One Hit Kill / Tabletop Games

Examples of the One-Hit Kill trope in tabletop RPGs, board games, and trading card games.

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Dungeons & Dragons

Yes, D&D does this so often we had to give the game its own folder. While Fourth Edition reduced this element of the game (see the notes on Fourth Edition near the bottom), the first three editions were rife with examples.

• Up to 3.5 Edition, the game has a large number, mostly of the "fortitude save or die" variety, including:
  • Massive Damage — A well-known modification to the game, in which doing a certain amount of damage in a single attack (usually 50 points) means that the poor monster who suffered from it has to make a fortitude save vs. Instant Death. At lower levels, this is likely to be irrelevant since the 50 points of damage already killed the target. Not often used when campaigns have higher-level characters who can dish out 50 damage a turn on average; although by that time, the spellcasters are throwing death spells fairly regularly: read on.
  • Finger of Death — 7th-level arcane spell; this one's a generic "save or die" spell.
  • Circle of Death — the 6th-level version that does this to every creature within a certain radius.
    • In earlier editions, this spell is known as the Death Spell, and in AD&D, it deals death depending on the Hit Dice of those it was cast upon. Unlike Circle of Death, there's no saving throw against it — if you're hit with it and you have less than nine Hit Dice, unless you have enough people of equal or lower Hit Dice than you to use up the spell's power before it gets to you, you're pretty much screwed. In Second Edition AD&D, if you're killed with a Death Spell, you can't be raised or resurrected, and the only way you can be brought back was with a Wish.
  • Slay Living — 5th-level divine spell; similar to finger of death, but clerics use it instead of wizards. It's a "Touch of Death" type thing, too.
  • Phantasmal Killer — 4th-level arcane spell; requires a Will save to disbelieve the frightening illusion it creates, and if that's failed, you must make a Fortitude save or die, with success dealing regular damage rather than a one hit kill. There's an upgraded 9th-level version, weird, which is much harder to save against and deals more damage if you succeed. This one's particularly aggravating because death ward, which is supposed to protect you against save-or-dies, does exactly squat against it — because it's an illusion. Getting two chances to resist the One-Hit Kill effect makes death by phantasmal killer rarer... and more memorable.
  • Cloudkill — 5th level arcane spell; a cloud of toxic gas that kills you with No Saving Throw, makes you save or die, or deals Con damage, depending on how many Hit Dice you have. Can be disrupted by strong winds.
  • Flesh to Stone — 6th-level arcane spell, with a simple condition: a single target makes the fortitude save or is turned to stone. The kicker is that it's not quite instant death, and can be reversed with Stone to Flesh or Break Enchantment, but it's usually not too common for this to be available to the opponent (Unless it's clear to the GM that the party's wizard is very fond of this effect) and even if it does it's still a simple and effective way to get someone or something out of your hair for a while.
  • Disintegrate — 6th-level arcane spell. In 3rd and 3.5 edition, it does 2D6 points of damage for every caster level you have (up to 40D6), but in earlier editions, it was a One Hit Kill that could reduce you to little more than fine dust on a failed save.
    • Intelligent swords in the earlier editions that had a special purpose could have this as its special purpose power, delivering this effect on any hit with the weapon when it was wielded against any enemy that the weapon in question was dedicated against. As you can well imagine, swords like these gave those they were dedicated against some very good reason to fear.
  • Symbol of Death — 9th-level arcane spell, kills you and anyone else near it when it's triggered.
  • Imprisonment — 9th level arcane spell of the Phantom Zone type; permanently locks its target in a small bubble beneath the earth. Victims don't die there, but instead have time stopped for them and are placed in untouchable suspended animation, so they can't even attempt to break the spell, because their mind has stopped. And unlike being dead, it takes another 9th level spell to undo. The downside to its overwhelming power is that the player does not get loot from the enemy. Of course, enemy NPCs have no reason to care about loot...
  • Power Word: Kill — 9th-level arcane spell; kills you without a save if you're at 100 HP or less.
    • Because not all of the "save or die" spells target Fortitude (some target Reflex or Will), a high level wizard is a Game-Breaker, as he may kill nearly anything by guessing which save is the weakest.
    • Thus, Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards. Of course, the wizard's one problem is that she has to prepare those spells hours beforehand, so she needs to either have a pretty good idea of what enemies she will face, or else prepare some insta-death for every kind of enemy she can think of. Sorcerers, on the other hand, know all their spells automatically but can't swap them out as easily, meaning that a sorcerer can know all three and choose which at the moment of casting; this is ironically enough less of a Game-Breaker than a wizard with a full spellbook or two.
  • Destruction — 7th-level divine spell; similar to finger of death, but it destroys the foe's body on a failed save (making resurrection more difficult) and inflicts more damage on a successful save. Damn CoDzilla.
  • Yet even more CoDzilla in the form of Implosion, 9th cleric spell. No matter how many HPs your target(s) has, if they fail the saving throw they implode and die. Somewhat balanced, however, since one particular creature can be targeted just once per each cast of the spell.
  • Blasphemy, Holy Word, Word of Chaos, and Dictum are all alignment-based spells that brutalize targets of the other alignment with negative status effects. However, if you are a certain number of Hit Dice (a measure of hit points) below the caster, you just drop dead, no save. Most of the game's most famous antagonists (The various Archfiends, for example) have these abilities built in.
    • In the case of casting one of these spells on your home plane, any extraplanar creatures that would be affected by these spells — regardless of whether they heard the spell being cast (creatures who are in their home plane already are only affected by the spells if they are capable of hearing them) — must make a Will save at -4 or be banished to their home plane for 24 hours. It's not lethal, but it's a quick way of putting these creatures out of commission (at least in your current plane) for a while.
  • Momento Mori, an Epic-level spell that takes instant death to its logical conclusion: willing a creature to die. Automatically quickened, and with no form of component, the caster simply thinks and the target falls over dead. It does not work on creatures with unreasonably immense life force (more than 160 hit dice.. which is more than three Tarrasques stapled together), however.
  • The Forgotten Realms setting adds Undeath to Death, which is a 6th level "Will save or die" specifically keyed to The Undead, available to both clerics and arcanists.
  • There's also Wail of the Banshee, which is finger of death, but hits multiple enemies.
  • Monks have a move called Quivering Palm which allows them a one hit kill (a remotely activated one hit kill no less). Its uses, however, are annoyingly limited ("Once per week?! Wizards can do it six times per day!"). It's done somewhat better in Neverwinter Nights 2, where you can use it after resting like all other abilities, and at higher levels can reach a fairly dangerous difficulty class for the saving throw that's on a par with the most over-specialized wizards out there. It also bears mentioning it was perhaps the only Save or Die that survived to 5th Edition, as noted below.
  • As for Weapon Properties: a lucky shot from a Vorpal weapon will decapitate its target (which usually kills it), a Disrupting weapon will take out undead (as long as they fail a fairly lousy Will save — but since you can whack them over and over, they have about 3-4 rounds till they fail their save), and the overpriced Epic weapon property Dread will take someone out on a lucky shot as long as they fail a piddly (or at least, piddly compared to any creature you plan on facing) save.
  • Certain weapons can also deliver One Hit Kills upon hitting certain targets. The Hammer of Thunderbolts, if you've met all the requirements to bring it to full power, can kill any giant instantly upon a failed save.
  • A cleric can out-and-out destroy undead with a single good turning check. Once per day, a cleric of the Sun domain can do it with a mediocre turning check.
  • Also, in the first edition of the game, you had the Assassin, whose signature ability allowed him to one-shot anyone on whom he gained surprise, provided he succeeded on the special attack roll. Even if the roll failed, weapon damage was automatic so it could still kill the victim. Also first edition blade venom works when you inflict damage with a weapon so you could still force a poison save if they survived the initial roll and the damage so you had 2 or 3 chances to kill them depending on their hit point total.
  • The Rules Cyclopedia's Sleep spell could send you to sleep without a save for 4-16 turns if you had 4+1 Hit Dice or less, and during that time, anyone can use a bladed weapon to kill you instantly regardless of hit points. If you wielded a sword with the Slicing talent and scored a natural twenty, the target of the attack had to save vs. death ray or be One Hit Killed, suffering triple normal damage even upon a successful save. A missile with the Slaying talent that hits the target for which it is keyed also forces a save vs. death ray upon its victim to avoid instant death.
  • The Living Death campaign had a special base class (Doctor) who had a skill only they could take (Doctor) and which they were required to spend 1 skill point on per level. With this skill, they could either restore hit points to an ally, or force a Save Or Die from an enemy. Lets do the math: the skill is always 1d20 + level + INT. It could be higher if you spend the 0-3 additional skill points you have the option of spending, or spend one of two skill increasing feats. Let us assume you did neither. Your roll is simply 1d20 + level + INT to set the DC of the Fortitude save of the enemy. This is an instant kill on pretty much any opponent who has a Fort save. And, before you point out that the attack still requires a successful hit at a -4 penalty, I'll also mention that the campaign disallowed armor, so everyone was ridiculously easy to hit.
  • Many monsters have instant death attacks, from a bodak's save-or-die killing gaze to a mind flayer's ability to rip your brain clean out and eat it, although that one at least has to grapple with multiple face tentacles first.
  • At low levels even "normal" attacks are potentially this, as a lucky critical can easily one shot a character (a level 1 wizard would have something like 4-6 hp, whereas even a level one fighter would only have 10-12 or so), although they attempted to help this by having everyone automatically get maximum hp for their first hit die. Even at higher levels some weapons can by a one hit kill if the attacker gets lucky, E.G some weapons (such as the scythe) do 4x damage on a critical rather than the normal 2x, combined with power attack and the like this can easily one shot a Squishy Wizard at even mid to high levels.
  • The demon lord Pale Night looks, for all intents and purposes, like a shapely human woman, swathed in a robe that covers her completely. This is not her true form, or even an illusion she herself puts on - this is a Weirdness Censor the laws of reality force on her, for the universe itself finds her horrific. If you get a look under the robe (either when she dispels it for a second, which she can do once a day, or by yanking it off yourself), you must make one of the highest Will saves in the game. Succeed, and your brain seizes up and refuses to comprehend what you just saw. Fail, and you die on the spot.
  • Anything that breaks the silvery cord of a being undergoing Astral Projection, like the jaws of an Astral Dreadnought or the silver sword of a Githyanki knight, kills that being instantly.
• Fourth Edition:
  • This edition mostly avoids this, with attack powers inflicting mainly straight hit point damage and possibly nonlethal side effects. The game has numerous powers that are described as one-hit kill effects, but by their rules text they're actually not; most infamously, the "Finger Of Death" spell simply deals damage similar to what other spells of the same level do. There are still some powers (mostly monster attacks) that can kill or petrify a target regardless of remaining HP, but even those are not quite instantaneous and allow at least two chances to shake off the attack via a successful saving throw before the final effect kicks in.
  • While Vorpal Weapons aren't as useful as they were in previous editions, rolling a critical for a Vorpal Blade allows you to continually reroll damage as long as you do max damage on the die, semi-mimicking the One Hit Kill properties of its original version.
  • Cannon Fodder minions are killed when hit with any damaging attack. They're intended to be support for the stronger allies.
  • The game also averted the "low level characters can get one-shotted easily" problem mentioned above by having characters start with hp equal to their constitution score (not modifier, score) plus their hp per level which depends on class, but means even a level 1 wizard should have about 15 hp. It also makes critical hits a lot less dangerous in general a critical with a non-magical weapon just does maximum damage (rather than multiplying the damage by a certain amount.)
• Fifth Edition:
  • The Way of the Open Hand Monk's Quivering Palm now only cost 3 ki points, and sends harmless vibrations through the target's body. When you want, you can detonate it, forcing them to make a Constutution Save. On a successful save, they "only" take 10d10 damage, and on a failed, they are reduced to 0hp. The only downsides is that you can only have one target marked at a time, and when you get this, earliest at level 17, you are already basically a demigod.
• Planescape
  • The Lady of Pain, the enigmatic ruler of Sigil, has two ways to deal with individuals she doesn't like. The first is to banish them to a maze that they'll probably wander for the rest of their lives, unable to find the hidden exit. The second, which she reserves for those who truly earn her ire, is to send her shadow out over them. This causes the unfortunate berk to be sliced apart by thousands of unseen blades. There is no attack roll and no damage roll, it's instantly fatal, automatically. Anyone killed this way is Deader than Dead, even gods have been permanently slain by her.

Other

Board Games

• Arkham Horror: It's possible, if difficult, to fight most of the Old Ones if they awaken. However, instead of dealing Stamina and Sanity damage, many have attacks that automatically kill an investigator, or kill any investigator who meets a given criterion. It's taken to its logical extreme by Azathoth, who has no game stats because its first move upon awakening is to destroy the world.
• Citadels: The Assassin only needs to call out the other character's title to kill them. Justified as Citadels is not a battle game, and the only way to counter the Assassin's kill skill is to bluff them into calling out a character card that is not in play.
• Monopoly: Nobody lands on a Boardwalk/Park Place with a hotel and lives to tell the tale!
• Zombicide: Black Plague has dragon bile, which when thrown and then ignited, destroys everything on the current space, including the otherwise Nigh-Invulnerable Abominations.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Deathtouch, a common creature ability, causes its bearer to instantly kill any creature it does any amount of damage to.
  • If Phage the Untouchable manages to deal combat damage to a player, that player loses the game. Door to Nothingness allows its caster to instantly make someone else lose the game, at the price of a lot of mana.
    Only a madman could create such a door. Only an imbecile would open it.
  • A famous early combo based around the card Channel (which allows you to exchange life for mana on a 1-1 basis) and a direct damage spell such as Fireball (which allows you to convert mana to damage on a 1-1 basis) allowed you to fry an enemy on full life in one shot. With one very rare card, a number of common ones and a bit of luck, you can do this on the first turn. As such, Channel was eventually banned from all competition.
  • Considering that the Legacy and Vintage tournament formats are defined by these kinds of combos, decks that have more than one versatile Combo Breaker to disrupt them, and decks that kill the Combo Breaker decks, it's not surprising that with 20,000+ cards at their disposal, innovative players have found tons of ways to pull this off with varying degrees of success.
  • The Storm keyword lets you get a copy of the spell it's printed on for each spell cast previously on that turn. This may seem powerful but not ridiculous until you remember that there are tons of spells that simply make mana... to cast more spells. And that countering the original spell doesn't stop the copies, making this a disconcerting aversion to One Bullet Left. (On the other hand, Stifle the Storm trigger and your opponent will get the original spell, but no copies.)
  • The Infect mechanic makes some creatures deal "poison counters" instead of normal damage, making it possibly to play a creature on the first turn, then throw enough Buff spells at it when it attacks to kill the opponent on the second. You only need ten poison counters to kill an opponent, and there are no practical ways to heal poison like normal life. Of course, if your opponent kills your creature after you use your buffs, it could be slightly awkward for you.
  • The Ravnican planeswalker Vraska specializes in these with her ultimates, which have included summoning assassins who cause players they damage to lose the game, imparting this quality to every creature you control on top of giving them all deathtouch, and dropping a player's life total to one so that any amount of damage is lethal.
• Pokémon Trading Card Game: This is the idea behind the "donk" deck category. They are capable of KOing a Pokémon on the first turn (before an Obvious Rule Patch, they were able to do so before the opponent could even take a turn). Among competitive decks, it is not uncommon for a player to have only one Pokémon ready when a match begins, and if that one ready Pokémon gets KOed, that player loses the match. The most notable "donk" deck featured Machamp, who could automatically KO any Pokémon who isn't evolved during a season full of strong unevolved Pokémon—Machamp was responsible for a large amount of official tournament matches during that season ending within five minutes.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • The TCG has a series of 3-Tributes creatures whose effect states that if they defeat the opponent by reducing their LP to zero, you win the entire match — not just the game, the match, regardless of how many games you played already and what the situation is. Only one of these, however, is even legal for use in a deck (the rest are all high-end tournament prize cards), and it had a short stint before being outright banned from tournament play.^note Granted, this was more due to the headaches regarding ruling and people surrendering the duel to spare the match loss which got the card banned, at least in the TCG. In the OCG, due to different rules, it wasn't possible to surrender like that so the match-winning decks were pretty consistently pulling it off and got the card banned for that reason in that format.
  • There are many ways to achieve one hit wins, like powering up a monster to ridiculous levels with equip cards or using a card like "Wave-Motion Cannon." Whole decks are made around the concept of the OTK (One Turn Kill) and the key cards are usually subsequently banned and/or limited so as to prevent such a deck from being constructed. Some popular examples:
    • Magical Scientist OTK^note Get the Scientist on the field with Catapult Turtle and use the Scientist to churn out fodder for Catapult Turtle's effect: Magical Scientist banned
    • Butterfly Dagger-Elma OTK^note Equip Butterfly Dagger to Gearfried the Iron Knight, which destroys the Dagger immediately and returns it to your hand by the Dagger's own effect, repeat ad infinitum; there are many ways to abuse this loop, the most infamous being in tandem with Royal Magical Library to assemble Exodia in one turn via drawing your entire deck: Butterfly Dagger-Elma banned
    • Rescue Cat OTK: Last Will banned. This did not stop Rescue Cat from being misused,^note namely using it with two Summoner Monks to bring out a two copies of Dark Strike Fighter - which itself was banned - for an OTK so it was eventually banned too.
    • Chaos Emperor Dragon/Yata Lock^note Use Chaos Emperor Dragon's effect to clear both player's hand and field while you have a card that can search Yata-Garasu when it's sent to the Graveyard; because Yata-Garasu skips the opponent's Draw Phase when it deals damage, the opponent becomes completely helpless and can be cherry tapped to death at your leisure: Both Chaos Emperor Dragon and Yata Garasu banned^note Technically it's a One Turn you're completely totally screwed with no chance of saving yourself as you get pecked to death for 20 or so odd turns. But the point stands.
    • Cyber-Stein OTK^note Use Cyber-Stein to bring out a huge Fusion Monster (usually the 4500 ATK Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon) and equip it with Megamorph to double its ATK (because Cyber-Stein's effect costs 5000 Life Points to use, the user will almost certainly have less LP), attack, enjoy: Cyber-Stein banned
    • Empty Jar OTK^note  A deck that uses Cyber Jar to make your opponent draw cards and then repeats until using Card Destruction with Serial Spell to make them deck out. Cyber Jar banned. Card Destruction banned later^note  The US managed to slow the deck by banning the key card Book of Taiyou to one, but the World Championship led to Cyber Jar being banned.
    • Chimeratech Overdragon OTK^note Send every monster in your deck to the Graveyard with Future Fusion and then fuse them all with Overload Fusion into a Chimeratech Overdragon with a comically high ATK that can potentially attack your opponent's monsters about 20 or so times: Cyber Dragon, Future Fusion, and Overload Fusion all limited to one.
    • Chain Strike OTK^note Activate a bunch of cards in one Chain (including Ojama Trio to fill up the opponent's field and Just Desserts to deal a bunch of damage), then top it with a Chain Strike or two for massive burn damage: For a while, Chain Strike was limited to one, which killed the deck. Now it's at two, but Ojama Trio, a key card, was limited to one. Ojama Trio was also brought up to two, later on.
    • Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem OTK: Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem (4400 attack) summoned with with Power Bond (8800 Attack). Piercing damage. No traps until the End Phase when it attacks. For added silliness (and insult/injury) one can add Limiter Removal to the mix, bringing Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem's attack to a whopping 17,600 Attack. All cards involved are Unlimited, likely because said combo can't be done on turn 1.
    • Elemental HERO Gustav Max OTK: For one turn, Chain Material allows you to Fusion Summon by banishing the required materials from anywhere else. Fusion Gate allows you to Fusion Summon any number of times per turn. Elemental HERO Electrum, a Fusion Monster, allows you to return all of your banished cards to the deck when summoned. Exploiting these three cards leads to a loop which can deal an infinite amount of damage in one turn.
    • Blue-Eyes Chaos MAX Dragon OTK: Relatively simple to pull off, since the card has 4000 ATK and not only inflicts piercing damage, but double piercing damage, meaning if an enemy defense position monster has 0 DEF, it comes out to exactly enough damage for an OTK.
    • Accesscode Talker OTK: A common tactic for Cyberse decks is to summon this monster with Update Jammer as material, allowing it to use its destruction effect to clear the enemy field and attack twice with at least 4300 ATK.

Tabletop Role-Playing Games

• Call of Cthulhu has several different levels of One Hit Kill. On the lower end, we have Yig the snake god, whose "1d8 + Instant Death" bite can be dodged or parried and is ineffective if you're wearing some sort of armor it can't go through. Above this, there's the Dhole, which is the size of a battleship, so its attack can't be parried and ignores armor. And then we have Cthulhu, whose damage is "Eats 1d4 Investigators per character.
• Cyberpunk 2020: A medium pistol, not to mention heavier weapons, can insta-kill a character if hit in the head and unlucky enough.
• Deadlands: If you cast Soul Blast and draw a Dead Man's Hand, you automatically kill your target.
• Exalted:
  • The Celestial circle spell Blood of Boiling Oil. Three guesses how it kills the victim. There's also a Resplendency any Sidereal using a resplendent destiny of the Sword has access to that works like this, though only against mortals.
  • There's a few other Charms and spells that are one-hit-kills, though many of them are limited in WHAT they can kill instantly (mostly just mortal human beings or REALLY low-Essence magical entities). Also, due to the way the game's "extras" rule works, any attack against one that succeeds by enough becomes a OHKO as well.
  • Five Metal Shrike's Godspear deals Infinite damage and anything near the impact point disintegrates at quantum levels. The only other sources of Infinite damage are falling into the Void, which is to say "You cease to exist", and the Eye of Judgment of a Titan citadel, which is basically the Godspear + five-mile radius + ridiculous amounts of required infrastructure to build.
• F.A.T.A.L.: The namesake spell causes every living thing in the game universe to die. In one hit.
• GURPS:
  • The game normally considers this too potentially unbalancing, but still has the Coma and Heart Attack conditions, which force you to "save or die" unless help arrives quickly. The only thing worse is a massive radiation dose (over 4000 rads). You get to make one HT roll. On a critical failure you die in agony, on a failure you die in agony, on a success you die in agony, and on a critical success you die in agony, but it takes longer.
  • The GURPS forums see a number of power builds for such abilities, including at least one power that kills everything within a radius larger than the observable universe, on a ridiculously small number of points. It does this by using combinations of modifiers that, while not explicitly illegal, would normally be shot down by any GM.
  • Eventually, they released a supplement devoted entirely to Death Spells — none of them were a sure thing, since at least a resistance roll is always possible. That said, the supplement detailed over twenty Death Spells!
• Hong Kong Action Theatre: Getting a natural 20 on an attack is not only an automatic hit, but an instant kill or KO for any character of Moderate importance or below, depending on what weapon you're using and what your intentions are. If you get a natural 20 on a Major importance character (such as all player characters) or above, he or she is entitled to a Toughness roll in order to take normal damage instead.
• Legend of the Five Rings: The "Consumed by Five Fires" shugenja spell, if successfully cast, instantly kills the target and burns his body to ash. The drawback is that you take the same number of wounds it took to kill the target. Not recommended for use against tough opponents, and you should have some serious healing available in any case.
• The One Ring: One form of Critical Hit is a Piercing Blow that deals a life-threatening Wound if the creature fails an armor-based test to resist it, in addition to its Endurance damage. Player Characters and some powerful enemies can recover from Wounds, but most creatures die on the spot.
• Paranoia: Since death is just an annoyance until you run out of clones, there are several of these:
  • Tactical nukes. Which often come in grenade form (blast radius 500 meters, maximum throwing radius 50 meters — somehow, no one survives long enough to report this design flaw).
  • Plasma generators, basically flamethrowers on steroids. Which malfunction frequently, meaning the fuel tank strapped to your back is about to explode, leaving you a choice between undoing the cumbersome straps and running for it (and incurring a hefty fine for abandoning such expensive equipment) or attempting a difficult repair procedure (one roll just to turn off the alarm, a second to stop the explosion, a third to actually make it fire again). Oh, and expect blowback if you fire into a strong enough air current.
  • The "Falling from Great Heights" table goes from "five feet" all the way up to "Orbital". Which has actually been used in official adventures.
  • Having The Computer find out you're an actual full-blown Communist. Or a machine empath (It really hates being manipulated that way).
• Scion has the Death purview's level 10 power and Avatar power. The former can one-hit-kill anything with a Legend of 8 or lower. The latter can one-hit-kill a titan.
• Shadowrun: Given the realism the game treats wounds with, it's highly possible for a lot of things to be one-hit kills, unless you're playing a Street Samurai. Special mention goes to grenades, though, especially in enclosed spaces, as getting hit with almost 20 damage with Armor Pierce one time would be bad enough, but grenades also ping back off of walls, meaning that, in a small enough room, you could get hit with already super-lethal amounts of Physical damage almost ten times over. There's a reason this game is the Trope Namer for the Chunky Salsa Rule.
• Unknown Armies: If you roll a 01 in combat you automatically kill your target (or knock him out, if you so choose.)

Tabletop Strategy Games

• BattleTech: A handful of weapons have enough pinpoint damage to kill a 100 ton Humongous Mecha with a single shot to the cockpit, regardless of how armored the cockpit is. Any weapon can cause a one-hit-kill with an extraordinarily luck Critical Hit roll; a Through-Armor Critical, which then hits an ammo bin, causing the mech to spontaneously explode as its entire magazine cooks off.
• Star Wars Miniatures had a particular Boba Fett figure that had a 1 in 10 chance of one-shotting enemy characters whenever he attacked.
• Warhammer:
  • Blood Bowl: Unlike Warhammer, which it spun off from, there are no hit points in Blood Bowl. As such, every hit is a potential One-Hit Kill unless it's stopped by your armour. This means a halfling can kill a Treeman in a single tackle or an Ogre can break his neck from running too fast.
  • Warhammer 40,000:
    • The game has several attacks that cause automatic Instant Death, including the D-Cannon (opens a tear in the reality on top of the target), Force Weapons (rip out the target's soul. Before 5th edition this used to be Kill Outright, and would even kill targets that are immune to Instant Death) and Blissgiver (send the target into an unrecoverable coma). However the prize goes to the Vortex Grenade, and its big brother, the Vortex Missile, which sucks anything in the area of effect into the Warp. If a model as much as touches the template they die with no saves of any kind allowed, regardless of any immunity to Instant Death (really enormous war machines and Kaiju take D3 structure points and D6 wounds, respectively, and thus might survive). Depending on how the grenade scatters, this may also include the thrower however. This was amusingly proven in a battle report where a legendary and practically immortal hero of Blood Angels single handedly charged into enemy lines armed with a Vortex Grenade, whiffed the throw and sucked himself into the Warp.
    • In 3rd edition, Abaddon the Despoiler's daemonsword, Drach'nyen, is a one hit kill against anyone it hits, with only invulnerable saves allowed. The catch is that it's a literal one-hit kill; Abaddon has to trade all of his attacks for it and still has (at the very least) a 1/3 chance to miss the hit.
    • While the Ork tellyporta weapon, the Shokk Attack Gun, has a variable strength, and it can kill the user, at maximum strength it opens a huge hole into the Warp, killing everything nearby.
    • The Space Wolves Psychic Power "Jaws of the World Wolves" which will take its target out regardless of wounds, invulnerability or anything else, only a timely reaction can save them as a rock-fanged maw opens beneath their feet. Chaos had a version of the same called the Gift of Chaos. The difference is that it has a shorter range, only works against a single target and forces the target to do a toughness test instead of an initiative test. However, you can select any individual model in the squad you're targeting, making it very good for eliminating characters in the unit.
    • In 7th edition Space Wolves got Helfrost weapons, powerful frost cannons that can perma-freeze it's target. In-game any model that suffers a wound from a weapon with this rule has to make a strength test or be removed from play as he's encased in ice. It is most terrifying when given to Bjorn; not only is it a free upgrade for his assault cannon (which pales in comparison) but because of Bjorn's moderately high BS, the thing will rarely ever miss it's target.
    • Anything with a Strength value of "D" for "Destroyer" does just as much damage as a Vortex template, though it can only do it once instead of popping up repeatedly and is not one-shot. The Eldar scout titan is so awesome it can spew out four 5" blast templates with essentially the same effect as the Vortex grenade every turn.
    • If you take one wound from Interrogator-Chaplain Asmodai's Blades of Reason, you will die. Luckily, armour protects against it. Less luckily, there's only so many armour saves one can reasonably pass.
    • The Tyranids' ultimate leader-organism, the Swarmlord, is armed with FOUR bonesabres that not only have the ability to kill anything they wound in one hit, they slice through almost anything and Invulnerable saves are scant protection since the sabres also force any successful saves to be rerolled. Fortunately for most opponents the Swarmlord is almost exclusively a melee-only creature, and a fairly big target to boot.
    • Any weapon with a strength value equal to twice the target's toughness will always cause instant death. Justified, since in each case the weapon in question should be more than capable of tearing the target in half.
    • Most guaranteed One-Hit Kills in 40k disappeared following the introduction of variable damage in 8th edition, so it is theoretically possible for a character to survive getting shot in the face by an antitank weapon that would have splattered them in previous editions. That being said, if an attack is strong enough its still very likely for high damage weapons such as those previously listed to kill even the strongest characters with one strike.
  • Rogue Trader brings us the Navigator power The Lidless Stare. When mastered, anyone who takes damage from it (so that's anyone within 15m looking at the Navigator who he beats on a Will check) has to pass a Toughness test or die immediately. Yes, I mean anyone. It's a good idea to make sure your friends aren't looking...
  • Warhammer Fantasy Battle:
    • Giants have a random attack table. One of these, Stuff in Pants^note for all the American tropers out there, remember that Games Workshop is British, so it is a slightly more Squick meaning of "Pants"... assuming giants bother with wearing two layers of clothing. instantly kills the unfortunate victim. If you manage to kill the Giant before the end of the game, they however escape unscathed. There's also the "Eat" result, which has much the same result, but is slightly less disturbing.
    • The Killing Blow rule allows a weapon to instakill a human-sized target if you roll a 6 to wound. The Heroic Killing Blow allows a model to instagib giant monsters as well.
    • Some weapons can also Slay Outright, which means a single wound inflicted by such weapon causes the target to lose all their wounds.

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