History Main / ContractualBossImmunity

** The final boss of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' cannot be killed with the rocket launcher. He needs a special ''red'' rocket launcher, which you receive after you pummel him with regular weapons for a while.

** The final boss of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' cannot be killed with the rocket launcher. He needs a special ''red'' rocket launcher, which you receive after you pummel him with regular weapons for a while.

** The final boss of ''VideoGame/ResidentEvil4'' cannot be killed with the rocket launcher. He needs a special ''red'' rocket launcher, which you receive after you pummel him with regular weapons for a while.

** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemEngage'', on Maddening difficulty, bosses tend to have either the Unbreakable skill (immune to break) or the Veteran+ skill (immune to break and nullifies effective damage), the former on bosses without a type weakness and the later with at least one weakness. Hard difficulty downplays this, as bosses in this idfficulty with weakness will have the Stalwart skill, which reduces damage effectiveness from 3x might to 2x might (however, they are still vulnerable to being broken by weapon triangle advantage).

** The first game had Stone Curse, which completely petrified an enemy. It was not effective against Diablo but did work against other bosses and was a common strategy to use against some of them.

* ''VideoGame/SouthParkTheStickOfTruth'' has a status "Boss: Immune to stun, sleep, and pissed, just because." Additionally, each summon will tell you flat out that they refuse to go near bosses. [[spoiler:When fighting against Craig, when he uses the "Clone Army" move, he said that he's immune to splash damage (which means that using abilities that target multiple targets will treat targeting as though you are targeting only one) because Clyde said he is."]]

** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' has the Dark Elf, a challenging midgame boss, unless you cast Weak on him, which drops him to single digits. This weakness was removed in the remake. Also, while several bosses ignore or are outright immune to the Poison/Venom spell, the upgraded Bio/Virus spell works on nearly everything (it technically applies the status effect Sap instead of Poison, and almost nothing has Sap immunity). Not only is it useful against nearly every boss, one particular [[OptionalBoss optional] DualBoss becomes much easier to manage with proper use of it.

* ''Franchise/{{Kirby}}'': Bosses and minibosses generally cannot be inhaled, because they're bigger than Kirby. Meta Knight, however, is a little guy with cape and armor who is also immune to Kirby's ability. In the anime, Kirby tries to inhale him, but Meta Knight [[NoSell just stands still]], saying that he has "other ways of defending himself".

* Played with in the Mann Vs. Machine mode of ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'': [[GiantMook giant robots]] are immune to the Spy's backstab. There is, however, a series of upgrades to the knife that let you do a fixed amount of damage based on the upgrade level; it generally won't be the OneHitKill backstabs are to everything else, but it's still quite damaging, especially since you may be able to get in several before it turns around. And then there's the [[DamageSpongeBoss Tank]], which not only can't be headshot or backstabbed, it is also completely immune to all negative effects like Jarate, Mad Milk, Burning, Sapped, Stun, etc.

* In ''VideoGame/EnterTheGungeon'', bosses are completely immune to the ForcedTransformation effect of magic weapons.

*** When facing Black/White Kyurem in ''VideoGame/PokemonBlack2AndWhite2'', Ghetsis' staff prevents the player from using Poké Balls, thus Kyurem must be knocked out (though it can be caught in its normal form later, after the main story is over).
*** During ''VideoGame/PokemonSunAndMoon'', UB-01 appears when visiting Aether Paradise. Despite being a powerful Ultra Beast at level 27, the entire island has a Poké Ball jammer that prevents people from using Poké Balls to capture Pokémon, you included. After becoming the Champion, however, you're able to encounter it somewhere else (which doesn't have the Poké Ball jammer) and catch it without issue.

* Some games, usually on-rails shooters like ''VideoGame/StarFox'', have area-effect attacks designed to destroy all on-screen enemies, but will only cause a comparatively large amount of damage to bosses.

** Plan C item, which will kill everything in the room instantly, including any boss in the game (of course, since it kills ''the player'' too, its usefulness is limited). It's also possible to gain so much attack power that bosses are taken out nearly instantly, but two of the Afterbirth bosses have a damage-blocking mechanic which rapidly scales up their armor when they take large amounts of damage in short periods of time. As a result, even runs that would instantly kill a normal boss can take a good deal of time to wear the boss down.

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

The reason programmers and authors do this is for game balance and narrative issues. Where's the big climactic and ''fun'' battle if the hero just lops off the enemy's head? A hero who can send the BigBad into the PhantomZone, [[TakenForGranite turn them to stone]], [[MadeOfPlasticine cleave them limb from limb]], or otherwise kill/disable them in less than a heartbeat skirts [[GameBreaker dangerously close]] to an InvincibleHero.

However, this Contractual Boss Immunity ends up resulting in GameplayAndStorySegregation that will really bug players, or worse, ''harm them'' if they put a lot of their [[ExperiencePoints XP]] into powering up these abilities. Essentially, this is what puts the "Useless" in most {{Useless Useful Spell}}s, especially in {{RPG}}s; what's the point of using an expensive, powerful attack when it only works on enemies you can defeat with a weak one?

However, [[AvertedTrope averting]] this trope ''can'' make for a different and entertaining atmosphere. Allowing players to OneHitKill any enemy, turn the FinalBoss to stone, or have their characters use the [[TouchOfDeath Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique]] on [[Film/KillBill Bill]] can be downright ''[[ShowyInvincibleHero awesome!]]''

As you can see, this veers in and out of AcceptableBreaksFromReality. It can be fun to kill a FinalBoss with the uber attacks that are normally useless, but it can also be rather boring to do so.

In recent days, this is becoming a DownplayedTrope in several instances, most of which have to do with expanding the options available to the player and the underlying systems which make them work, watering down the effects of these potent attacks instead of outright making them useless. One example is that, instead of [[OneHitKill instantly killing]] the boss, the Exploding Heart Technique does massive amount of armor-piercing damage when successfully applied while the boss [[BreakMeter is made vulnerable]]. Another is that, instead of being unable to [[StatusEffects inflict poison]] on a boss, it requires multiple casts of a poison spell (instead of the usual one on {{mooks}}). The ''VideoGame/MonsterHunter'' series loves this version, but even it has instances which play the trope straight.

* ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIIINocturne'' contains 5 elements for inflicting aliments (mind, nerve, death, expel and curse). All but 2 bosses (Forneus, who comes before the first instant death spell and Troll, who is weak enough to be a miniboss at most) are immune to death/expel and all but a handful of early bosses null or strongly resist the other 3. Most of the instant kill effects do work well on various [[FlunkyBoss flunkies]] however.
** ''Franchise/ShinMegamiTensei'' is unusual for a JRPG in that ''only'' bosses are outright immune to instant kills and incapacitating spells. All other enemies will be vulnerable to at least some of them, and in a good number of cases outright weak, translating to "one cast, one kill" against those types of enemies. As far as general gameplay is concerned, instakills are definitely NOT {{Useless Useful Spell}}s (Being [[NintendoHard MegaTen]], simply "attack"ing a random counter is a good way to die). Also, stat debuffs definitely ''do'' work on bosses (and are seriously necessary in most cases).

** The first ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTensei'' game shows ''why'' this trope is in effect: bosses did not have blanket immunity to many status effects, so many otherwise difficult boss fights could be instantly trivialized by having your human party members open fire on the boss with Charm Bullets loaded in their guns. The bosses would then start beating on themselves.