Non-Health Damage

There's multiple Gaming Stats, but usually you only lose when your Hit Points hit 0.

Still, there's other stats, and sometimes that means they can be attacked. This is for when that happens, and "damage" means a reduction in some quality, for example, if an Abstract Eater can eat someone's memories or beauty.

If it's Damage Over Time, then it's also a Status Infliction Attack. Other Status Infliction Attacks can also count, if the status affects stats other than Hit Points, like speed. And if somehow lowering a non-Health stat can result in death, a.k.a Stat Death, then this trope likely occurs from enemies exploiting that weakness.

Some damagable stats are medium-specific, such as hand-size in a card game. And for the games where there's no one clear Hit Points stat, instead having Multiple Life Bars, then "Hit Points" is taken to mean all the vital stats, with this occurring if a non-standard, preferable non-vital, stat is targeted, such as Speed.

Sub-Tropes:

• Anti-Armor: For damage to Armor Points.
• Level Drain: For loss of Character Levels.
• Mana Burn: Damages Mana Points instead of HP.
  • Mana Drain: When the burn is restored to the attacker afterward.
  • Mana Shield: Invokes the trope with a shield that diverts the damage.
• Stamina Burn: For damage to the target's endurance or Sprint Meter.
• Subsystem Damage: For damage to a specific part of the target.

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Examples:

Tabletop Games

• Arkham Horror: Each of the Ancient Ones attacks in a unique way if the Investigators are unlucky enough to need to fight one. These include removing their Clue tokens, trophies, NPC allies, or even their hands, and investigators who can't pay the price are devoured on the spot.
• Ars Magica: There are spells to inflict permanent Warping points on their target, which can be much worse for them in the long term than temporary Wounds. A mage is immediately threatened by a Magic Misfire and becomes more vulnerable to them in future; a Muggle with Warping begins to gain character Flaws.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • 3rd and 3.5 Edition:
    • There are various ways for threats to damage The Six Stats. Getting knocked to 0 for any mental stat renders you some form of catatonic, while losing all strength or dexterity makes you physically helpless. Losing all constitution just kills you.
    • The Joystealer, a monster, deals damage to the player's charisma. This can be absolutely devastating for certain player classes, such as bards, which rely heavily on the charisma stat.
    • Most poisons work by damaging one or more ability scores rather than hit points. If it's Strength or Dexterity damage, dropping to zero causes the character to become too weak to move or paralyzed (respectively) until they regain at least one point in the relevant ability score. If it's Constitution damage, dropping to zero is fatal. If a mental stat falls to zero, the character is reduced to a helpless, blithering idiot.
    • The Allip is the ghost of a madman whose touch causes insanity, represented as damage to wisdom.
    • The spell shivering touch is a Minmaxer's Delight because it's low-level, yet deals enough Dexterity damage to paralyze a full-grown dragon and has No Saving Throw.
  • 5th Edition: Shadows are infamous for being far more deadly than their challenge rating would suggest because of this. When they land a hit, in addition to dealing damage they also reduce the target's Strength score by 1d4... and if their Strength is reduced to 0, the target drops dead of Stat Death, with no saving throw. This is especially brutal given that A) ability-draining attacks are otherwise unheard of in 5th Edition so there aren't many defenses against it, and B) Strength is a Dump Stat for almost every class so most player characters will only have an eight or ten.
• Dark Sun: Monstrous Compendium Appendix II: Terrors Beyond Tyr. On the world of Athas, undead can have a variety of random powers. One of those powers is to drain 1-4 points of a specific attribute by touch, such as Constitution.
• Mage: The Awakening:
  • A skilled practitioner of Life magic can inflict temporary damage to a target's physical Attributes, while Mind magic can do the same to mental and social Attributes. Attributes can't be drained to zero and are restored when the spell ends.
  • Death magic has a signature attack spell, "Rotting Flesh", that inflicts a penalty on all the victim's social rolls equal to the damage dealt, on the grounds that its effects are just that gross.
  • Mages who make deals with Acamoth too frequently begin to suffer long-term penalties to all their spellcasting rolls, as their souls erode from the strain. Unlike any other source of harm in the game, recovery takes years.
  • Formal Wizard Duels use a specially enchanted arena that causes attacks to target Willpower instead of health, so duellists only suffer short-term exhaustion unless they deliberately press themselves to the point of physical harm.
• Mice and Mystics: If they can, Roaches steal player characters' cheese tokens, which are spent to purchase and use special abilities, in lieu of dealing wounds. Greedy Roaches transfer those tokens to the game clock, advancing the countdown towards defeat.
• Pathfinder:
  • First edition had more monsters capable of doing this than you could shake a stick at, and the players were capable of doing this as well. Spells such as Ray of Enfeeblement, Calcific Touch, and Touch of Idiocy could drain out the big six stats; if Constitution went to zero, you were dead. If any of the rest went to zero, you were helpless. Plenty of poisons and drugs also did ability score damage.
    • Pathfinder's shadows laugh at Fifth Edition's shadows, because they roll against touch AC to hit, deal 1-6 Strength damage, and come in a greater variety that can do 1-8 points of Strength damage (with the saving grace that zero Strength paralyses instead of killing). Given most Pathfinder games embraced point buy, dumping Strength was even more common.
    • The Feeblemind spell, inherited from D&D, reduced the character's Intelligence and Charisma to 1. Most spellcasting classes lost all spells at that point. Wisdom-based casters were made too stupid to speak, so they likely also were not going to be doing anything important either.
  • Second Edition has all kinds of ways to inflict this and makes it part of the meta. To wit, in Second Edition you get three actions per round and with every attack, you face an increasing penalty to hit. Thus, against all but the weakest enemies, taking three attacks is heavily discouraged. So what should a PC do? Use skills to Intimidate to inflict Frightened, damaging the enemy's ability to do anything, or Deception to Feint and reduce their AC, Bon Mot to fluster them and reduce their Will, and so on. Unlike most editions, these are pretty much resolved just like attacks.
• Exalted: Stat Death occurs if the Heart grace is reduced to 0, turning into something that doesn't matter. You're even more transient than the dream of a creature made of dreams. This is not something that Creation-born have to worry about, but they can still have this if all their other graces are reduced to 0, which is usually the result of being soul-ravished by the aforementioned dream-creature.
• In GURPS you die if aging causes any stat to drop to zero. If some other force drops a stat to zero you're rendered all but helpless.
• Magic: The Gathering: Gnat Misers, when played damage maximum hand size:
  Each opponent's maximum hand size is reduced by one.
• In the New World of Darkness, its second edition has a Sanity Meter for mortal humans, Integrity...which cannot actually hit zero except under very special circumstances (read here; there's precisely one monster that can do that, and it does so explicitly as part of eating its target).
• The One Ring: Adventurers can replace a normal attack with an attempt to intimidate their enemies, reducing their Hate Points. This can render them unable to use their special abilities and inflicts a major debuff if they fall to zero. Some creatures retreat at this point; others can only be killed after their Hate is exhausted.
• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay has many ways for creatures to suffer temporary or permanent harm to their main Characteristics (such as The Six Stats) or secondary Characteristics (such as movement speed):
  • Vampiric blood drinking reduces the victim's Strength by 1-10%, which recovers at 1% per hour.
  • Sufferers of the Green Pox lose 5% per day from all their main Characteristics. They recover when the disease ends, but suffer Stat Death if their Toughness falls to zero.
  • "Magic Destroyer" Chaos weapons can temporarily reduce their victims' Magic Characteristic by 1 with every hit, impeding their ability to cast spells.
  • Possible side effects of using Black Magic include permanent reductions in Strength or Toughness.
  • The Lore of the Heavens' most powerful Curse can permanently remove a Fate Point, which acts as a 1-Up or a renewable Luck Manipulation Mechanic.

Video Games

• In Advance Wars: Dual Strike, Sasha's CO Power drains her opponent's CO Gauge, which is required to perform a CO Power.
• In Arx Fatalis: In a play on Stat Death, max health is calculated by formula "Max health = 2*Constitution*(Your Level +1)", meaning that simply leveling up gives you a good load of health, even if your Constitution is at absolute minimum of 6, and making Constitution a Dump Stat. However, Hilarity Ensues if a lich randomly decides to cast a Curse spell, decreasing all your stats by 10 - which, according to the above formula, means instant death for anyone with Constitution below 11.
• Darkest Dungeon has Stress, which primarily acts as a character's inverted Sanity Meter. It can be applied through events or certain enemy attacks, like Swine Wretch vomit, which applies 10. Accumulate enough of it, and your character runs the risk of an Affliction that has the potential to hose the rest of your party. Accumulate too much, and your character suffers a heart attack, which puts them on Death's Door — and if the character is already on Death's Door, they die instantly. While Health is restored immediately upon returning to town, Stress remains until it is healed at either the Chapel or the Tavern. Sending high-Stress characters into another dungeon run without providing them with some relief is a recipe for bad times.
• Dawn of War: All attacks deal damage to morale (except units with no morale bar, like vehicles, buildings and the more faithful/fanatic/batshit insane footsoldiers), while some are specifically noted to deal a lot of damage to morale (such as flamers and snipers). Several abilities deal more damage to an enemy's morale than their health, or even no health damage at all. A demoralized squad has lowered accuracy and damage, but moves faster.
  • The Chaplain's Demoralizing Shout greatly reduces an enemy squad's morale and speed.
  • The Khorne Berserkers' Mark of Khorne ability demoralizes nearby enemies and makes them run away.
  • Some Dark Eldar buildings deal damage to nearby enemies' morale, while Chaos buildings slow its regeneration.
  • Psykers deal morale damage to themselves when using their abilities (which are themselves highly demoralizing to the enemy).
  • Inverted with Commissars, whose Execute ability instantly restores squad morale at the cost of, well, executing a squad member.
  • The Priest's Fanaticism ability restores morale and temporarily makes the squad immune to health and morale damage.
  • The Necron Lord's Nightmare Shroud ability utterly destroys any morale in nearby enemies, and makes them run away from him.
  • Necron Flayed Ones deal constant morale damage to enemies around them.
  • Dark Eldar Horrorfex grenades cause high morale damage and cause units to flee, while their Screams of the Damned ability causes all enemies to lose half their morale.
  • The Avatar of Khaine makes nearby Eldar units immune to morale damage.
  • Killing the Ethereal deals massive amounts of morale damage to all Tau units on the map.
• The Elder Scrolls series, has many damage effects, that change game by game. For example:
  • The Disintegrate effects for damaging its Breakable Weapons, in The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, leaving the series after that and moving to unbreakable equipment.
  • The Damage Attribute effects, targeting the non-metered stats.
• Certain bosses in Final Fantasy XIV can fully drain the party's Limit Break, which is usually done when the fight is progressing to the next phase.
• The Bishop's Judge spell in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance can steal a target's JP (Judge Points), which are used to imitate a combo attack or summon Totema. Enemy units don't have access to either.
• The variant "Seal" skills introduced in Fire Emblem Fates makes an attacked target lose 6 points of a given stat such as Defense, Strength, Speed, etc. In Fates, affected units recover 1 point per turn while in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, the sealing only lasts a single turn, presumably because of how overpowered the skills originally were.
• In NetHack, if your intelligence drops to zero, you die of "brainlessness", and not even an Amulet of Life Saving will save you, you are Deader than Dead. This mostly happens because of Mind Flayers, which drain your intelligence by eating your brains.
• Starcraft I: The Science Vessel's EMP ability destroys all energy (even on biological units) but deals no damage. It also reduces Protoss shields to zero.
• In Shadow Hearts series, characters possess "SP" (Sanity Points) in addition to HP and MP. Throughout battle, it goes down slowly, but certain enemies may lower it with special attacks, like "SP Lowering" in the first game. If it dips below 1 point, the character goes Berserk, and randomly wastes turns.
• The Sega Genesis game Sub Terrania has the final three levels take place in water levels and introduces the Acid meter, which slowly accumulates while the ship is submerged. If the meter fills completely, the ship instantly explodes regardless of how much shielding it had left. The meter is to refer to the acidic water corroding the ship's hull.

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