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GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#1: Aug 19th 2023 at 3:26:51 AM

Note: This thread was proposed by MaLady.

Lumps too much RNG together. Random Event, Random Drop, Permanently Missable Content, Honest Rolls Character.

Split into other tropes, and only keep this around if there's some form of luck that's Too Rare to Trope, or make a disambig due to inbounds needing something to hold the spot.

Luck Based Wick Check:

  • Actually about luck that also determines win or loss of a game, and seems to not be covered by other tropes (~20 wicks, a.k.a ~40%)

The other 60% of the check is a scattering of things that doesn't directly impact winning or losing a game:

Wick check:

Luck-Based Mission wick check.

sqrt(2721) is ~52.1, rounded to 53, and Wolfram Alpha to generate the indexes: Disregard the wick to here.

Categories, where some pages use it more than once, so they get split into multiple categories:

    Actually about luck that's not covered by other tropes I know, that also determines win or loss (~20?, a.k.a ~40%) 
* Luck-Based Mission: Can be invoked by the player, if they choose to create a custom level with a random deck. Otherwise averted as none of the levels in the singleplayer campaign make use of this feature.
* Fortune Cookie: "I Can See the Floor Again, Almost..." Edition: While showing off Super Mario Maker 2's Multiplayer Mode, one of the stages proves to be a Luck-Based Mission due to the moving platform in the final area. First time Jon makes it there, it's nowhere in sight, and he revives in the first area to find it completely chaotic courtesy of a Lakitu gradually flooding it with Spinies. Things only keep rolling downhill from there.
Li'l Doge has low stats like the original, but faster speed... and, more importantly, a 20% chance to dodge attacks from any cat for a second. Dodge on enemies is a Scrappy Mechanic for a reason — if you're [[Luck-Based Mission not lucky]], the enemy can just keep activating its dodge over and over again, indefinitely
* Luck-Based Mission: There is a spinner in the back of the book that initially decides which of the two main storylines you will follow: "Fun" or "Games". If you get Games, rather than letting you make choices, a lot of the paths are decided by actual games such as flipping a coin or rolling a dice, etc. You also have to use the spinner at other points in the storyline.
* Luck-Based Mission: Some books don't follow any real internal logic, which makes winning the book more trial-and-error than good planning/decision making. Most of the books also have at least one choice determined by something random the book asks you such as what day of the week it is, what month you were born, whether you have fair or dark hair, or are right or left-handed, etc.
  • ScrappyMechanic.Action: Maybe. Depends on how luck-based it really is. Is it actually dependent on something other than RNG?
Lara losing her balance or grip in Tomb Raider: Anniversary is, on paper, a mechanic where sometimes she slips when grabbing a ledge or balancing on a pillar and you have to press a button to steady herself before she falls. In practice, it turns every single "time your jumps to avoid moving blades, crushing walls, etc" segment into a Luck-Based Mission since, if she happens to lose her grip or balance, you will be hit by the obstacle and killed before you can act.
* Luck-Based Mission: The entire point of the Lair, where you must give Pumpkinhead an item. Except, this item changed from playthrough to playthrough, so if you don't have it, you've literally lost the game.
* Luck-Based Mission: And HOW! Much of the game is up to sheer luck what will happen, from the enemies encountered, items dropped, to even how battles go. In many ways, the game is Dungeons & Dragons in all but name with how battles are waged, with no two encounters with the same enemy going exactly the same. One enemy during one encounter may give you enormous trouble while the next time it's an absolute pushover.
* Luck-Based Mission:
** Several quests in the online game have some luck in it. Usually, you can get a pretty high rank, even if you're completely screwed, but there are some quests where rank is determined almost completely by luck (we're looking at you, Rescue the Apprentice). Can also get like this in the single-player titles, since your allies have the tendency to get themselves killed at the most inconvenient time.
** The "Infiltrate the Official Residence" quest in Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires. There are five total places where Wood Oxen can randomly spawn, and you need to find and break three of them to win. Two of them, however, are in an area where, due to poor AI pathing, you can not avoid the guards - you will be seen, which means several super-powered officers spawn in and the mission becomes unwinnable on all but the lowest difficulty settings. Better hope all three Wood Oxen decide to spawn in the space you can actually reach!
* Luck-Based Mission: Any race through the city or hidden orb rush, depending on the random placement and movement cycles of citizens and guards, both on foot and in vehicles. They REALLY love to get in your way.
%%** Obtaining the piece of seal in the water slums from Brutter.
* Luck-Based Mission: Serbia's expansion into Illyria is borderline impossible if Austria-Hungary doesn't collapse into an Austro-Hungarian War, which the player as Serbia has no way to influence and cause.
* Luck-Based Mission: The whole game (or at least the "destroying Eurasia" part) — you can try using the Enigma cannon from the very start and it still has a chance of success; conversely, even if you collect all the parts for the Shuttle, it may still fail.
* Luck-Based Mission: Many, many examples throughout the series. Heck, the very nature of the game means that there will be times where the color that you need just won't show up.
** "Nohoho AI" back in Tsu. Nohoho (and his Fever counterpart Donguri Gaeru) would stack Puyo to the brim on the three rightmost columns on the field, clear one group, and pray the pile would magically create a chain or two. It may sound impractical (competitively speaking), but it won't be a laughing matter if you get hit with a five or six chain. (Suketoudara, Harpy, and Yu & Rei use similar "gimmick" stacking patterns, but none of theirs are quite as effective.)
  • VideoGame.Puzzle And Dragons:
    • For the gameplay itself, this trope also works in both ways. Number of Combos (and thus, attack power and healing amount) are based on players' skills, but falling blocks can either allow you to get healed, get another combo to activate Leader Skills...Or screwing up your strategy (when using Ishikawa Goemonnote , stalling for skills or trying not to get the enemy at a certain HP percentage, for example).
      *** Anubis, Kushinadahime, and BAO Robin all fall prey to this, as their Leader Skills rely on combos. The most combos anyone can set up is 10, with Kushinadahime and two of Anubis's Ultimate Evolutions requiring more than 10 combos to reach the maximum output of their Leader Skills. "Awoken Anubis" gets a special mention for being able to get to 400× ATK (12 combos and the player used a skill that turn). A top-level player in Japan managed to wipe out Maleficent Dragon Lord Zaerog in the Ultimate Dragon Rush with a single hit at only 11 combos, and that's after he stalled so Zaerog had a Dark Absorption active so it would mean only 4 of the team's Fire sub-attribute (which only has about a third of the ATK strength of the main attribute) did any actual damage to Zaerog.
  • VideoGame.Sunless Sea:
* Luck-Based Mission: Several challenges are purely luck based, but fortunately they are never mandatory and the player has an idea of their odds when choosing to try them. More generally, surviving the Early Game Hell requires a certain degree of luck in the zee's alteration, coupled with some existing knowledge of the game.
* Luck-Based Mission: INSTRUCTIONSMAN, who must be killed by having Robotnik jump into a book with 3 diagonal dots. The book will either kill Robotnik or INSTRUCTIONSMAN.
* Puzzle Boss: DODONGOMAN can only be attacked by killing the Dodongos while he's hovering over them, INSTRUCTIONSMAN has to be defeated by jumping into a book with three diagonal dots on its cover ([[Luck-Based Mission which also has a chance of killing Robotnik]]), and BOMBMAN can only be attacked during his first battle if Robotnik waits for him to drop the rope and uses it to reach him.
* Luck-Based Mission: Survival mode can go very well or very poorly depending on a few factors.
** The resources that are available near the starting point have a huge impact on how quickly you are able to gain access to higher tech trees.
** Local terrain features may or may not include several natural choke points, which can greatly improve your ability to defend against large hordes.
** The choices of mayor that are made available at each population tier are completely random. Some of them come with amazing benefits that will benefit the entire play-though such as reduced build times or reduced research costs. Others offer small bonuses like a few units or resources.
* Luck-Based Mission: Some mini-games are this, such as "Big and Small", where you have to guess whether the next card drawn will be bigger or smaller than the last one, and "Next Color", where you have to guess whether the next card drawn will be a red, blue, green, or black one.
* That One Boss: Omega Shenron like all final Battlefield bosses, not only hits incredibly hard but also massively lowers your DEF on a Super Attack but what sets him even further above the rest is that he is capable of locking out your rotations. This essentially turns the Final Boss into a Luck-Based Mission. And depending on your luck, if he locks your squishy target with all attacks coming from that rotation including a Super Attack, then expect Omega to dish out a Curb-Stomp Battle where you're unable to deal any damage to him. He's so unfairly difficult that they have nerf him twice by lowering his HP, ATK and even his chance of launching an SA.
[Reign of Terror] Frieza (1st Form)'s Extreme Z-Area not only hits incredibly hard but most the units that you are required to run can't even tank well against his attacks. Among the 6 units available, only 2 can reliably tank his super attack but only because of type advantage. To add further insult to injury, you are only are able to run the mediocre Krillin as the friend leader who can only tank at an unreliable 30-50% rate, forcing you to run 2 potential dead-weights in the team. All this makes the event an entirely RNG-fest Luck-Based Mission. Got lucky with your rotation by having Bardock/Piccolo & Frieza attacks only 1 slot or Bardock himself turn into a Giant Ape? Then you have effectively won the event. Consequently you got a double Krillin and Gohan rotation? You'd better pray that Krillin's guard chance activates or you've effectively kiss your 25 stamina goodbye.
Belmod is easily considered to be the hardest boss in the "Epic! Transcendent! Gods of Destruction Assemble" event. While he has a far lesser health pool than all the other Gods besides Heles, this is of little comfort compared to the number of devastating gimmicks thrown at you. Firstly, this Clown has the ability to lock your rotations so if he locks a unit like say, Goku & Frieza in the first slot, then you can't do anything as he hits your defender very hard right down to a Super Attack that one-shots you. Oh and he can also Seal your team so if he seals the afromented Goku & Frieza, then his damage output got severely gimped. As if that wasn't enough just like Liquiir he can launch two Super Attacks in one turn and each one of them lowers your DEF which will easily devastate your run. His boss fight pretty much made the run a Luck-Based Mission where it entirely depends on whether or not he's gonna lock your squishiest units in the slot where he does most of the attacks.
* YMMV.Huniepop 2:
* That One Boss: The final boss is a massive difficulty spike from the rest of the game. You need to win 4 dates in a row, with the Nymphojinn taking the forms of various girls (with their accompanying baggage). Completing the date quickly becomes a borderline Luck-Based Mission where the various luck based mechanics inherent to the genre (such as not getting the matches you need, freak accident chain reactions resulting in broken heart matches, the girl’s baggage, etc.) quickly stack the odds against you. Not helping is that you have only 100 moves which are shared across all 4 rounds meaning it's very likely to screw yourself over by taking too many moves in one round and not having enough for the rest.
* Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Amongst 6 piece classified gear sets, the ones that stand out the most (especially in PvP combat) are Striker, Predator, and Nomad (Rare occasion would be D3, which is viable for incredibly durable shield). 6 piece Striker penalizes players less for missing shots and additionally adds a constant heal over time based on how many damage stacks the Striker player has. 6 piece Predator takes the 4 piece bonus's propensity for bleeding enemies dry and magnifies it based on the player's Stamina stat. Lastly, trying to kill a 6 piece Nomad player essentially becomes a Luck-Based Mission, now that their ability to come back from the dead has a fairly high random chance of resetting its cooldown upon activation.

    No Context on luck (2) 
* That One Level: "The Black Gate Opens": you have your primary hero, two secondaries and a bunch of weaker troops against the massed might of the hordes of Mordor. Your objective is simply to survive for at least 15 turns while Evil beats the crap out of you.
* Ending Fatigue: Chapter 7 of Dokapon, which involves fighting the Final Boss, Overlord Rico. The Luck-Based Mission aspect of even getting to him

    Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic (1) 
* Anti-Frustration Feature: The August 6 update adds a free new balloon that serves as a Luck-Based Mission which is weighted toward catching new Pokémon, as well as increased Diamond production from the digger, increased rate of collecting P, and a code worth 100 free Diamonds on the website.

    Random Drop (3) 
* Guide Dang It!: Finding the Wellington Boots, which also crosses over with some Luck-Based Mission to boot. To recap: You have to battle a Paper Broozer, a rare enemy that only appears in a few spots of the final dungeon. Said Paper Broozer won't drop them normally: it must first use a certain attack (out of three possible ones) to attack the bros. This attack throws a number of barrels that the bros must break with their hammers. Upon doing that, each barrel has a chance to contain loot. Said loot is usually coins, with a small chance to contain a rare item which has a one in seven chance of being the Wellington Boots, the other six possible drops being Beans.
* Luck-Based Mission: You get a protag after picking up bacon or a churro. It completely Randomly Drops, though churros are MUCH more likely to be dropped than bacon.
** Most drops have been standardized in Super MNC, so you always get the same amount of stuff from killing the same kinds of bots, though Bullseye and Jackbots can still randomly drop Bacon.
* That One Boss: The Fiery Warpath and the Labyrinth/Zokor are this if you seek the [[Luck-Based Mission rare trap loot]] the bosses drop. Many hunters are stuck in these areas hoping the next run finally brings the trap parts.

    Gacha Games' gacha? (2) 
* Armor Units in Hall of Forms. Generally, you have the freedom to fodder skills whatever you want for your unit as long as you have the manuals/heroes necessary., but in Hall of Forms it's a Luck-Based Mission. You have to rely on sheer luck to get such skills in the Hall of Forms, meaning if you're not lucky, your armored unit ends up being dead weight with a mediocre skillkit that does it no favors
* Luck-Based Mission:
** Rare Egg Machine pulls. You spend 5 Magic Stones for one pull, and God help your mobile device from being whacked if you receive some weak, repetitive, or hard-to-use monsters...But at the same time you may get powerful monsters by one pull.
*** As of Version 8.1, all monsters considered vendor trash (3-stars and their evolutions) have been dropped from the Rare Egg Machine (no more Golems, no more Healer Girls, no more Mystic Swordsmen) as they can be adequately farmed from dungeons. And Version 8.1 gives players the option to sell their duplicate monsters for Monster Points, which can then be traded in for rare evolution material monsters (rarer monsters net more MP), new Latent Awakening TAMADR As to add additional Awoken Skills, and extremely rare (and therefore extremely expensive) exclusive monsters.
** The game plays in both ways. On the one hand, many powerful monsters can only be acquired by the aforementioned pulls, but you can still get many useful ones via normal gameplay, especially Descended Dungeons. If you're skilled enough, you won't even need to spend any Magic Stones for that. Skill upgrades, however, completely fit this trope. One can fill up Skill Levels by powering up with only that amount of monsters...Or feeding dozens of monsters without even raising one Skill Level.
*** Of course, you could use the guaranteed Skill Up monsters like Flampy, which can only be obtained from farming more difficult "Alt." versions of Normal and Technical Dungeons which are found as Coin Dungeons (until they were all made Co-op Dungeons), the Ultimate Arena dungeon (a 21, 22, or 25 level boss rush), or appear as 1-time-only prizes from the various Challenge events (Challenge Dungeons, Descended Challenge). It's honestly easier to just farm dungeons repeatedly and use dozens of versions of the same monster during 2.5× skill up fusion events to hope you level up the skill (that didn't stop people from coming up with teams to farm Ultimate Arena prior to its renewal).
*** Thankfully, one later update introduced the Max Enhance system, which allows you to avert this by selecting parameters to raise to their Cap with zero chance of failure - provided you have the resources. Level in particular runs on EXP Stock, which is obtained along with gold and MP by selling units.

    Random Event (2) 
* Luck-Based Mission: In Ashes of Malmouth, whether or not Nicoh Erin agrees to go to the resistance base or turns on you during the "Savior" sidequest is completely random.
* Luck-Based Mission: Apart from Zhuge Liang, Zhou Yu and Sima Yi, none of the heroes who aren't on the map from the start are guaranteed to spawn in a given campaign. It's possible, for example, to play as Cao Cao in the earlier start dates and never come across Dian Wei or Xu Chu throughout your whole campaign.

    Uncategorized luck (6) 
* Luck-Based Mission It's to be expected, given that the nature of dungeons is dragons is that players have to roll dice to determine how well their characters do something. No matter how skilled any of the characters are, if the luck of the roll isn't with them, they're bound to screw up now and again.
* Luck-Based Mission: Spring's dice Artifact works like this. If it can correctly guess whether the dice's sum is even or odd, it can then steal away what the target cherishes most.
* Magic: The Gathering: Lands. [[Luck-Based Mission You either don't have enough or have too many]].
* Luck-Based Mission: How trying to make hybrid crops work. You'll need to feed him two different seeds to create a brand new seed. However it's not guaranteed that'll work so you need to keep trying. Though fusing seeds and certain flowers (Gemsoils, Happy Lamps and Upseeds) has much more success by giving it a special benefit (Grow on any soil, grow in any season and crop rank is S respectively).
In the Gaiden Game and Prequel Crisis Core, you play as SOLDIER First Class Zack Fair. It's not really a spoiler anymore that The Hero Dies at the end, but in the meanwhile you get a fun Action RPG with a Limit Break mechanic in the form of the "Digital Mind Wave," a slot machine that's always in the corner and gives you your LBs or Summon Magic when you line up three portraits of the same NPC. It's a Luck-Based Mission and somewhat frustrating to rely upon...
* That One Puzzle: Lt. Surge's Gym is the first to have an actual puzzle that locks you out of fighting the Leader until it's completed, but it's also the most annoying one. To reach Surge, two switches hidden in trash cans need to be pressed. When the first switch (randomly placed) is flipped, the other needs to be pressed exactly afterwards; look in the wrong trash can, and the puzzle resets. The only hint you're given is that the second switch is right next to the first, but even then, that's anywhere from two to four cans to check, and process of elimination won't help since the second switch can appear in cans you had already checked. And because the original Gen I games are bugged, the second switch can either spawn in an incorrect spot or not at all. The entire thing boils down to a tedious Luck-Based Mission.

    AI Roulette (3) 
* Sentinels of the Multiverse: Wager Master, Miss Information, and the Ennead can also fall into this, particularly Challenge MI and Advanced Ennead. Wager Master has a deck of random nonsense that can, [[Luck-Based Mission depending on order]], either lose him the game before he even starts or utterly wreck your shit
* That One Boss:
** Pillar Zelenin, the Final Boss of the Chaos path. You thought Mem Aleph's One-Hit Kill move was bad? Try a One-Hit Kill that hits the entire party. It is literally a Luck-Based Mission where you and your demons pile onto the boss, doing as much damage as possible while praying that Zelenin doesn't bust out Requiem.
Seth starts using special attacks he copied off the other characters as early as Round 1. If you survive that, Round 2 unlocks his super and ultra moves. And he can pull off Ultra Combos twice in a row straight, with no recovery time. It's practically a Luck-Based Mission.

    Random Effect Spell (1) 
* That One Boss:
** This being an Atlus game, there's quite a few of them, but the one that gets the most attention is Ouroboros, the final boss of the fifth block. Her first form isn't terribly hard, except for the fact that she heals about 160 damage per round, which is more damage than you can do to her unless you exploit her weakness to fire. Her attacks include Wild Thunder, a powerful group lightning spell, and Disaster Cycle, a spell that hits for moderate physical damage and inflicts random status ailments. That last one is really nasty because sometimes she gets really lucky with it and manages to either leave you with a dead weight party or petrify the main character (instant game over). Fortunately, your chances of seeing Disaster Cycle are slim. All this is just her first form, however. Her second form no longer regenerates every turn, but now she uses Disaster Cycle almost every turn, and whenever she's not using Disaster Cycle, she's using Wave of Death which hits the whole party for nearly 300+ physical damage per hit! Her liberal use of Disaster Cycle almost makes the fight a Luck-Based Mission.

    Random shop-like-thing selection (2) 
* Luck-Based Mission: While it is impossible to lose, collecting the nine fetishes is heavily dependent on luck because not all of the fetishes can be found. As such, you need to buy them. However, vendor inventory is randomized each day. There is no guarantee you will be able to find the ones you need, and to try again you have to spend money on food and collect trash for a day.
* Temporary Online Content: The Catalog feature is a completionist's nightmare due to including limited-time items, fortune cookie items, limited-time fortune cookie items, and event-exclusive stuff, but those problems are somewhat mitigated by the newly-introduced reissue events ("somewhat" because those are still time-limited).
* Luck-Based Mission:
** The garden event is notorious for this, despite being split into two parts (Part 1 is the first four days, part 2 is the last six) to avoid overwhelming players during the event launch. First of all, to attract rare creatures (required to claim rewards) you have to plant seasonal flowers, the seeds of which appearing as Randomly Drops from completing animal requests (only one among the available seasonal seeds can be bought, but it's a common request reward anyway). Nope, you can't cross-pollinate to obtain them. Next, once the seasonal flowers bloom, which can take from 3-4 hours depending on the flower type, there's still a chance that a creature won't spawn on a newly-bloomed flower, with rarer ones having lower spawn rate. Now we come to the catching part, which has a chance to fail, with higher failure rate on the rarer creatures (go figure). Having active friends share their captured creatures with you can help with the creature availability problem (as long as you keep your garden filled with flowers), but nothing can fix the catch rate problem except paying 10 Leaf Tickets to guarantee you catch one, which can become costly if you use it to catch too many. It's even worse on the second half of the event where the final two creatures share the same flower type, so you can only hope that the 3-star rare creature shows up during flower bloom, even if it's just one. Thankfully, the harder a creature type can be obtained, the lower the requirement to claim all the rewards associated with the specified creature, but you still need a whopping 80 or 90 of each of the three-star creatures caught within six days to get everything the event has to offer. If you want all the rewards, good luck. You'll need it.
** The Flower Festival event. The method of obtaining seeds is definitely changed— cross-pollinating is finally allowed— but it's also the only way to get the rarer kinds of seeds, and trading in the flowers is the only way to get the items rather than catching rare creatures. The mission then becomes to both budget your seeds so you have enough flowers to trade for the items, then hope the flowers you don't save create the rare seed you need when you cross-pollinate.
** Getting villagers through Gulliver. Gulliver has 23 unique villagers he can bring back, three in physical form and twenty in the form of Villager maps that then must be played with Blathers. However, in order to get said villager/map, Gulliver has to give you a bonus, which may or may not happen depending on which items you give him or due to sheer luck.
* Scrappy Mechanic: While partially circumvented by many of the cards being common (generally due to many of them being random enemies), most of the unique cards in King of Cards have to be bought through Chester's shop, which can be rather annoying due to the cards bought being [[Luck-Based Mission randomized]], which means the player can get duplicates of cards they already own, and leaves it very likely the player will waste a bunch of gold trying to complete their collection.

    Guide Dang It (1) 
* That One Level: The Break the Targets stage in Showdown has frustrated a lot of people, since the game doesn't explain its mechanics very well. It often feels like a Luck-Based Mission whether you can earn enough points or not. What's worse is that, unlike the minigames in Super Smash Bros. that inspired it, clearing this minigame is required to advance in the story - if you fail you lose a continue and have to try the stage again.

    Random Encounters (2) 
* Luck-Based Mission: Her companion quest can only be triggered through a random encounter that has a low chance of occurring. Many players cannot even trigger the encounter at all.
* That One Achievement: The "Crown" awards are all notorious Last Lousy Points. If you defeat a monster that's significantly larger or smaller than normal, its size is recorded with a gold crown or a silver crown for a remarkably large specimen. These achievements require you to do this for every large monster whose size isn't constant. They combine Last Lousy Point and Luck-Based Mission to the extreme. While there are some DLC quests that are guaranteed to have gold-crown sized monsters, you're out of luck for the rest. And this list includes Deviants, Rare Species, and several Elder Dragons. Many Hunters give up before they get either of these awards. 4 Ultimate onwards at least accepts silver crowns for the "large" crown award.
* Breather Level: There's [[Luck-Based Mission a one-in-three chance]] that the Underground Maze in Adventure Mode will be like this. The goal of the level is to find the Triforce in one of six spawn points — the spawn points that don't have it will have a shadow clone of Link to fight. Two of these spawn points can be reached without any encounters (the others are beyond the second spawn point). Should the Triforce spawn in one of the first two spawn points, you can clear the level without any combat whatsoever (making it by far the easiest way to get the Switzerland end-of-level bonus).

    Pixel Hunting? (1) 
* Luck-Based Mission: Anything involving a zoom-in point which doesn't shine beforehand in the first game. This includes a number of the smaller creatures and roughly half of the salvage items.

    Barely talking about luck? (3) 
* That One Level: The optional mission "Memento," where the player has to travel through heavily infested terrain to retrieve a novelty watch for Lily. You can improve the odds by calling in various expensive favors, but in a game whose main story points tend to give you a gang of NPCs for backup, it stands out as a very dangerous mission without substantial preparation and luck. It's also very much a Luck-Based Mission, as you may only have to deal with the Infested ranger station, or if you're really unlucky, you'll also have to deal with multiple Hordes, Feral zombies, and even a Juggernaut or two. The reputation goes so far, one of the most popular mods for the game simply adds a functional bridge to Ranger Station, just to make this mission less annoying to deal with.
* Luck-Based Mission: Want to beat a league quicker instead of leveling up your Magikarp? Well, after Great League, the "Macho Karp" event will allow you to give the Magikarp to a scientist. If it's successful, the max level cap increases by 1, meaning that you can potentially sweep through matches that you wouldn't have had access to if you waited. What happens if it fails? Your Magikarp evolves into a Gyarados, forcing you to get a new one.
* Luck-Based Mission: It's hard to tell when shots can hit you or not from the blue mooks (the red ones are a given, as are bazooka men, thrown grenades, knives, and environmental damage), making dodging a guessing game. Also, the timer will continue running after beating tougher opponents.

    Self Imposed Challenge (2) 
* Scrappy Mechanic: 1.8 added a way to get mob heads. Unfortunately, the only way to get them is to have the mob (zombie, skeleton, or creeper) be killed by a charged creeper. This entails waiting for a thunderstorm, hoping for a creeper to get struck by lightning, staying at a distance where the creeper neither kills you or despawns, bringing a mob to the creeper, and then not dying when the creeper explodes, which is very difficult, especially on Hard or Hardcore mode. Needless to say, not many people were happy with the unnecessary [[Luck-Based Mission difficulty]] in obtaining a trophy.
* Demonic Spiders: Kuchisake-Onna is extremely hazardous against those who do an SQQ max Ambrosia run, in which the gamer at level 20 has to go into [[Luck-Based Mission Thanatos Tower]] first. In there, she's commonly fought, she can't be talked away (easily), and she spams Mamudo, which will most likely off any member not fortunate enough to have a dark type persona, which at that point in the game, is extremely limited.

Index (1):

Archive (1):

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 20th 2023 at 8:45:38 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#2: Aug 19th 2023 at 3:27:19 AM

Paging ~MaLady to the thread. Anyway, I'm going to hold off on commenting and wait to see what others say first.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Amonimus the Retromancer from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
the Retromancer
#3: Aug 19th 2023 at 3:38:10 AM

I suppose reinforcing "the success of a game/quest is completely out of player's control" under a new name (Random Victory Chance?) and/or disambiguating.

Many of these examples that are "bad Nintendo Hard / Fake Difficulty" complaining about objectives being sometimes harder/impossible due to random generation, and I'm not sure if it's own trope (Randomized Difficulty?).

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Berrenta How sweet it is from Texas Since: Apr, 2015 Relationship Status: Can't buy me love
How sweet it is
#4: Aug 19th 2023 at 4:14:53 AM

I could get behind a disambiguation.

she/her | TRS needs your help! | Contributor of Trope Report
Malady (Not-So-Newbie)
#5: Aug 19th 2023 at 5:07:08 AM

[up][up][up][up] + [up][up][up] - Thanks!

[up][up] - Gameplay Randomization exists, for "Randomness affects gameplay"? Could just redirect there, but seems too broad. Maybe.

Edited by Malady on Aug 19th 2023 at 5:10:28 AM

Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576
WarJay77 Big Catch, Sparkle Edition (Troper Knight)
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
#6: Aug 19th 2023 at 9:09:16 AM

With all those tropes this could possibly become an index, though it would still be nice to have a concept that covers the basic "player has no control over if they achieve winning RNG".

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
Tabs Since: Jan, 2001
#7: Aug 19th 2023 at 12:13:10 PM

There's also Trial-and-Error Gameplay, Try Everything, Random Loot Exchanger, Lootboxes, Randomly Generated Loot, A.I. Is a Crapshoot and others for more "randomness in video games that I don't like" tropes.

StalkerGamer Hi! :3 Since: Dec, 2021 Relationship Status: Love is an open door
Hi! :3
#8: Aug 19th 2023 at 12:38:08 PM

I'm fine with disambig for now.

GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#9: Aug 19th 2023 at 12:53:17 PM

Edit: Retracted.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 19th 2023 at 3:21:48 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
WarJay77 Big Catch, Sparkle Edition (Troper Knight)
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
#10: Aug 19th 2023 at 12:55:19 PM

It would be a long disambig... We had this same issue with Adult Fear, and that became an index.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#11: Aug 19th 2023 at 1:02:34 PM

I'll change my vote to turning it into an index, then. I suppose renaming it to Luck Based Mission Tropes or Luck Based Mission Index would be an option if we want to make that part clearer.

Edit: Retracted.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 19th 2023 at 3:21:41 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Amonimus the Retromancer from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
the Retromancer
#12: Aug 19th 2023 at 1:04:17 PM

Would this index be much different from Gameplay Randomization? Everything could point there now that I think about it.

Edited by Amonimus on Aug 19th 2023 at 11:05:00 AM

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
WarJay77 Big Catch, Sparkle Edition (Troper Knight)
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
#13: Aug 19th 2023 at 1:13:42 PM

Maybe a redirect? IDK. Still feels kinda sucky to lose the good examples though, because this is totally a thing that goes beyond basic randomization. I mean, 40% of wicks is nothing to sneeze at.

Edited by WarJay77 on Aug 19th 2023 at 4:14:13 AM

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#14: Aug 19th 2023 at 1:21:16 PM

I forgot about the fact that 40% of the wicks don't fit anywhere else (I slept between opening this thread and my first vote), so I'm changing my vote again, this time to closing without doing anything.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Aug 19th 2023 at 3:22:03 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Malady (Not-So-Newbie)
#15: Aug 19th 2023 at 2:23:09 PM

Well, that's only valid at 40% if they really can't go elsewhere.

For this, I'm not sure if a "challenge" is "mission" enough to count. If it isn't then this would just be Randomly Generated Levels:

* Luck-Based Mission: Several challenges are purely luck based, but fortunately they are never mandatory and the player has an idea of their odds when choosing to try them. More generally, surviving the Early Game Hell requires a certain degree of luck in [[Randomly Generated Levels the zee's alteration]], coupled with some existing knowledge of the game.

    Actually about luck that's not covered by other tropes I know, that also determines win or loss (~20?, a.k.a ~40%) 
* Luck-Based Mission: Can be invoked by the player, if they choose to create a custom level with a random deck. Otherwise averted as none of the levels in the singleplayer campaign make use of this feature.
* Fortune Cookie: "I Can See the Floor Again, Almost..." Edition: While showing off Super Mario Maker 2's Multiplayer Mode, one of the stages proves to be a Luck-Based Mission due to the moving platform in the final area. First time Jon makes it there, it's nowhere in sight, and he revives in the first area to find it completely chaotic courtesy of a Lakitu gradually flooding it with Spinies. Things only keep rolling downhill from there.
Li'l Doge has low stats like the original, but faster speed... and, more importantly, a 20% chance to dodge attacks from any cat for a second. Dodge on enemies is a Scrappy Mechanic for a reason — if you're [[Luck-Based Mission not lucky]], the enemy can just keep activating its dodge over and over again, indefinitely
* Luck-Based Mission: There is a spinner in the back of the book that initially decides which of the two main storylines you will follow: "Fun" or "Games". If you get Games, rather than letting you make choices, a lot of the paths are decided by actual games such as flipping a coin or rolling a dice, etc. You also have to use the spinner at other points in the storyline.
* Luck-Based Mission: Some books don't follow any real internal logic, which makes winning the book more trial-and-error than good planning/decision making. Most of the books also have at least one choice determined by something random the book asks you such as what day of the week it is, what month you were born, whether you have fair or dark hair, or are right or left-handed, etc.
  • ScrappyMechanic.Action: Maybe. Depends on how luck-based it really is. Is it actually dependent on something other than RNG?
Lara losing her balance or grip in Tomb Raider: Anniversary is, on paper, a mechanic where sometimes she slips when grabbing a ledge or balancing on a pillar and you have to press a button to steady herself before she falls. In practice, it turns every single "time your jumps to avoid moving blades, crushing walls, etc" segment into a Luck-Based Mission since, if she happens to lose her grip or balance, you will be hit by the obstacle and killed before you can act.
* Luck-Based Mission: The entire point of the Lair, where you must give Pumpkinhead an item. Except, this item changed from playthrough to playthrough, so if you don't have it, you've literally lost the game.
* Luck-Based Mission: And HOW! Much of the game is up to sheer luck what will happen, from the enemies encountered, items dropped, to even how battles go. In many ways, the game is Dungeons & Dragons in all but name with how battles are waged, with no two encounters with the same enemy going exactly the same. One enemy during one encounter may give you enormous trouble while the next time it's an absolute pushover.
* Luck-Based Mission:
** Several quests in the online game have some luck in it. Usually, you can get a pretty high rank, even if you're completely screwed, but there are some quests where rank is determined almost completely by luck (we're looking at you, Rescue the Apprentice). Can also get like this in the single-player titles, since your allies have the tendency to get themselves killed at the most inconvenient time.
** The "Infiltrate the Official Residence" quest in Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires. There are five total places where Wood Oxen can randomly spawn, and you need to find and break three of them to win. Two of them, however, are in an area where, due to poor AI pathing, you can not avoid the guards - you will be seen, which means several super-powered officers spawn in and the mission becomes unwinnable on all but the lowest difficulty settings. Better hope all three Wood Oxen decide to spawn in the space you can actually reach!
* Luck-Based Mission: Any race through the city or hidden orb rush, depending on the random placement and movement cycles of citizens and guards, both on foot and in vehicles. They REALLY love to get in your way.
%%** Obtaining the piece of seal in the water slums from Brutter.
* Luck-Based Mission: Serbia's expansion into Illyria is borderline impossible if Austria-Hungary doesn't collapse into an Austro-Hungarian War, which the player as Serbia has no way to influence and cause.
* Luck-Based Mission: The whole game (or at least the "destroying Eurasia" part) — you can try using the Enigma cannon from the very start and it still has a chance of success; conversely, even if you collect all the parts for the Shuttle, it may still fail.
* Luck-Based Mission: Many, many examples throughout the series. Heck, the very nature of the game means that there will be times where the color that you need just won't show up.
** "Nohoho AI" back in Tsu. Nohoho (and his Fever counterpart Donguri Gaeru) would stack Puyo to the brim on the three rightmost columns on the field, clear one group, and pray the pile would magically create a chain or two. It may sound impractical (competitively speaking), but it won't be a laughing matter if you get hit with a five or six chain. (Suketoudara, Harpy, and Yu & Rei use similar "gimmick" stacking patterns, but none of theirs are quite as effective.)
  • VideoGame.Puzzle And Dragons:
    • For the gameplay itself, this trope also works in both ways. Number of Combos (and thus, attack power and healing amount) are based on players' skills, but falling blocks can either allow you to get healed, get another combo to activate Leader Skills...Or screwing up your strategy (when using Ishikawa Goemonnote , stalling for skills or trying not to get the enemy at a certain HP percentage, for example).
      *** Anubis, Kushinadahime, and BAO Robin all fall prey to this, as their Leader Skills rely on combos. The most combos anyone can set up is 10, with Kushinadahime and two of Anubis's Ultimate Evolutions requiring more than 10 combos to reach the maximum output of their Leader Skills. "Awoken Anubis" gets a special mention for being able to get to 400× ATK (12 combos and the player used a skill that turn). A top-level player in Japan managed to wipe out Maleficent Dragon Lord Zaerog in the Ultimate Dragon Rush with a single hit at only 11 combos, and that's after he stalled so Zaerog had a Dark Absorption active so it would mean only 4 of the team's Fire sub-attribute (which only has about a third of the ATK strength of the main attribute) did any actual damage to Zaerog.
  • VideoGame.Super Robotnik Land:
* Luck-Based Mission: INSTRUCTIONSMAN, who must be killed by having Robotnik jump into a book with 3 diagonal dots. The book will either kill Robotnik or INSTRUCTIONSMAN.
* Puzzle Boss: DODONGOMAN can only be attacked by killing the Dodongos while he's hovering over them, INSTRUCTIONSMAN has to be defeated by jumping into a book with three diagonal dots on its cover ([[Luck-Based Mission which also has a chance of killing Robotnik]]), and BOMBMAN can only be attacked during his first battle if Robotnik waits for him to drop the rope and uses it to reach him.
* Luck-Based Mission: Survival mode can go very well or very poorly depending on a few factors.
** The resources that are available near the starting point have a huge impact on how quickly you are able to gain access to higher tech trees.
** Local terrain features may or may not include several natural choke points, which can greatly improve your ability to defend against large hordes.
** The choices of mayor that are made available at each population tier are completely random. Some of them come with amazing benefits that will benefit the entire play-though such as reduced build times or reduced research costs. Others offer small bonuses like a few units or resources.
* Luck-Based Mission: Some mini-games are this, such as "Big and Small", where you have to guess whether the next card drawn will be bigger or smaller than the last one, and "Next Color", where you have to guess whether the next card drawn will be a red, blue, green, or black one.
* That One Boss: Omega Shenron like all final Battlefield bosses, not only hits incredibly hard but also massively lowers your DEF on a Super Attack but what sets him even further above the rest is that he is capable of locking out your rotations. This essentially turns the Final Boss into a Luck-Based Mission. And depending on your luck, if he locks your squishy target with all attacks coming from that rotation including a Super Attack, then expect Omega to dish out a Curb-Stomp Battle where you're unable to deal any damage to him. He's so unfairly difficult that they have nerf him twice by lowering his HP, ATK and even his chance of launching an SA.
[Reign of Terror] Frieza (1st Form)'s Extreme Z-Area not only hits incredibly hard but most the units that you are required to run can't even tank well against his attacks. Among the 6 units available, only 2 can reliably tank his super attack but only because of type advantage. To add further insult to injury, you are only are able to run the mediocre Krillin as the friend leader who can only tank at an unreliable 30-50% rate, forcing you to run 2 potential dead-weights in the team. All this makes the event an entirely RNG-fest Luck-Based Mission. Got lucky with your rotation by having Bardock/Piccolo & Frieza attacks only 1 slot or Bardock himself turn into a Giant Ape? Then you have effectively won the event. Consequently you got a double Krillin and Gohan rotation? You'd better pray that Krillin's guard chance activates or you've effectively kiss your 25 stamina goodbye.
Belmod is easily considered to be the hardest boss in the "Epic! Transcendent! Gods of Destruction Assemble" event. While he has a far lesser health pool than all the other Gods besides Heles, this is of little comfort compared to the number of devastating gimmicks thrown at you. Firstly, this Clown has the ability to lock your rotations so if he locks a unit like say, Goku & Frieza in the first slot, then you can't do anything as he hits your defender very hard right down to a Super Attack that one-shots you. Oh and he can also Seal your team so if he seals the afromented Goku & Frieza, then his damage output got severely gimped. As if that wasn't enough just like Liquiir he can launch two Super Attacks in one turn and each one of them lowers your DEF which will easily devastate your run. His boss fight pretty much made the run a Luck-Based Mission where it entirely depends on whether or not he's gonna lock your squishiest units in the slot where he does most of the attacks.
* YMMV.Huniepop 2:
* That One Boss: The final boss is a massive difficulty spike from the rest of the game. You need to win 4 dates in a row, with the Nymphojinn taking the forms of various girls (with their accompanying baggage). Completing the date quickly becomes a borderline Luck-Based Mission where the various luck based mechanics inherent to the genre (such as not getting the matches you need, freak accident chain reactions resulting in broken heart matches, the girl’s baggage, etc.) quickly stack the odds against you. Not helping is that you have only 100 moves which are shared across all 4 rounds meaning it's very likely to screw yourself over by taking too many moves in one round and not having enough for the rest.
* Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Amongst 6 piece classified gear sets, the ones that stand out the most (especially in PvP combat) are Striker, Predator, and Nomad (Rare occasion would be D3, which is viable for incredibly durable shield). 6 piece Striker penalizes players less for missing shots and additionally adds a constant heal over time based on how many damage stacks the Striker player has. 6 piece Predator takes the 4 piece bonus's propensity for bleeding enemies dry and magnifies it based on the player's Stamina stat. Lastly, trying to kill a 6 piece Nomad player essentially becomes a Luck-Based Mission, now that their ability to come back from the dead has a fairly high random chance of resetting its cooldown upon activation.

Disambig Needed: Help with those issues! tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13324299140A37493800&page=24#comment-576
WarJay77 Big Catch, Sparkle Edition (Troper Knight)
Big Catch, Sparkle Edition
#16: Aug 19th 2023 at 2:23:56 PM

[up] That one is kind of a ZCE since it just says "some levels do this", so no wonder you don't know where to put it.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#17: Aug 19th 2023 at 4:25:11 PM

The existence of examples that can't be moved elsewhere is why I don't think anything needs to be done, or at least not by TRS, since a Short-Term Projects thread could probably be used to move examples that fit other tropes. Since this has 2731 wicks, the amount of wicks that can't be moved elsewhere should be higher than what the wick check picked up.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Amonimus the Retromancer from <<|Wiki Talk|>> (Sergeant) Relationship Status: In another castle
the Retromancer
#18: Aug 19th 2023 at 4:30:44 PM

I think this 40% could be re-checked if they really don't fit anywhere and if they have anything in common. From this post I see a lot of "the game/quest can be either easy or difficult depending on randomized object placements".

TroperWall / WikiMagic Cleanup
Karxrida The Unknown from Eureka, the Forbidden Land Since: May, 2012 Relationship Status: I LOVE THIS DOCTOR!
The Unknown
#19: Aug 19th 2023 at 5:20:10 PM

I'm with Gaston. This is an actual thing and just needs a good scrubbing.

Open a cleanup thread and close this one.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
themayorofsimpleton Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him from Elsewhere (Experienced, Not Yet Jaded) Relationship Status: Abstaining
Now a lurker. Thanks for everything. | he/him
#20: Aug 19th 2023 at 5:54:40 PM

I have to agree. I didn’t say anything but I think this is a legit concept and we could just do a cleanup, as Karx said.

[tup] Close + cleanup

TRS Queue | Works That Require Cleanup of Complaining | Troper Wall
MacronNotes (she/her) (Captain) Relationship Status: Less than three
(she/her)
#21: Aug 19th 2023 at 6:40:31 PM

I think is a legitimate trope as well. Fine with closing and cleaning up.

Macron's notes
Yindee Just stoic wisdom. from New England Since: Jul, 2016
Just stoic wisdom.
#22: Aug 19th 2023 at 10:01:42 PM

[up][tup]

Vehicle-Based Characterization | Grief-Induced Split | Locker Mail
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#23: Aug 20th 2023 at 6:45:14 AM

I'm just closing because there doesn't seem to be a TRS-worthy problem here.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
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