History ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill / TabletopGames

** In the canon, this was also the fate of a certain unfortunate mercenary commander, one Colonel Pythonius Brion, whose 'Mech stopped sort due to signs of badly hidden land mines. The badly hidden mines in fact turned out to be a FakeTrap designed to lure him into a ''real'' trap, whereupon an entire battalion of enemy 'Mechs rose from cover and all {{Alpha Strike}}d him simultaneously. Brion's ''Dragon'' was reduced to [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe Half the Mech It Used to Be]], by which we mean that all that was left of the machine was a pair of [[SmolderingShoes Smoldering Legs]] and a two-hundred-meter-long scorch mark.

** In the canon, this was also the fate of a certain unfortunate mercenary commander, one Colonel Pythonius Brion, whose 'Mech stopped sort due to signs of badly hidden land mines. The badly hidden mines in fact turned out to be a FakeTrap designed to lure him into a ''real'' trap, whereupon an entire battalion of enemy 'Mechs rose from cover and all [[Alpha Strike]]d him simultaneously. Brion's ''Dragon'' was reduced to [[HalfTheManHeUsedToBe Half the Mech It Used to Be]], by which we mean that all that was left of the machine was a pair of [[SmolderingShoes Smoldering Legs]] and a two-hundred-meter-long scorch mark.

** Fire any Battlemech-scale or higher weapon at a non-{{Power Armor}}ed infantry trooper and watch them be reduced to little more than a crater with a name. Bad as that is, the ''Mechwarrior'' RPG makes this worse. Early games multiplied all ''Battletech'' damage values by [=5d6+3=] against infantry, so that, say, a small laser that did 3 points of ''Battletech'' damage now did [=15d6+9=] damage, in a game where the average character has 40 hit points and the absolute maximum value for hit points is 80. There were also no rules against using the largest available weapons against lone humans either--one sourcebook even notes that taking a Gauss rifle hit is ''[=75d6+45=]'' damage to a human being, effectively killing the target so dead that their earthly remains will require a mop to collect, [[NotEnoughLeftToBury if you're lucky]].

* Fire any Battlemech-scale or higher weapon an non-{{Power Armor}}ed infantry trooper in ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' and watch them be reduced to little more than a crater with a name. Bad as that is, the ''Mechwarrior'' RPG makes this worse. Early games multiplied all ''Battletech'' damage values by [=5d6+3=] against infantry, so that, say, a small laser that did 3 points of ''Battletech'' damage now did [=15d6+9=] damage, in a game where the average character has 40 hit points and the absolute maximum value for hit points is 80. There were also no rules against using the largest available weapons against lone humans either--one sourcebook even notes that taking a Gauss rifle hit is ''[=75d6+45=]'' damage to a human being, effectively killing the target so dead that their earthly remains will require a mop to collect.

** For more homebrewed goodness, there is the [[ViewtifulJoe Viewtiful Warrior]], a burst-damage combatant which, due to [[Tropers/{{Luigifan}} the creator]] vastly overestimating high-level monsters, [[GameBreaker is capable of wiping out mighty dragons in SECONDS with a swarm of Voomerangs]].

** "The Book of Vile Darkness" has a particularly vicious spell: Apocalypse from the Sky. The damage per square foot isn't stunning by the standards of 9th-level spells, but the blast radius is ten ''miles'' per caster level. According to the description, the spell ''typically levels forests, sends mountains tumbling, and wipes out entire populations of living creatures."

*** The cost of casting that is maybe even more overkill -- casting it takes an artifact (high grade {{Unobtainium}} and likely better used another way) and [[BloodMagic damaging your own constitution]] to the extent of killing an average person (severely weakening tougher casters), does even more damage to the caster's wisdom (non-wisdom based casters without overly high wisdom scores are likely to make themselves helpless in an instant)n and even damages your wisdom ''just by being prepared''. And it takes an entire day to cast. Still, it has its uses. There is a spell (Sadism) that grants you a bonus on your die roll based on how much damage you inflicted last round. If you just wiped out an entire continent, you can basically succeed in any die roll. Actually, that roll is likely to be overkill too.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} lives'' off this. Their average pistol -- which shoots .7 calibur explosive gyrojet rounds -- would be an invocation of the ChunkySalsaRule by anyone else's standards. That's not even counting the standard lasgun of the Imperial Guard, which cleanly blows off the heads and arms of unarmored humans, or the pistols that fire molecule-thick shuriken or bugs that ''eat their way through your body to your brain in the brief few seconds that make up their lives.'' Oh and did we mention the flamethrower pistols that nuns in jet packs can wield [[GunsAkimbo akimbo?]]

* The second version of Allister Caine in TabletopGame/{{Iron Kingdoms}}', tabletop Warmachine has a Feat(super move) called Overkill. When he uses it the power of his pistols increase with every attack, and models killed by them ''explode'' damaging other models. His pistols have an INFINITE rate of fire, meaning he can make as many attacks with them as he has focus(mana) to spend. This feat makes him arguably the best assassin character in the game, popping the feat and gunning down the enemy warcaster to win on assassination.

* ''{{Rifts}}'': The "only hitpoint that matters is the last" rule is played deadly straight for supernatural creatures ''even in the fluff'', which means that professional military and police forces use this as standard operating procedure. It even has an InUniverse name, "misting".

** For vehicles, there is a 100mm gatling that shoots ''strategic nukes'' - average damage for that one is 210 billion per second (the human body is vaporized around 100 damage). On the defensive side, stasis fields can take infinite amounts of damage. There are weapons that can send someone to some point in space far enough away that you can just forget about them. Other supplements have their moments too (a spell to make a volcano, a template of a '''''very''''' minor EldritchAbomination). Also, in {{GURPS}}, everything can be [[SerialEscalation scaled up]] if the GM lets you.

* ''{{Mekton}}'' has nuclear bullets. ''Nuclear'' bullets? It also has, among other things, MIRV remotes packing enough missiles to make ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' jealous (oh, and these can be nuclear too); the [[WaveMotionGun Core Cannon]], which is a hundred times too large to fit on the average mecha and could vaporise one seven times over in one shot; energy beams that can hit every part of a target a potentially infinite number of times; power reservoirs that can absorb your enemy's blasts, then project them back in a bolt of horrible doom that outshines the sun; and Excessive Scale, which is more or less reserved for building [[StarWars Death Stars]], [[ThatsNoMoon planet-sized battle fortresses]], and the Anime/TengenToppaGurrenLagann. The sourcebook that introduced most of these systems introduced several harder-to-damage kinds of armour plating to make up for the increased quantities of damage.

* Invoked in ''TabletopGame/IronClaw'' which actually has a mechanic where dealing more damage to an enemy than it takes to kill them has an effect on game play. Specifically, nearby allies become afraid, there's not enough of the body left for any Necromancy spell that requires a body to work on them, and even the game's only true resurrection spell - while it can still revive them - is unable to completely restore them from their severe mutilation and leaves them permanently disfigured.
* In many card games, some players will wipe out the opponent’s entire defense, drain his lifepoints to bare minimal, and then summon a full fleet of powered up monsters to wipe out what little the opponent has left, despite the fact even one of them could wipe out the remaining life points 10x over. Many gamers refer to this strategy as an ''Onslaught''.

*** The cost of casting that is maybe even more overkill - casting it takes an artifact (high grade {{Unobtainium}} and likely better used another way) and [[BloodMagic damaging your own constitution]] to the extent of killing an average person (severely weakening tougher casters), does even more damage to the caster's wisdom (non-wisdom based casters without overly high wisdom scores are likely to make themselves helpless in an instant) and even damages your wisdom ''just by being prepared''. And it takes an entire day to cast. Still, it has its uses. There is a spell (Sadism) that grants you a bonus on your die roll based on how much damage you inflicted last round. If you just wiped out an entire continent, you can basically succeed in any die roll. Actually, that roll is likely to be overkill too.

** There was a homebrewed Ultima spell (from the ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' games) for 3.5 D&D. It did about all of those things and it required all of your spell slots to memorize it for the duration, had a bit of a time limit before it started damaging even more wisdom, and made you pass full out for like maybe half a month after use. Granted you could probably kill ''anything'' with it, barring maybe that one virtually-unkillable monster
** For more homebrewed goodness, there is the [[ViewtifulJoe Viewtiful Warrior]], a burst-damage combatant which, due to the creator vastly overestimating high-level monsters, [[GameBreaker is capable of wiping out mighty dragons in SECONDS with a swarm of Voomerangs]].
** Most high level spells tend to run towards this as well, especially when used on lower challenge rated monsters. For example: Meteor Swarm. As of 5th edition it has a range of one mile and launches four [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Meteor's]], each which do an ''average of 120 damage in a forty foot radius''[[note]] 20d6 fire and 20d6 bludgeoning [[/note]]. For perspective, an Elder Dragon, which is meant to be a challenge to a 4 man party of max level characters, tends to have around 350 health.

* Noted in the [[GameMaster DM's]] guide to ''LegendOfTheFiveRings'' is Ryoko Owari. The governess's guiding philosophy is that minor nuisances are to be ignored, but any major problem must be dealt with as much force as she can muster: "Don't resort to violence quickly, resort to violence ''thoroughly''."
* ''{{GURPS}}: Ultratech'' has a few wonderful toys. There's the ghost particle beam that makes a massive antimatter explosion inside of the target. Reality disintegrators [[RetGone erase people from existence]]. The best example might be handguns that fire nuclear weapons, which are so much overkill that they have literally no practical use.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} lives'' off this. A fairly average pistol (a handheld ''fully automatic, armor piercing recoilless rocket-launcher'') is an invocation of the ChunkySalsaRule by anyone else's standards, and that's not even counting the standard lasgun of the Imperial Guard, which cleanly blows off the heads and arms of unarmored humans, or the pistols that fire molecule-thick shuriken or bugs that ''eat their way through your body to your brain in the brief few seconds that make up their lives.'' Oh and did we mention the flamethrower pistols that nuns in jet packs can wield [[GunsAkimbo akimbo?]]

* Fire any Battlemech-scale or higher weapon an non-{{Power Armor}}ed infantry trooper in ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'' and watch them be reduced to little more than a crater with a name. Bad as that is, the ''Mechwarrior'' RPG makes this worse. Early games multiplied all ''Battletech'' damage values by [=5d6+3=] against infantry, so that, say, a small laser that did 3 points of ''Battletech'' damage now did [=15d6+9=] damage, in a game where the average character has 40 hit points and the absolute maximum value for hit points is 80. There were also no rules against using the largest available weapons against lone humans either--one sourcebook even notes that taking a Gauss rifle hit is ''[=75d6+45=]'' damage to a human being, effectively killing the target so dead that their earthly remains will require a mop to collect.

* Invoked in ''IronClaw'' which actually has a mechanic where dealing more damage to an enemy than it takes to kill them has an effect on game play. Specifically, nearby allies become afraid, there's not enough of the body left for any Necromancy spell that requires a body to work on them, and even the game's only true resurrection spell - while it can still revive them - is unable to completely restore them from their severe mutilation and leaves them permanently disfigured.

** The Azrael from ''{{GURPS}}'': It attacks the enemy with a bunch of 700 megaton missiles and ''then'' smashes into the planet with enough force to wipe out the dinosaurs all over again.

** ''DawnOfWar'' brings this to the extreme within the game's system - no EarthShatteringKaboom, though. Granted, it starts off small with highly gruesome finishing moves between individual units, but reaching the top tier of almost any race brings wholesale death and destruction. The Necron's fully-awakened Monolith, for example, is a slowly-moving, ''teleporting'', troop-producing, death-beam ''spewing'' glacier of epic proportions, and usually signals game over for anyone who receives it teleporting into the back of their one remaining base. Meanwhile, the Imperial Guard Baneblade can take a Monolith down.

** Any of the three remaining Titan-class aerial citadels. Main weapon: the Godspear, only more so. Let's put this in perspective: the Shrike can fire the Godspear to deal infinite damage to an area in a 25 yard radius, once per day, with a secondary blast of 50 damage out for 500m. A Titan citadel can do the same, once per ''hour'' (during daylight), from an orichalcum lens a mile in diameter, to level an area TEN MILES ACROSS. And the hull is covered with smaller weapons to see off threats that don't mandate the reduction of an entire city to a smouldering crater. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you [[RunningGag destroy Gem]].

* ''Grimm'' has Humpty Dumpty, "reborn" as the Rotten King. Since he's technically undead, he can be put back together an infinite amount of times unless the pieces are: burned by the Dragon (not "a", ''the''), eaten by the Big Bad Wolf, sold to the Devil and haggled back, and thrown beyond the edge of the world. The order doesn't matter and it isn't specified if this has to be done in a single go, but it is stated that he will recover from anything less.

** There was a homebrewed Ultima spell (from the ''FinalFantasy'' games) for 3.5 D&D. It did about all of those things and it required all of your spell slots to memorize it for the duration, had a bit of a time limit before it started damaging even more wisdom, and made you pass full out for like maybe half a month after use. Granted you could probably kill ''anything'' with it, barring maybe that one virtually-unkillable monster

** Eldar Blackstone Fortress. They were designed as an anti-God weapon. The fact that a dozen of them failed to wound a single C'tan doesn't make it any less impressive.

* In ''Car Wars'', nuclear weapons were described as something along the lines of 'set even a small one off and the game is over'. The maps were poster-sized, two feet by three feet or so, and usually represented about eight city blocks or so. The smallest available nuke would utterly destroy at least six of those maps in every direction.

*** In ''Elder Evils'' (a book entirely dedicated to [[EldritchAbomination Eldritch Abominations]]), one such Evil, Atropus, the World Born Dead, can only appear / be summoned when a great amount of deaths occur in a catastrophe. One way that the book details that could happen can be by an attack of a demonic army upon the Material Plane. The other... is Apocalypse From the Sky.
** There was a homebrewed Ultima spell (from the ''FinalFantasy'' games) 3.5 D&D. It did about all of those things and it required all of your spell slots to memorize it for the duration, had a bit of a time limit before it started damaging even more wisdom, and made you pass full out for like maybe half a month after use. Granted you could probably kill ''anything'' with it, barring maybe that one virtually-unkillable monster

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}} lives'' off this. A fairly average pistol (a handheld ''fully automatic, armor piercing recoilless rocket-launcher'') is an invocation of the ChunkySalsaRule by anyone else's standards, and that's not even counting the standard lasgun of the Imperial Guard, which cleanly blows off the heads and arms of unarmored humans, or the pistols that fire shuriken or bugs that ''eat their way through your body to your brain in the brief few seconds that make up their lives,'' Oh and did we mention the flamethrower pistols that nuns in jet packs can wield [[GunsAkimbo akimbo?]]
** Tau pulse rifles don't just kill Guardsmen. They kill Guardsmen ''very, very'' thoroughly. (Without cover, five hits in six are instantly lethal.) Pulse rifles are also the only basic ranged weapon except the Necron gauss flayer capable of putting the fear of the Tau'va into Space Marine Rhino vehicles and Ork looted wagons from the front. Railguns are even ''more'' spectacular, capable of reducing the largest and toughest tank (outside of Apocalypse) into a rapidly-expanding cloud of smoke and shredded metal.

*** ''Apocalypse'' just takes it UpToEleven (and then 40,000). A Strength value of 10 is considered the highest you can go in the normal game. ''Apocalypse'' one-ups this with the D rating, which automatically wounds regardless of any modifiers and inflicts [[ChunkySalsaRule Instant Death]], as well as automatically penetrating any tank it hits. On top of that, there's also the Void Missile, which includes the D-Strength value as well as having the ability to just remove any models it hits (with only Invulnerable Saves being able to save you) regardless of any rules (Vehicles and Eternal Warriors usually don't suffer as bad if they're hit by a D-strength weapon, but the Void Missile outright negate their ''existence''). On top of that, all of the templates got doubled in size (and many of these possess the D-strength).

*** ''Planetstrike'': possibly the only ''40K'' expansion suited for less than 3000 points in which dropping fragments of a starship on your enemy, blasting a [[FrickinLaserBeams Frickin' Laser Beam]] from orbit into the heart of their base, and pummelling them with a meteor shower, are all standard tactics. (The ship fragments, in the inaugural Planetstrike battle report, were described as going through a Guard Valkyrie flyer "like a sledgehammer through a pane of glass". Ouch.)

** The current Blood Angels are like this with dreadnoughts: With a certain weapon equipped, a Dreadnought is fully capable of an infinite number of attacks, so much so that the rules actually had to list "this stops when you've either had a bad roll or everyone else is dead". They also have a Spellcasting Dreadnought; a Cyborg/mecha/battlesuit that ''can cast spells''.
** The Space Marine ''Apocalypse''-only tank Terminus Ultra Land Raider. It has ''8 Anti-tank cannons''. The Imperial Armor Helios Land Raider might be a better example, fully upgraded it mounts 4 of the same anti-tank cannons, a long-range artillery rocket launcher, an even longer ranged cruise missile, a tank-killing heat ray, and a ''recoilless grenade launcher machine gun'' for point-defense.

** And then there's the [[http://gmftp.paranoia-live.net/GreyMist08s_Props/Acute/MAMSM4/GR000003.JPG Warbot Mark IV]], rivaled for size only by Alpha Complex itself (and maybe a Giant Radioactive Mutant Cockroach or two).

* Invoked in ''IronClaw'' which actually has a mechanic where dealing more damage to an enemy than it takes to kill them has an effect on game play. Specifically, nearby allies become afraid, there's not enough of the body left for any Necromancy spell that requires a body to work on them, and the game's only true resurrection spell can still revive them, but is unable to completely restore them from their severe mutilation and leaves them permanently disfigured.