History Main / TheLawOfDiminishingDefensiveEffort

* In ''LightNovel/{{Slayers}}'', to demoralize Lina into using her DangerousForbiddenTechnique, Hellmaster tells the Slayers that they can attack him all they want and he won't counter-attack or even attempt to defend himself, and then spends a while laughing off everything they throw at him (even more so in the novel version, where all of the Slayers actively participate in the fight). The first thing that forces him to react is two simultaneous Dragon Slaves from Lina and Sylphiel, which "might have hurt a bit if I hadn't dodged it". The only thing that he really considers worth defending against is the Giga Slave - at which point he discovers that [[EvilIsNotAToy ultimate destructive power is not a toy.]]

* ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'': Accelerator has control over vectors, so anything that makes contact with him will bounce off, even if it hits him without him being aware of it. His arrogance bites him in the ass in his fights against [[PowerNullifier Touma]] and Amata Kihara. As a testament to Accelerator's CharacterDevelopment, much later in the series, he faces Umidori Kuroyoru. Kuroyoru launches an attack that can hurt him, expecting Accelerator to take the attack and get himself killed. Accelerator dodges, causing her to have a VillainousBreakdown as she didn't see that coming.

* Frederica from ''LightNovel/AvestaOfBlackAndWhite'' actively invokes this trope by having a Commandment that forbids her from ever dodging or blocking attacks made against her, but gives her near complete immortality in return as long as she doesn't do anything to violate it.

* ''Fanfic/KabbalahThePassiveConqueror'': Discussed and subverted. When [[VideoGame/FateGrandOrder Mashu Kyrielight]] gets attacked by the [[LightNovel/DateALive AST]], she remembers that Servants are immune to non-magical attacks and is highly tempted to tank their bullets, but decides to block them with her shield. It was a good call because when a few bullets go past her shield and hit her, though they bounce off, they ''really'' hurt.

* In Literature/TheDresdenFiles, Ivy the Archive is a GreatBigLibraryOfEverything in human form. She knows ''everything'' that has ever been written down. In the [[TheVerse Dresdenverse]], knowledge equals power, and she has ''a lot'' of it. In a spectacular display of power, she manages to take on seven very Elite Mooks, blocking or redirecting every attack with seemingly minimal effort. But when the leader of the Elite Mooks throws a spell at her, Ivy devotes most of her attention, as well as one of her hands, on defending against her attack.
* The BigBad of Literature/TheAlloyOfLaw doesn't bother to avoid punches, bullets, or dynamite blasts. He even blows his head apart with a shotgun, just to make a [[GoodThingYouCanHeal point]].
* The [[PoweredArmour ACS]] troops from Literature/LegacyOfTheAldenata are essentially immune to most small-arms fire. They're also fairly high priority targets, resulting in some resentment from normal soldiers who have to find cover from both direct enemy fire, and from the (still nasty) flechettes and railgun rounds ricocheting from any ACS nearby. Of course, standard procedure is to have the ACS ''way'' out in front...

* ''Videogame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance:'' Almost all of the bosses in the game do what they can to avoid your attacks or stop them in their tracks where it's possible, knowing Raiden's HF blade can put some actual damage on them. This isn't the case with [[spoiler:Senator Steven Armstrong]], whose unique brand of [[spoiler:Nanomachines ([[MemeticMutation SON!]])]] harden his body so much that most of the time he just plainly does not give a fuck what you're throwing at him; he just plows straight through your myriad slashes anyways to punch your face off the rest of your body. Most of his blocks are just to show off how little Raiden's blade does to him.

* Averted in TabletopGame/{{go}} (a.k.a. igo, weiqi, baduk) - if the stronger player can forget defense, the handicap is too small - and according to the game etiquette, they should play weaker in order to avoid crushing their opponent. Especially if the handicap was purposefully omitted or too small. The stronger one is supposed to "gently" show where a mistake was done, and not take too great advantage of obvious blunders. It's supposed to be a sign of a good player that they can defeat a weak player of any level by a small margin.

* Often used in ''Manga/OnePiece'': Luffy is made of rubber and thereby immune to bullets and blunt force trauma (unless supplemented by haki), Logia users are elementals and immune to everything except sea stone, the sea itself, something that defeats their element (e.g. using water on a fire logia) or haki.

* ''Literature/ACertainMagicalIndex'': Accelerator has control over vectors, so anything that makes contact with him will bounce off, even if it hits him without him being aware of it. His arrogance bites him in the ass in his fights against [[PowerNullifier Touma]] and Amata Kihara. As a testament to Accelerator's CharacterDevelopment, much later in the series, he faces Umidori Kuroyoru. Kuroyoru launches an attack that can hurt him, expecting Accelerator to take the attack and get himself killed. Accelerator dodges, causing her to have a VillainousBreakdown as she didn't see that coming.

* ''LightNovel/ACertainMagicalIndex'': Accelerator has control over vectors, so anything that makes contact with him will bounce off, even if it hits him without him being aware of it. His arrogance bites him in the ass in his fights against [[PowerNullifier Touma]] and Amata Kihara. As a testament to Accelerator's CharacterDevelopment, much later in the series, he faces Umidori Kuroyoru. Kuroyoru launches an attack that can hurt him, expecting Accelerator to take the attack and get himself killed. Accelerator dodges, causing her to have a VillainousBreakdown as she didn't see that coming.

* Happens with the Replica Weapon used by the Pope in ''LightNovel/TheRisingOfTheShieldHero'', while the Replica Weapon does contain 1/4th of the total power of all four Cardinal Weapons and can shift forms to those weapons, because of the ideology of The Three Heroes Church treating the Shield Hero as their religions' AntiChrist, Pope Bisca refuses to use the Replica Weapons' Shield Form to instead rely upon a magical barrier to defend himself with, a barrier that is fueled by the mana of his own Churchs' Followers just like every other attack that the Replica Weapon is capable of producing. Suffice to say, Pope Biscas' barrier is eventually worn down through attrition by all Four Heroes working together.

* ''Videogame/MetalGearRisingRevengeance:'' Almost all of the bosses in the game do what they can to avoid your attacks or stop them in their tracks where it's possible, knowing Raiden's HF blade can put some actual damage on them. This isn't the case with [[spoiler:Senator Steven Armstrong]], whose unique brand of [[spoiler:Nanomachines ([[MemeticMutation SON!]])]] harden his body so much that most of his blocks are to show off, and most of the time he just plainly does not give a fuck what you're throwing at him and plows straight through your myriad slashes anyways to punch your face off the rest of your body.

** In Annual #2, ComicBook/{{Hawkeye}} defeats ''both'' ComicBook/IncredibleHulk and ComicBook/IronMan by exploiting the fact that they're parallel versions who know nothing about him, hence they'll not even try to dodge one arrow of the guy who has developed projectiles capable to bypass Hulk's invulnerability or melt Iron Man's armor down.
** In his second appearance, The Vision believes he can whitstand ComicBook/TheMightyThor's attacks by making himself super-dense. He changes his mind after getting punched across the room.

* The fluff of ''TabletopGame/VampireTheMasquerade'' mentions that Ventrue with the [[MadeOfIron Fortitude discipline]] often like to use their supernatural toughness as an intimidation tactic, standing still and letting {{muggles}} throw away bullets, knives and other attacks at them (which they shrug off) as a way of psyching them out.

* ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' has the Rolling mechanic, that lets you roll to get invincibility frames for a quick instance. Since in the game armor slows you down, if you put it on and it surpasses a certain weight threshold (that you can increase with certain items) you have less invincibility frames in your rolling. Because of this, and the fact that you can avoid almost any kind of damage by rolling in time, many people that are too confident of their skills and reaction times tend to use as little amount of armor as possible, or not use armor at all (Of course, at risk of dying even faster if they fail in the process, and since less armor gives you less Poise it also means you will get stunlocked by incoming attacks easier).
** This mechanic, of course, makes some player versus player interactions a circus of men rolling while wearing nothing but a loincloth and a potato sack on their heads moving all over the place really fast, or a giant fat armor while rolling incredibly slow yet somehow dodging all incoming damage.
* Dante from ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry'', [[CutscenePowerToTheMax at least in cutscenes]], he will let enemies impale him with pointy objects, crush him underneath them etc. because of his HealingFactor, usually leaving a wisecrack or two. If he starts blocking or evading properly then you know the fight's serious.
** The actual gameplay also demonstrates the corollary very well, especially on the harder difficulty modes: If you aren't jumping around like a frog on meth, you will be ''torn to shreds'' by most of the enemies you face.

* In ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' fanfic ''Fanfic/{{Traveler}}'', Cynthia's Spiritomb won't bother to defend itself against most attacks due a combination of it's power, ghostly nature, and ability (Pressure). But once Ash starts aiming for it's base, it freaks out and focuses entirely on defending.

* Done a few times in Dissidia and Dissidia 012.

* Totally averted in Chapter 280 of ''Manga/KenichiTheMightiestDisciple''. The Karate club is taught Muy Thai by one of the members of Yomi, but he only taught them how to attack. As such they could not defend against Kenichi at all when he counterattacked.

* Used by Sensui in ''Manga/YuYuHakusho'' when he fights 3/4 of the protagonists at once. He completely shrugs off Kurama's Rose Whip and Hiei's Dragon of the Darkness Flame, which have sliced through and vaporized past opponents respectively, but he noticeably avoids Kuwabara's new Dimensional Sword, which can cut through absolutely anything. The fact that Sensui knows how powerful this technique is, but is still confident that he'll win is a bad sign.
* In ''Manga/MedakaBox'', Zenkichi states that this is the common weakness shared by the strongest students at the academy: they never dodge their opponents' first attack (Medaka being an exception thanks to the "Auto-Pilot" Abnormality she copied before). Any attack that could take them out of the fight in one hit will work on them.

** In ''ComicBook/TheSupergirlFromKrypton'', a squad of winged ComicBook/{{Darkseid}}'s parademons tries to stop him by kamikazing against his body. Superman just ignores their relentless assault as continuing his march forward.

''The less actively a combatant pursues his own defense in a fight, the less likely he '''needs''' to.''

The corollary: ''Any attack that forces someone who normally ignores self-defense to dodge (or block) the attack is [[OneHitKill an attack that can kill him in one hit]].''

The sad (terrifying) fact is that this is an instinctive response called the Peltzman effect, where the person will take more risks according to how safe he is in some kind of internal (insane) sense of balance. But since humans tend normally to overestimate their benefits... the result is nasty. Worse is that it's a constant effect that people do without realizing day after day. Not so different from pain tolerance; expected pain "hurts" less than surprise pain.

* {{Inverted}} in ''Fanfic/TheMissionStaysTheSame''. When Shepherd first sees Captain Gallardi fighting on Purgatory, she notes that he seems oddly over-cautious, never leaving cover for more than a fraction of a second. Then she remembers that Gallardi is used to fighting without kinetic barriers, where even a single bullet could kill him.

** Hidan is entirely immortal, and thus has almost no strategy or moves beyond "get opponent's blood for voodoo technique". Both his partner Kakuzu and eventual opponent Shikamaru tell him how stupid that is. They areproven completely right when [[spoiler:Shikamaru buries his severed head deep underground]]. He was also shown to be at least partially vulnerable to dismemberment as unlike Kakuzu he can't pull his bodyparts back together automatically.

** Both of these come up as plot points later as Crocodile (a sand Logia) and Enel (self-appointed god of Skypeia and lightning Logia user) Don't bother to dodge Luffy's punches they get smacked in the face as Luffy has coated his hands in water or his own blood (Crocodile) or is made of rubber and is insulated from electricity (Enel). From this point on both fights are over pretty quickly as neither is as used to conventional hand-to-hand combat as Luffy (although Crocodile still won their second round with the water by dehydrating Luffy's body and only lost the third round with the blood because [[VillainousBreakdown he finally had enough and threw strategy out the window for a simple beatdown]]). Likewise, Luffy makes little to no effort to block punches so when Sentoumaru shows up and uses hand-to-hand combat, reinforced by armament haki on him Luffy is freaked out that he's being hurt by these attacks.

** Hidan is entirely immortal, and thus has almost no strategy or moves beyond "get opponent's blood for voodoo technique". Both his partner Kakuzu and eventual opponent Shikamaru tell him how stupid that is. [[spoiler:They are [[AndIMustScream entirely right.]]]] Again, ConditionalImmortality like with Alucard. WordOfGod says that, if he doesn't perform his ritual sacrifices, his immortality will eventually run out. No word on how long ''that'' takes, though.

*** Hidan DOES have to dodge or avoid certain things though, since [[spoiler: his body parts can be severed, and he shows no ability to reattach them. After getting his head cut off, Kakuzu has to sew it back on. Since Kakuzu is capable of ripping out peoples' hearts and absorbing them with that sewing...it's debatable if Hidan would've been able to pull himself back together on his own. Though Hidan's mid-range attack methods suggest not.]]
*** Some ninja, like Orochimaru, [[GoodThingYouCanHeal still play the trope straight though.]] In Orochimaru's case, he can simply regenerate after almost anything including a broken neck. [[spoiler:This also bites him in the ass, as he makes no effort to dodge a blade that he thought couldn't harm him, only for it to turn out to be a ''spiritual'' blade that [[LotusEaterMachine sealed him in an endless illusion.]]]]
*** Orochimaru also plays it entirely straight when [[spoiler:he fights Naruto in the 4-Tailed Transformation. He makes very little effort to actually dodge attacks, though he does use a technique which allows him to create a "new" body in order to avoid certain attacks' effects after they've connected. It isn't until Kyuubi!Naruto uses the [[BreathWeapon 4 Tails]] [[WaveMotionGun Menacing Ball]] that he puts forth a ''serious '' effort to defend himself, commenting on how it could kill even him in one shot. Said "serious effort" being to summon the ''Triple'' Rashomon Gate in the blast's path. A pair of his EliteMooks had previously described a ''single'' Rashomon Gate as the "ultimate defense". All three gates were destroyed, but the blast was slowed enough for Orochimaru to avoid destruction.]]
*** [[BlobMonster Suigetsu]] partially averts this though as despite being able to avoid damage by turning into water, he still prefers to avoid attacks in a more conventional fashion (except in that one filler episode, but that was against someone he really didn't consider a threat and to scare him by showing the power off). Granted, this might simply be because he can't attack while reforming or a limit on how much he can regenerate before losing consciousness/dying.

*** Subverted with Tsunade [[spoiler:and later Sakura.]] Her healing techniques mean that she can both take the front lines and survive lethal attacks, but she still trains in evasion, so it's more of a last resort than anything.

* In ''WebComic/KillSixBillionDemons'', [[spoiler:Jagganoth]] averts this trope. Despite being stated to have CompleteImmortality and being NighInvulnerable to the degree that it is conceptually impossible to harm him, he still engages in defensive maneuvers and parries, dodges and intercepts incoming attacks he could logically simply NoSell and power through with an UnflinchingWalk. [[spoiler:White Chain hypothesises from this that, despite being invulnerable, Jagganoth still feels the pain of every attack that hits him and thus attempts to avoid that pain. She also hypothesises that any being [[{{Determinator}} capable of enduring as much pain as Jagganoth constantly does is likely not to be trifled with]].]]

* In ''WebComic/KillSixBillionDemons'', [[spoiler:Jagganoth]] averts this trope. Despite being stated to have CompleteImmortality and being NighInvulnerable to the degree that it is conceptually impossible to harm him, he still engages in defensive maneuvers and parries, dodges and intercepts incoming attacks he could logically simply NoSell and power through with an UnflinchingWalk. [[spoiler:White Chain hypothesises from this that, despite being immortal, it is likely Jagganoth still feels the pain of every attack that hits him and thus attempts to avoid that pain is possible. She also hypothesises that any being [[{{Determinator}} capable of enduring as much pain as Jagganoth constantly does is likely not to be trifled with]].]]