Basic Trope: If something exists in a video game, someone will try killing it.
- Straight:
- In World of Realms, NPCs aren't meant to be killed; they have 9999 HP, take Scratch Damage from all attacks, and heal to full health every frame. However, if a player uses the fully upgraded Death of a Thousand Cuts skill on them, and has just the right equipment and active spells to make it activate 10 times per use, the scratch damage adds up, and the NPC dies before they have a chance to heal to full health.
- There is a dragon guarding the door to The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. The dragon is Purposely Overpowered, to encourage you to wait until you're powerful enough to have a fighting chance. However, a particularly skilled player can actually kill it before they're really supposed to.
- Exaggerated:
- In Invincible Monsters, the enemy can't be defeated by shooting them. The whole point of the game is to defeat them using unconventional means.
- Even the Final Boss can be killed much earlier than it should be if the player is skilled enough.
- Downplayed: NPCs can be killed in World of Realms, but only by using the exceedingly rare Sword Of Game Breaking.
- Justified: If it has stats, it can be killed.
- Inverted:
- Players in World of Realms are totally invincible.
- A certain fan favorite NPC is scripted to die in a climactic battle, but savvy players figure out how to save him by Sequence Breaking, preventing his "invincible" attribute from being turned off prior to the fight beginning.
- Subverted: NPCs in World of Realms can be killed, but there's a hefty in-game fine to make sure nobody does it.
- Double Subverted: NPCs in World of Realms fall to their knees and may be talked to still but no longer attack (although they will cast spells if included in dialog trees). That is actually a developer failsafe for death by overriding their normal actions and animations. The 'loot' action is changed to the talk action and setting their animation and death state to always be collapsed. Casting a resurrect spell on them causes them to stand up again.
- Parodied: Instructions on how to kill NPCs can be found on the skins for several in-game items.
- Zig Zagged: World of Realms allows players to kill anything and everything in the game world, at least until its out of beta.
- Averted: No one has attempted to kill World of Realms NPCs. Yet.
- Enforced: The dev team wanted a dynamic world, which means no invincible NPCs (and a lot more coding and scripting, but it's worth it).
- Lampshaded: The High King has stats listed on his body as part of his texture pack.
- Invoked: The programmers make sure players know they can kill the Dark Maiden, just so someone activates their "special quest" once she dies.
- Exploited: Killing certain NPCs causes parts of the story to play out differently.
- Defied: NPCs in ''World of Realms'' can't be killed except by directly messing with the game's code.
- Discussed: One in-game title is "Hunter with the Impossible Kill".
- Conversed: "Legend tells of one way to defeat the monster..."
- Implied: NPCs can be targeted by the in-game combat system.
- Deconstructed: Things go sideways when a World of Realms player goes and kills a high-level NPC responsible for supplying the main quest. The game is shut down to patch the code.
- Any character with this level of protection is a literal god. Anybody who commits deicide will find themselves erased from existence entirely by an angry pantheon.
- Reconstructed: The programmers decide to allow NPCs to be killed in special circumstances to add a layer of strategy to the game.
- Played for Laughs: NPCs can die, only to come back again after a certain amount of in-game time has passed.
- Played for Drama: The death of major NPCs is used as fodder for story-lines, including vengeance quests and assassinations.
Go back to the main page and take a swing at one of the examples.