So what can you do in a video game? Jump, attack, swing your sword, rain fire and destruction on your enemy, heal your friends, or maybe do a backflip? This is an index of all the things that video game heroes and villains can pull off.
Tropes:
See also:
- 11th-Hour Superpower: A powerful, unique weapon or ability suddenly obtained near the end of the game to help the hero get through the final challenges.
- Air-Dashing: A burst of forward momentum in the air.
- Always Accurate Attack: This attack will never miss its target. Ever.
- Anti-Debuff: Measures that can be taken against getting debuffed.
- Anti-Escape Mechanism: A move that can be used against fleeing foes in order to thwart their attempts.
- Area of Effect: Attacks that hit a wide area, rather than a specific target. Beware friendly fire!
- Arrows on Fire: Arrows can kill you. But they can kill you better if they're on fire!
- Attack Reflector: A technique that reflects an attack back to the attacker.
- Auto-Revive: With the right item or spell, a character will be automatically revived in the event of their own KO.
- Awesome, but Impractical: A great, flashy move, which is hard to use or does little damage.
- Back Stab: A stealth attack from behind that does massive damage.
- Ballistic Bone: An attack that launches bones.
- Beat the Curse Out of Him: The way to free a cursed or possessed person is to beat him up.
- Beehive Barrier: A barrier made up of geometric shapes.
- Booze-Based Buff: Video games portray drunkenness in silly ways, often with positive status effects.
- Boring, but Practical: The mainstays of your skillset that you use over and over again, because they are the most effective.
- Boss-Altering Consequence: An ability or action that causes a unique effect during a Boss Battle but isn't required to beat it.
- Bubble Gun: The gun shoots bubbles. Lame.
- Cast from Hit Points: A spell that draws from the user's own health or life energy.
- Cast from Money: It costs money every time that power is being used.
- Chain Lethality Enabler: An effect which makes it easier for a character who gets a kill to immediately follow up with another kill.
- Chain Lightning: A multi-hit lightning attack.
- Charged Attack: Charge up a skill by either collecting items or holding a button.
- Circling Birdies: A visual indicator of being dazed and/or confused and/or under certain Status Effects.
- Combination Attack: A special attack that occurs when two or more characters use certain attacks at the same time or in rapid succession.
- Combos: A sequence of moves that string together.
- Cooldown Manipulation: Where you can manipulate the Cooldown of your abilities (or your foes').
- Corralling Vacuum: An ability that pulls enemies in an area together to facilitate follow-up attacks on them.
- Counter-Attack: When the enemy attacks, you swat him right back.
- Critical Hit: An attack randomly does extra (or double) damage.
- Critical Failure: A chance for automatic failure (or Epic Fail) when executing a skill or spell.
- Damage Discrimination: In videogames, things that do damage to one thing don't always do damage to something else.
- Damage-Increasing Debuff: A status ailment making its subject take more damage somehow.
- Damage Over Time: A negative status that inflicts a small amount of damage on a unit at regular time intervals.
- Damage Reduction
- Dash Attack: An attack that simultaneously moves the user in a forward direction.
- Death or Glory Attack: A high risk attack that can be very powerful but can also backfire or disadvantage you.
- Deliberately Non-Lethal Attack: A attack that can't kill your enemies.
- Desperation Attack: A super-attack available (or more powerful) only when the user is near death.
- Disadvantageous Disintegration: Your attack destroys not only your enemy, but also all the valuable stuff he would otherwise have dropped.
- Disc-One Nuke: An exploit where a powerful item or technique is achieved early on in the game.
- Double-Edged Buff: A status effect that provides both a positive and negative effect on the target.
- Double Jump: Jump once, then you jump again in mid-air. No, it shouldn't be possible, but it's fun.
- Draw Aggro: Abilities that make enemies focus on one player, usually the tank in the party.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Ice beats water. Water beats fire. Fire beats... spooky?
- Elemental Tiers: Elemental weapons (and sometimes spells) are drastically different in power level.
- Enemy Scan: HP: 200. MP: 90. Element: Potassium. Weakness: Widdle Kitties.
- Evolving Attack: An ability which can grow or change as you use it or gain levels.
- EX Special Attack: A special attack that has been powered up by spending part of a meter.
- Field Power Effect: When the characters get supernatural bonuses or weaknesses based on the battlefield conditions.
- Finishing Move: A special combat maneuver you can only use to finish off a battle.
- Fire, Ice, Lightning: The three most common elements in RPGs.
- Fire, Water, Wind: A less common but still present trinity of elements often found in games.
- First-Person Snapshooter: The increasingly common gameplay feature that has the player taking pictures of enemies, items, NPCs, or features in the environment.
- Fixed Damage Attack: A skill that does a set amount of damage, regardless of the caster's or target's statistics, or pretty much anything else.
- Full Health Bonus: A skill that is most effective when the player is at full health.
- Goomba Stomp: Enemies in Platform Games can be defeated just by the player landing on top of them.
- Goomba Springboard: Games where you can stomp on an enemy to end up higher than where you started from.
- Gradual Regeneration: Something's restored over time, depending if it's an ability or an item.
- Grapple Move: An attack done by grabbing an enemy and usually throwing them after.
- Grind Boots: Characters can grind a rail without a skateboard—just with their shoes.
- Ground Pound: The player jumps, ducks or crouches in the air, and comes down powerfully onto the ground.
- Ground Punch: When one or several of a character's attacks or moves involves punching the ground.
- Herd-Hitting Attack: An attack that makes standing around in a group a bad idea.
- Home-Run Hitter: An ability that hits so powerfully that the opponent is knocked all the way into the distance (twinkle!)
- HP to 1: An attack that always reduces its targets' Hit Points to one (i.e. 1 HP away from death).
- Immune to Flinching: The ability to avoid the recoil/stun animations when being hit.
- Infinity +1 Element: A unique spell or element only usable by bosses or special units, with no weaknesses.
- Invulnerable Attack: An attack that makes you invincible while it's charging or executing.
- Item Amplifier: Items are more effective when used.
- Kamehame Hadoken: An incredibly destructive, solid blast of Pure Energy emitted from the hands.
- Knockback Evasion: An action performed to stop being knocked back by a hit.
- Lag Cancel: A move you can do to shorten the amount of lag time after an attack, letting you move again more quickly.
- Last Chance Hit Point: If a normally lethal amount of damage instead reduces a character to their last Hit Point, and they can endure one more attack before being knocked out.
- Last Disc Magic: In Eastern RPGs, although magic is usually less efficient than melee attacks, a spell or set of spells later in the game will be much better than the rest.
- Last Ditch Move: An attack thrown by an enemy just before it dies.
- Level Drain: In RPGs, certain enemies can take Character Levels away from you (usually temporarily).
- Life Drain: An attack that hurts your opponent and heals you.
- Limit Break: A powerful attack or technique available after some requirement during battles (e.g. damage received) is fulfilled.
- Limited Move Arsenal: Characters can't just use everything they know; they have to rely on a limited subset of them during battles.
- Loot Command: A specific command you need to loot something from a defeated enemy.
- Loot-Making Attack: An attack or ability that creates items after attacking an enemy.
- Magikarp Power: A character or ability that seems completely useless at first, but with repeated use and patience can be highly effective later.
- Mana Burn: An attack that damages the target's magic points.
- Mana Drain: A skill that drains a target's magic points and gives it to the caster.
- Mana Shield: A skill that makes attacks damage your magic points instead of your Hit Points.
- Maximum HP Reduction: Attacks that reduce the maximum number of Hit Points, not just their current amount.
- Mutual Disadvantage: When two sides are equally impervious (or vulnerable) to the other's skills or powers.
- New Skill as Reward: You received your flashy new ability or crafting technique as a reward for completing a task.
- Non-Elemental: An enemy or spell that has no elemental affinity and hence no strengths or weaknesses against elemental opponents.
- Non-Health Damage: Damage that's not dealt to health. Some of its sub-tropes are on this index.
- Non-Standard Skill Learning: This skill is learned in a different way than other skills in the game.
- One-Hit Kill: A spell or attack that will instantly defeat the target... if it hits.
- Only Flesh Is Safe: This attack only damages or affects inorganic and inanimate matter. Biological life is immune.
- Percent-Based Values: Something's effect calculates the value used as a percentage of another value.
- Percent Damage Attack: A spell or attack that lowers the target's HP by a fraction of the current amount regardless of other factors. Often cannot inflict a killing blow.
- Perfect Reload Command: A move that allows faster reloading for a gun.
- Player-Guided Missile: You can personally ensure your attack hits its target, by guiding it there yourself.
- Power Copying: Where the hero can copy the abilities of bad guys and use them from then on.
- Quirky Bard: A gimmick class, character or unit often added by game designers trying to add variety.
- Random Effect Spell: Nobody knows for sure what will happen ... do you feel lucky, punk?
- Randomized Damage Attack: An attack/ability that has its damage/quality etc randomized per each usage, forcing you to be wise on using it.
- Recovery Attack: An ability to fight back after getting knocked down.
- Reduce Aggro: Items and abilities that make foes less likely to go after you.
- Reverse Shrapnel: An ability that surrounds the user with deadly items, which then home in on enemies.
- Revive Kills Zombie: Situation where an undead or zombie enemy is damaged by healing magic or items.
- Rolling Attack: You roll yourself into stuff to travel quickly, and deal damage in the process!
- Sacrificial Revival Spell: This spell kills you, but it brings someone back to life.
- Secondary Fire: Where a gun can have a second "fire" button with a different effect than the primary "fire" button.
- Self-Damaging Attack Backfire: Your own attack ends up hurting you.
- Shockwave Stomp: Where a boss or character can smash on the ground and send out a wave of energy that causes damage.
- Situational Damage Attack: An attack that depends on some certain variable/action that can make it more powerful.
- Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: A powerful attack that is nonetheless far less damaging than its depiction implies.
- Slide Attack: A low-sliding action that sits between offensive option and a means of mobility.
- Special Attack: Any weapon, move, or tactic that is normally not a basic punch, kick, or whatever other forms of attack the user normally uses. May or may not require some form of Mana or energy to power it.
- Spell Crafting: When a setting lets you make up or cobble together spells or powers.
- Spin Attack: You spin around like a maniac in an attempt to make cheeky enemies give you a little breathing room.
- Splash Damage: An attack that does damage in a radius around where it initially hits, dealing less damage farther from the center.
- Splash Damage Abuse: Abusing an attack's Splash Damage or Area of Effect to get enhanced performance.
- Sprint Shoes: An item, ability, or spell that enables the player character to move around cities and town faster. May or may not have any use in actual combat.
- Stage Fatality: A finisher that sends the opponent into some environmental hazard.
- Stamina Burn: Some that targets the stamina stat or value, provided it's not another name for Hit Points.
- Stat Overflow: This spell or effect allows you to temporarily surpass the cap on one or more of your Stat Meters.
- Status-Buff Dispel: A spell that negates Status Buffs that enemies (or the players) have cast on themselves.
- Strong Flesh, Weak Steel: Where meat trumps metal and fleshy characters are (sometimes inexplicably) more durable than armored tanks.
- Summon Magic: The ability to call on a magical, often mythological entity without the hassle of actually having it follow you around.
- Super Mode: A mode where an individual temporarily becomes much stronger, almost always accompanied by a visible change towards the badass end of the spectrum.
- Symmetric Effect: An effect that impacts every player in the same way, whether in relative or absolute terms.
- Sword Beam: You swing your sword, and a beam of energy shoots out to hit opponents from a distance.
- Time Rewind Mechanic: An ability to rewind in-game time at any point.
- Too Awesome to Use: It's awesome, but can be used so few times that you actually don't want to use it.
- Tornado Move: The ability to throw tornadoes or hurricanes to your enemies.
- Turn Undead: A standard spell which causes The Undead to panic or be destroyed, depending on the work.
- Unblockable Attack: An attack that can't be blocked; it breaks any defense or counter. Can usually be dodged or interrupted, however.
- Useless Item: Man, this would be a great item if the programmers remembered what it was meant to do.
- Useless Useful Non-Combat Abilities: Abilities that let you get through situations without fighting, but end up not being all that useful.
- Useless Useful Spell: A spell or effect which sounds useful in theory, but rarely ever works in your favor.
- Useless Useful Stealth: When sneaking past an opponent isn't as easy (or rewarding) as just plain fighting them.
- Video Game Dashing: For when a character zooms forward for no explainable reason.
- Video Game Flight: Somewhat ironically, video games that actually let your character fly freely about the world don't always let your character fly freely about the world.
- Video Game Sliding: Characters can often slide from a complete standstill, with enough force to break walls or kill enemies.
- Video Game Stealing: YOINK! You stole PIANO!
- Wall Jump: Who needs stairs? Just bounce yourself off the wall!
- You Nuke 'Em: Tactical or strategic nuclear warheads used in gameplay.
- You Shouldn't Know This Already: You get an item or instrument that can do all sorts of things - but you can't do them yet, because your in-universe character hasn't "learned" about them yet.
- You Will Not Evade Me: A move that pulls a target to your location.
