Every so often, a game will provide an incentive for doing some extra damage beyond what is strictly required to deplete an enemy's Hit Points. Sometimes, the extra damage translates into extra Experience Points. Other times, the extra damage translates into money; this way, any Hit Points or Mana that get expended in battle can be replenished with now-affordable Healing Potions and Mana Potions. The incentive may be something as slight as a Cosmetic Award, such as a more spectacular enemy explosion and/or Ludicrous Gibs.
In cases where the aforementioned Limit Break attacks get rewarded, this can be a gameplay-encouraged version of There Is No Kill Like Overkill. Instances where this is possible in multiplayer games involve Beating A Dead Player.
Examples:
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Action RPG
- Bloodborne: As in Dark Souls 1 below, attacking enemies as their death animation plays gives an unintended bonus, only this time it applies to all enemies: you can still regain health from attacking enemies who are in the middle of dying.
- Dark Souls:
- Enemies drop more souls when one attack does enough damage to One-Hit Kill them (regardless of how much health they had before the last hit).
- In a (presumably) unintentional example, the combined health bar of the 4 Kings has slightly more health than those of the individual kings added together. To avoid fighting a 5th king, it's necessary to do extra damage to each king that spawns (or to continue to attack during their rather long death animation). Doing so can also effectively reduce the HP of the final king, as he dies as soon as the combined health bar hits zero.
- In the Deception series, it always pays to hammer the enemies with as much damage you can dish out in a combo, giving more ark points for designing new traps. This is especially true for Deception 4, where the demoness of Sadism will give you bonus ark for doing so.
- Super Robot Wars OG Saga: Endless Frontier grants more experience points if players finish an opponent off with a "Support Attack" or an "Overdrive". The Endless Frontier EXCEED Sequel awards bonus experience for an Overdrive finish depending on whether one or more than one enemy is destroyed at the end of battle, but a "Support Finish" (where a partner assigned to a front row fighter in the party achieves the final hit) nets additional gold, while an "Assist Finish" (a non-support only party member in the back row) fills the Frontier Gauge up. The latter is noteworthy as EXCEED allows the gauge to carry over for every fight. It also possible to regain a percentage of Spirit Points equal to 1/10th of the maximum number of combo hits dealt in that battle, meaning players can use Spirit Commands a lot more often than in the first game if they're good at juggling enemies.
- In Mega Man Star Force 3, overkilling an enemy with a non-elemental card attack will increase the Noise level by the amount of extra damage. When the level exceeds 200%, you can transform into your Finalized form; additionally, ending a battle with upwards of 100% Noise will enable you to obtain Illegal Data.
Beat-'em-up
- Streets of Fury: Players can juggle enemies even after they die, continuing to fill their super meter as if they were still alive. Combo an enemy long enough, and they explode.
Eastern RPG
- In Paper Mario: Sticker Star, Paper Mario: Color Splash, and Paper Mario: The Origami King, one extra Heart Point of damage to an enemy beyond its last bit of health becomes one coin. This gets added to the automatic coin and sticker reward for winning the battle itself.
- Final Fantasy X has an overkill mechanic; if you kill a monster with an attack that exceeds a certain amount of damage, the party will be awarded with more AP and items.
- In Glory of Heracles (DS) you can Overkill enemies by dealing enough damage to their corpse, at which point it dissolves into Ether, replenishing both the party member's MP and the actual Ether on the battlefield, which you need to cast spells. Corpses of normal enemies disappear by themselves at the end of the turn, but Undead enemies will ressurect instead, so you have to either Overkill them or kill every other enemy before that. Thankfully, party members can't be Overkilled, and in fact enemies will sometimes waste turns hitting a defeated ally.
- Some of Arumat's Battle Trophies in Star Ocean: The Last Hope requiring inflicting overkill damage on the foe. Initiating a Rush Gauge special attack barrage is the best way to handle it, as the enemy won't die automatically from the attack until it's completed. Good thing, as you'll need to inflict over 90,000 points of overkill damage to get all the trophies for that category.
- In Fantasy Life, doing "overkill" to a resource-gathering point (trees for Woodcutters and ore deposits for Miners) gets you more resources.
- Golden Sun: Killing an enemy with a Djinni of the appropriate element causes the enemy to glow briefly before it dies, and gives more coins and increases the probability of it dropping an item or weapon.
- In Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals, beating on enemies after they've been killed and before they disappear causes them to spill out extra gold and experience, as well as soul shards that can be traded in for special items.
- The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel has an overkill mechanic. If a character deals 5 times more damage than the target enemy's current HP in one hit, then the party will gain a 10% experience bonus at the end of the battle. These bonuses can be stacked.
- In Fate/Grand Order, since a single character cannot change their attack target even after the target is dead, the game gives additional Critical Stars and NP Charge for each additional hit. This can encourage players to go for Overkills, as it benefits them for the next turn.
- Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and 3: Chain Attacks can continue until the Chain attack gauge is emptied, or you destroy enough orbs to go into Elemental Burst (in 2), or complete an Ouroboros Order (in 3) . If you deplete the targeted enemy's health during a Chain Attack, you will cause an "Overkill", converting any extra attacks into an Experience Point multiplier. In 2, you will also gain additional drops from the enemy just by killing them with a chain attack.
- In Valkyrie Profile, juggling an already-defeated enemy can make it drops crystals (which grant more experience) or even treasure chests.
Fighting Game
- Killer Instinct (2013) enforces this by allowing players to continue their combos even if they kill their foe, and allowing that continued combo to even gain meter. This extra meter allows such things like using one Ultra Combo, then activating Instinct Mode to reset the combo, and then gaining enough meter to make another Ultra Combo. Doing extra damage to opponents in Shadow Lords also boosts loot drop rate.
First Person Shooter
- The aptly named Overkill gear in Bioshock Infinite allows Booker to shock several enemies when making a kill with more damage than necessary, thus making it even easier to score an Overkill on them.
- Borderlands 2
- The Gunzerker class has one skill-tree end with the skill "No Kill Like Overkill". After getting a kill, the extra damage done is then added to all gun attacks madenote for a couple seconds or until you kill another enemy. So if one kills a weakened enemy with something like a rocket launcher, then pulls out a machine gun, it can get pretty crazy powerful.
- The Psycho class has two overkill abilities: the first returns overkill damage to himself as health (Important since his health tends to dip really, really low due to his playstyle), while the second converts overkill damage to an explosion that can chain by overkilling other enemies (possibly to Game-Breaker levels).
- Surplus Damage is one of many, many factors that gives you more Skillshots points in Bulletstorm.
- In Ion Fury, enemies killed with too much damage, often to the head or using explosives tend to explode into valuable armor pickups.
Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game
- In World of Warcraft, several healing classes have a feature where overhealing reduces damage taken by the healing target, or gives them a shield that absorbs damage based on the overhealing.
- Experience points in Nexus Clash are awarded in combat based on damage dealt, even if the amount of damage dealt exceeds the target's available health points. Many players try to save Special Attacks for killing blows for this reason, to get the maximum benefit from killing one enemy.
Puzzle Game
- Bookworm Adventures gives extra gem tiles for doing enough surplus damage.
Rhythm Game
- In O.N.G.E.K.I., after you've destroyed the entire enemy team, continuing to hit notes will build up an "Over Damage" bonus.
Roguelike
- In Dwarf Fortress, the DF2014 update added the ability for multiple solid hits, or a few powerful blows, to reduce the affected body part to Ludicrous Gibs. With most normal enemies, caving their skull in will likely kill them or knock them out anyway, making this a mostly cosmetic effect. However, the update also tweaked undead to require mangling essential parts in this manner to put them down.
- Normally, "killed" zombies in Cataclysm will eventually revive. In order to stop the revivification process, you need to take a few moments to destroy the body. However, doing extraordinary amounts of damage to the zombie while it's still standing will cause them to explode into meat chunks, saving you that step.
- Gear Head is a mecha roguelike that features Subsystem Damage. Mecha are made of body parts like arms or legs, and destruction of the central torso is needed to destroy a mecha. If you hit a body part hard enough to blast it off, the overflow damage is sent to the torso.
Shoot-Em-Up
- In Ether Vapor, when certain large enemies are critically damaged, the word "Overkill" appears over the target and a x8 multiplier is applied to any points earned from continuing to damage the enemy.
- Raiden IV: Overkill introduces a number of mechanics not present in the original Raiden IV, but perhaps the most notable feature is the Overkill mechanic. When you critically damage a large enemy, a five-block Overkill gauge shows up over it and you can continue to pound the enemy with more firepower until it finaly blows up. Filling up at least one block causes the destroyed enemy to release a bonus point item, the value of which increases the more you damage the enemy before it explodes.
Strategy RPG
- In Culdcept, a few creatures have a special ability that steals magic based on the damage dealt, including damage past the point required to kill the creature. There is also an achievement for draining the opponent completely from toll fees so that they have to release all their property and warp back to start.
- In Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume, attacking an enemy with zero HP will fill up the Sin gauge. Acquiring twice as much Sin as the game demands for that battle can unlock powerful weapons, armor, accessories, and abilities. Conversely, failing to overkill enemies will earn you the ire of your mysterious benefactor, generally meaning that she'll screw you over in your future battles by setting her goons on you in addition of fighting the enemy forces: they're basically impossible to beat without using one of the other main mechanics to supercharge one of your allies, which also kills them after the battle as well as automatically fulfilling the basic Sin requirement. In short, she'll get her way no matter what you do.
- Overkilling enemies in Agarest Senki guarantees an item drop, in addition the enemy's normal random drop.
- Games in the SD Gundam G Generation series starting with Spirits will give an Overkill bonus if the player does more damage than necessary to destroy an enemy machine. It even gives multiple bonuses (like Overkill x5) if you deal enough damage.
Tabletop Games
- In one version of Warhammer, characters would always use every attack they had in a duel, even if they had already killed their opponent. Every wound they inflicted beyond death would increase the morale penalty suffered by nearby troops. Seeing your leader slain by the enemy champion is disheartening; seeing your leader sliced into bloody chunks by the enemy champion, who is now looking in your direction, is terrifying.
- Similarly, in Ironclaw, inflicting 6 or more damage on a target will "overkill" them and automatically render their allies Afraid (unable to attack, at least until they can rally again).
- Overkilling an enemy machine in BattleTech may not mean much (other than making the unit and any Critical Hit unable to be salvaged), but overkill someone in on-foot scenarios in MechWarriornote , and they are well beyond the means of medical help. 'Deadly' wounds, IE, injuries that meet or exceed hit points, can still be survived by any character, player or NPC, with a large dose of luck. There is no surviving a 'Fatal' wound at all, which describes characters thus afflicted as "very definitely dead, and there's not much left to put in a coffin, either."
- Certain weapons in Paranoia can do this. If their damage is boosted high enough, it goes from "Killed" to "Vaporized". There's not really much a difference mechanically, but the players a recommended to give a hearty clap for such an astounding feat (especially if a player managed to vaporize themselves).
- The Fantasy Flight Games Warhammer 40,000 games have Critical Damage tables to describe just how gruesomely a given attack mutilates its target after all Wounds are depleted. Most columns where death occurs have it set around 9, but bringing a target past that threshold on the chart often causes some Bloody Hilarious side effects, such as an energy weapon to the head causing your now-headless and on fire body to stagger off in a random direction, setting fire to anything in its way.
- Depending on the campaign, sheer overkill can be necessary in GURPS. The important threshold is putting your target under negative ten times their max HP, which destroy the body. Some forms of resurrection "require a mostly intact corpse". Especially important in After the End when dealing with a Zombie Apocalypse, this will prevent your enemy from raising from the dead.
Western RPG
- Extra damage in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim translates into physical momentum. Do barely enough to kill an enemy and it will simply slump over; use a powerful attack against an enemy with just a sliver of health left and it will fly across the room. An (originally) unintended consequence of this is that the damage of giant attacks, meant to be a One-Hit Kill, is set so high that each attack will launch the victim into the stratosphere. It was left in 'cause it's FUN.
- In the Baldur's Gate series, inflicting considerably more damage to an enemy than they have hit points left results in them exploding into Ludicrous Gibs. This also applies to party members, and the ones who are killed in this fashion cannot be resurrected.
- In Marvel: Avengers Alliance, you get a special bonus and extra mission points whenever you do just this to finish off an enemy. The resulting damage labels range from Overkill to Epic Overkill depending on how much extra damage you do.
- In the first two episodes of Penny Arcade Adventures, doing enough surplus damage to an enemy gives an overkill bonus, which translates into increases to attack power.
Other
- Some of the Yu-Gi-Oh! video games reward players with extra credits directly based on the amount of damage dealt, and therefore encourage them to overkill their opponent by a fairly generous amount to squeeze a few more credits out to buy another pack of cards. For instance, some games award a 1 credit per 100 damage to Life Points bonus, so a player may earn 80 credits for defeating an enemy with exactly 8000 points of damage to their Life Points in a duel. Wipe out the opponent with an attack that overkills them by 2000 Life Points, though, and now the game awards the player an extra 20 credits on top of their base 80 given for the victory, a 25% bonus to the player's profit for that duel.
- The first Pokémon Ranger game had bonus experience given to the player should they loop the Pokémon more times than necessary before they capture it. This was removed from later games simply due to an overhaul in the damage system.
- Magic: The Gathering:
- Typically averted when attacking with creatures. No matter how much power your creature has, it can be blocked by any creature your opponent controls. The defending creature will be destroyed if it has lower toughness than your attacking creature's powernote , but the surplus damage is lost. Blocking particularly powerful creatures with low toughness creatures is known as "chump blocking" on the competitive scene.
- One major exception are creatures with the "Trample" ability. Creatures with Trample deal surplus damage directly to their opponent's life.
- Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft:
- Hearthstone has a keyword "Overkill". It will be followed by an effect which triggers whenever the card with the keyword inflicts more damage on a target than is required to kill it.
- Inverted with "Honorable Kill", which triggers if the damage source used to kill the minion is exactly equal to their remaining health.
- Inscryption:
- Overkill damage when attacking a card will also strike any card waiting in the lane behind the killed card. This damage cannot hurt your opponent.
- Overkill damage when attacking your opponent is directly converted into currency used for purchase of in-game items.
