History LuckBasedMission / RolePlayingGame

** There are enough times in the battles of ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'' where random effects can spontaneously happen that you can never truly rely on your own skill or character's power level. Either you or your opponent can randomly be frozen or turned invisible, fog can fill the arena rendering most attacks ineffective, and you have absolutely no control over when it happens or ''what'' will happen. As the game's core mechanic relies on TimedHits, you can be steam-rolling a random encounter only to be randomly frozen, take a beating, and get a GameOver, losing all your progress, purely because the RandomNumberGod decided to say "screw you". Calling it a ScrappyMechanic is an understatement as, unlike every enemy attack in the game barring one from the intently difficult BonusBoss, you can not Superguard or even defend against some of these effects at all.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'''s Auction House. There are 2 magicite items you can get there to learn some nice spells, but they have pretty low odds of showing up (3/16 chance for the first and 1/8 for the second), and the auction takes quite a while to finish each time it's the wrong item.
** There's also the Coliseum. Betting an item to get a specific other item is fine, but the character that you choose to enter the arena will choose their actions ''entirely'' at random, with a chance of using ''any'' option available to them. Sabin might be able to wipe out any single enemy with the Bum Rush/Phantom Rush skill when you're in the control, but when he's in the Coliseum, expect him to try to cast Imp on a boss monster that's immune to it, then use Pummel/Hurricane Fist for minimal damage, then cast Float on himself before dying, assuming he doesn't just use Spiraller/Soul Spiral as his first action, which kills Sabin in exchange for healing other party members, something that's naturally useless when he's the only party member.

* ''[[VideoGame/DotHackR1Games .hack//Quarantine]]'''s final dungeon is 10 floors deep and a large number of the enemies require using the Data Drain skill to defeat. The Data Drain skill will start causing random negative side-effects to start happening if you use it too much, such as giving you an instant Game Over. To make matters worse, each room can spawn anywhere from 1-4 enemies. If the game is feeling merciless and decides to throw 4 enemies at you too many times, you're almost guaranteed to get the Game Over from overusing Data Drain. Even if you take every precaution and the dungeon is kind enough to spawn a normal amount of enemies, it's still very easy to end up rolling the Game Over halfway through. The BonusDungeon has the same idea, except it is 15 floors deep instead.

** ''VideoGame/PaperMario64'' has Chuck Quizmo, a character who hosts a traveling PopQuiz. He will ask a series of questions, reward the player with a Star Piece if they answered them all correctly, then leave. However, it's not the questions themselves that luck-based, but the possibility of actually finding Quizmo at all. His first appearance in Koopa Village is a static encounter, but from then on out he will appear randomly at various settlements throughout the game. Throughout the course of a playthrough, it's very unlikely that a player will actually play through all sixty-four rounds of Quizmo's questions, due to the fact that he simply will not show up frequently enough. Players wanting to [[HundredPercentCompletion 100% the game]] will find themselves travelling in and out of different areas repeatedly trying to get Quizmo to show up, usually through the three pipes in Toad Town Tunnels that lead to Goomba Village, Koopa Village and Dry Dry Outpost.

* Ooh, boy, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV''. The Rainbow Pudding is particularly irksome, because it's the only way to complete the DS-exclusive Namingway sidequest.

* In ''VideoGame/DragonsDogma''
** The FinalBoss can only be beaten if you grab him & your pawn finsihes him off or your pawn grabs him and you finish him off. If your pawn doesn't feel like fighting, you can't win.
** There's also an optional quest that requires you to kill a dragon very early in the game. Doing so at that point would probably take around 30 minutes but he can suddenly fly away at any time even if his wings are broken or he's stunned and he does so often that you probably won't even have enough time to take the first of his several health bars. If that happens the quest is labeled as failed. You can come back and try again later though.

* ''VideoGame/ClaDun'' 's Rangeon (random dungeon) has the monster level, item drop rate and chance of items having rare titles change based on the type of gate you enter at the end of each floor. Regular Gates have little to no effect on these three variables. Angel Gates never raise the monster level by more than 1 and never lower the drop rate or rare title rate. Demon Gates and Hell Gates are guaranteed to raise the monster level, and lower the drop rate and rare title rate, with Hell Gates having more severe effects. Gamble Gates can go either way. There's always at least one gate at the end of each floor of the dungeon, but it's random which gate or gates are there, as well as whether or not there's an exit portal. All the gates' effects become greater as you reach deeper floors of the dungeon, and at the point where an Angel Gate is able to raise the drop rate and rare title rate by 40 or 50 each, a single Hell Gate can ramp up the monster level by '''hundreds'''. Even though your characters can only be level 99 at the max, enemies aren't subject to that level cap, and a Hell Gate late enough can pit you against level 300-400 monsters, leaving you no option except to run for the exit...if there is one.

* Ooh, boy, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV''. Where to start? Rydia's additional summons (Bomb, Cockatrice, Mindflayer, and Goblin), and in the DS version, the additional tails and the Rainbow Pudding. The Rainbow Pudding is particularly irksome, because it's the only way to complete the DS-exclusive Namingway sidequest.

* ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'':
** Mushroom #VIII in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII Final Mix+.'' True, this is only a sidequest required for OneHundredPercentCompletion, but then again, the type of people who play the Final Mixes ''are'' completionists. Anyways, this sidequest, no matter what strategy you use, requires a complicated setup and can be resource-intensive--so you ''will'' be SaveScumming. The point is to keep the mushroom in the air by hitting it and never allowing it to touch the ground; what makes it luck-based is the completely random direction the mushroom will jet off to every few rounds of hits. It requires as well very fine-tuned timing and hand-eye coordination, yet if luck is not with you, you will lose. Oh, and how many times must the mushroom be hit? ''Eighty-five times, minimum.''

** The Battle of South Roundtop in ''VideoGame/{{SaGaFrontier2}}''. Unlike every other strategy segment where you're either heavily favored or at least just slightly disadvantaged, this is brutal. Victory hinges on 1 - Killing the Dragon's unit fast. 2 - Suffering very few if any casualties. and 3 - Making a wall of Meat Shields just out of range of the ''BigBad'' before the turn counter triggers his script to go insane. 4 - Walk straight up to the freaks on the turn the script triggers. 5 - For the love of God defend. 1 and 2 are narrow but doable odds, but doing them AND keeping your units within range of the remaining enemies and not making a mistake of crossing the line in the sand tanks the odds completely.

** Be happy, because ''VideoGame/{{Persona 1}}''[='=]s Thanatos Tower is a luck based dungeon.
** ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}''[='=]s PSP version has Maniac Mode. The enemies hit twice as hard, the AI is better, and the enemies are much more likely to get the advantage if a battle starts with neither side ambushing the other. This is bad, because an ambushed party, no matter what level, always has a chance of being taken out once you've gone about halfway through the game's one dungeon. Made even worse by the fact that only the player character has to be killed for a game over, and the enemies will often gang up and expose weaknesses. Making it even worse is that in order to save you have to stop what you're doing and exit the dungeon, only able to re-start at select pit-stop floors that are spaced ever 15-20 floors apart. So if you're unlucky enough to get ambushed on any floor above 70, chances are you're about to lose 1-2 hours of gameplay.
** ''VideoGame/{{Persona 4}}'' features a luck-based mission that requires playing the fishing mini-game until you catch a big fish, and then trading that in so you can try and catch an ''even bigger fish''. This mission must be finished if you want to max the Hermit Social Link. Largely fixed in ''[[UpdatedRerelease Golden]]'', which heavily expanded on the fishing mini-game and let the player fish multiple times a day.

** Some of the bosses in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsBirthBySleep'' also qualify, most notably the [[BonusBoss Mysterious Figure and Vanitas' Lingering Spirit.]] To specify, neither boss has any sort of recognizable pattern to their attacks; their actions are determined almost entirely by an RNG, so MF may just spam his X-Beam attack, in which case he's not very challenging, or he may randomly decide to create clones of himself, fire lazers from all directions, turn invisible, and use his rope, all at the same time, in which case you might as well put your PSP down. Another factor that comes into play is that both of these bosses have a random chance to avoid all damage. VLS will teleport away from an attack before it connects and counter, while MF takes it a step further, actually ''turning back time'' to before he was hit and attacking the player before they launch their attack. Whereas most action games (including the other ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' games) will give enemies a threshold of damage that they can take before they break out of the player's combo, these guys simply have a random percent chance to avoid all damage, every single time they're struck, and even if the player catches them while they would otherwise be vulnerable, meaning that the player's actual ability to deal damage (and thus defeat the boss) is determined entirely by chance.

** If the leader you're controlling gets KO'd [[WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou you lose]]. This means some boss battles and even random encounters boil down to praying to god that they don't all decide to gang up on your leader, because even some of the Mooks will do enough damage to kill a character in one round if they concentrate their attacks.

** It's literally a Mission with Mission 55, when fighting a Neochu and 5 Picochu. Attempting this mission at the end of Chapter 11 is a pretty bad idea, since your party is not strong enough to survive easily, though the pay-off (the Growth Egg, doubles CP obtained post-battle if worn in active party) is definitely worth it if you will. The best way to complete this Mission is by controlling Vanille (who has some pretty bad HP Growth) and spamming her [[InstantKillAttack Death]] spell over and over, and having Snow act as the meatshield while Hope takes care of healing. Problem is that you likely won't even get to ''do'' anything, since Neochu enjoys attacking your leader first... so you could easily retry the battle a few times ''just'' to be able to do ''one'' thing in the battle! And even then, Death has only a 1% chance of connecting (+1% added for every Debuff on the enemy) so you could either get really lucky and have it die fast or take its sweet time. Sure, you ''can'' come back here late in Chapter 12 or post-game, but where's the fun in that?

* A scary number of battles in ''VideoGame/TheLastRemnant'' can turn into this, due to the fact that the AI [[RandomNumberGod randomly]] [[AIRoulette assigns]] what each union is allowed to do at the start of each turn. Including heal. This can result in a unit getting beaten down to critical HP and starting the turn without the sensible option of trying to heal their HP, usually resulting in them getting wiped and usually a game over.

* There is one battle in ''VideoGame/MarioAndLuigiBowsersInsideStory'' that actually has a serious luck factor. The giant Bowser fight against the Monty Mole train has a time limit of sorts; if you do not destroy the train before it crosses the bridge at the end of the rails, you lose. This means that you only have a fixed number of turns to win the fight. Bowser's experience level and stats actually do not matter at all during giant fights, which means that only skill matters... supposedly. All factors considered, this battle actually has tight requirements on how many attacks you can screw up and still win, and these requirements solely depend on the number of times the train uses its bomb attack instead of its Goomba attack. Bowser's fire itself is not enough to kill the train; you must counter the bomb attack at least once to do enough damage to win. If the train never uses a bomb attack, ''you can execute every move perfectly and still lose''.

** All the optional boss battles in the [=PS2=] games (''VideoGame/DigitalDevilSaga'', ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'', and ''[[VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIIINocturne Nocturne]]''). ''Devil Summoner: [[VideoGame/RaidouKuzunohaVsTheSoullessArmy Raidou Kuzunoha]]'' is exempt from this, as its optional fights are much more forgiving. Largely because DS isn't NintendoHard.
** In ''Nocturne'', sometimes you're going through an area you're +10 levels over, and you'll get ambushed. The enemy then uses your weaknesses for extra rounds, gets a few lucky crits on the hero and BAM! Game Over. And you didn't even get a chance to counter attack. Furthermore, if merely the main character dies, it's Game Over. There's two different elements full of nothing ''but'' instant kill spells that work startlingly well, and if you want to resist or null one of them, you become weak to the other, until really rather late to the game where you start getting better Magatama. Naturally, a large number of random encounters pack at least one of the two instant kill elements, making most random encounters with them a Luck Based Mission.

** The rare Shadows from ''Persona 3'' always get an Enemy Advantage, which means two turns in a row at the start of a battle. It's possible that they'll run away before you even get a chance to attack if you're not lucky.

** ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiStrangeJourney'' has a luck-based '''FinalBoss''' at the end of the Neutral path. Its second form has an attack that is a guaranteed instant kill against whoever it hits, with no way to protect against it. Yes, it can target you. This essentially means every time the boss casts it, you have a 1 in 4 chance (AT BEST) of dying. ''Even if you're at level 99.''

* Ooh, boy, ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV''. Where to start? Rydia's additional summons (Bomb, Cockatrice, Mindflayer, and Goblin), the Pink Puff Tail that gets you the best armor (that one even more so because the enemies that drop it only appear in ''one room in the entire game.''), and in the DS version, the additional tails and the Rainbow Pudding. The Rainbow Pudding is particularly irksome, because it's the only way to complete the DS-exclusive Namingway sidequest. Speaking of the DS version, the BonusBoss, Geryon, and the other BonusBoss, Proto-Babil. General strategy for those two bosses are: Equip the Adamant Armor on all characters (not an easy feat itself, because of the aforementioned Pink Puff Tail), and '''pray.'''
* The BonusBoss Ozma in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' can just as easily wipe out a level 99 party as he can be beaten by a level 1 party; winning or losing depends entirely on what attacks Ozma decides to use.

** Any battle featuring enemies with petrification or instant death attacks, which become more frequent later in the game, can be this. Many times they can spam these moves and wipe out both party members before you have a chance to get back on your feet. Good thing DeathIsASlapOnTheWrist in this game.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' seems to be entirely made of randomness. Most of the best equipment is based on [[RandomlyDrops enemy loot]], which drops very VERY randomly. The chests that are the backbone of exploration? They appear randomly, and contain random contents. The high-powered rare enemies for completionists? Go figure, most of them ''also'' appear randomly. It would be one thing if you had somewhat of a chance, but many of these "random" chances can range from 10% all the way down to ''0.1%''. And then there's pulling off the most powerful Concurrence in the game, which is required to earn a specific achievement and complete The Sky Pirate's Den, which is required to earn the highest clan rank. Successfully pulling this move off depends on 98% luck and 2% twitch reflexes. The reward for earning the highest clan rank? A BraggingRightsReward.

** Success in reaching the Dragonlord in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestI'' is almost entirely decided by how often you run away successfully and how many enemies put you to sleep. If you're downright unlucky, a monster can put you to sleep with his first turn and then wail on you until you die. Even if you survive the gauntlet of downright unfair enemies on the way down the floors of the Dragonlord's castle, you still need enough MP left over to kill him too. Also, his first form can silence your healing spells, though it is possible to run away from him and re-engage him with your spells enabled again. Yes, you can actually run away from the ''final boss'' in this game, but it's just as luck-based as anything else.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestII'':
*** It has an enemy spell called Sacrifice, which is an instant party wipe that never misses. If a random encounter knows this spell (although very few do), and it goes first, you are completely fucked. Have fun redoing the entire Road to Rhone.
*** The final battle with Malroth amounts to whether or not he decides to cast Healall. Unlike Hargon, Pazuzu, and Zarlox/Belial, who will only use it when near death, Malroth can use it at any time and completely at random.
** The final boss's three parts in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVI'' can do over '''500 damage''' to a single target [[AIRoulette if the RNG decides it really doesn't like someone]]. Only about a third of that can be resisted to ''any'' degree. Long story short, if the game feels like it, one of your party members is dying, everyone else is taking a ton of damage as well, and there's nothing you can do about it.
** The difficulty of the DiscOneFinalBoss also boils down to how often he dualcasts his two hit-everyone attacks, which together can drain nearly ''all'' of your two {{Squishy Wizard}}s' HP. This is before you can have ''any'' multi-target healing, and you'll only have ''one'' character who can even heal one person for more damage than they took or even ''revive'' those who fall (again, this has only a 50% chance)...if you've taken the time to grind up your newest party member.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVIII'' also features a very annoying random encounter enemy that has Death Dance, a move that can kill 3 members of your party in one turn, if you're unlucky, leaving you prey for a quick party wipe even if normally you'd be at no risk.
** The Monster Arena in ''VideoGame/DragonQuestVIII'' is equally luck based. You don't have any input into your monster team's actions, which means that you're left ''hoping'' that their AI will actually do something useful. Too often you'll lose simply because your team either uses the wrong attack choices repeatedly or targets the wrong enemy, like going after the StoneWall while the CombatMedic keeps healing him as the GlassCannon pummels your team to defeat.
** ''VideoGame/DragonQuestIX'' continues the trend. In the postgame, high level Legacy bosses get 3 turns. Even with a maxed out party if they attack the same person twice or critically hit them once they will die. One character can use an item that will protect against the latter, but the other three have no recourse except to rely on an evade rate that caps around 20-25%. Most of them also have an [=AoE=] move that will do about 300-350 to you. Your max HP is in the 810-900 range if you don't farm 1/256 drops repeatedly and 999 if you do. Either way if they do that move three times in a round, instant Game Over. They also have the dreaded Disruptive Wave. However there is another side to them being luck based fights. The easier Legacy bosses can be soloed with sufficient farming, provided they don't Disruptive Wave too often.

* ''VideoGame/BreathOfFireII'':
** A certain fishing spot can only be accessed if you travel from one point to another without running into a random battle. As they are random, and often frequent in that area, this is a luck-based sidequest. You can skip random encounters using the game's flight power, but that's gained several chapters after the sidequest is first available, and is {{permanently missable|Content}} well before the end of the game.

** The game has the fight with Habaruku. Depending on which spells the random AI picks, he'll either completely waste you in two turns, or not hurt you at all.
** Also, in Highfort, you only have one character in your party and have to deal with random encounters with enemies who have an instant death spell in their repertoire. Your character isn't a powerhouse so you can always count on an enemy launching an attack. Just hope it isn't a Death spell.

* ''VideoGame/BugFables'': The attacks Carmina uses in her secret boss fight are left up to a roulette wheel. This means that she can potentially damage herself or heal the party if the wheel is in your favor.

* Some bosses in ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' can be this, your survival dependent on whether or not they choose to use their large, damaging nuke attacks.

* Minor example in ''VideoGame/MassEffect2'' on Insanity difficulty. At one point during Archangel's recruitment mission, you need to close a couple of doors. However, enemies are running at the doors and if one reaches the threshold, the door reopens and you have to start again. If you do not have the right class and weapon or power combination, it is entirely possible for an enemy krogan to run all the way to the door without dying no matter what you throw at it. Basically, the only way you can win this mission in a lot of cases is if the krogan AI randomly decides to stumble or doesn't spawn until it is too late to reach the door before it closes.

* Certain {{Role Playing Game}}s have aspects of the Luck-Based Mission to them, particularly in battles with powerful enemies. If an enemy uses an especially powerful attack twice in a row (which is sometimes rare, sometimes distressingly frequent -- Luck), it could mean the death of your party, regardless of how strong you are at the time. This sort of arrangement is common in games that use an [[AIRoulette A.I. Roulette]]; enemies that cannot be made intelligent may end up leveling the playing field by using overwhelming attacks on a random basis. Sometimes random damage can also affect the gameplay when fighting against tough enemies.
** ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarII'' has the infamous fight with Darkfalz. While his attacks are nasty enough to make him a challenge on their own, he also turns your party members 'evil' throughout the fight. Some of these effects aren't too bad (weakened attacks and defense), but others are debilitating, making a character waste turns doing useless things like trying to flee or steal items from their party members. Lord help you if he gets two or more characters with the latter, because the only way to cure it is to wait a few turns for the Neisword to heal them automatically... At which point he'll often just recast it. Suffice to say, this gets irritating very fast; no matter how well equipped and trained you are, Darkfalz can reduce your party to uselessness and then wipe you out, forcing you to take a long trek back to Lutz's place and then back through the final dungeon to try again, unless you [[GuideDangIt happened to find the Visiphone of course]].
** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI'' and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyII'' had several enemies, such as cockatrices and ghouls, that could inflict paralysis or instant death on your party. If they ambushed you, they could kill you without you ever getting a chance to fight back.
*** There's also Echidna, in the Dawn of Souls and Anniversary edition of Final Fantasy 1, whose earthquake spell can inflict instant death on your entire party, even with protection against instant death.
*** The worst possible outcome of a trip to the Castle of Ordeals in the original game is running into Sorcerers/Mindflayers: they do basically no damage when they attack (1-2 damage at best), but they have an incredibly high chance to inflict instant death with the attack if they hit. The only defense is a [=ProRing=] (Protect Ring), which you can buy from a town for 20,000 GP each, as it protects against instant death in most releases of the game but not in the original NES version, in which there is no defense against it at all. This is, of course, not noted in ''any thing'', game, manual or otherwise, and the price is incredibly prohibitive at the point that you're likely to be visiting the Castle. You have to hope you get lucky enough to hit them first, or run away. [[OhCrap Later in the game, you can run into groups of 6+.]]
* The third ''Monster Girl Quest'' installment, the first half in particular, is largely based on luck. You have to rely on the techniques ''Fallen Angel Dance'' and ''Serene Mind'' to block/dodge some of the attacks of foes which would otherwise [[CurbStompBattle curb-stomp you]]. Since luck plays a huge part in how often these techiques protect you, battles can range from complete cake-walks to NintendoHard to actually impossible depending on how many times the RandomNumberGod decides to let you dodge attacks.
* ''Battle Slots'' makes every battle a Luck Based Mission, in that both you and your opponents use slot machines to do battle.
* ''VideoGame/{{Absinthia}}'': The {{Superboss}}, Hex Boyfriend, can randomly inflict ailments on the entire party, including charm. This puts the party at the mercy of the RNG, since too many potent ailments could make the battle unwinnable.

* ''VideoGame/AVeryLongRopeToTheTopOfTheSky'':
** Most {{Boss Battle}}s. Between AIRoulette, {{Critical Hit}}s, OneHitKill attacks, and status effect spells, things are going to be hectic. This is particularly bad in the early game, where status protection is very limited and you don't have instant death protection at ''all''.
** The FinalBoss normally isn't ''too'' bad, but if you want to get the NewGamePlus endings, there are two points where you have to fight him with only two party members. He has an unavoidable OneHitKill attack, Ivy is usually slower than him, and you can't buy max revive items at that point (though if you bought a stockpile on a previous run, it'll carry over into NewGamePlus). ''[[AIRoulette Have fun]]''.
** Some {{Bonus Boss}}es have an attack called "I'll kill you all!" that [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin tries to instantly kill the whole party]]. It has a low rate of success and you can get instant death protection at that point, but still...
** All three contests the pig arena. Not only are the quiz bowl questions random (which makes sense), but the portions that are decoded are as well. On some runs you might get a totally decoded question, other times it might be complete gibberish. The arena is also a bad offender, since the combat system is such a Luck-Based Mission to begin with; a single miss or critical hit can change the course of the whole event.
* ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' and ''VideoGame/BaldursGate2'':
** This can happen against enemies that use any of the various "save or die" effect spells like [[TakenForGranite flesh to stone]] or disintegrate if you're not using the appropriate defenses like death ward or protection from petrification. The game is also automatically over if the main character is killed, even if you have other party members who are able to revive a character or restore the them back to normal.
** Learning spells from scrolls in these and other D&D-based games. It has a % chance of failure, presumably you read a scroll and either learn the spell or not, the scroll disappears anyway. SaveScumming kills the whole idea, however.
* ''VideoGame/BatenKaitos''
** Fadroh. Unless you want to spend days farming wind magnus for Xelha, Gibari, and Mizuti, the whole boss battle hinges upon when that Orb of Magical Offense comes up in his hand; if you haven't had at least three or four good turns to wear him down, you're ''done''. The whole card-based battle system comes with luck elements, but this battle just cranked it up.
** The DuelBoss of Xelha Vs. the Ice Goddess. It's basically a card flip minigame. You get a choice of seven or eight cards, and have to match it with the card chosen by the Ice Goddess. Get it wrong? Xelha takes a hit. And for completionists, there's a Camera magnus hidden in there, which you need to use to take one picture for OneHundredPercentCompletion. It's ''entirely'' possible to easily win the battle but ''not'' take the picture, which is just as, if not more, frustrating for people seeking to achieve perfection in this game (which is a very hard task, given this game doesn't have a NewGamePlus and there's ''plenty'' of items that can be [[PermanentlyMissableContent unobtainable]], including Boss pictures). And then it repeats all over again for the Wizard Shadow battle...
** [[RandomlyDrops Rare Portraits]] of your characters. Sure, they have ''very'' low chances of dropping per camera shot, but since you can simply equip someone with all the cameras you have and waste away your turns [[FirstPersonSnapshooter taking pictures]] while [[ScratchDamage fighting Shawras in Moonguile Forest,]] they're not bound to be a bother, right? '''Wrong.''' There's two particular Rare Portraits that can only be taken in the grand total of '''''ONE''''' specific boss battle ([[spoiler: Malpercio in Algorab Village]], in case you're wondering). This is the ''only'' time in the '''entire game''' (sans the epilogue, that is) where Mizuti's mask is off. [[RandomlyDrops If you don't get]] ''both'' the Maskless and Mega Rare Mizuti Shots in this battle, then they're [[PermanentlyMissableContent gone]]. It doesn't help that this is a ''very'' easy boss, and that this is a GuideDangIt because there's ''no'' indication in-game (other than the missing blanks alongside the other portraits in the Magnus List) that there's something missable in this battle, and by the time you've realized it, there's a fair chance it's too late by then.
** The Trail of Souls is this for those aiming perfect completion. It basically amounts to you playing a forward-scrolling third-person shooter in which you have to shoot down waves of enemies as they approach your ship so you don't have to deal with them (shooting down full waves gives you reward magnus or a speed boost, as you're not supposed to fall too far behind your guide). The problem is, these enemies are ''unique'' to this area, and you cannot revisit it, which means that if you don't ''purposely'' leave at least one wave alive and let it attack you, you won't be able to take the picture''s'' of the '''two''' different types of enemies in the area. Moreover, one of these guys is ''the only enemy in the entire game that drops Frost Caps'' (otherwise mediocre armor), and there's one item that can ''also'' be [[PermanentlyMissableContent lost]] if you don't blow the wave to oblivion. In other words, ''unless you're lucky enough to encounter '''both''' enemy types in a single sacrifical wave, have the '''one''' enemy type who drops the missable item drop it, have the enemies last long enough for you to take pictures of '''both''' of them '''and''' make sure to kill the wave that drops the missable Secret Recipe magnus,'' you will '''not''' see that perfect Magnus List. There's OneHundredPercentCompletion, and then there's ''Baten Kaitos.''

* The likelihood of succeeding at the chocobo racing mini-game in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'' is highly dependent on the number and locations of the balloons and hazards, which can vary widely and appear to be randomized.
** Most notably, in the first turn. If a bird nails you there, you're done.

* ''VideoGame/{{Undertale}}'': Papyrus' BrickJoke tile machine that's later used by Mettaton that emplores a variety of rules into multiple colored panels. It ''can'' be completed but under a 30 second time-limit and one wrong move could prevention from reaching the finish line.

** There's also the Coliseum. Betting an item to get a specific other item is fine, but the character that you choose to enter the arena will at ''entirely'' at random, with a chance of using ''any'' option available to them. Sabin might be able to wipe out any single enemy with the Bum Rush/Phantom Rush skill when you're in the control, but when he's in the Coliseum, expect him to try to cast Imp on a boss monster that's immune to it, then use Pummel/Hurricane Fist for minimal damage, then cast Float on himself before dying.

*** The worst possible outcome of a trip to the Castle of Ordeals in the original game is running into Sorcerers/Mindflayers: they do basically no damage when they attack (1-2 damage at best), but they have an incredibly high chance to inflict instant death with the attack if they hit. The only defense is a [=ProRing=] (Protect Ring), which you can buy from a town for 20,000 GP each, as it protects against instant death in most releases of the game but not the original NES version. This is, of course, not noted in ''any thing'', game, manual or otherwise, and the price is incredibly prohibitive at the point that you're likely to be visiting the Castle. You have to hope you get lucky enough to hit them first, or run away. [[OhCrap Later in the game, you can run into groups of 6+.]]

*** The worst possible outcome of a trip to the Castle of Ordeals in the original game is running into Sorcerers: they do basically no damage when they attack (1-2 damage at best), but they have an incredibly high chance to inflict instant death with the attack if they hit. The only defense is a [=ProRing=] (Protect Ring), which you can buy from a town for 65,000 GP each, as it protects against instant death. This is, of course, not noted in ''any thing'', game, manual or otherwise, and the price is incredibly prohibitive at the point that you're likely to be visiting the Castle. You have to hope you get lucky enough to hit them first, or run away. [[OhCrap Later in the game, you can run into groups of 6+.]]

* Mushroom #VIII in ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII Final Mix+.'' True, this is only a sidequest required for OneHundredPercentCompletion, but then again, the type of people who play the Final Mixes ''are'' completionists. Anyways, this sidequest, no matter what strategy you use, requires a complicated setup and can be resource-intensive--so you ''will'' be SaveScumming. The point is to keep the mushroom in the air by hitting it and never allowing it to touch the ground; what makes it luck-based is the completely random direction the mushroom will jet off to every few rounds of hits. It requires as well very fine-tuned timing and hand-eye coordination, yet if luck is not with you, you will lose. Oh, and how many times must the mushroom be hit? ''Eighty-five times, minimum.''

** There are enough times in the battles of ''VideoGame/PaperMarioTheThousandYearDoor'' where random effects can spontaneously happen that you can never truly rely on your own skill or character's power level. Either you or your opponent can randomly be frozen or turned invisible, fog can fill the arena rendering most attacks ineffective, and you have absolutely no control over when it happens or ''what'' will happen. As the game's core mechanic relies on TimedHits, you can be steam-rolling a random encounter only to be randomly frozen, take a beating, and get a GameOver, losing all your progress, purely because the RandomNumberGod decided to say "[[ClassicVideoGameScrewYous screw you]]". Calling it a ScrappyMechanic is an understatement as, unlike every enemy attack in the game barring one from the intently difficult BonusBoss, you can not Superguard or even defend against some of these effects at all.

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'':
** No matter the generaton, catching any [[OlympusMons legendary Pokémon]]. Sure, you can give it status effects, whittle its health down to a sliver, etc., but thanks to having the lowest catch rates of any Pokémon, it ultimately boils down to "Will the game decide that I've caught the legendary before I run out of Ultra Balls/it runs out of PP and [=KOs=] itself with Struggle?" It helps that the catch rate is subject to [[http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Catch_rate a lot of variants]]; [[http://veekun.com/dex/gadgets/pokeballs calculating them is possible]], but not guaranteed to suceed. Even in the optimal situation for catching one, most have a success rate of about 18%. Fortunately, scenarios where [[SwordOfPlotAdvancement you need to catch a legendary to proceed with the game]] give them a higher catch rate.
** And then you have [[GetBackHereBoss roaming legendaries]]. Starting in ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver'' with the legendary beasts (Raikou, Entei, Suicune) and continued on by several more Pokémon, even merely finding them is luck-based. Spending hours chasing them around by looking at the map to see where they are, moving to another area, checking the map, moving to another area... repeat ad nauseum. It almost never works, either. In some games, this is made even worse by having to run into each one of them at least once before you can track them your map. That's right, you need to be lucky enough to run into one of them by chance ''before'' you can start actually hunting them. At least in Gen IV (including the remade versions of Gen II), the map on the Pokétch/Pokégear has a tracking feature on it, so you don't have to worry about the luck aspect of the initial finding anymore. Gen V was also kind enough to have its roamers come with storms that track on the electric signs in the gatehouses (and, better yet, you only have to worry about ''one'' in ''Black'' or ''White'', and ''none at all'' in ''Black 2'' or ''White 2'').
** Catching Feebas is this in Generation III and especially IV. In both generations, Feebas can only be found in one area in the game. In Gen III, they appear in a river that consists of hundred tiles in total and Feebas only appears in six of them. ''SIX''. Thought that was bad? In Gen IV, they only appear in a lake and only in four tiles, ''which are randomized every day''. Want to catch a Feebas? You either need a lot of patience... or a lot of luck. Thankfully, ''[[VideoGameRemake Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire]]'' adds fixed spots where you can find Feebas 100% of the time.
** In ''[[VideoGame/PokemonDiamondAndPearl Platinum]]'', Beldum may possibly be even worse to catch than the [[OlympusMons Legendaries]]. As if the incredibly low catch rate AND [[SelfDestructiveCharge Take Down]] weren't bad enough, you have to wait for a swarm of them to appear, which could take days, possibly even weeks, so you'd have to be patient to even get the opportunity to confront one. This also means that if you miss out on the swarm day, or simply fail to catch one in time, you're boned and have to wait ''again''. Then they only appear on the route that causes constant sandstorm damage to most of your Pokemon. ''And'', since Beldum's only attack inflicts damage on itself, you could do everything right and it could still kill itself.
** ''Pokémon Battle Revolution'' has a few luck-based coliseums. In the first, you have a roulette wheel to determine whether you get to use one of your own Pokemon, or one of your opponent's far less useful ones. In the second, it's a 100-battle endurance match, where the roulette is used to determine if any of your Pokemon get healed. The roulette can actually be controlled with good timing, though, since it decelerates at a fixed rate rather than randomly, but learning the timing will require a few spins of it.
** The Honey Trees in Gen IV. If you're lucky, you'll be able to catch Pokémon like Aipom, Heracross and Cherubi that can't be found anywhere else. If you're not lucky, you'll get Wurmples. On every single tree. Adding to the luck factor is that it takes six hours for a Pokémon to appear, and SaveScumming doesn't work as the Pokémon you will encounter is determined the moment you slather the tree. At least the level and gender ''are'' randomized before an encounter, though, making it a little bit easier, yet still frustrating, to catch that elusive female Combee. As an added batch of fun, Munchlax is found on precisely four trees, which require the use of a calculator and knowledge of a value found only by hacking shiny Pokémon to determine which of about a dozen are those trees. It's still a 1% chance once you know which trees it is.
** ''Platinum'' also has the "5 Maid Knockout Exact-Turn Attack Challenge" in the (Sinnoh) Pokémon Mansion. You have to beat five trainers in a row (itself pretty easy since they're all using one Clefairy each at level 25-33), but in an exact number of turns. The "luck-based" part comes from the fact that the total number is usually only one or two more turns, and ''every single Clefairy knows Endure'', so not only do you have to be able to knock them out, you have to hope they don't use Endure at the wrong time or it becomes completely impossible (and the little bit of control you can get is with Taunt, which can only work for the last match). Just to rub salt in the wound, what's actually worth taking this challenge for is the chance to fight one of two trainers holding a RareCandy (thus this is one of the only ways that item can be farmed) that you need Thief or Trick to get and have to use before the enemy destroys the item by using Fling. And you only get to take this challenge once a day. [[SaveScumming Hello, soft reset!]]
** In Contests in Gen IV, there is no way, repeat ''no'' way to beat the Master Rank unless you're incredibly lucky. And this is merely an improvement from the Gen III Contests, which were comparably worse due to jamming moves.
** A good chunk of the dungeons in the ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeon'' games qualify as well. Purity Forest and Zero Isle South, for example. Not only did they have 99 floors, but you could not take any items, money or teammates with you, you could not recruit anything inside, your level was reduced to one and you were forced to save before going in, meaning that essentially whether you made it through or not depended on how quickly you could locate the stairs and what items you could find.
** A few rare trainers love using evasion-increasing moves like Double Team, which are actually banned in competitive play for being too luck-based. The worst offender is probably Janine in ''VideoGame/PokemonStadium 2'', whose entire strategy revolves around using Baton Pass with several layers of Double Team. And every one of her Baton Pass targets have either Swagger or Confuse Ray, dropping your percent chance of landing a hit to the single digits while she slowly tortures you to death with Toxic and blocking your escape with Spikes and Mean Look. Either you come fully prepared with a team that packs Haze and Heal Bell, or prepare for a ridiculously long fight.
** The first Stadium game wasn't above using luck-based challenges either. The fourth battle in the final round of the Prime Cup throws the Gambler at you, who has possibly the most aggravating strategy of all the opponents you'll face; paralyze your Pokemon with either Body Slam or Thunder Wave so his mons outspeed yours, then spam one-hit KO moves nonstop. What makes this even worse is that his team is actually of varying types of Pokemon who are all pretty durable, and he's actually smart enough to switch them out when faced with a bad matchup. You could either sweep him effortlessly or get completely annihilated; it's all up to luck. And considering how Pokemon Stadium is with giving your opponents fantastic luck....
** The Safari Zone. It's either catch the Pokémon instantly with the crappy Safari Ball (which you'll eventually swear is just a normal Pokéball painted over), or watch that Chansey with a 1% chance of appearing ([[MeaningfulName hence the Japanese name "Lucky"]]) run for the hills. Your only aid in helping with this? Pebbles/Mud that [[BlatantLies really helps raise the catch rate]] and make it easier for the Pokémon to run away, or Bait that makes it harder to catch the Pokémon, but lowers the likelihood of the Pokémon running away. Naturally, this is in every game before Gen V, and when it came back in ''OR/AS'', the setup is no different from finding/catching Pokémon anywhere else in Hoenn.
** In ''[[VideoGame/PokemonXDGaleOfDarkness Pokémon XD]]'', there is the "Metronome Cup." You fight two Pokémon with two of your own. All of the Pokémon have only one move -- Metronome, a move that summons any other move at random. Winning or losing is literally and entirely based on luck. There is no strategy involved in the least. [[HilarityEnsues It's rather fun, however]].
** Also in ''Pokémon XD'' is a Battle CD where you use a Zangoose against a Cradily that uses Barrier three times to max out its Defense while you use Swords Dance three times to max out your Attack, the use Slash until you get a CriticalHit, which will bypass the Defense boosts and K.O. Cradily. The problem is that Slash has only a 1 in 8 of being a CriticalHit and you have a limited number of turns, meaning you can run out of turns without ever getting a CriticalHit.
** Voltorb Flip in the international versions of ''[[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver HeartGold/SoulSilver]]'' is basically Minesweeper with much more random guessing. While it is quite deep, some boards are really unsolvable, like ones with something close to "Sum 5/Voltorb 2" on every row and column. Boards like those always require 2 to 4 guesses, which translates to a 1/4 to 1/16 chance of winning, given perfect play. And there's always the chance of landing on a Voltorb on the first turn, even when the row says 7/1 and the column says 8/1 ... And a first turn Voltorb means back to Lvl 1.
*** They have online calculators for Voltorb Flip. However, every one of them has a disclaimer that basically amounts to "Voltorb Flip is a Luck Based Mission. This calculator can only give you a reasonable idea of which tiles are safe."
*** Like RealLife Casinos, Game Corners in general are a Luck Based Mission. Compared to the outrageously rigged slots in the other generations, Voltorb Flip is downright forgiving. Some actually preferred the luck-based slots, though, since it was much faster-paced and you could just buy casino coins if you were rich and impatient.
** How about any of the Battle facilities? You know, the Battle Towers, Battle Frontier, Battle Subway, Battle Maison, and Battle Tree? You have to win 49/100/170 consecutive times without losing once, and without any continues (and you can't save and reset, you get disqualified). And the game can be brutal about luck sometimes. Say, you meet an opponent with Brightpowder (held item that increases evasion) and one-hit KO move which hits 30% of the time. It's extremely common in the Frontier that both Brightpowder and the one-hit KO move takes effect. Sometimes 3 times in a row, and the matches are 3 vs 3. Say goodbye to your hours of winning. Oh, and the game does mock you if you lose, as if you played bad.
*** The Battle Factory is the worst, because you don't even get to play with your own team, instead, you are given random Pokémon to fight, and it resets every 7 matches (there are 49 matches to be won). So unless you get strong Pokémon in all 7 sets, you are screwed.
** The Battle Pike of the ''Emerald'' Battle Frontier is unashamedly one. Pick a pathway and hope it's a safe one. While there are guides who can give you an idea of what lies behind each door, they're not perfect. Oh, and there's little to no healing, so you'll want to avoid paths with battles as much as possible. No wonder your reward for completing it is the Luck Symbol...
** ''Stadium 2'''s Challenge Mode is probably the worst offender. The game is already [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard heavily rigged in the computer's favor in every match]], but Challenge Mode makes it worse by forcing you to use 6 randomly generated Pokémon that are almost guaranteed to be complete crap, and then use them to fight the (much better) random Pokémon the computer gets in 4 difficulty levels. The description of the mode says "This mode tests your ability as a trainer", but it would be more accurately described as "This mode tests your ability to resist carpal tunnel syndrome from how many times you'll have to reload the game upon getting a terrible team".
** The Vermilion City Gym could also count. In order to deactivate the electric gates blocking your path to Lt. Surge, you need to flip a pair of switches. What the game ''tells'' you is that they're placed randomly, and that the second switch is always next to the first. What the game ''doesn't'' tell you is that only half of the cans can even contain the first switch, and not ''all'' adjacent cans are necessarily eligible to contain the second switch. What the game ''can't'' tell you, because it's due to a programming error, is that the top left can is almost always one of the options for the second switch, even though it's not adjacent to any of the options for the first switch. So, yes, there's a tiny chance of looking in the top left can twice in a row and finding both switches.
** The very battle system itself is luck based to an extent. You can plan and strategize as much as you possibly can, but if the game decides it doesn't want a move/item/ability/side effect with a less than 100% chance of working to succeed, there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. Then there are critical hits, which are possible for almost every move but are also almost always random. Some moves choose targets at random in double and triple battles and others (and a hold item) force the opponent's to switch out at random. Even damage itself has a random variance range rather than being entirely fixed by stats. There are still some other luck based factors not yet mentioned here.
** The Dream World from ''VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite'' was intended as a successor to ''[[VideoGame/PokemonGoldAndSilver HeartGold and SoulSilver]]'''s Pokéwalker in that it's an alternative means to obtain Pokémon and items for your game. While it did do that, it preferred to send players to random locations rather than letting the player pick the location to explore for themselves, and you could only take ten steps each visit before leaving and Pokémon would stop coming to you after so many visits in a day.
** Trying to get certain rare Pokemon from Hidden Grottos in ''VideoGame/PokemonBlack2AndWhite2''. Half the time it's an item you find, or a Pokémon you have/don't want.
** Breeding in any game, if you aren't an [=RNGer=]. Getting one aspect isn't too hard. You can control inherited moves easily as long as your breeders don't level up too much in the daycare (before Gen VI) and getting the right nature is easy with one parent holding an Everstone, and with only one or two abilities, it isn't hard getting the right one, but getting all at once can be aggravating.. And good stat parents help your IV chances but do not guarantee good stat offspring. Even worse is trying for shiny Pokémon. The Masuda method of using one parent from a foreign language game helps, as does Gen V's and VI's Shiny Charm, but the chance is still low. Arceus help you if you're breeding for shiny, good stats and correct nature all at once.
** [[VideoGame/PokemonXAndY Gen VI]] introduces Wonder Trade. You offer one Pokémon, and you get a random Pokémon in return. You won't know what you get until it comes. It could be anything from a [[OlympusMons legendary]] to a starter to a ComMon to anything in between.
*** It also brings back the exact-turn battle challenges from ''Platinum ''in the form of restaurants, although going a couple turns above or below the par will merely give you a smaller prize, giving you some leeway. The higher-level restaurants, though, will actively try to screw you up by throwing everything they can into defense. And the last one squares the whole luck factor by engaging you in rotating battles, in which the Pokémon you target is completely random. Fail too many guesses and you're guaranteed to get a dent in your wallet.
** ''VideoGame/PokemonSwordAndShield'' is literally this on Max Raid Battles, if you decide to do this on your own and dealing with [[ArtificialStupidity computer-AI players using weak Pokemon]]. Stat modifiers can reset randomly. Due to your team's Pokemon being weak, the opponent can easily wipe them out using moves that hit all opposing Pokemon, wiping them out in 1 turn; you can lose the Dynamax battle in 2 or less devastating moves. If the opposing Pokemon has either Counter or Mirror Coat, you can lose your Pokemon in 1 hit.
*** Special shout-out to the special [[SNKBoss Mewtwo Max Raid Battles]] that was available for a short time, even on team. Good luck facing a Level 100 Pokemon with insane stats. At least the rewards are very good if you somehow managed to complete it.