Damage-Increasing Debuff

"Simply put, this skill increases an enemy's susceptibility to the harsh effects of the elements and elemental magics. Skin burns like paper, chills cut to the bone, and lightning is drawn to the victim as if they were an iron bar in a rainstorm."

— Lower Resist curse, Diablo II

A negative status ailment that makes its subject take more damage from whatever hits them.

Comes in three different flavours: Some effects of this type do this directly by changing taken damage by some percentage (reducing the amount of hits an enemy can take in a way sometimes functionally identical to a Percent Damage Attack). Others reduce Damage Reduction, resistance, or armor value. There's also a rare type of this which adds a fixed amount of damage to every hit.

All of these are fairly different, but they have one thing in common: Every hit the victim takes while in this state hurts a lot more. This type of effect (especially the defense-lowering kind) is often the key to beating resilient enemies. The way to exploit this for massive damage differs depending on type: the strongest attacks should be used while the target is afflicted with a percentally-functioning damage increasing debuff. "Per hit" types especially increase the power of the Spam Attack or Damage Over Time attacks, and are quite rare in games with realtime combat or a speed stat since such a modifier tends to be unfairly powerful if you can get many hits in a short time.

If inflicted physically, this is often a speciality of martial arts. If inflicted magically, this tends to be a curse or some other sort of Black Magic. Might be the side effect of channeling spells, like in Final Fantasy Tactics.

Compare and contrast a Critical Hit, Status Effect-Powered Ability, Armor-Piercing Attack, or elemental weakness exploitation, which usually mean increased damage for a single attack; Injured Vulnerability, if the "injured" part is a status ailment that makes someone more vulnerable; Status-Buff Dispel, an ability that removes defense buffs; Break Meter, a bar that, when filled, typically makes the target take more damage; and Anti-Armor, which can include lowering the enemy's defense stat. Contrast a Status Buff or trait that increases the damage dealt by someone, a Situational Damage Attack whose damage varies by itself rather than through some kind of debuff, and also contrast a debuff decreasing evasion.

Note that this is about a debuff that increases the damage taken by its subject, not about a damage-dealing debuff whose damage gradually increases.

(For those who don't know: The term "debuff", as opposed to a positive Status Buff, is mostly used discussing video games and refers to a temporary ailment with negative effects for its subject.)

---

Examples:

Roleplay

• Destroy the Godmodder: Started showing up partway through the second game, in the form of the spoil of war Lil' Cal and the splash potion of crippling.

Tabletop Games

• Magic: The Gathering has Wound Reflection and Curse of Bloodletting, which double your opponents' pain.
• The Pokémon Trading Card Game has at least a dozen cases of this. This includes the rare "extra damage per hit" type: For instance, Machamp Lv.X has an effect, No Guard, that increases damage by 60, both done by and done to Machamp.
• While most of Sentinels of the Multiverse focuses on damage-increasing buffs, such as Legacy's Galvanize power, there are a couple of hero cards that debuff an enemy for improved damage against them, most notably Parse's Targeting Arrow and the Naturalist's Predator's Eye. This is also a very common tactic of villains, potentially spelling doom for low hit point heroes like the Southwest Sentinels. Occasionally, a hero card will debuff the hero who uses it as a drawback for getting a positive effect.
• Warhammer 40,000 has the "curse" psychic power, which makes the target more easily wounded.
• The War Machine tabletop miniatures game has an entire faction whose theme is debuffing its opponents- Cryx. Its units are generally among the weakest available in the game, but become powerhouses after the enemy's stats have been lowered repeatedly by spells and effects.

Tabletop RPG

• Champions. The Drain and Transfer powers can be used to reduce a target's defenses, making the target more vulnerable to subsequent attack.
• Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition supplement The Complete Psionics Handbook. The Double Pain power greatly reduces the target's pain threshold and causes them to take double damage from all attacks for 10 minutes. However, the extra damage is temporary and can only cause unconsciousness rather than death.
  • In 4E, there is a game mechanic called Vulnerability where creatures have negative effects dealt to them when hit by certain damage types (usually a fixed extra amount of damage, but occasionally other debuffs like disabling regeneration or being slowed). There are several powers that allow you to impose these vulnerabilities upon enemy targets.
  • In 5E, the Ranger spell Hunter’s Mark and the Warlock spell Hex both make a single target take extra damage from the caster’s attacks. If the target dies before the spell wears off, the caster can transfer the Hunter’s Mark/Hex to another target.
• Shadowrun:
  • When a victim of the drug Hyper takes any damage, they automatically take an equal amount of Mental damage as well.
  • The Reduce Body spell basically reduces the defense stat.
• Vampire: The Masquerade: A side-effect of some uses of Obtenebration, a main effect of one Quietus power, is decreased defense.

Video Games

Action-Adventure

• In Bastion, some idols cause you to take extra damage when they're active.
• Cripple in Distorted Travesty temporarily decreases the defense of an enemy afflicted with it.
• In Kid Icarus: Uprising, there are enemies that can inflict Weaken status on you. This temporarily shrinks your lifebar to half its size, making any hits taken deal twice as much damage. You can Weaken other players in multiplayer matches, if your weapon has the effect or you use the Weaken Attack power.

Card Battle Game

• The Hex skill from Spellstone will cause a card that's hit by it to take a certain number of extra damage points from all skills and attacks that turn (e.g. Hex 3 will give +3 damage). Since it's nearly impossible to dodge this status without Invisibility, a common strategy in high-level play is Hexing the whole field, then spamming cards with Bolt or Frostbreath like there's no tomorrow.

Eastern RPG

• Cosmic Star Heroine
  • Vulnerable is a common status effect that doubles the next damage the afflicted character takes, including damage from poison. The debuff disappears once the target takes damage, so one should be careful not to inflict it just as the poisoned target gets to act, since even a doubled damage from poison is rather negligible.
  • Afflicting machanical and spectral enemies with "rust" and "curse", respectively, makes them take more damage.
  • Arete can learn a skill which inflicts the target with a weakness to a randomly chosen element.
  • One of Clarke's skills lets him cover the enemy in oil, making them weak to fire.
• Cthulhu in Cthulhu Saves the World can drive enemies insane, which frequently boosts their strength but also makes them take more damage.
• Sap/Kasap in the Dragon Quest series halve the defense of one enemy/all enemies respectively.
• The Epic Battle Fantasy series has featured the ability to directly debuff Defense and Magic Defence since the first game, but has also featured a wide variety of damage-increasing status effects:
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 2 introduces Freeze, which increases damage taken from the next hit the affected receives (increasing by 50% in EBF2, and doubling it from EBF3 onward)
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 4 introduces five status effects which raise damage taken:
    • Curse, Tired and Weaken increase Holy, Earth (Bio in EBF5) and Dark-elemental damage taken by 50%, respectively. Additionally, Curse debuffs Defence and Magic Defence each turn.
    • Stagger causes the next hit taken to be an automatic critical hit. It would gain the ability to stack in EBF5.
    • Wet increases Thunder and Ice-elemental damage taken by 50%, but halves Fire-elemental damage.
  • Epic Battle Fantasy 5 buffs the aforementioned statuses by having stacks consumed on a per-attack basis, rather than a per-hit basis ^note particularly helpful for attacks like Matt's 9-hit Legend and Lance's 6-hit Unload, and introduces six neutral status effects in the vein of the aforementioned Wet:
    • Light, Heavy, Chill, and Dry increase damage taken from one or two elements by 50%^note Light increases Wind damage, Heavy increases Earth damage, Chill increases Ice and Water damage, Dry increases Bomb and Fire damage, and halve damage from another^note Light halves Earth, Heavy halves Wind, Chill halves Bio, Dry halves Ice and Thunder.
    • Enchanted and Invisible, meanwhile, double physical or magical damage taken, respectively, but completely negate damage from the other type.
• Final Fantasy:
  • While charging a spell or an attack, units in Final Fantasy Tactics take more damage from all attacks.
  • The recurring Oil status increases the damage incurred from Fire attacks.
  • Final Fantasy VIII has the Vit. 0 effect caused by the Meltdown spell, which sets an enemy's physical and magical defense to zero.
  • The remake of Final Fantasy IV has the Cry ability that Porom can use, which decreases the defense of all enemies. You can later give this ability to other characters; hilariously, the preferred recipient is often Kain (since he has so few other abilities), meaning you can take the series' Memetic Badass and make him cry like a little girl on command.
  • Final Fantasy X has the Armor Break and Mental Break skills, which lower enemies' Defense/Magic Defense to 0. The former also removes the Armored status (Armored enemies ordinarily take reduced physical damage, except from attacks done with Piercing weapons).
  • Final Fantasy XII has three Technicks that work this way: Shear lowers the foe's Magick resistance, Expose lowers the foe's physial damage resistance, and Achilles adds an additional element weakness to the foe, increasing damage dealt if of that element.
  • Final Fantasy XIII has the Deprotect and Deshell statuses, which reduce the target's physical and magical defence respectively, along with Imperil, which reduces the target's element resistance (Frequently granting them an elemental weakness to exploit).
  • The Tactics games have debuffs called "Defense Down" and "Resistance Down" that are physical and magic-specific variations of this.
• The crisis cast of Aquabeam in Last Scenario lowers the victim's magic defense.
• Paralysis in Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals doubles the damage an afflicted character takes, while also halving the damage they inflict.
• Lily of Mana Khemia 2: Fall of Alchemy can apply the Freeze status, which, in an interesting twist, adds damage to water skills by dealing small additional hits. It helps that all of her skills are water-based.
• Miitopia:
  • The Imp's Sweet Whispers and the Princess's Eau de Cologne inflict this on enemies, the former being an Always Accurate single-target skill while the latter targeting all enemies but have a chance of failure.
  • The Miis themselves can also suffer from this if they're "led astray".
• Monster Girl Quest! Paradox RPG:
  • There are debuffs for lowering Defense and Willpower, increasing the physical and magical damage that the target takes, respectively.
  • Other debuffs increase the damage that the target takes from a specific element, and there's even one that increases damage from all elements.
  • Finally, most status ailments have this as a secondary effect, but limited to damage from a specific skill type. For example, stat-reducing debuffs increase the damage taken from Bow skills by 100% (300% in earlier versions of the game).
• Some enemies in Panzer Dragoon Saga can inflict the Pain status ailment, which decreases your defense until cured.
• Parameters: Both the Final Boss and the Superboss can temporarily lower your defence when they attack you.
• Pokémon has both general and element-specific examples of this.
  • Leer, Screech, Tail Whip, and Tickle reduce the target's Defense.
  • Fake Tears and Metal Sound reduce the target's Special Defense.
  • Psychic (the move, not the type) deals heavy damage, but also has a chance of reducing the target's Special Defense, so they'll take even more damage next time.
• In Radiant Historia, enemies launched into the air take a percentage of the damage they took while in air when hitting the ground. Characters who used the Change command take more damage until it's their turn.
• In The Reconstruction and I Miss the Sunrise, if a side gets Rushed/loses the Zone of Control (which is mostly same thing known by a different name in each game), they take more damage while also inflicting less. Also, poison (while otherwise being your standard HP sap) percentally increases the damage of Moke's Toxic Shock spell.
• Most if not all Shin Megami Tensei games and spin-offs have the Rakunda spell. Rakunda decreases the target's defense, and is incredibly useful in boss fights and difficult Random Encounter fights (especially when you have the damage-boosting buff Tarukaja cast on your characters). In some games Rakunda effects all enemies, in some it only effects one. (In the latter case, you eventually get a spell called Marakunda which effects all enemies.) "-nda" is the catch-all suffix for stat debuffs in MegaTen.
• A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky: The Goblin King's Right Claw has a chance of reducing the target's defenses.

Platformer

• Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: Getting petrified multiplies the damage Nathan takes by 3.

Western RPG

• Marked in Darkest Dungeon is a status effect that causes certain attacks to hit the target for extra damage, or even with higher chances of scoring a Critical Hit; marked heroes are also more likely to be targeted than their fellows. Unlike regular debuffs, there's no chance of resisting it — if the marking attack connects, the target will be marked. That said, all marking moves on the hero side do come with an additional debuff, which can be resisted; while the Arbalest and Occultist don't increase damage directed at the enemy (they reduce Dodge instead, meaning that regular-damage attacks land more often), the Houndmaster and Bounty Hunter can reduce enemy PROT, which does increase damage (or more accurately reduce enemy damage resistance and so attacks will land closer to their full damage).
• Diablo II features the Amplify Damage curse, which reduces physical resistance by 100%. In the majority case that the enemy had no physical resistance to begin with, this means double damage. Of course, enemies have similar abilities as well. Lower Resistance and Conviction (which also cuts down Defense) provide this for elemental damage users; very useful in higher difficulties where all monsters are otherwise immune to at least one element.
• Both Dragon Age games have Mark of Death, which effectively boosts damage to a target from anyone by 20%. Dragon Age II has the Brittle status effect, the Hex of Torment and the Wounding Arrow.
• Petrification in Dragon Age II, inflicts the percental debuff, and, once upgraded, decreases defense. Before, it increases it.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • Morrowind and Oblivion each have spells that reduce elemental resistance and are capable of sending it into the negative, meaning that enemies now take increased damage from that element. Once you are able to create customized spells, combining high-intensity, short-duration elemental resistance reduction with damage of that element is an easy way to do insane amounts of damage relatively early.
  • In Skyrim, the Marked for Death shout works by decreasing the armor rating of an enemy while also causing them to lose health for 60 seconds over the duration of its effect. It also gets stronger with each word used.
  • The Elder Scrolls Online features Fracture and Breach, a couple of debuffs that lower an enemy's physical and magical resistance respectively and are applied by several skills. Some debuffs are more specific, like the bow's Focused Aim which increases damage received, but only from bow attacks.
• Fire Emblem Warriors has the Armor Strike skill. Having it on a character's weapon allows them to inflict and receive the Broken Armor status, halving the Defense and Resistance of any affected unit.
• Grim Dawn has a wide variety of debuffs that reduce enemy resistance to certain types of damage. And since enemies can have up to and over 100% resistance to some damage types resistance reduction is very necessary.
• Several powers in the Mass Effect franchise either increase the force or damage enemies take, or reduce their damage resistance, notable examples being Warp and Cryo Blast.
• Path of Exile has multiple examples:
  • Most Curse skills take the form of damage increases. Examples include Vulnerability ^note increased physical damage and damage-over-time effects, Elemental Weakness ^note Reduces elemental resistance, possibly into negatives, and Assassin's Mark ^note Increased Critical Hit chance and multiplier.
  • Shock ailment increases all incoming damage by a percentage.
  • The Impale debuff saves a portion of the physical damage from the hit that inflicted it and adds the damage to the next few hits received.
• Transistor: Void is a Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack to "Cripple Targets' defense and attack".

MMORPG

• City of Heroes: Most attack powers have debuffs as side-effects, including this. In particular all Sonic attacks.
• In Elite Dangerous, the Corrosive Shell experimental effect causes the weapon that has it to apply an effect to the target that increases the damage they take by 25% and gives all attacks against the target an additional 20 armor penetration.
• Final Fantasy XIV has many enemy abilities that make the target more vulnerable to certain types of damage. Most often seen, however, is the all-encompassing Vulnerability Up debuff, which serves as a penalty for taking avoidable hits, ensuring that a player can't just get away with not bothering to dodge as long as they're healed up after; enough stacks and they will die. On the players' side, the Ninja's Trick Attack makes a target take more damage from all attacks for a short time.
• Guild Wars has all flavors of these, in various hexes and conditions.
  • The sequel has the Vulnerability condition, which increases incoming direct damage by a flat 1% per stack (up to 25). Also, some bosses (such as Claw of Jormag) have their own effects that increase the damage dealt by their other attacks.
• Deleveling an enemy in Kingdom of Loathing will reduce their damage absorption, along with their attack power.
  • And during the level 12 quest, some enemies can inflict a status ailment on you that increases damage taken from their element.
• Perfect World has a handful of these in addition to debuffs that lower either Physical or Magical Defense. Most notable among player-character skills that explicitly inflict "increased damage taken" on enemies are Heaven's Flame (Blademaster skill on Axe & Hammer branch of skill tree), Amplify Damage (Venomancer skill for use in Fox Form), and Blood Vow (Archer skill). Genies available to all classes can also learn a milder version, Extreme Poison, with the right elemental affinity. Amplify Damage can stack with either Heaven's Flame OR Blood Vow, but the latter two cannot stack with each other. (Since Heaven's Flame is far more potent than Blood Vow, it's best that the Archer save his/her Chi for a skill whose primary purpose is to inflict damage, rather than a debuff, unless the party does not have a Blademaster.)
• Tactical players in Star Trek Online gain 'Fire On My Mark,' which comes in both a space-combat version and a ground-combat version. The space version's Captain variant can reduce the targeted ship's resistances (all of them) by 50 for 30 seconds. Science Captains gain access to Sensor Scan and several related powers which are even more effective. Science vessels have the Sensor Analysis (that lacks a time-limit and escalates in effect the longer it is in place) that works like this, reducing damage and energy drain resistance, if used on enemy ships (if used on allied ships it buffs heals).
• World of Warcraft has quite a few. Several boss fights make great use of them; for example, while fighting Elegon, you have to make sure he gets stacks of a damage-increasing debuff in order to defeat him before he enrages, while running out of the central area from time to time to remove the stacks that you get. Most bosses in which this comes into play far too much HP to be killed without effective use of these debuffs. Often, raid bosses put a debuff of this sort on the tank, forcing the raid to periodically have another tank taunt the boss and tank it until the first tank's debuff has cleared.

First-Person Shooter

• One of the possible pieces of gear in BioShock Infinite makes your melee attacks cause enemies to glow red and take double damage for the next five seconds.
• Borderlands:
  • In Borderlands, enemies afflicted with a Corrosive elemental effect suffers additional damage from all sources, including subsequent Corrosive effects.
  • Borderlands 2 replaces this with Slag, which increases damage from all non-Slag sources. Corrosive instead simply deals extra damage to armored enemies/robots. Zer0's Death Mark skill allows him to mark enemies with melee attacks and Death Bl0ss0m kunai, causing them to take increased damage from all sources.
  • Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! gives us the "frozen" status effect from Cryo weapons, which makes the unfortunate target take double damage from melee, explosive and critical hits, in addition to freezing it solid.
  • Borderlands 3 not only brings back the Cryo element, the game replaces Slag with a new element called Radiation, which not only increases damage from all sources, irradiated enemies suffer Damage Over Time while damaging nearby enemies. Upon death, irradiated enemies explode in a radioactive nova that irradiates other nearby enemies. As devastating as this element is, Radiation is less effective against armored enemies.
• In Overwatch, there's Zenyatta's Orb of Discord, which increases all damage dealt to its target. In addition, the Orb's distinctive appearance tends to make its target stand out in a firefight.
• Team Fortress 2: Being covered in Jarate or marked by the Scout's Fan O' War turns all taken hits into mini-crits, increasing their damage by 35%. In addition to this, the mini-crits also affects the way base damage applies: usually attacks may vary plus or minus 50% in damage depending on distance, but with a mini-crit, each bullet will never fall below the base, meaning that suddenly a minigun (which has 9 damage as the base, for a range of 4.5 to 13.5 damage per bullet) can increase its damage range to minimum 12, maximum 18. Even at long range, one might still get a nasty surprise if afflicted with mini-crits from a minigun, a pistol or even the relatively Short-Range Shotgun.

Turn-Based Strategy

• In Age of Wonders 2: The Wizard's Throne handicaps inflicted by attacks include Cursed (from attacks with Death damage), Poisoned (Poison damage) and Vertigo (Holy damage); these are defense reduction overlapping with elemental weakness. And of course, there are many debuff spells. Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic adds Shadow Sickness, forced on most normal units visiting Shadow World without protection.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Seal skills lower the stats of their target. Seal Defense makes incoming physical attacks deal more damage, while Seal Resistance does the same for magical attacks.
  • Daggers in Fire Emblem Fates induce stat debuffs when they hit. All of them lower defense and resistance, while some affect other stats as well.
• Player and enemy units in Into the Breach can be covered in A.C.I.D., which makes them take double damage from attacks.
• The Frozen status ailment in Odium, in addition to paralyzing the victim.
• Mazinger Z's Rust Tornado has the effect in some Super Robot Wars games. In the Super Robot Wars: Original Generation series, the Armor Breaker and a few enemy-only attacks decrease the target's armor stat.
• X-COM
  • The Shredded status effect in XCOM: Enemy Unknown means the unit will take 33% more damage from all sources. It can only be applied by the Heavy's appropriately named Shredder Rocket skill.
  • Rupture in XCOM 2 has much the same effect, with the difference that it's a shot with the Grenadier's Chainsaw-Grip BFG and re-usable (with a cooldown), unlike the single-charge Shredder Rocket. The game also retains a "shredding" ability, but this time it permanently lowers the target's Damage Reduction armor.

Real-Time Strategy

• In Scrap Metal Heroes, robots with the Scanner perk scan the robot they're attacking, increasing its damage from all attacks by 25%.
• StarCraft has the acidic attack from Zerg Devourers. StarCraft II has the Corruption ability, which makes their target receive 20% more damage for a few seconds.
• Warcraft III:
  • The Berserk status allows to user to attack much faster, but it takes a lot more damage (in %).
  • Faerie Fire, an autocast move, removes some armor from the target and allows the user to see that unit until the effect fades.
  • One armor-boosting magic aura is often modified in custom maps to decrease nearby enemies' armor.
  • Using Banish on a unit makes it immune to physical attacks, but greatly reduces its resistance to Magic-type attacks and spells. As it also slows the target considerably, it's risky to use it on your own units.
• Red Alert 3: The Allies' Guardian tank can switch to a targeting laser that trades its ability to fire for increasing the damage taken by whatever it's targeting (by 33% and 50% with the High Technology upgrade).

Third-Person Shooter

• Warframe
  • The status effects for fire and corrosive damage both reduce the afflicted creature's armor value. Corrosive reduces it by 26% with the first stack and an additional 6% for each other stack for a total of 80% armor removed at the cap of 10 stacks, while fire halves the target's current armor value for the duration.
  • Numerous Warframe abilities can also remove armor, such as Oberon's Reckoning and Hildryn's Pillage, and others have augment mods that add this functionality to them, such as Banshee's Sonic Boom and Ash's Shuriken.
  • The status effects for viral and magnetic damage both apply a multiplier to all damage that the target takes to health and shields respectively. Each one starts at +100% damage, with an additional 25% per stack. At the cap of 10 stacks, your enemies will take 4.25 times as much damage from your weapons and abilities.
  • Nova's Molecular Prime is a debuff ability that, among other things, makes afflicted enemies take double damage.

Tower Defense

• In Bloons Tower Defense 6:
  • The Embrittlement upgrade for the Ice Monkey makes the Bloons it freezes to take an extra one damage when attacked. The tier 5 upgrade, Super Brittle, increases the effect to extra four damage in addition to affecting MOAB-class Bloons as well. This effect works especially well with fast-shooting multi-projectile towers such as The Tack Zone or the Sky Shredder.
  • The Glue Strike upgrade for the Glue Gunner has an ability that covers all Bloons with glue that not only slows them down, but also makes them take extra damage. The next upgrade, Glue Storm, makes the duration of the glue five times as long.
  • The Cripple MOAB upgrade for the Sniper Monkey causes their shots to stun all but the strongest blimps and applies a secondary debuff which causes them to take an extra four damage from each hit.
• The Evileye Tower's 'Radiation' effect in Cursed Treasure increases damage taken by those afflicted with it by a percentage. Initially, it's 25%, but you can upgrade this up to a 50% increase. This makes anything other than ninjas a cakewalk, especially assassins who have a random damage reduction from 30% to 90%.
• Dungeon of the Endless has the Tear Gas module, which divides the defence of all monsters in the room by a certain amount (depending on level) while also causing Damage Over Time.
• Ghost Hacker's Amplifier upgrade when applied to a tower. It makes enemies hit by the tower take a large percentage of extra damage for 2 seconds.
• Kingdom Rush series:
  • Frontiers has the Axethrowers' Totem of Weakness, which places a totem on the ground that makes all nearby enemies suffer 40% extra damage.
  • Origins has the Golden Longbows' Hunter's Mark, which causes a single enemy to take double damage for a period of time.
  • Vengeance has the Shadow Archers' Shadow Mark, which causes a single enemy to take double damage for a period of time when fully upgraded.
• Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time has the Shrinking Violet, which shrinks zombies to tiny size. Affected zombies will take double damage from all sources.

Other

• Arc System Works fighting games like Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, Persona 4: Arena, and their sequels have Negative Penalty, which takes effect when a character refuses to attack and instead runs away for too long. Characters hit with Negative Penalty take much more damage than normal. Persona 4 Arena Ultimax has a character (returning from its predecessor) who can force this state upon her opponent through a Counter-Attack special move. As the Persona 4 Arena games are based on a series of role-playing games, they also have the Fear status effect, which achieves a similar effect by making all successful attacks upon a character act as Fatal Counters (a special type of counter that increases damage dealt by the attack and hitstun caused by every attack in the subsequent combo).
  • Guilty Gear averts this with its rendition of Negative Penalty, which instead drains all of the offender's Tension and makes it much harder to gain Tension for a while.
• Bounty of One: Taunt is a common item that makes enemies within a certain distance of the user take 50% more damage. It's only a common item because of its large drawback — it also makes those enemies move towards you much quicker.
• Clonk:
  • The Curse of Pain in the Fantasy pack makes its victim take double damage.
  • Battlecry and Swarm in "Keepers" percentally increase their subject's damage. Battlecry's power depends on its user's skill level, while Swarm consists of many locusts, and the effect strength depends on the amount of locusts that reached their target.
• Ursa in Dota 2 specializes in placing the 'Fury Swipes' debuff which causes his target to take extra damage from him, and the debuff stacks several times, causing the target to take even more damage, and combined with Ursa's other skill 'Overpower', which grants him bonus attack speed for a short time... Anyone who comes unprepared when facing Ursa is most likely to die and allow him to snowball, this is usually avoidable if you prepare yourself to facilitate Ursa's weakness like lack of mobility before getting a Blink Dagger.
• Heroes of the Storm has the Vulnerable status, which increases damage taken by 25% for a short period of time. Tyrande has this as her Trait, while other heroes such as Nova and Sylvanas have to pick a talent for it. Make a squishy hero Vulnerable and watch them disappear.
• In League of Legends Kayle and Swain have abilities that cause an enemy to take more damage from them for a short time, while Vladimir's ultimate causes enemies hit by it to take more damage from anyone. There's also a very large number of spells and items that use the indirect variant of reducing armor or magic resistance.
• In One Step From Eden, the Fragile status effect causes the unit to take 50% more damage from the next hit they take and reduce the counter by 1. Some spells and artifacts are more powerful if you are inflicted with Fragile, making it beneficial to apply it on yourself sometimes.
• In Richman series, where gods works like Status Effects that possesses a character to give them some effects for a few turns, there is God of Poverty, which increases the amount of money the possessed character loses.
• SCP: Secret Laboratory: Explosions (either from High-Explosive Grenades or SCP-018) will Burn players caught in the blast radius, increasing damage taken by 25% for ten seconds - helpful for finishing off human players who survived the blast or softening up SCPs before a push.
• In Slay the Spire, the Vulnerable status effect increases the amount of damage the afflicted takes by 50%. The Ironclad has the most cards that inflict Vulnerable or synergize with it.
• In Super Smash Bros., several of Inkling's attacks can coat their opponents in ink, which increases the damage they take.
• Terraria has two: Ichor, which lowers defense by 20, thus making a character take 10 extra damage per hit, and Broken Armor, which halves defense, effectively making you take an extra (half your maximum armor) damage per hit. Broken Armor can be prevented with the right accessory, but Ichor is unavoidable; on the other hand you can weaponize Ichor for your own attacks, but not Broken Armor.

Non-game examples

Anime and Manga

• In Log Horizon the Enchanter spell Thorn Bind Hostage works like this, placing a number of exploding vines on the target which add a fixed amount of bonus damage to the next few attacks to hit them.
• In the One Piece series there's Oil: when a character covered in oil is hit by a fire attack or explosion he suffers a lot of damage (unless it's Ace).

Literature

• Saintess Summons Skeletons: Once Alith's hero blessing (Phoenix Lineage) evolves, she can place "Devouring fire" on a target with a successful attack, giving a 10% increase to physical damage received by the target for the next 3 seconds. Which wouldn't be very much, except that Devouring Fire stacks, up to a hundred times (1000% extra damage, an elevenfold increase), if she can attack rapidly enough before it expires.

Webcomics

• Aetheria Epics has Argo's "pugilism" debuff technique.
• In Star Impact, Ponpon's glove power, Stamp Cannon, works like this: the left glove lays down a pawprint stamp on her opponent's skin, and her right deals increased damage if it lands on the pawprint.

Real Life

• AIDS works like this, disabling your immune system so that previously negligible diseases become life-threatening.

---