History Main / ContractualBossImmunity

* Bosses in most of the ''VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy'' series tend to be immune to disabling status ailments (stun, syphon, freeze), and instant death.
** [[WakeUpCallBoss The Guardian]] in ''2'' downplays this at worst. After you destroy his arms (a tough task in itself), he can be syphoned or stunned to block his arm regeneration; however, these effects seem to be resisted.
* Played with in ''VideoGame/EtrianOdyssey'': status effects besides instant death are only moderately less likely to work on [[PreexistingEncounters FOEs]] and bosses than {{mooks}}, and are useful for doing things like wasting their turns, doing damage over time, or preventing them from using their most powerful attacks. However, status effects only last a few turns, and successfully applying one to a unit [[DiminishingReturnsForBalance makes the unit more resistant to that status for about eight turns]] -- applying the same effect twice is considerably harder than doing it once and it gets successively harder. In ''Legends of the Titan'', the Arcanist has a spell that resets this resistance; it costs an extremely large amount of TP, but may still be worth it against particularly tough enemies.
** That said, there are oddballs in many of the bosses that stand out. Manticore is only vulnerable to brute force, being immune to ailments and binds. The [[{{Superboss}} Fallen One]] of 4 resists instant death, but is not ''immune'' to it, meaning a lucky instant death attack will end the fight instantly.

** Many raid bosses in ''[=EverQuest=]'' were outright immune to spells that slowed their attack speed since such spells could reduce a monster's damage output by upwards of 60% or more. Notable examples for their time were Derakor the Vindicator and the Avatar of War, two end-game bosses in the Scars of Velious expansion that were notorious for their extremely high melee damage output.
*** Eventually, Sony began allowing slow spells to work on many bosses, but with limited effect. Casters would receive messages such as ''"Your slow spell is only partially effective."''

* Most melee enemies in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' can be slowed by crippling their legs. Attempting this on the final boss has no noticeable effect. Also, the main boss and the 2 bonus bosses of ''Lonesome Road'' are completely immune to knockdown effects.
** For stealth characters, an easy way of killing enemies is to place an explosive in their inventories with reverse pickpockting. However, this doesn't work on Caesar or Kimball for some reason.

** Several games in the franchise have one boss who possesses an item or skill that nullifies effective damage against them: [[VideoGame/FireEmblemShadowDragonAndTheBladeOfLight Michalis]], [[VideoGame/FireEmblemTheBindingBlade Narcian]], [[VideoGame/FireEmblemTheSacredStones Valter]], [[VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening Walhart]], and [[VideoGame/FireEmblemFates Hinoka]]. You can either steal said item from the first three guys or simply pry it off of their corpses. In addition, Walhart's Conquest skill is also wielded by [=SpotPass=] Zephiel and DLC Ephraim, and [[spoiler:Walhart himself comes with it when he joins you and can pass it along to Morgan if he is his father]].

However, [[AvertedTrope averting]] this trope ''can'' make for a different and entertaining atmosphere. Allowing players to OneHitKill any enemy, turn the FinalBoss to stone, or characters to use the [[TouchOfDeath Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique]] on [[Film/KillBill Bill]] can be downright ''[[ShowyInvincibleHero awesome!]]''

* In ''Videogame/DeusExHumanRevolution'', while Viktor Marchenko does come with a larger-than-average healthpool and a unique weapon, provided that you either sneak up on him or remove his [[InstantArmor TITAN Armor]] he can be incapacitated via a Takedown.

* In ''Videogame/DeusExMankindRevolution'' while Viktor Marchenko does come with a larger-than-average healthpool and a unique weapon, provided that you either sneak up on him or remove his [[InstantArmor TITAN Armor]] he can be incapacitated via a Takedown.

* It's very common for BulletHell shooters to have the {{Bonus Boss}}es and/or {{True Final Boss}}es become invincible when the player bombs, taking no damage from the bomb or any of the players shots until the effect of the bomb ends. Generally, a barrier of some sort will be placed around the boss to show when this is occurring, although other things have been known to occur to indicate that the boss simply is not taking any damage (for example in ESP.Ra.De the boss literally leaves the screen). Sometimes the standard FinalBoss gets this type of invincibility as well when they're on their [[TurnsRed final pattern]]. Creator/{{Cave}} and ''Franchise/TouhouProject'' games are prime examples of this.

* ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert3'': Commando units are immune to getting run over by vehicles (especially notable in Tanya's case, since she ''runs up'' to vehicles to instakill them with a C4 charge))). However, they're just as vulnerable to anti-infantry weapons as other mook units.

* The mechanics of the ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAuto'' games usually allow anyone to be killed during gameplay (but may give you a Mission Failed if you kill them before their plot-driven death/wasted moment). Usual methods for killing mission targets include shooting their car until it explodes or running them off the road and carjacking them. However, there are rare instances in the series where key targets resist these methods. Occasionally, a target's vehicle may be invincible to damage and/or have locked doors. The most egregious offenders behave as an unstoppable force, knocking heavy semi-trucks off the road as if they were made of styrofoam to follow a scripted path.
** All enemy [=NPCs=] in ''VideoGame/GrandTheftAutoViceCity'' follow standard mortality rules except for three bosses. [[spoiler:Ricardo Diaz, Lance Vance, and Sonny Forelli]] are the only enemies who cannot be instantly killed with a headshot.

** An annoying case in many ''Grand Theft Auto'' titles involes characters who undertake missions with you on your side, but [[FaceHeelTurn are later fought as enemies]]. They'll go down from a small hail of gunfire when they're on your side, requiring you to protect them, but once it comes time to fight them they'll be able to withstand several headshots. One aversion to this is [[spoiler:Ryder in ''San Andreas'']] -- since the intended method is a chase sequence in boats, he himself only has a regular amount of health. Combine that with the fact that he has to swim out to his boat before the chase sequence starts ''and'' that the mission gave you a sniper rifle to handle the first half of the mission, and you can skip the whole chase and gunfight by [[CombatPragmatist simply gunning him down before he reaches the boat]].

* The final boss in ''VideoGame/{{inFAMOUS}}'' has this in spades. On easy mode all your attacks work, and he can be beaten quickly, and on normal mode your strongest doesn't work, but he can still be killed easily. On the NintendoHard mode? At least one of your skills will be below maximum level (assuming you chose an option to get a ton of XP), and all but your NORMAL ZAP and one (relatively weak) evil move work on him. Considering the sheer number of ways he can one-hit you if you're at less than full health? Painful fight to say the least. Can take over an hour, not counting the inevitable dozens of retries.
* The end boss in ''VideoGame/Prototype2'' has a bad case of this -- he cycles between being immune to each of your five attack types without warning, and doesn't let the player fly around or consume lesser enemies in a game based on using mobility and healing breaks and stealth.

* ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'': Zigzagged. All bosses can be affected by status effects (though it takes a few more hits than normal to inflict them). The Bible kills Mom and Mom's Heart instantly, but trying to use it on any other FinalBoss results in ''the player'' dying instantly instead. The Chaos Card will kill absolutely anything in one hit, including most Final Bosses... ''except'' the TrueFinalBoss of the Afterbirth+ expansion, which is immune to it. There is also the Plan C item, which will kill everything in the room instantly, including any boss in the game (of course, since it kills ''the player'' too, its usefulness is limited). It's also possible to gain so much attack power that bosses are taken out nearly instantly, but two of the Afterbirth bosses have a damage-blocking mechanic which rapidly scales up their armor when they take large amounts of damage in short periods of time. As a result, even runs that would instantly kill a normal boss can take a good deal of time to wear the boss down.

* In ''VideoGame/EnterTheGungeon'', bosses are completely immune to the BalefulPolymorph effect of magic weapons.

* Bosses in ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' tend to be immune to incapacitating effects such as [[BalefulPolymorph Polymorph]], [[AntiMagic Interrupt and silence effects]], and most notably stun effects. This is quite necessary, as if they weren't, every party would simply take as many rogues as possible to keep a boss stun-locked and incapable of doing anything. Similarly they're almost always immune to slow, to prevent them from being kited to death. There was a boss in ''The Burning Crusade'' whose movement speed was slow enough to allow kiting, and on heroic difficulty some people did indeed refrain from ever getting close to it.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' 2nd Edition's incapacitation trait potentially grants 'any' monster this. If you use a spell or ability with this trait on a creature of a higher level than you, its degree of success will automatically be one step higher than what it rolls. This makes is impossible for higher level creatures to suffer a critical failure effect, and heavily reduces the chance of a normal failure. However, this is usually reserved for abilities that have traditional 'save or suck' effects that heavily debilitate a monster and it's ability to fight -- such as stuns, removals, or spells like Baleful Polymorph and Feeblemind that essentially render a creature ineffectual -- so damage spells and spells with more minor debuffs (like penalties to rolls or stats) are still fair game (and are in fact encouraged to help beat major threats). In addition, incapacitation effects still work on equal and lower level creatures, and certain creature abilities will have this trait too, making them less powerful against players if you fight them at a higher level!

*** Flying bosses tend to take half damage from Gravity spells instead of being immune to them, and Emerald WEAPON apparently counts as one. While you still can't inflict more than 9999 damage in one hit, at least you have a way of reliably inflicting 9999 damage per hit for a while. Note that Emerald WEAPON has 1 million HP, so even at 9999 damage per hit it'll still take a while to wear it down.

*** The ''International Zodiac Job System'' and the ''The Zodiac Age'' UpdatedRerelease add the fight with the five Judge Magisters as stage 100 of Trial Mode. This fight is notable in that it's pretty much ''designed'' to be won by using status ailments and debuffs, short of simply cheesing the battle by manipulating the random number generator to have obtained a large amount of an item called Dark Energy, which deals 50,000 damage to all targets. The judges are extremely fast and can heal each other with Elixirs (though not themselves). Three of them, however, are vulnerable to the status ailment Disease, which prevents all healing and which they can't heal. Another of them can be inflicted with both Sleep and Silence, while another is vulnerable to Confuse, Blind and Immmobilize, in addition to the aforementioned Disease. A typical strategy involves hitting the three that can be with Disease, then repeatedly summoning Zodiark and using its Final Eclipse, which deals 60,000 damage to all targets in range. Once those three are killed, this leaves Gabranth and Zargabaath, Zargabaath being the one who can be hit with Sleep. The player can then simply keep him asleep. Gabranth's shtick is to repeatedly whack a character with stong physical attacks, but he is vulnerable to Wither to lower his strength to the point where his damage is neglible. Once he's killed, the player can then simply deal with Zargabaath at leisure, even still keeping him asleep if they want. There are a few other bosses that can be dealt ailments, but this is the one fight where it's truly necessary.

** You can find the Self-Defense Pistol, a .22 magnum derringer that [[OnlyWorksOnce can only be fired once]] but will down any enemy in one single hit. Bosses are the exception of course, with it instead doing about the same damage as one of Barry's .44 magnum rounds. Granted this is still a significant amount of damage, making the weapon helpful in fighting the Black Tiger or Yawn, but don't expect it to take them down in one hit. In fact, it was actually deliberately coded to not be able to one-shot a "boss" type monster, even if its damage output is higher than the boss's health, instead doing a HPToOne effect.

* ''Franchise/{{Kirby}}'': Bosses and minibosses generally cannot be inhaled, because they're bigger than Kirby. Meta Knight, however, is a little guy with cape and armor who is also immune to Kirby's ability. In the anime, Kirby tries to inhale him, but Meta Knight [[NoSell just stands still]], saying that he has "special defenses".

As you can see, this veers in and out of AcceptableBreaksFromReality. It can be fun to kill a FinalBoss with the uber attacks that are normally useless; but it can also be rather boring to do so.

* From the ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamSeries'': Typical combat moves won't work on most bosses, but this tends to be justified given the nature of said bosses. If its a fist fight, you can bet the Instant Takedown move won't work on them. As for ones with other types of boss immunity:
** ''VideoGame/BatmanArkhamCity'': The boss of the ''Catwoman'' DLC is Two Face, who is fought in a Predator Encounter. He is immune to a;ll types of takedowns, and has a health bar instead. An endless supply of {{Mook}}s will come into the room to replenish the ones you defeat, forcing you to pick them off, attack Two Face, and then retreat before his men can kill you. Rinse, repeat.

*** The ''International Zodiac Job System'' and the ''The Zodiac Age'' UpdatedRerelease add the fight with the five Judge Magisters as stage 100 of Trial Mode. This fight is notable in that it's pretty much ''designed'' to be won by using status ailments and debuffs, short of simply cheesing the battle by manipulating the random number generator to have obtained a large amount of an item called Dark Energy, which deals 50,000 damage to all targets. The judges are extremely fast and can heal each other with Elixirs (though not themselves). Three of them, however, are vulnerable to the status ailment Disease, which prevents all healing and which they can't heal. Another of them can be inflicted with both Sleep and Silence, while another is vulnerable to Confuse, Blind and Immmobilize, in addition to the aforementioned Disease. A typical strategy involves hitting the three that can be with Disease, then repeatedly summoning Zodiark and using its Final Eclipse, which deals 60,000 damage to all targets in range. Once those three are killed, this leaves Gabranth and Zargabaath, Zargabaath being the one who can be hit with Sleep. The player can then simply keep him asleep. Gabranth's shtick is to repeatedly whack a character with stong physical attacks, but he is vulnerable to Wither to lower his strength to the point where his damage is neglible. Once he's killed, the player can then simply deal with Zargabaath at leisure, even still keeping him asleep if they want.

* ''VideoGame/IttleDew'': The bosses can't be frozen, teleported, or launched by a portal block (an instant kill on anything else). While some normal enemies are immune to being frozen, none are immune to the other two.

[[folder: Strategy]]

* In ''VideoGame/DragonQuestI'', the Dragonlord is ''not'' immune to Sleep/Snooze, as shown in this video. However, the low hit rate for Sleep makes this AwesomeButImpractical. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twbxxr2THzI

** In all games but ''[[VideoGame/PokemonColosseum Colosseum]]'' and ''[[VideoGame/PokemonXDGaleOfDarkness XD]]'', you can't capture another Trainer's Pokémon and use it as your own -- not even with the Master Ball. Justified since, as the game points out, those are Pokémon that already have owners, and so you'd be blatantly kidnapping them. The aforementioned Orre games do allow this, but you can only snag specific Shadow Pokémon.

** several large monsters are unable to be captured for various reasons and is forced to be slain by the hunter.

*** Both Abyssal Lagracius and Raging Brachydios are unable to be captured due to being unable to set traps in the habitats they reside. Additionally in ''Iceborne'' the latter upon trapping the hunter, prevents the usage of any traps, forcing the hunter into a DuelToTheDeath.

** The FinalBoss of ''VideoGame/MonsterHunterWorld'' cannot be mounted, presumably due to its sheer size.

** ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiV'' has most bosses be ''resistant'' to all statuses, but not immune to them, so you can land them if you spam them repeatedly, and can even get a guarenteed success if you use your LimitBreak on it. The instant-death effects of Light and Dark spells still don't work on bosses even if they're otherwise weak to them, though.