History Main / AIRoulette

* The dream eater allies in ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts3D'' function in this fashion, though with the chance to perform a particular action varying based on their disposition and the remaining HP of themselves and their allies. As such, it's not uncommon to see them reapplying StandardStatusEffects or a StatusBuff on something that they just put it on instead of doing something more productive. They also might heal you immediately when you're almost dead, or not at all.
** Before, ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsChainOfMemories'' had this with Donald, making him very unreliable if summoned. He basically had no set pattern, and would cast random magic spells. On some occasions, he would be quite useful, such as when he casts Thundaga several times and fries the screen for you. However, he could be just as unreliable and do things like cast elemental magic on enemies who absorb them or waste Curaga when Sora is already at full health.
** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'' notably subverted this with regards to its bosses with a system known as Revenge Value. It was a hidden system that would count up every time the player landed an attack, and once it passed a certain threshold, the boss would break out of your combo and counterattack. This meant that, if you were able to figure out a bosses approximate Revenge Value, you could begin to counter the boss's counter before they even began it. Later games, which played this trope more straight, disappointed some players who had mastered the Revenge Value system.

** ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'' notably subverted this with regards to it's bosses with a system known as Revenge Value. It was a hidden system that would count up every time the player landed an attack, and once it passed a certain threshold, the boss would break out of your combo and counterattack. This meant that, if you were able to figure out a bosses approximate Revenge Value, you could begin to counter the boss's counter before they even began it. Later games, which played this trope more straight, disappointed some players who had mastered the Revenge Value system.

** Nearly all wild Pokémon in every game use the Roulette. This is probably justified by the wild Pokémon not having the decision-making skills of humans. Exceptions are typically those where you cannot catch the Pokémon, like the fused Necrozma fights in ''VideoGame/PokemonUltraSunAndUltraMoon''.
** In ''VideoGame/PokemonRedAndBlue'', your very first battle against your rival essentially comes down to luck, as they can either attack or use a status lowering move. Whether you will win comes down to how much they will use their non-directly damaging move. Getting the potion from your PC turns it from whether you're lucky enough to win to whether you're lucky enough to keep your potion to use later.
** The move Metronome is this. A move that is the Pokémon equivalent to the wrath of God has the same chance of being called via it as the move that has no effect whatsoever.
** As the game progresses, certain moves are appropriate only in the rarest of situations, such as Gravity. At other times, the 'Rock-Paper-Scissors' elemental weaknesses prove this trope. For instance, when the opponent's Fire-Ground combination Pokémon decides to square off against your Rock-type, he's just as likely to use a Fire move (which does little damage to you) rather than a Ground move (which will probably KO you quickly). Gym Leaders are smart enough that any attack that is weak against the opponent is removed from their roulette.
** Trainers in the first generation with certain Pokémon, such as Spearow or Kadabra, would use Whirlwind or Teleport, despite the fact that auto-flee moves don't work in Trainer battles. Whirlwind eventually gained a Trainer battle effect that's more annoying than anything.

* In the [[Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog Sonic spinoff game]] ''VideoGame/ShadowTheHedgehog'', the Egg Dealer is LITERALLY this. Its attacks are decided by hitting buttons (using a homing attack) on a slot machine that's on its front.

* The iOS[=/=]Android game ''VideoGame/SummonersWarSkyArena'' is ''chock full'' of this, contributing to the ArtificialStupidity of your mons, if you choose to automate the combat. There's some parameters that makes it less random, but even then it's not a sure thing.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Flight Rising}}", enemies in the Coliseum run like this. Enemies with full health bars will heal themselves, enemies with full breath bars will continue to meditate, and enemies will use elemental attacks against the dragon on your party with the strongest resistance to that element. Unless, of course, the enemy uses their attacks properly and wrecks your team in 3 turns. That is also possible.

* Enemy weapons targeting in ''VideoGame/FTLFasterThanLight'' is random, leading to things like bombs exploding harmlessly in empty rooms. [[TropesAreNotBad This is good]] because the game is NintendoHard as it is; an AI that can AlphaStrike through multiple layers of shielding or strategically target bombs to knock out weapons or kill crew members [[AntiFrustrationFeatures would get frustrating quickly]]. Enemy crew members, on the other hand, are governed by easily-predicted and manipulated ArtificialStupidity.

** The biggest BigBad may use Cancellation on you, removing the effects of your protective techniques. Resetting your party's magic defenses (if you even care about them) is far less costly than recovering from a group-damage attack.

* It takes less time. Complex AI routines would require a lot of coding for each individual creature to use its attacks most effectively, which increases the time it takes to create a new monster. In games with hundreds of different creatures (even if some are PaletteSwap creatures), AIRoulette is a reasonable alternative to writing hundreds of AI routines.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'' presents a unique scenario for this trope: the Coliseum, wherein the player chooses a single champion from the active party to fight solo against the enemy. The AIRoulette will then take over this character. The problem is, the more abilities (or spells) the character has, the more likely it is to perform something useless (like trying to cast Imp at Siegfried for ten turns in a row, or using Remedy or Float on oneself) or downright harmful (such as Meltdown, summoning Crusader, or Self-Destruct.) Many a player has gone into the Coliseum with [[GameBreaker a fully-leveled up Sabin, armed with a Genji Glove and a Master's Scroll/Offering]], expecting to kill the enemy in one shot, only to see him cast [[HeroicSacrifice Soul Spiral]] and kill himself on his first turn.\\

* ''VideoGame/TheLastRemnant'' for the Xbox 360 is an unusual case in that you, the player, are subject to partial AIRoulette just as much as the enemies due to the battle system. Though you still have command over your units, the available list of commands you can pick from turn to turn (as well as depending on the enemy you target) is determined entirely by the AI. Sometimes the commands available are entirely logical and normal, sometimes they're nothing near what you need (i.e. no healing commands when you could certainly use some), and sometimes they give you access to your uber attacks for trash enemies.

* In the [[VideoGame/SonicTheHedgehog Sonic spinoff game]] ''VideoGame/ShadowTheHedgehog'', the Egg Dealer is LITERALLY this. Its attacks are decided by hitting buttons (using a homing attack) on a slot machine that's on its front.

* In the [[Franchise/SonicTheHedgehog Sonic spinoff game]] ''VideoGame/ShadowTheHedgehog'', the Egg Dealer is LITERALLY this. Its attacks are decided by hitting buttons (using a homing attack) on a slot machine that's on its front.

* The AI would be very predictable otherwise. No matter how sophisticated the AI, if the same situation always causes the same reaction, the player will learn the pattern and anticipate it. A little randomness makes the game more challenging, in a way that cannot really be described as [[FakeDifficulty fake]]. For this reason, even more advanced AI architectures often involve randomness, except that instead of picking uniformly from ''all'' available moves, they draw a ''weighted'' random from among the few best ones (the tricky part, of course, is teaching the AI how evaluate its options).

One of the three methods a VideoGameAI uses to perform moves and functions is to simply pick moves [[GameplayRandomization at random]]. For some [[SmashMook simple foes]], this is fine, as the player probably won't notice. But the more complex or varied the enemy, the more likely actions will be chosen that would ''never'' be performed by any intelligent and sane human, or any sufficiently advanced enemy AI.

One of the three methods an AI uses to perform moves and functions is to simply pick moves [[GameplayRandomization at random]]. For some [[SmashMook simple foes]], this is fine, as the player probably won't notice. But the more complex or varied the enemy, the more likely actions will be chosen that would ''never'' be performed by any intelligent and sane human, or any sufficiently advanced enemy AI.

* The AI would be very predictable otherwise. No matter how sophisticated the AI, if the same situation always causes the same reaction, the player will learn the pattern and anticipate it. A little randomness makes the game more challenging, in a way that cannot really be described as [[FakeDifficulty fake]].

One of the three methods an AI uses to perform moves and functions is to simply pick moves at random. For some [[SmashMook simple foes]], this is fine, as the player probably won't notice. But the more complex or varied the enemy, the more likely actions will be chosen that would ''never'' be performed by any intelligent and sane human, or any sufficiently advanced enemy AI.

* A combination of the above. Many [=RPGs=] have monsters that are impeccably strong, but use a random AI to keep that strength in check. It's easy to make a stupid AI (takes less time) with high stats (keeping things fair). However, these sorts of enemies can easily turn into a LuckBasedMission, since the [[RandomNumberGod RNG]] essentially determines whether your party is smashed into goo or walks away unscathed.

** The battle systems in the ''MOTHER'' series relies on this for all of its enemy encounters. Many enemies (with few exceptions) have "do nothing" type actions in the list, such as furrowing one's brow or falling down. These are chosen from an enemy's list of attacks just as often as their regular attacks are, so it's possible to get lucky and have an enemy spend several turns idling. Other actions include particularly strong or deadly attacks, attacks that inflict [[StandardStatusEffects status ailments upon the party]] (like a particularly odd enemy action leaving a character "feeling strange," or confused). Given the general somewhat quirky atmosphere of the games, it goes a long way with infusing the series with a lot of its charm.

* The ''VideoGame/{{MOTHER}}'' series, as its first game was based off of the first ''Dragon Quest,'' uses this often. Enemies have a variety of actions with varying effects; normal attacks, stronger or particularly deadly attacks, attacks that inflict a status ailment on the target (like leaving them "feeling strange" (an analogue for traditional confusion), attacks that do nothing but waste their turn.

* The battle system in ''VideoGame/EarthBound'' relies on this to make fighting some enemies easier. Many enemies (with few exceptions) have "do nothing" type actions in the list, such as furrowing one's brow or falling down. These are chosen from an enemy's list of attacks just as often as their regular attacks are, so it's possible to get lucky and have an enemy spend several turns idling.
** Given the atmosphere of the game, this practically falls under the "RuleOfCute", if there were such a thing.
** Then there's the [[http://starmen.net/mother2/ebdb/enemies.php?enemy=145 Clumsy Robot]] boss, which has one devastating attack and so many "do nothing" moves it could be considered a {{lampshade}}.
*** Of course, this also means that if you get unlucky and Clumsy Robot uses the missile, say, four times in a row, even the rolling HP meters won't save you.
** There are also some enemies that use a set pattern to attack, such as the Robo-Pump and Final Starman.

* A speedrunner named Cosmo, while attempting a world record speedrun of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, ran into this with the Fire Temple boss, Volvagia, during one of his most promising runs. Due to the specific sequence break he was using, he had a limited amount of time to defeat Volvagia before the game auto-killed him, which would waste too much time to catch up to the world record, meaning he would have to start an HOUR's worth of gameplay over. So of course, Volvagia, only being vulnerable when the AI Roulette lands on certain moves, proceeded to perform anything but those moves until Cosmo's run was ruined. This happened repeatedly.

* In the Microprose ''{{Magic the Gathering}}'' game, the AI has a particular talent for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory because it randomly selects its moves. It's particularly amusing to see it countering its own spells. It is rather obvious to anyone who plays that the AI does not understand the game.

* The entire ''[[Franchise/SaGaRPG SaGa]]'' series has this in droves, especially ''VideoGame/SagaFrontier''. While a few enemies have a powerful move activated only after certain circumstances, they typically spam their moves indiscriminately. Battles devolve into [[LuckBasedMission games of chance]] in which the player hopes that enemies don't use their most powerful attacks. It doesn't help that many of the bosses get multiple turns. Even some of the most innocuous low-level enemies have sort of party-decimating attack that can result in an impromptu Game Over, like Magnetic Storm.

** In Generation I, this was taken a step further; Pokémon used by high level trainers are programed to use whatever move has the best type advantage above all others, even before considering whether or not that move actually does damage. This was especially noticable with the Elite Four, where you'd see their Pokémon use nothing but nondamaging psychic moves, such as Agility, Amnesia, and Barrier, simply because you brought out a Fighting or Poison type.

** It varies from game to game and AI trainer to AI trainer. However, wild Pokémon will ''always'' use an AI Roulette. This is probably justified by the wild Pokémon not having the decision-making skills of humans.
** The Roulette that AI trainers use prevents them from using moves that will be not very effective... which can make them even dumber than if they just used random moves. In Yellow Version, Giovanni has a Nidoking and Nidoqueen that, when faced with a Grass/Poison type like Bulbasaur, will only use Leer or Tail Whip due to what their other moves are. When you don't understand the Roulette, seeing them beat your Pikachu in one hit and then be taken down by a level 10 Bulbasaur is baffling.

* The entire ''VideoGame/{{SaGa}}'' series has this in droves, especially ''VideoGame/{{SaGa Frontier}}''. While a few enemies have a powerful move activated only after certain circumstances, they typically spam their moves indiscriminately. Battles devolve into [[LuckBasedMission games of chance]] in which the player hopes that enemies don't use their most powerful attacks. It doesn't help that many of the bosses get multiple turns. Even some of the most innocuous low-level enemies have sort of party-decimating attack that can result in an impromptu Game Over, like MagneticStorm.

** Especially {{egregious}} is that often one or more characters in a group will use a do nothing attack.

* An [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality accepted break]] in the already NintendoHard ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIIINocturne'', where some bosses could outright kill you in one round if they used the strongest attack twice. The BonusBoss is a LuckBasedMission.
** This is an understatement. If it wasn't for the roulette, Back Attacks would invariably kill you ''every time''. And enemies that could use multiple elements would decimate your party over and over again, becoming [[DemonicSpiders Demonic]] BossInMookClothing.

* ''Franchise/DragonQuest'':