![]() ![]() A Hopeless Boss Fight or Invincible Minor Minion is seen as a challenge to these people. Contrast with Invulnerable Civilians, which simply can't be killed, if they can even be engaged in combat at all. Savvy developers will code in what happens if you do manage to kill them.Ĭompare Murphy's Law, a similar caution regarding the misuse of technology, and Defeating the Undefeatable, the story/plot counterpart of this trope. It also doesn't not apply to techniques used to solo kill bosses that are intended to be killed by larger groups. This only applies when they are invulnerable to all normal forms of attack, or the developers have stated they are intended to be invulnerable. ![]() Just because no reward is offered for killing a character does not mean the developers intended them to be unkillable. Does not apply to a character who is not clearly intended to be unkillable. This trope can be an applied form of Loophole Abuse with how you go about killing Lord British (or any other normally unkillable NPC). For such games, this trope usually requires something like a Hopeless Boss Fight, Cutscene Boss, or Puzzle Boss. In other genres, enemies and NPCs tend to be considered completely different types of objects, so the concept of death ( at least due to game mechanics) does not apply at all to any character who wasn't specifically programmed as an enemy. This is most common in Western RPGs, as they are usually programmed with player freedom in mind, which means all characters, from the Player Character, to the bandits you are clearly meant to kill, to the villagers you can kill ( but shouldn't), all the way to the king that the game does everything to prevent you from killing (making him the target of this trope) are all treated as the same "Entity" class by the game, which gives them all Hit Points, an inventory, a death state, and the ability to be affected by combat mechanics. A king is a bigger target than the common baker and much more satisfying to dispatch. However, the more important the NPC is, the more likely it will be the target of a creative assassination attempt. A great number of NPCs are free to walk around unmolested, safe in their invulnerability. That said, the Lord British Postulate has less grounding in reality than one would assume. ![]() The name references the fact that there is a way to murder Lord British in nearly every Ultima game, famously including Ultima Online, where Lord British was killed by a fire spell because his invulnerability flags hadn't been set properly after a server crash. The Lord British Postulate is not restricted to MMORPGs, but can be applied elsewhere: C RPGs, FPSes, even Tabletop RPGs. Quite often, if a character's weapons fail to do the duty, then the task falls upon other NPCs, world objects, or the environment to assassinate the relevant target with some prodding from the player characters. In short, if a Non-Player Character cannot be killed through normal means, then there must be some abnormal means to do the job. The Lord British Postulate was coined in this WoW Insider post, and is the cornerstone of the creativity and ingenuity of the more cunning player. If a game designer wants an NPC to be invulnerable, they'd better make sure that it truly is. ![]()
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