Invisible Woman: Air (powers of invisibility)
- The Human Torch: Fire (powers of... well, obviously)
- The Thing: Earth (He's essentially a man made out of rock).
- In the Ultimate Universe, Dr. Doom gets in on this as well; his element is Metal. Which, considering that Ultimate Doom has actually transformed into a nigh-invulnerable creature of living steel and isn't just a guy in a suit of armor, is quite appropriate.
Various Marvel Comics heroes have used this trope at several points to defeat certain enemies, most often villains who either transform themselves into some giant elemental-type creature or otherwise use a certain type of energy in their powers.
- Spider-Man villains Electro, Sandman and Hydro-Man have all been defeated by being doused with water and/or some chemical compound that negatively affects them, like wet cement.
- The Incredible Hulk has defeated some of his opponents this way, such as by spraying the villainess Vapor with oxygen when she had transformed herself into hydrogen, effectively turning her into water (which should have required burning it), or by beating X-Ray (a living field of radiation) with a lead pipe, which disrupts his radioactive body.
  - This is much more more fun if you realize that pure oxygen and pure hydrogen tend to explode when combined.
  - Vapor and X-Ray were both members of the U-Foes, a group of villains who tried to get superpowers by copying Reed Richards' flawed space flight. They ended up as direct analogues of the Fantastic Four (but evil, and therefore punchable), making them Elementals twice removed.

Literature

Magic in Kaze No Stigma is divided into the four element set, each with its area of expertise. Fire is good at raw power and purification. Wind is good at reconnaissance and concealment. Earth can detect people touching the ground and cause earthquakes. No one cares about water. Fire mages can't be harmed by fire and can even stand on lava.
In one of Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, a literal game of Elemental Rock Paper Scissors and different interpretations lead to the death of a person. In this case According to the Dragon: Sand smothers fire, fire boils water, and water covers sand; while according to the merman: Fire melts sand, sand displaces water, water douses fire.
In Codex Alera, its less rock paper scissors and more three pairs of opposing elements: Fire vs Water, Air vs Earth, and Wood vs Metal. Keeping a craftsman with only an Earth Fury suspended in mid-air saps their powers, burying an Aircrafter saps theirs, dunking a Firecrafter in water or surrounding a Watercrafter with fire will cancel them out, and putting a Woodcrafter in a metal box will cancel out theirs. It's never seen, but it can be assumed that stuffing a Metalcrafter into a wooden crate would drain their powers. An exceptional craftsman can have multiple elemental pet Furies of varying types, though, which makes keeping them prisoner or nullifying them much more difficult.

TabletopGames

The Time Travel-laden 'Verse shared by the Feng Shui Tabletop Games and Shadowfist card game also uses this variation. Coincidentally, the most significant "boss" NPC associated with the Shadow element also becomes a technological cyborg when travelling into eras that won't support her magic.
While rarely used, this type of roshambo game exists in the Yu-Gi-Oh card game (and is more prevalent in some of the video games based on it), with certain monster Attributes (based on the four classical elements, along with Light and Dark) or monster types able to easily counter other types, or gain abilities from card effects that deal with like types/attributes.
- The most perfect example of the "rock, paper, scissors" game appears as a duel mechanic in the game Yu-Gi-Oh: The Sacred Cards, where a monster that battles one with a type that's directly stronger than it is destroyed automatically, without dealing any damage to the destroyed monster's controller (a major source of frustration for the player, in a game where dealing damage to the opponent's life points is the primary way of winning the game).
Battle Beasts had a similar gimmick, though initially, there were only three elements: Fire, Water, and Wood, in order of weakness. A fourth element was introduced later called the Sunburst that trumped the other three, but was so incredibly rare to find it might as well have been nonexistent.
In Dungeons & Dragons, there are four (or six, if one so likes) elements making up the Inner Planes (and as such apparently being the basic building blocks of the Multiverse). These are the four Western elements (plus Positive and Negative energy, representing life & dynamism contra (un)death & entropy). At its most extreme in the 2nd Edition of AD&D (most prominently in the setting Planescape) this was taken a step further to having the places where the various elemental planes met consist of para-elemental planes (where two elements touched) and positive or negative quasi-elemental planes (where an energy plane touched one of the four primary elemental planes).
- The para-elemental planes were:
  - Ice (Air & Water)
  - Magma (Fire & Earth)
  - Ooze (Earth & Water, and about as pleasant as it sounds)
  - Smoke (Fire & Air)
- The positive quasi-elemental planes were:
  - Lightning (charged Air)
  - Mineral (charged Earth)
  - Radiance (charged Fire, took the form of blinding light)
  - Steam (charged Water, counterintuitively it was cold and clammy rather than hot)
- The negative quasi-elemental planes were:
  - Ash (entropic Fire)
  - Dust (entropic Earth)
  - Salt (entropic Water, took the form of salt water, not the salt you dine with)
  - Vacuum (entropic Air)
- At least one fansite has speculated about quasi-para-elemental planes (the interaction of Ooze and Positive Energy, for instance produced Clay, while the negative counterpart was Silt).
- In D&D Minis, some attacks had an elemental damage type; resistance or immunity to that type would reduce or prevent said damage (e.g. Red Dragons being immune to fire-type damage). However, vulnerability would double the damage instead, such as casting a Fireball on a White Dragon.
Rolemaster (ICE) has an Elemental book with, if I can remember them all, fire, water, light, heat, earth, cold, dark, chaos, nexus (space), time, maybe electricity, air, wind (heat + air = wind), maybe spirit. I feel like I'm forgetting something.
Magic The Gathering has a stylized version of this trope: The game has five colors, and each color has two enemies, the colors across from them in the "Magic Color Wheel". In wheel order, the colors are: White, Blue, Black, Red, and Green. Thus, White's enemies are Black and Red, and so on. Neighboring allied colors tend to have similar play styles and share strengths (red and black are great at killing creatures, for example), while often having the direct opposite effects of their enemies (white likes to prevent damage, red likes causing it). Enemy colors can also share common ground, but in a much more limited manner. Likewise, characters in the multiverse can have allies of opposing colors, and differences in color aren't enough to totally break up Lorwyn's beauty-obsessed elves, whose race sports green and black members, or the white and red giants who oscillate between being extremely zen and extremely passionate. In game, some cards have no color (lands and artifacts) or multiple colors (fairly few). Colors are associated with specific types of cards and effects:
- Black (death, night, amorality): Black employs spells and abilities which are designed to degrade enemy creatures and whittle down enemy health points. This usually comes at a cost to your own health/creatures but is offset by a satisfactory pay off.
- Blue (water, deception, intelligence): Blue magic tends to be centered around counter spells and complicated alterations that are designed to affect the flow of the game. Blue also has the highest average number of flying creatures, though they are generally not well suited for direct combat and instead usually employ abilities which can deal damage indirectly or affect the flow of the game.
- White (light, valor, order): White magic endears itself to game play that either revolves around numerous weak creatures all attacking at once or a few powerful champions which can be further augmented through various enchantments. White is also partial towards life restoring magic and spells which can prevent your opponent from doing damage to you or your creatures.
- Green (life, nature, raw power) Green likes focusing on big and powerful creatures to attack opponents and stomp out enemy creatures. Its magic leans towards buffing up creatures and altering/gathering resources.
- Red (fire, destruction, chaos): Red is the most offensive color, dealing with magic and creatures which focus on doing direct damage to players and creatures. Their magic also has a penchant for destroying enemy artifacts and lands.
  - Each color also has defining weaknesses. Blue can stop spells before they even happen, but afterwards they have limited options. Black struggles to deal with things that don't live - artifacts, enchantments, and other black creatures. Red can smash physical things, but can't deal with enchantments, and has to burn down creatures with damage, so they have trouble with big creatures. Green's only way of dealing with creatures is creature-on-creature combat. White can deal with almost any threat, but only partially; white removal either gives its opponent a way out, or makes an "equal" trade by destroying a broad class of things, including the White player's.
Master of Magic adapts the same colours as Magic The Gathering with a similar differentiation of available spells.
In the table top roleplaying game Exalted, there are five elements in creation, a combination of Western and Eastern, each associated with an elemental pole that effects the geography and condition of the area around it: Fire (South, a vast desert), Water (West, an endless ocean), Earth (Center, the tallest mountain in Creation), Air (North, a frozen plain), and Wood (East, a dense forest). In addition, the Underworld, while not having elemental poles, contains five "Corpse Elements," which are memories of the corporal elements, each having its analogue: Pyre Flame (Fire), Blood (Water), Bone (Earth), Ash (Wood) and Prayer (Air). Finally, the Primordial machine-god Autochthon's body has its own elemental poles, five of which also correspond to the elements in Creation: Lightning (Fire), Oil (Water), Metal (Earth), Steam (Air) and Crystal (Wood). Autochthon's sixth pole, Smoke, has no Creation analogue.
Steve Jackson Games' Illuminati! has players (various illuminati-level Chessmaster factions) vying for control of various groups of varying levels of oddness such as the Postal Service, the FBI, the KKK and Goldfish Fanciers, making these attempts either directly or through other groups they control. Groups have zero to three alignments, except for one group which has five. Most alignments are opposed to one other alignment, such as "Liberal" and "Conservative", "Government" and "Communist". "Criminal" has no opposition, and "Fanatic" is opposed to itself. To make the system more complex, trying to Control or Neutralize a group means attacks get a bonus when alignments match (except Fanatic) and a penalty when they oppose; attempting to Destroy (permanently remove) a group reverses the penalties and bonuses from alignment. Thankfully, players' core Illuminati groups themselves have no alignments.
Yu-Gi-Oh has six attributes: Fire, Water, Earth, Wind, Light and Dark, however, none of them have any innate effectiveness against the other beyond some support card effects, although those usually pair off opposing attributes rather than interlock all 6 (A card that powers up Fire Attributes and weakens Water attributes will have a counterpart that does the opposite).

Video Games

Final Fantasy is probably the most famous example, with its Fire Ice Lightning spells beating ice, fire and water enemies. The most common arrangement is to have eight elements: Fire, Ice, Lightning, Air, Water, Earth, Holy, and Darkness; Fire melts Ice freezes Water puts out Fire; Lightning electrocutes Water; flying monsters, if not Air-elemental themselves, are untouched by Earth spells but battered by Air magic; undead are Shadow and hence weak to Holy (including most forms of healing magic - though not all monsters who are weak to Holy take damage from healing effects).
- Despite the fact that most of these elements show up in every game, due to the Fire Ice Lightning nature of the Black Magic spell system, some of these elements are quite difficult to access. For example, Water, Earth, and Wind spells are often completely unavailable to most of your party, or only available in the form of one summon or the occasional elemental-based weapon, while Holy and Shadow damage spells are often unavailable until the end of the game.
- Confusingly, in Final Fantasy X Ice is weak versus Fire and Water is weak versus Lightning. Those were the only four elements in the game (except for Holy, but there is only one Holy damage spell, and monsters who are weak to it are so rare that Holy does not show up on the Weak/Resistant/Immune/Absorb grid that Scan and Sensor show you), so maybe it's understandable when they made each element weak versus its opposite. Even so, why is Lightning weak versus Water, again?
  - Water's being effective against electricity is also notable in earlier games, including Final Fantasy VI, Final Fantasy VII, or Final Fantasy IX, where machines or other monsters that use electricity could be shorted out by water.
  - Note that in the Final Fantasy series, there are no actual elemental weaknesses or strengths, but instead weaknesses and strengths are determined by the enemy. Making it easier to, for example, make an enemy with weaknesses to everything instead of giving it one particular element.
- In Final Fantasy XI there is an elemental wheel with NPCs that explain how it works: "Water quenches Fire, Fire melts Ice, Ice blocks Wind, Wind erodes Earth, Earth absorbs Thunder, and Thunder boils Water. Light and Dark are in perpetual opposition because nothing can be both Light and Dark at the same time." Sadly, despite this explanation, the actual effects of elemental weaknesses are so slim that they're easily overridden by the level a spell is obtained:
  - The first rule of being a Black Mage in Final Fantasy XI is to know this wheel. When preparing an attack, you then must observe the element of the day, the weather, the moon phase, know what skill chain is going to be used, and the elemental weakness and strengths of the mob that you are fighting; then nuke with your strongest Thunder-based spell.
The console RPG Chrono Trigger uses a Fire → Lightning (divine form) → Water (including ice) → Shadow wheel. One quirk was that futuristic technology was always considered "Shadow" — including various laser attacks used by the robotic PC. Another was that combining different types of elemental damage always results in shadow damage. The DS remake clarifies things: Lightning is renamed to simply "Light", so the elements are Fire, Water, Light and Shadow. This does make the lasers being Shadow even more confusing, however, given that lasers are, you know, made of light. The mixing of elements is also explained: Light element is purity, while Shadow element is the opposite. Mixing more than one element results in an "impure" mix, resulting in shadow damage.
- It might be worth noting that in the original Japanese, the lightning element was always represented with the kanji for the heavens, hence why Chrono got both the lightning-type Thunder spells and the light-based Shining (Luminaire).
- "Thunder stun all dinosaur! You know?"
- Interestingly, there are several in game examples where Elemental Rock Paper Scissors is replaced by "Fight Fire with Fire." The different-colored Scouts in the Ocean Palace absorb all elements besides the one they use. When you fight Magus, he also uses Elemental Shields which absorb all elements except the corresponding one.
  - That is because he always use the one element that can get out of his barrier.
- The use of the Shadow element in futuristic (and Magus') attacks might be justified by the fact that both of the characters who use it come from a(n eventually) dead world.
- The sequel, Chrono Cross is a bit weirder about it. Its elements (called innates, while "elements" are spells) are white (holy/energy) versus black (shadow/gravity), red (fire/magma) versus blue (water/ice), and green (wind/plant) versus yellow (earth/lightning). All are strong against their opposite when attacking. What this usually meant was that rather than always using characters that were the opposite of the enemy's Innate, it was usually better to have one of the opposite, for damaging, and one of the same, who could easily survive if an enemy or boss suddenly let loose with a devastating attack.
  - Not to mention having two characters with the same innate is a bad idea when going up against bosses of the opposite, especially that bastard Miguel
Pokémon frequently brings this up in both the games and the anime, with seventeen elements as of the latest games in the series, often in combinations of two. Most obvious in the three possible choices of "starter" Pokémon in each game, which are just the right types (Fire, Grass, and Water) that each Pokémon's type beats one of the others and is weak to the other one, just like Rock-Paper-Scissors. Naturally, the rival character will invariably pick the one strong against your starter.
- Of course, in the anime, Ash can use electric attacks against established ground-based enemies all he wants. These same Pokémon will take no damage from electric attacks in the games.
- If your Pokémon is of high enough level compared to its opponents, their resistances to its element-based attacks won't save them from getting KO'ed in one hit. It's funny to see the message "It's not very effective..." when the opponent's life bar has just gone from full to empty.
  - And the opposite, "It's super effective!" and it only takes out a couple of points.
  - In the case of a "not very effective" hit taking out a Pokemon that should resist it, I remember Pokemon Stadium actually referencing it whenever it happened. The example that comes to mind is, in the tournament where you can only use unevolved Level 30 Pokemon, there is a Geodude that can always be OHKOed by the rental Vulpix using Fire Blast. The announcer would exclaim "Amazing! The Type disadvantage had no effect!!". For some reason, that one always stuck with me.
  - The level difference can be ignored in above mentioned case, since it doesn't matter. The ground type negates any electric attack and multiplies its damage with zero. So there's no difference if your attack would inflict a damage of 2 or 20000 normally: the result of electric versus ground is always zero.
- The latest title has Infernape (Chimchar stage 2) and Torterra (Turtwig stage 2) gain a secondary type upon evolution that aids them against the one their primary type is weak to (Infernape's Fighting-type is good against Empoleon's Steel, and Torterra's Ground-type is good against Infernape's Fire). Empoleon kind of gets the short end, in that Steel moves aren't great against Grass or Ground (Torterra). It does get a consolation prize, in that it can learn Ice-type attacks from a TM at any stage, which do Quad Damage to Torterra. Gaining the Steel type removes its Grass weakness, but on the other hand it adds a weakness to Ground.
  - On the other other hand, while Steels a terrible attacking type, it's got resistances out the ass...
- In FireRed and LeafGreen, this is parodied in the Teachy TV's tutorial on Pokémon types, when the Poké Dude interrupts his usual ending speech to say that he's a "cool-type", and compatible with "awesome-type" kids.
How can you forget Luigis Mansion? That game had the Poltergust 3000 able to suck up "elemental ghosts" after collecting a Fire, Water, or Ice medal (in that order). You suck up a certain elemental ghosts, and press L to expell that element. The mansion had candles, things that held water, and some iceboxes. Guess what did what.
In Quest for Glory II, you use fire to beat an earth elemental, earth to beat an air elemental, air to beat a water elemental, and water to beat a fire elemental.
The Shin Megami Tensei games have all featured the elemental Roshambeau concept. Individual demons may be weak, resistant, or some degree of immune to the 4 elements (8 in some games) and the 3 (or more) types of weapon damage; there's also the Almighty damage type, which nobody is ever strong or weak against.
- In addition to extra damage, recent games in the series award extra combat actions to the player for exploiting enemy elemental weaknesses, and penalize actions for hitting monsters with elements they're immune to.
- Except in Digital Devil Saga, where the final boss of part 1 resists Almighty.
- As does the secret boss in Nocturne unless you have pierce.
- The Elemental Rock Paper Scissors system is key to getting though the Nintendo Hard gameplay, especially in games like Persona. Not only must you alter your attack strategy to exploit your enemies weaknesses, you can also alter your own weaknesses mid-battle, which you must do if you wish to survive.
- ugh this troper remembers this one situation in Persona 3...Ally uses an Ice attack when their persona is weak to ice...then the enemy reflects it and they get knocked down. DOH.
Spoofed in the browser-based MMORPG Kingdom Of Loathing, which features a set of five rather ridiculous elements: hot, cold, stench, sleaze, and spookiness. Each "element" is weak against two of the others, with little logic to those weaknesses (spooky-elemental monsters, for example, are weak against hot and stench attacks).
- Think of Hot and Cold as being more like sexually attractive and cool. This nicely explains everything.
  - Well, the interesting thing is that "sleaze" seems to be defined as "oily" half the time. Bacon grease, motor oil, even a rotting fish (though that rather obviously also deals stench damage).
- The KoL element chart looks rather similar to that of Wu Xing, noted at the top of the page. Granted, some of the elements aren't in their strictly original positions, but the same general shape applies.
Exemplified in the Suikoden series of games — particularly in Suikoden II, where using two highest-rank spells of compatible element in the same round would result in them combining into a single ultra-powerful spell, and in Suikoden IV, where shipboard sea-battles are fought using Elemental Cannons. Countering an enemy attack with the appropriate element would result in the enemy's attack being absorbed into your own, thus dealing damage to the enemy ship equal to each ship's attack power combined.
- In Suikoden Tactics (also called Rhapsodia), the elemental wheel is more strongly emphasized, with each character having an innate elemental alignment. Characters are healed (and their attack and defense go up)when standing on terrain whose alignment matches their own, and are harmed (and attack and defense go down) when on their "enemy" element. The chain goes: Fire < Water < Lightning < Earth < Wind < Fire. While some of the relationships make sense (Water/Fire/Lightning) some are more esoteric and seem to rely on science (earth being a ground for lightning/fire burning up oxygen). Although this troper still doesn't understand why Wind beats Earth.
Lucas Arts's turn-based-strategy Gladius had a size-based example of this: where Heavies had an advantage over Mediums, Mediums over Lights and Lights over Heavies. There was also a fourth class, Animals, which did have an unlisted size but had to obey a second set of rules on top of that size. As well, each gladiator did, indeed, have earth, air, fire, or water-aspected powers, for a more traditional take on the trope.
- Battles of Prince of Persia also had a size triangle. Large > Medium > Small > Large. It also featured triangles based on weapon types, much like Fire Emblem.
The Fire Emblem series features a Rock Paper Scissors triangle in their magic and weapon classes. Anima beats light, light beats dark, and dark beats anima. Lances beat swords, swords beat axes and axes beat lances. Conversely, there are weapons in the series such as the lancereaver, which is a sword, but reverses the FE weapon triangle, as it is effective against lances, but weak to axes. If your weapon outclasses another, it will receive a strength and accuracy bonus.
- In FE 9 and 10, there are thunder, fire, and wind spells that form a triangle (these are all part of anima in the other games). FE 10 took the trope to a new level by having another triangle for light, dark, and anima, and within anima another triangle of fire, thunder and wind.
  - Never mind the fact that, in FE 10, there were maybe ten users of Dark magic. And Micaiah (light-wielding maiden who was also one of the main characters of the game) faced precisely zero of these.
  - The Thunder/Fire/Wind triangle from FE 9 was originally present in FE 4 and 5; the Anima/Light/Dark triangle replaced it in the GBA games.
Capcom likes this. Mega Man Zero and Mega Man ZX have a triangle of Fire beats Ice beats Lightning beats Fire - and of course, bosses usually come in fours, one of each and one of a neutral (sometimes earth or plant themed, but never affected by the cycle) variety. Mega Man Battle Network also has a Fire>Wood>Elec>Water cycle, supplemented (in the sixth game only) with a secondary Sword>Wind>Targeting>Breaking cycle. The primary cycle was held into Mega Man Star Force; the secondary cycle was never heard from again.
- Oddly, the game Mega Man X Command Mission has a triangle of Fire beats Lightning beats Water. What's odd is that this game treats ice as Water, and the Mega Man Zero series treats water as Ice, so at some point between the X series and the Zero series, the triangle inexplicably reversed itself.
The old (Game Boy/SNES) series of Little Master SRPGs embodied this trope by featuring a three-element system, consisting of — wait for it — Rock, Paper and Scissors. Yes, really.
In Guild Wars, the elementalist profession has the four classical elemental disciplines to draw its spells from. Typically, earth has strong defenses, air does heavy lightning damage to individuals and small groups, water slows and inhibits your enemies, and fire does widespread damage to large groups. Unlike some other models, there's not as much opposition between the elements though. For example, one water spell causes increased damage and blindness to an enemy set on fire, while an earth spell renders a character nearly immobile, but immune to all but lightning damage.
- Some enemies do take more or less damage from some damage types, but overall the difference is minor. Rangers also have a bonus +30 armor to elemental damage
  - Destroyers are an exception, in that they're immune to the Burning condition
In The Elder Scrolls, the elements are Fire, Frost, Shock (the three most prominent and obvious ones), Poison (sort of), and normal Magicka.
- Every magical effect is considered to be Magicka, even if it is also fire or frost. So being vulnerable or able to resist magicka allows one to resist most magical effects, even if they have their own elements.
- The Elder Scrolls games haven't really employed Elemental Rock Paper Scissors that much, except with respective Daedra, atronaches (Daggerfall), and golems (Arena). All but two races experience at least one natural resistance but this is typically negligible during normal gameplay, unless it is the general resistance to magic type.
Golden Sun is an interesting case. It has only four elements (Earth, Water, Wind, and Fire) and each one is both strong and weak against its opposite. For example, a fire enemy is weak against water attacks, but a water enemy is also weak against fire attacks.
- Which is fairly straightforward given that Golden Sun's Elemental Rock Paper Scissors is based around opposites rather than a fixed cycle — the only way it gets mixed around is with the resistances to adjacent elements — some Fire enemies will resist Earth more than Wind, some the other way around. What's really confusing, though, is that the default classes your characters are given don't quite fit this; your Mars (Fire) Adepts are weak to Venus (Earth) attacks and vice versa, and the same for your Jupiter (Wind) and Mercury (Water) Adepts. This is never explained.
The combat for Arcana on the Super NES was centered on the idea of elemental strengths and weaknesses. Several spells either affected an element onto the target, changed the target to a given elemental alignment, or even combined several elements together to make spells that could affect multiple weaknesses; these were strangely given the name "Attribute X", with the X being the power level of the spell. The game based not only its gameplay but its world mythology around the interplay of the four elements. It also subverted some of the typical expectations of Elemental Rock Paper Scissors, as each element was either strong or weak against the element next to it in the sequence, and was neither strong or weak against itself. Earth-elemental attacks, for example, were weak against Wind-elemental enemies but did a lot of damage against Water elementals, while being neither strong nor weak against Earth- and Fire-elemental enemies.
The Legend Of Dragoon's cast of characters are all of a specific elemental alignment — Dart for Fire, Lavitz/Albert for Wind, Shana/Miranda for Light, Rose for Darkness, Haschel for Lightning, Meru for Water, and Kongol for Earth. Note that all elements except Lightning follow the Light/Darkness opposition scheme (Fire and Water being strong against one another and so forth), with Lightning's lack of an opposite mitigated by its lack of heavy-hitting skills.
- There's also a neutral element, mostly possessed by enemies. I believe Dart has this in his Divine Dragoon form
Zan Zarah has a total of twelve elements, complete with a complex relationship table: Nature, Air, Water, Light, Energy, Psi, Stone, Ice, Fire, Darkness, Chaos, and Metal.
Lords of Magic has 8 elements representing 8 factions in an all-out war. They were:
- Order: Knights, civilization.
- Chaos: Barbarians, shamanism.
- Fire: Giants, destruction.
- Life: Elves, nature.
- Air: Fairies, weather.
- Death: Mercenaries, necromancy.
- Earth: Dwarves, tradition.
- Water: Merfolk, amazons?
Dinosaur King is quite literally Elemental Rock Paper Scissors; it has six elements which roughly correspond to a dinosaur type, and two which don't: Fire (mostly tyrannosaurids and some carnosaurs), Electric (ceratopsians), Grass (mostly hadrosaurs), Earth (ankylosaurs and stegosaurs), Water (sauropods and a few spinosaurs), Wind (a theropod grab bag), Secret and Unknown as the element types, but the way to determine a battle's outcome is a rock-paper-scissors affair.
In Jump Super Stars, power beats knowledge beats laughter beats power.
The game Kartia had a variant using the "qualities" of creatures you could summon, which were Common, Doll, and Shadow. Common beats Doll, et cetera. For those who couldn't keep the dynamic straight, these creatures also had a symbol by their name: rock, paper, or scissors.
The Tales Series often uses Fire, Ice, Wind, Earth, Lighting, and Water, in a cycle, then has Light and Dark, which were both strong against each other.
- Tales of Legendia had Fire-Ice, Lightning-Earth, and Dark-Water/Holy, which each being strong and weak toward each other. Of course, certain enemies were strong to both in the pair...
Eternal Darkness uses this for its main trio of Eldritch abomination gods and the magic associated with them, color-coded complete with which color beats which other in the same way as the starter trios in Pokemon, only red represents matter/strength, blue represents magic, and green represents sanity. There is also a fourth god and color, purple and the rough equivalent of "nuke" in Elemental Rock Paper Scissors.
- It's slightly more complex than that, though. Though for you, the powers are a simple RPS chain, for enemies they have actual gameplay effects. Red enemies regenerate and deal ludicrous physical damage, and take a lot of hits on top of that. Blue enemies tend to have odd special attacks- blue zombies explode if not decapitated, for instance- and deal magic damage in addition to physical damage. Green enemies are weak physically, but deal sanity damage and aren't really affected by the loss of limbs or heads- this only removes their ability to deal physical damage with the limb in quesiton. And your purple damage doesn't really deal extra damage, but it causes the metaphysical equivalent of poison, which grinds enemies, slowly but surely, to dust.
- It makes a weird kind of sense: Xelotath's insanity is devastating against a powerful mind, Ulyaoth's psychic attacks would overwhelm brawny Chattur'gha, but it would shrug off the subtleties of insanity and just rip apart poor Xel'lotath.
The many hundreds of Divine Beasts in Jade Cocoon 2 each belong to one of four elements; Fire, Wind, Water or Earth. Each element has its own specialties and attributes. Fire beasts generally have high Strength and Wisdom (measures of the strength of Skill and Magic attacks, respectively) and powerful Skill (melee) and Magic attacks, and are the strongest attackers. Wind beasts usually have high Speed (the beasts with the highest Speed value attack first) and a lot of special attacks (which induce status effects, like poison and sleep). Water beasts, as well as having some potent Magic attacks, also possess healing spells for restoring the HP and MP of your Divine Beasts and curing status effects, and are generally resistant to special attacks. Earth beasts specialise in defence, with high Vitality and Spirit (which dictate a Beast's Skill and Magic defence, respectively) and a variety of buffs (such as Defence and Speed increases), defensive spells (like damage-absorbing walls) and impressive attacks. As a rule of thumb, Fire's high attack power beats Water and Wind's low HP, Wind's high Speed and status effects beat Earth's general sluggishness and susceptibility to special attacks, Water's healing spells and resistance to special attacks beat Fire and Wind's primary abilities, and Earth's excellent defence beats the offensive power of Fire and Wind.
The original Jade Cocoon has a Fire—>Air—>Earth—>Water—>Fire sequence, plus a non-elemental foot stomp attack to which fliers are immune. Each spell in the game is tied to an element and, with the exception of the damage and elemental boost spells, unique to that element. You can combine your divine minions in such a way that they have two or more elements, but it reduces their elemental damage output accordingly and cuts them off from the boost spells.
Eve Online has kinetic, explosive, thermal and electromagnetic, which are roughly matched to the four races: Kinetic for Caldari, explosive for Minmatar, electromagnetic for Amarr and thermal for Gallente.
Azure Dreams is about as explicit as you can get: Fire beats Wind. Wind beats Water. Water beats Fire.
Metroid Prime 2: Echoes uses the Light-Dark dichotomy: the Light Beam slaughters Ing and other Darklings, and the Dark Beam is generally very effective against creatures on Light Aether. The first Prime game would have fallen squarely into this with its elemental beam weapons, but with the exception of a few fighting-fire-with-fire enemies and the Chozo Ghosts, the Plasma Beam kills everything dead, even the creatures in Magmoor Caverns.
Magical Starsign has Wood beats Wind beats Earth beats Water beats Fire beats Wood.
Mabinogi is unusual in that it has only 3 elements — Ice, Fire, and Lightning. Only about half the monsters, and nothing else, possesses elemental attributes, although they cannot be added to equipment. Another unusual factor is that instead of using a strictly oppositional Rock Paper Scissors type system, interaction between the elements is uneven, and governed by a comparatively complex formula.
Angband has a slew of them, mostly based of the D&D one. You have the basic fire, ice, electricty, acid, and poision. Expanding on this is plasma, chaos, time, nether, nexus, inertia, gravity, force, sound, light, darkness, disenchantment, and shards. Some variants expand this with water, wind, and lava.
The first X Men Legends game has three damage types: Physical, Energy and Mental. This applied to most enemy types and to the X Men you could use. Enemies that dealt Physical damage were bruisers, enemies that dealt energy damage were usually long-range attackers, and enemies that dealt Mental damage were support that would revive fallen enemies. Mechanical enemies like Sentinels were resistant to Mental damage, making characters like Jean Grey less than useful near the final levels of the game.
- Physical: Wolverine, Beast, Rogue, Nightcrawler, Colossus
- Energy: Cyclops, Storm, Iceman, Gambit, Jubilee, Magma
- Mental: Jean Grey, Emma Frost, Psylocke, Professor X
  - The second game would go on to introduce Elemental and Radiation damage. Radiation was essentially standard-fare RPG poison.
In Heroes Of Might And Magic III, the magic system is like this. The castle of Conflux in the expansion is even based on this trope, with most of the units being elementals and a building that allows leveling up each of the elemental schools.
Adventure Quest, Dragon Fable and others from Artix Entertainment are more often than not a game of finding out which enemies are weak against which weapons or spells, and which armor works best against whatever said enemy can throw at you.
In Digimon, the titular creatures are, with few exceptions, split into three types: Vaccine, Data and Virus. Some games would make Data weak to Virus, Virus weak to Vaccine, and Vaccine weak to Data.
Interactive Fiction game Mingsheng by Deane Saunders has an almost literal case of Elemental Rock Paper Scissors: in the climactic battle, the opponent takes battle stances named after the five Eastern elements, and the player has to type in the right element to make the PC carry out the appropriate battle stance to defeat him.

Webcomics

In the Triquetra Cats, the main characters have control over the elements of Earth Fire and Water, their mother has control over the element of Air, (as they are all on the same side it has never been resolved if one is weaker/stronger than the other save for minor sibling rivalry squabbling, in which they use their powers in possibly the weakest strength possible anyway)
Adventurers!, in addition to the standard RPG elements, includes "Tastes Like Orange Tang", "Doesn't Taste Like Orange Tang", and even "Peanuts".
Redcloak subverts this in Order of the Stick by summoning Titanium and Chlorine elementals.

Western Animation

Avatar The Last Airbender is based on the four western elements, represented by the four nations. Although in 'real life' no element is shown to be particularly stronger than the others, they do have their own literal Elemental Rock Paper Scissors, as in a game◊ (earth beats fire apparently). It was also somewhat parodied in one of the chibi shorts◊, where they spent the episode arguing over "what beats what".
- While the bending elements are all equal in terms of power they do have very different mental aspects that put them in opposition of eachother (Air vs. Earth, Water vs. Fire). For instance: Aang's easy going and adaptive nature works well for airbending, but does nothing for him when it comes to earthbending. Earthbenders need to be stubborn and direct to control their element, something Aang initially had trouble with. Avatar Roku, a Fire Nation native, went through the same thing when learning waterbending, which seems to indicate that this is a hurdle all avatars have to clear.
In an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Master Splinter defeats the Foot Mystics (who represent steel, fire, water, earth, and wind) with a powerful sword by making them use their elements against each other, while using the following quote:
Master Splinter: Fire melts steel, water puts out fire, earth shallows water, wind scatters earth, and I shall tame the wind!