Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
alt title(s): Standard Status Ailments; Standard Status Effect For some reason, the effects of hazardous status effects, within the rules of the game, almost never change. Poison is going to slowly sap your HP. Silence is going to block your magic. Paralysis is going to keep you from moving. And the same status effects will show up in every game. It may be that gamers are so hardwired to expect certain effects from certain conditions that trying to change them is more trouble than it's worth.
As documented in Useless Useful Spells, these effects are almost always going to get used on you. And thanks to the fact that they tend to linger and frequently continue to hurt you outside of battle, they are a lot more effective on you than on the enemy.
Games with these effects will usually feature a spell or item that cures each one individually, as well as another item, encountered later, that will cure all of them. By some inexplicable homeopathy by design, monsters that cause these effects will frequently drop the item that cures it. Don't think about it too much.
They show up in RPGs very commonly. They might also appear in Real Time Strategy (to accentuate the "strategy" part), and occasionally in First Person Shooters and Third Person Shooters, mostly those with RPG Elements. They can even appear in platformers and puzzle games.
Many of the status ailments have equivalent Status Buffs, with opposite effects. Note that despite what is said below, any status effect that prevents a character from taking any action may sometimes disappear on any hit (especially if there are not other party members in this game), and any of them period will often fix themselves after several rounds, even if they're permanent until cured in other games.
Examples:
Poison slowly saps your HP. In turn-based games, it will deal a set amount of damage at the beginning of each turn. If the game in question doesn't automatically cure status effects at the end of each battle, this effect almost always lingers until cured, often draining a bit of health with each step your character takes in the overworld. Some games ( Tales Of Symphonia, Pokemon) have both regular poisons and stronger, more potent poisons that sap more health at a time.
- Plague is a lot like poison, except it has the diabolical property that it spreads to allies. Shows up more in RTS games and MMORPGs, due to these games' crowded natures.
- This can sometimes get hilariously out of hand, as evidenced here
 .
- In Dungeons And Dragons poison lowers your stats when you are poisoned and about a minute later. Out of six stats you can only be killed by having one fall to zero. The others will just leave you unconscious or paralyzed.
- In 4th edition it's gone back to doing consistent damage.
- Pokemon has a couple of variants on poison (which is the only status effect to continue to take its effect outside of battle). A Pokemon poisoned by the move Toxic will lose Hit Points at an accelerating rate (starts at 1/16 and increases by 1/16 each turn), and the Curse technique, though not poison per se, has a very similar effect when used by a ghost.
- It's worth noting that if not for healing effects, Ghost!Curse would fall squarely under Doom; after five turns of one-quarter-of-max-health damage (four if your health is divisible by four) you will be knocked out.
- Starting with Diamond and Pearl, Poison will wear off outside of battle, but not before whittling down the Pokemon to exactly 1 HP.
- Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl have a similar effect in which a flower attached to someone's head will cause constant damage.
- Earth Bound actually has several varieties of poison - apart from the normal variety, there's also nausea (which combines Poison and Blindness), sunstroke, and (ahem) a chest cold.
- In Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, the Poison status reduces your stats and attack power considerably, but otherwise does no HP damage. Reversed with the Zombie soul - when equipped, you actually get stronger while poisoned.
- In Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, not only does poison severely lower your stats, but it also drains your health.
- In the early Phantasy Star games poison only prevents the afflicted character from healing damage (until PSIV, where it does damage.)
- The later Wizardry games featured both plague and poison, but poison worked conventionally while disease operated like Cursing (see below), and was the most dangerous status effect in the game.
- Final Fantasy VI had regular old garden-variety Poison in addition to two more similar status effects, Seizure and Phantasm (with the latter being a stronger version of the former). These worked similarly to Poison on characters in their regular state, but they were supposed to be able to heal undead monsters (and also undead characters if you equipped your characters with the relic that gave them undead properties) in a manner similar to Regen for living characters. Regen was also supposed to work similarly to Poison for undead characters, because Revive Kills Zombie. Unfortunately, a bug in the game's code caused Seizure and Phantasm to hurt all characters, leading to some humorous battles with undead monsters who would slowly kill themselves.
- Final Fantasy V introduced the smaller-but-faster HP drain in the form of Sap. Some enemies, and at least one Blue Magic, can cause this.
- Elder Scrolls Oblivion uses poison inconsistently, you can be immune to poison but certain attacks like 'poison spit' are classed as magic so effect them normally. Otherwise it is found in poisoned weapons and gas traps.
- Guild Wars has Poison and Disease. Overall, some status effects in the game get their own mechanic, "conditions". Only one condition of a particular type can be on a character at a time, and conditions effect and are effected by certain skills, separate from other buffs and debuffs.
- Some Final Fantasies, such as Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy XII, have a status effect called Sap. It acts in a similar manner to Poison, only instead of causing damage after actions or set intervals, it drains your HP constantly. Particularly deadly if you're inflicted with both Sap and Poison. The only saving grace of Sap is that it wears off after battle (except in XII, due to the way the battle system works).
- Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled includes a standard Poison effect that drains your health a bit every so often.
Burn is a wild card; free for any developer to use for whatever they feel like.
- Pokemon lose 1/8 of its health a turn and also have their Attack half while on fire - due to physical burns all over you, you may suffer from weakened attacks.
- Burn in Final Fantasy IX actually kills a burned player when they do something.
- Burns in Odin Sphere continuously cause damage and will wear off after walking a certain length of time, depending on the severity of the burns. Also, simply being in the Volkenon Lava Pits will sap HP unless a Cooler potion is used. Having a certain piece of equipment will prevent both of these effects.
- In Radiata Stories, characters who are burned will act normally but will occasionally jump up in pain from the flames until removed.
- Burning mobs in Flyff is rather strange - it does not sap hp, but reduces water resistance. If the next attack is water, goodbye monster!
- Guild Wars has burning cause a large amount of health degeneration (7 arrows vs. 4 for poison and disease). Burn effects usually last for shorter times to compensate.
- In World Of Mana, being on fire results in continual, persistent damage in which your characters can't do anything until the flames stop.
- Characters can be set aflame in Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled. It acts similarly to Poison, draining health over time, but generally wears off after a while whereas Poison tends to last the whole fight unless cured. Not so bad in itself, but it can actually deal good damage should you be Poisoned and on fire.
Paralyzed characters temporarily won't be able to move. Unlike in Real Life, paralysis is usually one of the shortest-lived effects — it'll wear off after a turn or two. Sometimes, there's a randomized chance of shaking the effect for a turn.
- Dungeons And Dragons used Hold Person and its variants for this, and some variants of the game treat you as being helpless for the duration, leaving you vulnerable to being killed by a Coup De Grace. Fourth Edition D&D has the Stunned condition, which flat out means you cannot move or take any actions at all and that you grant combat advantage to any enemies near you.
- In Nethack, paralysis prevents all actions and lasts for an uncomfortably long period of time. "Killed by a newt, while helpless" (i.e., while paralyzed) is a common ending for many a new adventurer.
- In Pokemon, Paralysis is permanent until cured, cuts Speed by three quarters, and has a 25% chance of preventing an attack from working.
- Some Tactical and Massively Multiplayer RPGs will split Paralysis into two types: one that keeps the victim from moving around the map (often referred to as Immobilize), and one that allows them to move, but keeps them from actually doing anything (often referred to as Stun, but it is often also combined with Immobilization).
- Case in point, Final Fantasy Tactics, at least the original, has "Don't Move/Immobilize" And "Don't Act/Paralyze" which are exactly what they sound like.
- Earthbound's version doesn't let you make basic attacks, defend, or access your items; but you can still use PSI. Also an exception, it will last out of battle until you talk to a Healer at a hospital or use PSI Healing Gamma/Omega.
- The Flyff Psykeeper can use Satanology, which increases in duration based on his Int stat. In Pv P, a Psykeeper with enough Int. can cause a melee class to be demolished!
- Guild Wars avoids this confusion, replacing it with the simple and logical "knocked down," which is exactly what it sounds like.
- A Paralyzed character or enemy in Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled will be totally unable to move or act, as their time bar is frozen for the duration of the effect.
Sleeping characters won't be able to move either. This effect lasts longer than paralysis, sometimes indefinitely if you don't cure it. Fortunately for you, sleeping characters who have been damaged will usually wake up. (Sometimes, only physical damage will awaken a sleeping character.) One of the more nonsensical status effects, generally — sleeping characters will often sleep standing up, sometimes not even changing their normal stance or battle movements, and they won't respond to the chaos of battle. In addition, you can cure sleep by going to a Trauma Inn and... sleeping? Perhaps you're just waiting to wake up...
- World Of Warcraft has potions that make you sleep in a healthy way, restoring health and mana rapidly. A more traditional Sleep effect is also in place, but can generally only be used on animals (and druids in animal forms). For players that is, monsters with the spell have no problems putting you to sleep.
- Dungeons And Dragons has rules for being woken up either by the noise of battle or by an ally shaking you. Magical sleep is extra deep so the noise won't wake you.
- Also, if you're damaged during sleep, instead of waking you up, it most likely kills you — sleeping characters are considered helpless and are thus vulnerable to being CDG'd.
- Achaea characters sleep lying down, but can still see and hear almost everything going on around them while asleep. Sleep is used as per usual to regain hit points and sometimes to control opponents in combat - unusually, characters get tired, yawn and spontaneously fall asleep if kept awake for too long.
- Pokemon uses this, which prevents attacking for 1-7 turns. Amusingly, you can wake them up with a reusable flute item in some version, and in Coliseum you can just yell at them.
- And then there's the move Rest, which forces your Poke to sleep for two turns (not counting the one used doing it), but fully restores its health and removes other status effects. It's a key component in many tournament players' lineups.
- There's also a move called "Snore" that could be used while a Pokemon was asleep. There's also "Sleep Talk" where the Pokemon will use a random move while asleep. Either one of these will likely be found on a Pokemon that knows Rest.
- Or they'll be holding a Chesto Berry, which cures Sleep immediately; this pretty much lets the Pokemon itself use a Full Restore (full HP reovery and wipes any Status Effects).
- Lost Kingdoms II had this, but the target in question stops moving and recovers health slowly. Plus, as to add some realism, Tara kneels down while asleep. The sequence she does to fall asleep and wake up immobilizes her, as if playing with Tara wasn't hard enough as it is.
- In Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne, this Troper actually begs to be put to sleep. It immobilises you but restores HP AND MP. Anyone who plays this knows that mana is like gold dust in this game, what with the critical macca shortage one starts experiencing early on due to having to pay considerable sums of money that increase the more you need healing, as opposed to the typical '100 gil full rest'.
- In Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled, being put to sleep stops a character from acting for a few turns, but being attacked will wake you up, physical or magical. Tends to be undone by angry monsters before you need to bother curing it, unless the only creatures present like reinflicting Sleep over and over.
Silenced characters won't be able to use magic. This is a holdover from the classic fantasy trope that you have to say magic words (sometimes rhyming ones) or chant a spell's name in order to use magic, so being muted would logically prevent that. However, the trope often gets carried over into games where magic clearly doesn't work like that, or isn't even present (like in Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars — why would being silenced prevent Mario from being able to jump?) Particularly hilarious when the enemy silences a Heroic Mime. Games with voice acting will sometimes have the characters still be able to talk even while "silenced". ( Skies Of Arcadia is a major offender here.) One is forced to wonder if some game designers, Japanese ones especially, ever looked up what "silenced" translates to.
- However, in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, being silenced will only block off abilities that would intuitively require speaking - magic spells, but also abilities like "Cheer" and "Advice."
- You can tell when characters in Final Fantasy VII have been silenced because they have a large speech bubble over their heads. Yeah.
- Ward from Final Fantasy VIII and Garnet/Dagger from Final Fantasy IX lose their voices for segments of the game, and can still cast magic (though, during that segment, Garnet will occasionally fail to do what you ask her to do). They're also still susceptible to the Silence status ailment. Go figure.
- Also used somewhat intuitively in Wizardry 8 in that, of the four schools of magic, silencing does nothing to stop alchemists from using spells ("Sure, I can't talk, but that's not stopping me from throwing explosives"). However, while it makes sense for Wizardry and Divine spells (which require incantations and prayers) to be affected, Silence will also, bizarrely, affect Psionics...
- In World Of Warcraft, Warlocks additionally have the so-called "Curse of Tongues", which slows down casting and makes the target speak Demonic — in the ingame chat! — as long as it lasted.
- The Silence skill is also one of the Dark Ranger's ability's in Warcraft3.
- Shadow Priests get a Silence spell as well... Although I'm not sure how a Silenced enemy is prevented from casting spells, but not from yelling for help.
- Marksmanship Hunters get an ability called Silencing Shot. Guess what it does.
- Like in Tactics, silence also blocks off certain physical abilities like the Warriors Shout abilities. However, being silenced never actually makes characters or monsters unable to talk.
- In Icewind Dale, one of the first mini-bosses is an evil cleric who has things to say when she dies. Is she is Silenced at the time, the game is locked in a during-event state and it is impossible to save the game at all.
- Persona 3 refers to this as Panic, where a character, well, panics and can't concentrate on using magic or summoning their Persona.
- Wild Arms games calls this "Misery" and it affects all Force abilities.
- In Ace Online, I-gears can Silence enemy gears and block them from using their skills.
- "Stopspell" from the first Dragon Quest games does Exactly What It Says On The Tin, blocking your opponent from using his spells. It can be a lifesaver if you're facing a spellcasting enemy and want to stop him from using his nastier magic (particularly if he can also cast Stopspell) on you.
- Exile has Dumbfounded, where the character forget their spells. This is to avoid the whole "Why can they speak?" issue.
- Guild Wars has a particularly nasty status condition called Dazed. Characters suffering from it take twice as long to cast their spells and said spells can be interrupted by any attack that hits them.
- In Disgaea, being hit with Amnesia from an attack (marked by red question marks floating over the victim's head) will result in the victim being unable to use anything other than regular attacks.
- In Mother 3, if you get inflicted with "forgetfulness", you won't be able to use any skills/PSI.
- Elder Scrolls Oblivion enemies will often cast a single spell after being silenced and then attack you with a weapon, this can be due the fact silence only effects spells, not scrolls or greater/lesser powers.
- Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled - Silenced characters cannot cast magic, but can still use physical techniques that consume SP as well as normal attacks. Combo-attacks are disabled if the Silenced character's half of the attack is magical based as well.
Blindness either totally stops or sharply decreases the accuracy of physical attacks, much as Silence does for magic. In the Final Fantasy games, this often has a strange tendency to not be a very large accuracy drop... (Well, if your enemies are all standing neatly in a row waiting patiently to be attacked...)
- And on the opposite end, games like Wizardry also include characters with terrible directional hearing. How the heck else can one explain the tendency to be surrounded by enemies and accidentally shoot someone standing right next to you?
- Nethack does interesting things with blindness; when the main character is blinded, in addition to the usual effects, the player can't see any enemies on their screen — unless they have the "Telepathy" trait, in which case they gain the ability to see virtually all enemies on the map. There's even a "Blindfold" item which is supposed to be worn by telepaths...
- Blindness also prevents the character from seeing what's on the ground, forcing them to use their hands. Woe be to the adventurer who just killed a cockatrice and isn't wearing gloves! Scrolls can't be recognized or read (instead of "a scroll labeled AXLDFKJ" you just get "a scroll"), gemstones are all "stones", and in general a blinded character will learn that The Dev Team Thinks Of Everything.
- Final Fantasy VI unintentionally averts this trope in the original with a glitch making the evade stat useless, thus making blind, which makes evade 0... completely harmless. And, thus, the item that prevents blindness, Goggles Do Nothing
- Earthbound wins the award for the most ridiculous name for this status effect, which it calls "uncontrollable crying".
- Ragnarok Online has blindness not only decrease accuracy and dodge rate, but also limits the actual area a player can see.
- Everquest had blindness affect a player far more than a monster by making it impossible for the player to see by turning the visual field black (and if you were using the interface that had menus overlap the visual field, you couldn't see the menus either). Interestingly, though, you could still do anything as normal, such as cast spells, select targets, etc., just you had to be able to do it without seeing (i.e. memorize the location of the mouse and try to navigate through menus without actually seeing them, or use macros).
- Radiata Stories actually blurs and pixelates the screen when your character is afflicted with Blind, so neither the character nor the player can see what's going on.
- In the Mega Man X RPG Command Mission, which replaces standard statues effects and spells with robotics-themed counterparts, not only does this status reduce the character's accuracy, but their evasive ability as well (can't dodge what you can't see, right?).
- In the Pokemon games, there are moves that reduce the opponent's accuracy, which usually involve throwing something in their eyes. Though like most stat modifications, this is canceled as soon as the victim is switched out or otherwise leaves the battle.
- Guild Wars has this condition as well, giving physical attacks a 90% chance to miss.
- If there's one thing that rogues in World of Warcraft are known for, it's that they can be righteous dicks. Especially with their ability "Blind" which, in this case, renders the user completely useless and wandering around for a good 10 seconds. Any damage will cause the the afflicted character to "see" again by knowing where their opponent is and cancel the wandering effect.
- Since the first three Final Fantasy games factored in accuracy in damage calculation (since number of hits per attack is one of the more important factors), this status effect resulted more in dealing less damage.
- In Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled, Blind results in a pretty standard reduction to your accuracy. This can be especially frustrating when it hits the Designated Hero before he can use any magic.
- Squall Leonhart, whose weapon sports Hit% 255, is utterly unhindered by Blind. He's just that Bad Ass.
Berserk describes a character who can't be controlled, loses all of its abilities except its basic attack, and whose attack power goes way up — though at least berserked characters are still attacking the proper side, unlike Confused or Charm. Arguably, this could be considered a positive status effect, depending on whether it was cast on a fighter or spellcaster— some games even offer the chance to purposefully suffer this status.
- There are lots of World Of Warcraft mobs that go berserk when their hit points fall below a certain percentage. Conveniently, they're often called "Foo Berserkers".
- Some ogres have a particularly silly version of it: it increases their attack power, but also slows their attack speed so much that it's bascially canceled out and slows them down so much that ranged classes have an even easier time dealing with them.
- Many bosses have a so-called 'hard enrage', where after a certain period of time their damage goes through the roof, killing everyone in seconds. A 'soft' enrage does the same thing except here the boss gradually gets stronger throughout the fight until it becomes impossible.
- Additionally, warriors have both a talent called Berserker Rage and a fighting mode called Berserker Stance. The warrior Berserker effects will increase damage done but also damage taken, and a berserk warrior is immune to Fear spells.
- Many Final Fantasy games have the player capable of casting berserk on enemies as well as themselves. Perfect for preventing weak enemy mages from casting their powerful spells.
- Final Fantasy XII treats Berserk as a positive status trait. It's cured by Dispel, the positive effect remover, enemies often use it on themselves, and it speeds up attacks greatly. Just don't use it on your lead character, or you won't go anywhere until it wears off.
- Final Fantasy X-2 has an entire class devoted to the spell Berserk (ala The Berserker Dressphere), the spell in case can only be cast on the caster.
- Final Fantasy IV has the berserk white magic spell, which does just what it says above. In addition, the "Avenger" two-handed sword, when wielded by Cecil, causes him to go into a permanent Berserk-mode, and the ultra-rare Pink Puff enemy has a "dance" that both changes the battle music and causes the whole party to go berserk.
- Final Fantasy V had the Berserker job. Simply being that job makes a character constantly berserk, and one of the abilities you can learn from that class allows you to carry that trait over to other jobs. Interestingly, they still have MP, allowing them to wield runic weapons at full power (they drain the user's MP).
- Final Fantasy VI didn't have that much use for it, but one particularly nasty boss becomes trivial if Berserked-instead of hammering the party with powerful magic, he attacks for pathetic damage.
- In Fire Emblem, the berserk effect forces characters to attack whoever is closest to them, which usually means their own allies. This is especially problematic late in the game.
- In the Persona series, Berserk actually is a negative status effect, since it also halves the afflicted character's defense power. And of course, an enemy's ailment spells will nearly always hit you while yours rarely work. So if your dedicated healer, who usually has the lowest max HP of the group, is hit with Berserk...
- However, there is a boss in the game whose strategy revolves around Berserking your characters and decimating them with powerful physical attacks. But the boss is also weak against one of the three physical weapon types, specifically, Pierce! So equip your Main Character with a spear, bring Aigis, Ken, and Yukari and then watch the boss get torn apart. One is advised to keep at least one person free of Rage, however, because the boss also uses Megidolaon, and you need someone who can heal.
- For bonus points, that boss is the final Tartarus boss. What a way to end the dungeon.
- Pokemon has several attacks that work like a temporary version of Berserk, causing the user to automatically keep using that one move repeatedly for a certain number of turns (somewhere from 2 to 5, usually randomly chosen). There's also the move Encore, which forces the 'opponent' to use the same move they used last repeatedly until it wears off.
- In the first generation games (Red/Blue/Yellow), the move Rage made the user go mad, refusing to do anything else (even let you use items or switch it out), and getting angrier and therefore stronger every time the user took damage. Strangely enough, only one PP was used up starting this—subsequent attacks (also called Rage) didn't use any PP. It was not a very good attack. However, later versions changed it so that Rage was just like most other attacks and simply gained more power as the user took damage.
- The second generation games (Gold/Silver/Crystal) introduced Swagger, a move that increased the opponent's attack power and confused the opponent, thus increasing the amount of damage they take when they hurt themself.
- I-gears from Ace Online have Berserk as their other signature attack, apart from frenzy.
- Shadow Hearts has a slightly different version of Berserk that works a little bit like the Confuse status (see below). It's not a status that can be directly inflicted; however, stay in battle too long and your characters will go Berserk once they run out of Sanity Points. Also, if you want the protagonist to learn his most powerful abilities, you have to let him go Berserk.
- In Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled, a Berserk character doesn't get any significant boost to their power, but cannot be controlled and will physically attack as they see fit. Most of the time, they manage to attack enemies, so it's not so bad until you find monsters that love to inflict Berserk while only being vulnerable to magical damage.
- Breath Of Fire 3: While not so much a curable status effect, having Rei transform into his Weretiger form will cause him to become much stronger but uncontrollable, having him only attack physically, and becoming increasingly likely to attack allies every turn he stays in that form. Luckily, you can easily fix this by using Influence, which is normally pretty useless. With it, however, you can use Influence to target a boss monster and have Rei only attack them for the whole fight.
Confused characters will attack their companions or even, inexplicably, themselves. Often, the computer takes direct control of confused characters and has them attack at random, although occasionally a confused character will do what you want; you just can't select their target.
- Earthbound has two versions of this ailment: the standard confusion (referred to as "feeling strange"), and "Mushroomization" doubles as a Meta-Effect out of battle.
- Confusion in most games (most notably the Final Fantasy series) isn't really confusion so much as it is a disguised Charm effect: a temporary Face Heel Turn in which your characters will do nothing but attack each other or themselves. In Final Fantasy X 2, where your characters will do random commands (such as using random items or abilities); I've had the misfortune of once having a confused character use a Megalixir. Argh!
- Final Fantasy VI wins the award for "Best Fridge Logic as a Result of a Standard Status Effect, EVER" - Sabin, while zombified (which is similar to muddle, but can't be cured by attacking the victim), can use Bum Rush on himself. Bum Rush is an attack that does damage by running around the target. The attack animation for this is weird.
- In Infinite Undiscovery, if the player character gets confused the game inverts your controls and turns off friendly fire immunity but you aren't forced to attack anyone. Other characters will attack whatever is nearest as usual.
- Pokemon uses this. When confused, a Pokemon has a chance of hurting itself rather than the opponent each time you try to attack. After a few turns the Pokemon can snap out of it, or it can leave battle to do so.
- In the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, confusion makes you move and attack in random directions until it wears off. However, you can still throw items in whatever direction you want, including projectile items.
- In Shin Megami Tensei games, confuse has a chance of making the affected character do something... Well, really stupid. A common manifestation is inexplicably tossing macca everywhere or simply hurting themselves a la Pokemon.
- In Phantasy Star Online, one of the status effects that is probably confused causes the player's character to run in random directions - gunners will fire in about every direction but what you want them to and run into enemies so it's best just to stay very still and wait.
- A confused character in Chrono Trigger will attack whatever is the closest to him, be it friend or foe.
- Suffering confusion in Radiata Stories will make your player character control awkwardly, and your attacks can damage your allies.
- Frenzy from Elder Scrolls Oblivion can be used to turn enemies against each other and even their own summoned creatures. Custom spells can have entire towns killing each other.
- Shining Force is a little more merciful with it's confusion: A lot of the time, the confused character just stands there and mumbles to himself.
- Dungeons And Dragons had the "behave randomly" version of this, as well as the more permanent Insanity. The "attack self" variant was also present in the psionic power Death Urge.
- In World Of Mana, confusion temporarily [1] reverses your controls.
- Wild Arms will allow you to choose an option in battle, but not the target.
- Perfect Dark Zero's Psychosis Gun (in a rare non-RPG example) negates all forms of team-coloration and enables the victim's friendly-fire. When everyone is the same dull gray color, it's surprisingly easy to panic at an approaching teammate...
Charm Your character gets controlled by the other side and often can attack you with both basic attacks and as well as spells and special abilities. If the person taken over can cast healing magic they may even use the magic to cure the members of the enemy party. This can sometimes be one of the harder to cure effects, although sometimes simply attacking the charmed person can break the effect.
- The Sa Ga series from the Romancing Sa Ga trilogy onward is notorious for this ailment, especially at certain bosses.
- Once again, there are several different versions of this in World Of Warcraft. The most famous is the Priest spell "Mind Control", which lets you control a hostile enemy or player. In Pv E, it's used as a form of crowd control. In Pv P, it's used to make enemy players jump off cliffs. Mind Control is also used by certain enemies, probably most effectively by Yogg-Saron, who casts an unbreakable Mind Control spell on any player whose Sanity Buff hits zero.
- There are also spells such as "Enslave Demon", which allow players to take an enemy creature as a pet for a short time, similar to the Hunter's Tame Beast skill.
- And of course the warlock demon pet Succubus has a spell, called Seduce, which will stop an enemy humanoid in their tracks with infatuation (complete with floating hearts) until they are hit or the spell runs out.
- Depending on the skill levels of the players involved, Charms in Dungeons And Dragons are usually less "make them attack their friends" than "make them think you're their best friend in the whole world". They won't attack the charmer (or his allies, if the charmer asks nicely), but neither will they just attack their friends without good cause (though the cause can conceivably be because they're attacking his new best friend in the whole world).
- On the other hand, the "Dominate" spells have the charmer actually taking over the mind of the victim, thus making these more like the standard Charm status effect from other games.
- One of the standout examples from the Final Fantasy series comes from Final Fantasy Tactics A 2. In one mission you're assigned to go take out a group of Cassie Malboros, pink Malboros with ribbons (implied to be the source of THE Ribbons, the ultimate status-effect-nullifying accessory.) The major difficulty of the fight is the fact that the Cassies have an area-effect high-accuracy Charm ability.
- Final Fantasy Tactics takes this a step further with the "Invite" status, which is a permanent Charm effect. If the Invited enemy survives the battle, it will even join your team.
- There is a sort of Charm effect in Pokemon; when a Pokemon is under the effects of the Infatuation status condition, there is a 50% chance that they will be unable to perform their attack (in which case they are "immobilized by love"). This condition is caused by the move Attract and the ability Cute Charm, and only affects Pokemon of the opposite gender (e.g, a female Pokemon who uses Attract on a male Pokemon, or is struck with a physical attack by a male Pokemon; genderless Pokemon are completely immune to the effect).
- The worst possible effect to suffer in Persona 3, especially if one of your healers gets hit. One of the most famous screw-yous in the game is if the final boss hits your healer with Charm, and the healer in turn casts the full-heal Diarahan on it. To put it in perspective, the final boss's last form has four times the hit points of any boss before it.
- A Charmed character in Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled will, as per standard, turn on your party. Luckily, they aren't very smart and tend to avoid using their more powerful spells and attacks.
Frozen characters are unable to act. Like sleep, this condition tends to stick around, but if the enemy is dumb enough to use a fire attack on a frozen character, that will often cure the effect.
- In Final Fantasy IX, being frozen additionally makes you die if you are hit by a melee attack.
- Being frozen in Ragnarok Online is easily cured- just get hit. The biggest problem is that it changes the character's element to Water for the duration of the effect, increasing damage from Wind based attacks.
- Certain Fire type attacks allow the frozen Pokemon to free themselves... but freezing moves are unlikely to be used on them in the first place. In fact, Freeze is the least seen standard status effect in the Pokemon games, as it has no dedicated high-accuracy move and is only found as a low-percentage side effect of most Ice moves.
- An alternate way to defrost a frozen pokemon is to trick your opponent into hitting them with a fire type attack by switching pokemon. Of course, you want to be sure that your pokemon will survive the fire attack before you try this.
- As of Generation II, there's also about a 10% chance of your Pokemon thawing out by itself on its turn.
- In Command And Conquer, any frozen unit/building can be shattered and killed by even the most pitiful attack. In one hit.
- This is probably more realistic than it seems for sufficiently-frozen things (and it would have to be cold to freeze something that quickly), since the bonding breaks down at low temperatures. If you ever get the chance, dip a piece of something soft like an orange or a rubber hose in a tub of liquid nitrogen and throw it at the wall.
- Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, you can be frozen by certain enemies. Due to the ice area coming in late in the game, and enemies that use the effect only appearing in certain areas, it isn't that high a priority for players . . . but due to the fact that enemies can still hit you while you're frozen, you take damage when you thaw, AND you can get re-frozen rather easily, this is one of the more perilous status effects in the game (and it doesn't help that the Bonus Boss has the ability to freeze you with one of its breath attacks).
- World Of Warcraft has two versions of being frozen; one simply renders you unable to move (but does not prevent other actions), the other is this trope. In most cases, it immediately wears off upon receiving any damage. Mages deserve special mention for being able to freeze themselves in a block of ice, clearing all debuffs and becoming invulnerable for up to 10 seconds, at the cost of being unable to act.
- Shin Megami Tensei games using the Press Turn system make the Frozen effect a godsend when it affects enemies. Frozen enemies will have their Agility reduced to zero, and all physical attacks will ignore their defense and will always hit critical, which gives you an extra turn. A high-level spell called Cocytus (and its upgraded form, Niflheim) will almost always inflict this status. It's the only feasible method of killing Arahabakis. Of course, the effect is just as devastating when you are affected.
- In Warcraft 3 certain units can freeze buildings, preventing them from producing. Inexplicably, the same attack does not affect normal units.
- It does slow them down, but presumably they are moving too much to freeze solid.
- World Of Mana calls this the "Snowman" ailment; in Legend Of Mana, this results in massive damage while frozen.
- In Final Fantasy VI, frozen characters turn blue and are unable to act, though they'll accept commands if they're frozen on their turn; they'll carry out the command when thawed. Fire breaks this effect and the afflicted is immune to ice.
- In Diablo 2, the Frozen status severely slows down those afflicted. When killed, there's a good chance the target will explode, destroying the corpse.
- In Phantasy Star Universe, ice technics and bullets can produce this status at random. Characters will be trapped in ice and unable to move for a short period of time, making them easy targets for other attacks.
- A Frozen character in AI Is A Crapshoot is unable to move around the battle area, but can still attack if targets are within range, as well as use magic and items.
Petrified characters are likewise unable to act, and are functionally dead. This is one of the most persistent status effects, generally — it seldom heals on its own, and sometimes even Trauma Inns can't cure it — you need a spell or item. Most games with petrification have a Nonstandard Game Over if all your characters happen to get turned to stone.
- In many of the later Castlevania games, being turned to stone freezes you temporarily, but also makes you far more vulnerable to damage — gods help you if this happens in the Bonus Dungeon.
- There is also at least one instance in Final Fantasy X where a boss can attack a petrified party member, shattering them and leaving you with only two available character slots for the rest of the battle. Being petrified while underwater instantly shatters the victim.
- Final Fantasy IV has Gradual Petrify, which makes you take double (and triple and quadruple damage) every time you are hit with it; after three times you become a statue. It's the bread and butter attack of the demon wall.
- In Warcraft 3 this is a beneficial ability which can be used on undead gargoyles. While petrified, the gargoyle is unable to act, but its armor goes way up and it regenerates health rapidly. A similar situation occurs with gargoyles in the Worldof Warcraft raid instance called Naxxramas Necropolis.
- Stone Curse in Ragnarok Online has the traditional effect, as well as changing the target's element to Earth, causing double damage from Fire effects.
- The later games in the Wizardry series feature a particularly nasty Stone effect-it damages vitality the same as dying, and when you do cure a stoned character, it's quite possible they died while stoned, necessitating resurrection and inflicting the vitality loss for dying...
- Gorgons will do this in Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones. The first turn a character has been petrified, any creature that attacks the character has a higher chance of scoring a Critical Hit.
- In Paper Mario, the stone cap does this. Like the tanuki suit in Super Mario Bros 3, It dramatically increases your defense.
- In Baldur's Gate, two of the most powerful spells where Stone to Flesh and Flesh to Stone. One specific NPC in the game is trapped in a petrified state. If you use a Stone to Flesh spell on the "Statue" she will be extremely grateful and wish to join your party.
- The Wild Arms series replaces this with Brass, which like in FFIV, is a slow countdown until your character is turned into metal.
- Earthbound 's version of this is diamondization. The character is functionally death, and you even get a red tinted interface just like when someone has died. (They also look quite comical out of battle, with a head encased in a perfect cut diamond.)
- Ogre Battle features Cockatrices and Gorgons, whose breath and gaze carry a high chance to petrify. Once petrified, the victim may as well be dead for good, given how rare the curing item is. And if it hits an important character...
Slow causes a character to attack and possibly move slower. Shows up more often in games without a turn-based combat system, as the effect is more suited to real-time action. (The turn-based variant usually involves causing the affected character's turn to come up less frequently, or cuts your action points in less primitive games). Usually appears in games with a Haste spell, and if both are cast on the same character, the two will usually cancel each other out.
- A-gears in Ace Online have this as one of their exclusive skillset. It's possible to snare yourself if you're not careful...
- In Final Fantasy 9 it makes the ATP bar fill up a lot, well, slower.
- Phantasy Star Online had Slow Traps cause this. This was a big problem since the trap appeared out of nowhere for non-androids and those without Trap Visions and it didn't last long enough to warrant a Lv.6 Anti spell.
- There are a few attacks that lower your Pokemon's speed, the most notable of these being String Shot, a move found on most common Bug Pokemon. A more frustrating example (as the bugs are pathetically weak anyway) is the powerful Bubblebeam move, which deals damage and has a chance of lowering your speed. Misty and her Starmie back in the first games loved this move, and the speed-lowering meant that Starmie could quite easily hit you with two Bubblebeams in a row, knocking out most pokemon. Only two types resist the water-type Bubblebeam, and one of them is Water itself. If you didn't pick Bulbasaur, you're in for one hell of a battle.
- Mages in Worldof Warcraft can elect to take this ability.
- Guild wars has "crippled" as a condition, in addition to a number of hexes.
- Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled: A Slowed character's Speed is heavily reduced, making their time bar fill up slower, and thus giving them less actions.
Stop cause a character to..well...stop. Completely. Don't ask how they can breathe though...
- Maybe it stops their perception of time? Or worse, just freezes them in place, And I Must Scream style.
- Early RP Gs treated this as a sort of high-end Paralyze, but later games attribute it to time magic, in which case time stops for the target, but they can still be affected normally.
- Inverted in Dungeonsand Dragons, which has a Time Stop spell that instead affects the caster, removing them from the current time stream. This effect only affects the caster, who in turn, can only affect himself with abilities while removed. Spells that run on a timer can also be cast as long as they don't affect anything other than the caster or the area (resulting in a very nasty combo with casting several delayed-blast fireballs on a descending timer, that all go off when Time Stop ends).
Weird Transformation — the character is turned into a weird, sometimes humorous, but universally weak creature. The specific creature tends to vary from game to game — frogs, pigs, scarecrows, eggplants, rice balls, whatever — but if this happens to you, you can be sure you're going to have lowered stats (often brutally lowered, to the point where you're looking at one-hit kills) and some inaccessible commands.
- This is a fairly rare instance of player characters having useful access to such an ability: in World Of Warcraft, a mage's ability to "sheep" mobs is a vital aspect of crowd control. However, it does have a downside: the target rapidly restores health and mana, whereas the monster version of this or similiar spells do not (anymore).
- In more recent patches, Shamans have been given a similar ability; Hex, which turns the target into a frog. The major difference is that Hex does not regenerate health OR break on damage, with the trade off being that it can be cast much less often.
- Final Fantasy VI has the Imp status where stats are severely lowered and all special abilities are locked except for the Imp spell. However, there are Imp equipment found in the game that are completely useless on regular characters but godly when equipped on an Imp.
- Many games in the Final Fantasy series feature a Frog status which blocks all actions except a very weak physical attack (and sometimes the Frog spell as well). Oddly enough, Final Fantasy IV features both the Frog status and a similar Pig status.
- The difference between the two in Final Fantasy IV was that Pig wouldn't affect your physical attacks; it was sort-of a longer-lasting Silence.
- This even has plot relevance, but god help you if you get into a fight while you're hopping around looking for a tiny exit.
- Final Fantasy III has turning the party small, and into frogs, part of the storyline.
- In Super Mario RPG, there is a Guide Dang It item that lets you inflict Sheep status on the enemies, effectively killing them in one hit. Using this item enough changes it to an even better version of the same thing, as it now targets all enemies at once.
- In normal gameplay, some enemies can turn your characters into scarecrows (disables basic attacks and items) or mushrooms (can't act, but slowly regenerates). Oddly, actual numeric stats aren't lowered in either condition.
- In Ragnarok Online you can do this to enemies, using a certain dagger or accessory. But rather than just downgrading the monster, it 'randomly picks one''. This can lead to impressive minibosses inhabiting a low-level area and stomping on new players.
- In the first four .hack// games, this is the player, Kite's, special ability, the Data Drain. Data Drain is typically used on invincible boss monsters to make them vulnerable, but you can use it on regular enemies as well, which will cause them to transform into the lowest level monster that shares their general "form". Since you can only use data drain a limited number of times before getting a game over, this is normally avoided, but it can let you make your way deep into dungeons even if you're too low of a level. And, of course, a monster that's been data drained gives next to no experience, so it will actually prevent you from leveling up normally if you use it too much.
- Shiren the Wanderer: Mysterious Dungeon 2 features an enemy that at low levels turns your items into rice balls, but at its maximum level turns YOU into a riceball! You're able to move around but do nothing else until it wears off.
Fear — causes a character to run away, perhaps even completely fleeing the battle. Otherwise, it just outright scares the living daylights out of the target and prevents them from doing anything until they get it together.
- Elder Scrolls Oblivion has two such effects Turn undead for less fresh enemeies and Demoralize for everybody else.
- Dungeons And Dragons likes this one with basic fear spells and fear auras that surround powerful enemies.
- In Pokemon, the move Roar scares the opponent into fleeing the battle (or switching out in trainer battles). The mysterious ghosts in Lavender Tower (pre-Silph Scope), make your pokemon "paralysed with fear" and unable to do anything.
- Warlocks in Worldof Warcraft are well known for this ability, but a few other classes have limited versions; priests have Psychic Scream and warriors Intimidating Shout, both of which will scatter an entire group.
- Fear in Super Mario RPG halves the damage of the afflicted.
- In a double example of Weird Transformation and Fear, in Final Fantasy Tactics reducing a character's brave to minimal levels will transform them into a chicken; they automatically flee every turn and regenerate their brave.
- Persona has two versions: Fear and Distress. Fear will sometimes cause a party member to freeze up, stealing their turn, and sometimes makes them run away outright. Distress weakens them, and any attack that hits them while they're distressed is an automatic Critical Hit.
A Meta-Effect is a condition which interferes with the player's control interface somehow, such as by obscuring parts of the screen or, yes, reversing the controls. Hard to justify with the context of the game world, so it often gets folded in with confusion, curses, or sanity somehow. Most of the "sanity effects" in Eternal Darkness are of this type.
- While usually not a status effect per see, World Of Warcraft characters can get drunk, which obscures the players vision of the game and makes movement rather uncontrollable. This is usually done intentionally for fun (ingame holidays often serve free alcohol), but a few instances of it being inflicted by monsters exist aswell. Unfortunately, characters sober up from those much faster.
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind has the effect Blind reduce visibility by the power of the effect. 100% Blind literally makes the screen completely black. Not helpful with the fact that one rare item does this and makes traveling by a breeze (or a hurricane, since those go faster).
- Perhaps the most well-known example: Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy.
- Nethack has the hallucination effect, which causes the symbols representing monsters and items to constantly shift, makes it impossible to distinguish whether a monster is hostile/neutral/friendly, makes the game give humorous alternate message, and in the Slash'EM variant makes the contents of your pack look different every time you examine your inventory.
Death — more specifically, the instant kind. One cast, one death, no waiting. Obviously this is a ridiculously powerful ability, so it's often balanced with laughably poor accuracy. Often reserved for bosses — games where common enemies can use this with regularity tend to be frustrating, since there's often nothing you can do to stop it except pray for a miss.
- A variant known in Final Fantasy games in the level-based Death spell, which kills any enemy whose level is multiple of 5.
- Final Fantasy VI had two such spells, Doom and X-Zone. Bosses were usually immune to these spells. However, players could use the Vanish spell on most bosses to give them the usually-beneficial Clear status, which makes a character resistant to all physical attacks but extremely susceptible to magic. So susceptible, in fact, that a bug in the game caused these invisible bosses to lose their immunity to the two instant-death spells! This could be used to trivialize a lot of difficult boss fights.
- It should be noted that using X-Zone in this manner to kill the randomly-appearing boss Doom Gaze would result in not getting the Bahamut Esper upon his defeat. Not a good call; use Doom instead.
- Such moves in the Pokemon universe only work if the target's level is lower than or equal to the user's, except in the first game(s) where it was Speed. The moves also have 30% accuracy.
- When paired with Lock On or Mind Reader these moves have 100% accuracy, however most opponents are smart enough to swap when these moves are used.
- Even without such a move or ability, each level difference between the two Pokemon increases the success rate by 1%. Hence, a level 71-100 Pokemon could use 100% instant-kills (however, unless the opponent is a master of EV points and has an Event-Only Legendary, you're unlikely to need them).
- Shin Megami Tensei games enjoy providing even lowly Mooks with instant-death spells like the Hama and Mudo categories. More infuriating when they happen to miss everyone in the party but the Main Character.
- World Of Warcraft likes to give bosses One Hit Kill abilities, but special mention goes to Archimonde. Anyone who has had to learn this encounter will be very familiar with his Finger of Death ability, which he uses to mop up the raid when things go pear-shaped. Under certain conditions he uses Hand of Death instead, which does five times the damage (five fingers, geddit?). To everyone at once. Ouch.
- Earthbound has the Psi Flash ability. Once it reaches Beta, Gamma or Omega level, it possesses the ability to instantly kill select characters. Only Ness and the boss of the final sanctuary can use it though.
- And Giygas, who uses it liberally. Night/Sea/Star Pendant required.
- It's more than just that. The regular enemies Conducting Menace, Conducting Spirit, and Wild n' Wooly Shambler and the bosses Evil Mani-Mani, Thunder and Storm, Kraken, Diamond Dog, Ness's Nightmare and Giygas can use at least Flash Beta or its non-PSI (read: non-blockable) equivalent, Glorious Light/Summoned a Storm. And absent protective pendants, all of hte Player Characters are *very* vulnerable to Flash and will frequently be paralyzed or KO'd by even the Beta level.
Doom — Similar to Death, but activates after a set amount of time or turns instead of instantaneously; usually accompanied by some sort of indicator of time left. It can sometimes be cured before this by standard status-removing magic; otherwise by ending the battle before death.
- Some poorly programed games will even continue the countdown through victory animations, possibly wiping out the final party member mid-boogie.
- In Earthbound, when your characters have a sufficient level, any physical damage that should kill you becomes a Doom effect instead, allowing you to win the battle before you should die (doesn't stop death-inducing Flash attacks, however). Furthermore, while using Lifeup or food on a dying character doesn't seem realistic in stopping death by mortal damage (that's to assume there is anything resembling realism in this game), it's just as effective, and more readily viable in some cases, to throw a Lifeup Gamma than to let them time out and have to toss a more-expensive Healing Gamma/Omega.
- The Perish Song attack in Pokemon works this way, combined with Mean Look it makes a good strategy against stallers. However, using it when both players are down to their last Pokemon in tournament play is illegal.
- The Curse move, when used by a Ghost-type Pokemon, also does this, dealing around 1/4 of their maximum health every turn until they switch out or faint.
- In Final Fantasy Tactics, an additional Doom counter comes into being after a character dies. If that counter reaches 0, the character is Lost Forever (unless it's an undead, in which case it can revive.)
- Nethack has a "sick" (food poisoning) condition which is fatal if not cured within a few turns, and a delayed-effect petrification status caused by hearing a cockatrice hiss which can be cured by eating an acidic food.
- Some games, such as several Final Fantasies, have a Petrify status ailment which is a mix of this and Stone - a countdown, after which the character turns to stone.
- In Mount Hyjal, a raid dungeon in Worldof Warcraft's Burning Crusade expansion, one of the bosses casts a debuff called Doom, which kills the target player upon fading and spawns a demon from their corpse.
A character in Critical condition is low on hitpoints and near-death. Highly variable between games, it can unseal desperation moves (as in Final Fantasy VI or some of the Tales games) or simply cause effects like a hunched-over posture, a red-tinged screen, or an alert bell. Seeing this as a negative thing to varying degrees is a something of an aversion of Critical Existence Failure.
- However, videogame bosses are practically guaranteed to become stronger when low on health.
- Starting from the third generation, certain abilities (Overgrow, Blaze, Torrent, and Swarm) can have a bonus to attacks of a Pokemon's type when their HP is below 1/3 of their maximum.
- Certain berries only activate when the Pokemon is in a 'pinch' (1/3 health or lower) as well. Couple that with certain attacks that do incredible amounts of damage when your pokemon is near death (Reversal, Flail), and letting yourself get beat up by the opponent only to turn the tables seconds later becomes a viable option.
- F.E.A.R.: Focus Sash + Endeavor + Quick Attack + Rattata. The Focus Sash ensures that, if attacked with full HP, the Mon holding it survives with 1 HP. Endeavor sets the enemy's HP equal to the user's. Quick Attack always goes first and will take down that last 1 HP with mandatory Scratch Damage. There are ways around it, of course, but if you don't know them...
- Some games have equipment that activate or increase in power when the wearer is in critical condition, such as "SOS" items in Square-Enix games.
- Final Fantasy VI had "Desperation Attacks" - when a character who was in Critical condition launched a standard physical attack, there was a chance of them using an extremely powerful move that would often turn the tide of battle. Each character had his or her own unique Desperation Attack.
- Lost Kingdoms doesn't really bother with this, unless you're the main character. Where you are, your movement becomes hindered the less hp you have, which makes you easy prey.
- Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne has Hito-Shura take on a rather fetching red glow and stagger around holding him stomach when on the field.
- Paper Mario is a good example of how this can be a beneficial effect, as many badges provided great benefits to Mario when he was at 5 or less (or even only 1) HP. Being probably the most ubiquitous example, Mega Rush increased your attack power by FOUR TIMES if you had a single hit point remaining. This, coupled with an infinitely-comboable Power Jump attack (and good timing) led to monumental amounts of damage being dealt. This could take out just about every boss that didn't start out invulnerable until a certain event happened (which happened far too often for this to be TOO abusable) before it even had the chance to attack, making it a staple tactic of speedrunners.
- In Final Fantasy VIII, being in critical condition is the most common way to trigger a Limit Break. Since the only other method is by use of a spell that isn't very easy to get and doesn't last very long, this makes it oddly desirable to keep at least part of the active party terminally at critically low HP in order to turn out Limit Breaks at will.
- If a party member other than the main character is knocked into Critical in Persona 3, they may ask you to let them leave the fight. This can get annoying if they have healing magic, because if you tell them to stay, they'll tell you off... then heal themselves. You suffer no penalties for ordering them to keep fighting, incidentally.
- The Tales series have always approached this effect somewhat differently with systems like Overlimit and Spirits Blaster. At first, this just provided temporary immunity to staggering when the target took enough damage (essentially, it was something of a desperation move). However, as the games went on, Overlimit gained a gauge that could be built up through causing and receiving damage. Characters were still immune to staggering after it was activated, except the overpowered Mystic Artes were now easier to use since you could trigger them on a whim.
- Tales Of Vesperia takes this one step further with the option to stack up to four Overlimits at once. The PS 3 version increased this to eight.
Cursed cause the forces of darkness/light to send upon you a series of horrible magical hexes that will screw you up basically. Ranging from reversed movement to severe attack and defense debuffing. You can still fight but will do so at suboptimal levels, some may even prevent you from healing yourself until a healer comes in and gets rid of it.
- One particularly potent one is from GuildWars: Spectral Agony. 80% slowed movement and attack speed, and 100hp loss/second (base max hp is ~500).
- Another nasty one is Disease from the later Wizardry games, which while technically a Plague, operates like a curse, and will steadily destroy a character from their skills to permanent stat damage, from which there is no recovery-not even death and resurrection will restore the character.
- Similarly, Disease from the Wild Arms games will prevent the character from healing while it's in effect.
- In Final Fantasy VIII & X, a Cursed character is unable to perform Limit Breaks or Overdrives.
- It didn't help in Final Fantasy X that the aeons were immune to all status effects BUT curse. Of course, those select bosses have status effect causing attack with a myriad of effects. If one's really unlucky, one of the characters will be Cursed. If an aeon gets hit by said attack, they always get cursed. asdf
- I, Treasure Of The Rudras, Curse is called Pollution, character cannot cast Mantras until Purifier is used or a Costly MP Mantra is cast that can Purify it PERSUAN
- Curse works differently in the Castlevania games:
- Rondo of Blood and Harmony of Dissonance: Slows down character's movement
- Symphony of the Night: Character is unable to attack or defend
- Aria of Sorrow, Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, and Order of Ecclesia: MP level drops FAST
- Lament of Innocence: Character is unable to perform combos
- And then there's the famous "Mushroom" status from Earthbound, which is essentially this.
- In Worldof Warcraft, the Warlock class is a master of Curses:
- Curse of Agony, which deals increasing damage as time passes.
- Curse of the Elements, which both reduces the target's magic resistances and increases the damage they take from magic attacks.
- Curse of Tongues, which slows casting speed.
- Curse of Weakness, which reduces the target's armor and physical attack power.
- Curse of Exhaustion, which lowers the target's movement speed.
- Curse of Doom, which deal a large amount of damage after a certain amount of time passes.
- An odd case in Pokemon. The move Curse works differently depending on the type of the pokemon using it. Ghost type pokemon cut their own HP to inflict a poison-like status on the enemy. Any other type will lower their speed to raise defense and attack.
- Super Mario RPG's version of the Fear status would fall under this category, as it halves the target's attack and defense stats. Players probably recall the animated cake that has an attack to inflict Fear on the whole party at once.
- Individual characters can become cursed in Golden Sun, but by two totally different ways. The first way is for a spirit to become bonded with some character, which normally doesn't do much except cause Scratch Damage every odd turn. The second way is to equip something that is cursed (the game will always tell you what equipment is cursed, and the equipment usually has foreboding names, like Devil's Plate and whatnot). Cursed equipment normally has resoundingly high bonuses, but in exchange you cannot remove the equipment, and your character will occasionally be unable to move during battle. Both curses cannot be removed by any item or spell, and you must visit a healer to fix yourself.
- There is, however, an item that one can equip to nullify a curse's effect. Using a cursed weapon while wearing said item can make for a very powerful character, but the weapon cannot be unequipped without visiting a healer.
- Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled: It's not displayed in battle, but two of your characters spend a good portion of the game Cursed. The effect being that you tend to start battles with anywhere from one to four random status effects and debuffs. Can be a bit of a Wall Banger when you catch fire as soon as you see a monster.
|
|
