http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html

My favorites:

Wait! That Was A Load-Bearing Boss!
Defeating a dungeon's boss creature will frequently cause the dungeon to collapse, which is nonsensical but does make for thrilling escape scenes.

"Mommy, why didn't they just use a Phoenix Down on Aeris?"
Don't expect battle mechanics to carry over into the "real world."

I've always hated that one. Aeris is dead. Phoenix Down obviously doesn't resurrect the dead, or every FF world would be overpopulated and boring. It simply revives you from an unconcious state enough so you can fight again.

Aye indeed. If one returns to their roots with Final Fantasy 4(JP)/2(US), one would find that unconsciousness in battle isn't death, it's called swoon there. Phoenix Down just wakes us up from that state, though only barely.

...

...sometimes it's weird being oldschool.

I think this list is better...

http://atrocities.primaryerror.net/rpgcliches.html

Yeah, see, the problem with that is when, for example, someone calls a spell called DEATH, you DIE, and then still get raised with phoenix down. Swoon my foot.

Sephiroth casts Supernova a gazillion times. Can't much more non-realistic than that.

I always hated that. He'd use it like 3 times a battle if I didn't finish him off fast enough. It was awesome to watch, yea, but annoying after the first time, because you can't cancel through it.

And it makes the Sun go SUPERNOVA, yet you can survive.

I'm not sure if that battle ever actually happens though. I'm pretty sure the VERY final battle doesn't, but after all, the whole part with Bizarro Sephiroth and the one winged angel happens in that weird swirly green crap...lifestream-induced hallucinations! Or something!

Anyway, the point is, not using phoenix down on Aeris is a valid concern, because it's death, not KO.

ugh if i ever make a game my resurrecters are going to be annoying.

If you die you can only be resurrected by a special ability of one race (and to be annoying you only have one of them) they have to go into the afterlife and track you down, downside: you temporarily lose two party members if a character dies, if you take too long the spirit starts going through the process of repressing their past life or the body starts to degrade.
there would be certain characters that are actually immune to death spells(amazing isn't it, not just every monster after you learn to cast it) so they only get knocked out, but the storyline would be affected if you don't keep some characters alive

oh and down with stereotypical heros, Go the anti-hero

It is not death. It CAN'T be death. Do you honestly believe a world where you could Phoenix Down dead people wouldn't use that whenever possible? Especially as cheap as it is. The spells are obviously misnamed, or named so as to sound scary but not be. And, in combat, KO may as well be dead. It's only really needed as a distinction outside combat.

I maintain that it IS death, for the purposes of combat (they're DEAD, they can't do anything, that's why all status effects go away, and they can't be hit - why wouldn't you want to hit an unconscious person to finish them off given a chance? And the LIFE/LIFE2/AUTOLIFE spell brings them back to life. (I don't think it's revive in 7...could be wrong, hmm.) Obviously characters can't die as far as plot goes, but it's evading the point for the sake of the game, not that it actually isn't death.

well it's not death the normal way, perhaps cloud relised that Aeris must die and didn't feel like sharing.

also
"Evil will always triumph, because Good is dumb!"
If the villain needs all ten legendary medallions to attain world domination and you have nine of them, everybody in your party still thinks it is neccessary to bring the nine to the villain's castle and get the final one, instead of hiding the ones they've already got and spoiling his plans that way. After you foolishly bring the legendary medallions to the villain's hideout, he will kidnap one of your companions (usually the main love interest) and you will trade the world away to rescue your friend.

this is true and is proven in baiten kaitos (they wander around gathering cards which will summon a creature that will destroy the world even though they are the only ones able to find them)

Just for the record - I hope Baten Kaitos rots in hell for a long, long time. Good card battle system, hated everything else. Didn't like a single bloody character. Ugh.

Regarding roleplaying cliches (that IS the point of the thread, despite sidetracking), it's pretty hard to get away from them these days. Developers certainly don't usually try to think up something new, just rehash the old stuff and make it prettyfull. Bah.

And I maintain that they keep those names because that's what people think of it as, and what it has historically been, not because that's what it actually is. And I sure as hell would go after the guys still attacking me before I bothered with their unconcious friend.

I simply don't find Phoenix Downs/revive magic inconsistent, because whenever people truly die, they can not be revived, based on the vast amounts of population who continue to die, and even main characters who die and cannot be revived.

Even if I didn't want to go after the people still attacking me, since although multiple target fire/etc. spells have a reduced damage from their single target varieties (or increased mana/mp cost) said damage reduction doesn't differ from a two target spell to a three target spell, I'd make sure to incinerate the helpless body while I was blasting the first one as well. This goes doubly for monsters with room attacks because they don't seem to have mana costs anyway.

If I think of a setting like D&D, deaths to monsters are more or less irreversible despite the presence of healing/resurrection magic by virtue of the fact that it causes them to lose a level and priests don't have enough spells to keep up with this sort of thing. Similarly, it's not impossible to rationalise that the reason people aren't consistently brought to death in settings where phoenix down et al. are ridiculously cheap is that monsters eat their prey after killing them (a process which is different from the above body-incineration in that it takes far more time, except for those monsters like the giant worms which swallow people whole, which presumably you extract undigested bodies from after their death), so anyone NOT capable of defending themselves such as main characters are boned regardless.

There are some easy ones though. i.e don't give the male lead a sword or the female a staff. Give them surnames and use them, don't kill off their parents. technology doesn't have to be the root of all evil in a magical world.
don't make an unplanned sequal (spelling IS the root of all evil) because you'll have to reset godly characters to their basic skills.
The "hey i know you" cliches are hard to avoid, but don't have your characters constantly letting the enemies get away, don't immunise all creatures against hard to get spells making them only useful against creatures that can be killed in a few hits anyway.

anyone else want to contribute?

This is entirely a game mechanics case where it HAS to come before realism, or you'd be screwed.



D&D, that makes sense. But here, Phoenix down is cheap. And what about old age? Disease? Accidents? =

This one's my favourite:

Garrett's Principle
Let's not mince words: you're a thief. You can walk into just about anybody's house like the door wasn't even locked. You just barge right in and start looking for stuff. Anything you can find that's not nailed down is yours to keep. You will often walk into perfect strangers' houses, lift their precious artifacts, and then chat with them like you were old neighbors as you head back out with their family heirlooms under your arm. Unfortunately, this never works in stores.

hehe i like that one and this one:
Just Nod Your Head And Smile
And no matter how big that big-ass sword is, you won't stand out in a crowd. Nobody ever crosses the street to avoid you or seems to be especially shocked or alarmed when a heavily armed gang bursts into their house during dinner, rummages through their posessions, and demands to know if they've seen a black-caped man. People can get used to anything, apparently.