History Main / RandomizedDamageAttack

* While all weapons in ''VideoGame/{{Wynncraft}}'' deal damage determined by a range of values, the limits are often further apart with [[ElementalRockPaperScissors Thunder]]-based weapons, reflecting Thunder's portrayal as a more chaotic element.

* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline2'' has the Meteor Fist Photon Art for the Knuckles weapon. This is a chargeable attack that causes golden fists to [[DeathFromAbove rain down on your foes.]] How the fists manifest vary by chance; you can get one small fist, a rain of small fists, or one gigantic fist that does absurd damage. However, the attack needs to be charged in order to see the giant fist at all.

* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline2'' has the Meteor Fist Photon Art for the Knuckles weapon. This is a chargeable attack that causes golden fists to [[DeathFromAbove rain down on your foes.]] How the fists manifest vary by chance; you can get one small fist, a rain of small fists, or one gigantic fist that does absurd damage. However, the attack needs to be charged in order to see the giant fist at all. There's a reason why it's also called [[FanNickname "RNG Fist"]] by players.

* ''Videogame/EpicBattleFantasy'' gives Natalie the ''Manga/LuckyStar'' spell, which is cheap on MP, but its damage varies wildly-it can range from a mere tickle to damage highly devastating for such a cheap spell. ''3'' onward gives her Star Shower, a multi-hitting AreaOfEffect version of the spell.

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* Crackle in ''VideoGame/{{Hearthstone}}'' is a Shaman spell from ''Goblins vs. Gnomes'' that costs 2 Mana with 1 Overload[[note]]You have X less Mana the next turn[[/note]] that deals somewhere between 3 and 6 damage to a single target. At worst, it's a more expensive Darkbomb, and at best it's a cheaper Fireball. It's one of the most hated cards against Aggro Shaman decks because of its wide damage range.

* ''Webcomic/ProblemSleuth'': The Catenative Doomsday Dice Cascader is a machine that uses a process of dice-rolling to determine the damage it deals. First, a central dice is rolled to decide how many of the six others will be rolled to determine the actual damage. All the selected dice are then rolled, and each result is multiplied by the previous total to determine the sides of the next die (for instance, if the centra die rolls a six and the second one a two, all further dice have twelve sides; if the third rolls a seven then all further dice will have ninety-six sides, and so on). This can end with a final with a monstrous number of sides, which is then rolled to determine how much damage is dealt to the target. The Cascader is used in [[https://www.homestuck.com/extras/20 a non-canon strip against the Midnight Crew]], ending with a final die with over fifty trillion sides. It rolls a one.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''

* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''. Almost all attacks that do physical damage (melee combat, spells, psionics, etc.) inflict a variable number of HitPoints. In fact it would be quicker and easier to list the attacks that always do the same damage. This is true of most games inspired by ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' as well.

* [[VideoGame/{{Uncharted}} Nathan Drake]] and [[VideoGame/{{inFAMOUS}} Good Cole MacGrath]] in ''VideoGame/PlaystationAllStarsBattleRoyale'' both receive a 3-hit melee combo that always results in a randomized finisher, all gaining the same amount of AP, but with different hit-reactions. They are:
** Drake's Neutral Square combos comes with a potential right-hook or uppercut, which both result in lifting the victim a short height into the air, and a frontal kick which knocks them onto their backside for a moment. For the combo's sake, you'll probably want the kick.
** Good Cole's results in him either bashing the enemy with his amp in two different ways, both resulting in an eject roll, or jamming his palm into them for a crumple-state. Considering that Cole gets his major damage from combos, you'll probably want the crumple.

** Accupressure chooses a random stat (between Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, Speed, accuracy, and evasion) and raises the stat of the selected target by two stages.

** The "Damage Roulette" Second Wave option for ''VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown'', all attacks save for explosives, psionics and MEC subsystems ([[FireBreathingWeapon flamethrower]], [[PowerFist Kinetic Strike Module]] and [[ElectromagneticPulse Electro Pulse]]) can deal between [[ScratchDamage 1 damage]] and 150% of the max base damage. A CriticalHit will deal the weapon's base damage ''plus'' what the regular attack would cause. Which means your soldier can be [[ScratchDamage tickled]] by a Sectopod's [[WaveMotionGun chest cannon]], or someone with Titan armor can be one-shot by a lucky crit from a Muton with a plasma rifle that hurts as much as a non-roulette Sectopod cannon shot.

* ''{{VideoGame/Dota2}}'': Every unit from the heroes to creeps has attack damage that has a variable so damage is always dealing either minimal or maximum damage. Chaos Knight takes this UpToEleven where he not only has the most extreme damage variable (-15/+15 compare to most heroes's -3/+3 at average) but also has Chaos Bolt, which inflicts a random but inversely-related amount of damage and stun. Upgrading the spell increases both the maximum and minimum values of both the damage and stun, but there's still a big difference between a 275 damage skill that stuns for 2 seconds, and one that does 100 and stuns for 4.

* Chaos Knight from ''{{VideoGame/Dota2}}'' has Chaos Bolt, which inflicts a random but inversely-related amount of damage and stun. Upgrading the spell increases both the maximum and minimum values of both the damage and stun, but there's still a big difference between a 275 damage skill that stuns for 2 seconds, and one that does 100 and stuns for 4.

* ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger''
** Lucca has the Wondershot that deals random damage.

* Weapons in the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series generally have a damage range listed in their stats

* In the ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBros'' series, Mr Game & Watch's side special attack (called "Judgement") does random damage AND random effects ranging from Mr Game & Watch damaging himself through various StatusEffects to smashing the opponent off the map for a OneHitKill. Which effect you get corresponds to the number above his head.
* In ''VideoGame/ArcanaHeart'', a character using Saligrama will get a dice attack where the damage is of course randomized and can sometimes get a buff if you're hit, you hit your opponent or you take fatal damage.

* In ''VideoGame/MegaManBattleNetwork'' series, [=NumberMan.EXE=]'s Dice Bomb deals damage based on the number on the top side of the dice.

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}''
** The move Magnitude has a power between 10 (Magnitude 4) and 150 (Magnitude 10).
** The move Psywave also does random damage; specifically it deals a random number between 0.5x and 1.5x the user's level.
** Present does variable damage, in particular with a chance to do negative damage (i.e. heal the opponent).
** Some moves, such as Fury Attack, Pin Missile, Bullet Seed and others, deal normal damage with each hit but hit a random number of times. This is negated if the user has the Skill Link ability, when they'll always hit the maximum amount of times (usually five) unless the opponent faints before all of them hit.
** Accupressure chooses a random stat (between Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, Speed, accuracy, and evasion) and raises the stat of the selected target by two stages.

* Weapons in the ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}'' series generally have a damage range listed in their stats.
* In ''VideoGame/SuperMarioRPG'', enemy attacks have no random variation of damage, but the player's attacks do. The variation depends on the weapon; unarmed attacks have no randomness, whereas the Masher and Lazy Shell have a very large random factor.

* ''Videogame/EpicBattleFantasy'' gives Natalie the ''Manga/LuckyStar'' spell, which is cheap on MP, but its damage varies wildly-it can range from a mere tickle to damage highly devastating for such a cheap spell. ''3'' onward gives her Star Shower, a multi-hitting AreaOfEffect version of the spell.

This, however, is when an attack doesn't always deal the same damage every time - it highly depends on your luck.

** Present does variable damage, in particular with a chance to do negative damage (ie heal the opponent).

* Axes and bombs in ''FinalFantasyXII'' vanilla did random damage (unless you scored a CriticalHit, in which case they were devastating.) That, and the fact that most of the better varieties of each weapon were hard to come by, made them unviable for anything beyond experimentation and [[SelfImposedChallenge Self Imposed Challenges]].

** The "Damage Roulette" Second Wave option for ''VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown'', all attacks save for explosives, psionics and MEC subsystems can deal between 1 damage and 150% of the max base damage. A CriticalHit will deal the weapon's base damage ''plus'' what the regular attack would cause. Which means your soldier can be [[ScratchDamage tickled]] by a Sectopod's [[WaveMotionGun chest cannon]], or someone with Titan armor can be one-shot by a lucky crit from a Muton with a plasma rifle.

* In ''[[{{VideoGame/XCOM}} X-COM]]'', the weapon stats displayed in game show average damage. Guns roll from 0 to 200% of that, while explosives roll 50-150%. Lucky soldiers can survive point-blank heavy weapons fire while unlucky ones die to stray pistol rounds.

[[AC:FightingGames]]
* [[VideoGame/{{Uncharted}} Nathan Drake]] and [[VideoGame/{{inFAMOUS}} Good Cole MacGrath]] in ''VideoGame/PlaystationAllStarsBattleRoyale'' both receive a 3-hit melee combo that always results in a randomized finisher, all gaining the same amount of AP, but with different hit-reactions. They are:
** Drake's Neutral Square combos comes with a potential right-hook or uppercut, which both result in lifting the victim a short height into the air, and a frontal kick which knocks them onto their backside for a moment. For the combo's sake, you'll probably want the kick.
** Good Cole's results in him either bashing the enemy with his amp in two different ways, both resulting in an eject roll, or jamming his palm into them for a crumple-state. Considering that Cole gets his major damage from combos, you'll probably want the crumple.

[[AC:FirstPersonShooter]]

[[AC:HackAndSlash]]
* [[ShockAndAwe Lightning-based attacks]] in the ''VideoGame/{{Diablo}}'' franchise do damage randomly between 1 and some huge number.

[[AC: {{MMORPG}} ]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Dofus}}'' has a [[TheGambler gambling class]] in Ecaflips who have moves that deal damage randomly between a minimum and maximum base damage amount. The majority of their skills have random base damage, and are themed around gambling themes like card games, slot machines, and coin flipping. Some of their skills even heal the enemy back a small amount to add to the gambling theme.

[[AC:RealTimeStrategy]]

[[AC:Roguelike]]
* The old DOS game ''Wizard's Castle'' deals consistent damage with physical weapons, but the magic spell Fireball deals between one and fifteen points of damage, fifteen being enough to OneHitKill any adversary. Similarly, the Web spell will render an adversary unable to strike for as few as one turn to many as five turns.

[[AC:RolePlayingGame]]

* Videogame/EpicBattleFantasy gives Natalie the Manga/LuckyStar spell, which is cheap on MP, but its damage varies wildly-it can range from a mere tickle to damage highly devastating for such a cheap spell. ''3'' onward gives her Star Shower, a multi-hitting AreaOfEffect version of the spell.

[[AC:TabletopGames]]
* ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''. Almost all attacks that do physical damage (melee combat, spells, psionics, etc.) inflict a variable number of HitPoints. In fact it would be quicker and easier to list the attacks that always do the same damage. This is true of most games inspired by ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' as well.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''
** This game has several weapons with random strength or random amount of hits, usually determined by D6 or D3 roll. Examples include Chaos daemon weapons (random amount of hits) and Ork zzapguns (random strength). The most extreme example is probably the Dark Eldar Casket of Flensing, which has random range, random amount of shots ''and'' random strength.
** Weapons with situational damage also exist, but are much rarer. The conversion beamer, a rare weapon available to certain Space Marine characters and Inquisitors, deals more damage the further away the target is, while the pulse submunition cannons of the Tau R'varna battlesuit increase in strength and amount of hits as the target's size increases.

[[AC:TurnBasedStrategy]]

* EpicBattleFantasy gives Natalie the Manga/LuckyStar spell, which is cheap on MP, but its damage varies wildly-it can range from a mere tickle to damage highly devastating for such a cheap spell. ''3'' onward gives her Star Shower, a multi-hitting AreaOfEffect version of the spell.