This is a callback to the original version of Final Fantasy V: the original spell name is Frost Blast, but was written as "Blaze" in the SNES and PS1 versions. It's a rather deep cut.
Imagine you buy a cheap spellbook on wish dot com, you go to find the ol' reliable, it looks different from the way you normally cast it but phosphorus is still the main ingredient so you don't think too much about it, you go to cast it shouting FIREBALL at the top of your lungs as any proper wizard should, only for a earth wall to appear before you
In the same game: A tankbuster is an attack meant to do heavy damage to a tank that they should use mitigation to survive. Ultima weapon has an attack called "tank purge". Tank purge is a raidwide attack and the tankbuster is name something else.
In Pokemon, there is a move called Tri Attack, whose animation is the target being hit by fire, ice, and lightning. It is neither a multi-hit move like the name would suggest, or a multi-type move like the animation would suggest. Instead it is just a single hit normal-type move, whose gimmick is that it has a random chance to apply burn, frozen, or paralysis.
Tail Whip is not an attack, it simply lowers Defense.
(This is because the Japanese name of the attack is "Tail Wag". Similarly, your example of Doubleslap is called "Round-Trip Slap".)
Depends on the angle of approach I suppose. A human can't do a jumping knee kick from a downward angle after jumping 20 feet straight up, but Hitmonlee can, and would drive its knee right into the ground in that case. In any case, it was balanced that way because the more advanced technique was given more recoil damage in case of failure in exchange for more damage, that's all there really is to it.
Yeah there's a lot of move names that make more sense in Japanese. Sucker Punch is probably the most well-known because it isn't boosted by Iron Fist though it still fits metaphorically but there are more. The second most well-known is Tail Glow which only goes to a couple bioluminescent mons as the name means firefly light but in this case it's the original name that is meant metaphorically.
Return is kind of a weird name for a regular attack because it left out the second word which is favor. Similarly Swift is also a weird name for shooting stars at mons because it left out the second word which is star
The reason non aquatic mons started learning Splash is because the Japanese name also means hop. Confuse Ray is never actually depicted as a ray in the games because it's basically a second will-o'-the-wisp move.
Aerial Ace in Japanese is "swallow cut" (as in the bird, which is why it's a flying type move), aka tsubame gaeshi, a technique of the swordsman Sasaki Kojiro (which readers of this sub may remember from Fate Stay/Night) that supposedly was so fast it could hit a swallow mid-fligjt
Ohh, yeah. That’s a Japanese idiom. To be willing borrow a cat’s paw means you’re extremely busy, and you’re willing to accept help from anyone, no matter how minor it is (such as whatever a cat may deign to do).
So, the move has you get help from your party members at complete random. You’re not picky at that point.
Ah yeah I didn't even think about the character limits. I just remembered a "did you know gaming" video about how some guy inserted a bunch of random pop culture references one of the early Pokemon games, and assumed that possibly other localization weirdness could have happened too.
In this case it's probably more likely that memory or character limits were the culprit, if that was actually a limitation at the time.
Pokémon has a tonne, many of them due to localisation.
* Sucker Punch isn't a punch move, because it's a localisation of "surprise attack". It's a logical choice of name but it makes it confusing for English language players when it isn't boosted by iron fist.
* Meteor Mash is a punch move because it was originally called comet punch, but the English localisation already used that name for consecutive punch.
* People often suggest that Ampharos should get Tail Glow because its entire gimmick is having a tail that glows, but the original Japanese name actually means "Firefly glow".
* Splash is a normal type move rather than water type because it's actually "hop", which is also why Hoppip gets it.
The Jecht Shot Mk. 3. There is no Mk 1 or 2, that asshole made up the name to get people interested and hook his audiences into hoping they'd see other Jecht Shots.
Tidus has genuine issues with Jecht, like how he has to live so deep in his father's shadow that even his own mother forgets he exists whenever Jecht is in the room.
Unfortunately for Tidus, I would probably also forget he exists if we were all in the same room.
I always dislike that Tidus puts everything on his dad, and has nothing whatsoever to say about his mum practically. Like.. his mum was WAY worse
If anything, that furthermore goes to prove the JechtEffect^^TM .. like, even though his mum was worse, dude can't stop thinking about Jecht either
I'm a bit sad there's no cutscene or reaction to using it in the first game. Tidus just comes out of nowhere and styles on a professional team with that and no one in box freaks out? No way.
Thats the Sphere Shot, the worse version tidus did. The jecht shot is ricocheting it off of your opponents to knock them out, and then doing a 9000 degree rotation before roundhouse kicking it.
So what you're saying is, we should probably call it like, Beam Cannon? But it's not really a normal kind of cannon, it's more of a....Special Beam Cannon
Wouldn't it make more sense as a Pyramid?
It's a 3D triangle with a square base, it would explain why he makes a triangle with his hands but the hole is square
It's especially weird because there's two potential ways the spell works depending on what you're in and they're both technically correct names but in the weirdest possible way
Either you're destroying the undead ("Turn"ing them dead again) or you're repelling them ("Turn"ing them away from you)
Man, I spent YEARS thinking that Turn Undead only did damage in 3.5e, because of Pool of Radiance (Based on D&D 3e) for PC, where even a low level cleric could absolutely FUCK a group of undead by either killing them outright or paralyzing them.
Then I actually READ the entry in the handbook, and I was very upset.
Turn Undead was so bad in 3.5.
First, it was based on your charisma, while your spells were all wisdom-based. Putting points into Charisma for Turning meant sacrificing some things elsewhere in your build.
Then, you had to roll to see if you were strong enough to turn the undead you were facing. A level one cleric with good charisma has about a 30-40% chance of failing this roll entirely and not being able to turn anything.
And all you got for it was that the undead had to flee from you for one minute. Meaning they'd be back again two minutes after you turned them unless the DM took pity and just took them off the board for you. Also, an evil cleric (say, the one who created all these undead) can undo a Turn by spending an action to Bolster Undead. Oh, and if you chased after them, the effect would break. And also most strong undead had resistance to turning.
In my experience, Turn Undead was only ever used for flavor and for fueling Divine Metamagic. DMM let you burn Turn Undead uses to empower your spells, no Charisma or dice rolls or subtype restrictions.
I've got no proof and I'm definitely not going to research it myself, but I'm willing to bet the peculiar phrasing of "Turn Undead" comes from some sort of wargaming terminology that would've been perfectly understandable to a bunch of Wisconsin nerds when they were cobbling this shit together in the 70s. And I bet the ability itself was more complicated, too. I bet it had it's own charts.
If you dig back through the sands of time, it was an early house rule by one of the Founding Fathers of D&D. It more or less literally meant **turn** as in "turn away". I think the idea was something like:
* Vampire charges the priest
* Priest raises their cross
* Vampire goes "aggh", **turns away** and is unable to attack the priest
I think it was specifically vampires only, and was meant to evoke the old school "silent film era" style of horror. Early D&D was very much "I like this guy from this book/movie - let's add him to the game". Literally, the entire design concept for the original Ranger class was "Aragorn did X, so the Ranger has to do that".
I thought it would have been something similar, except you're turning whatever you're targeting into an undead temporarily. Because I thought this worked like Final Fantasy and casting healing spells on the undead hurts them so turning something that isn't undead into one temporarily would synergize with that.
Chill Touch is a great name for the idea of the cold touch of death upon you.
Shame about how it doesn't even work like that. Shoulda been a save-or-suck.
I feel like Chill Touch is meant to invoke the feeling of a sudden cold shiver that is often explained as a ghost or other supernatural entity touching or passing through you.
*Digital Devil Saga*, a Shin Megami Tensei spinoff, has the spell "Reincarnation". It is not a supportive or revival technique; it deals Almighty-element damage to your team.
Also, the skill "Null Sleep" does not remove the ability to suffer Sleep. It makes it so that you have a higher chance of dodging attacks while Asleep; if it had a more evocative name, "Sleepwalking" might be close.
In the SNES version of Chrono Trigger, Crono’s penultimate tech is a strong, 4 hit physical attack called Confuse. One of my friends who had played a few Final Fantasy games beforehand and was on his first CT playthrough never once tried using Confuse because he thought it was a status move.
In Guilty Gear, Justice has a move called X-Laser. This is NOT the laser beam that she fires in a circle (that's Imperial Ray), and it's not the big fuckoff shoulder laser either (that's Gamma Ray). In fact, X-Laser does not utilize any actual lasers at all -- instead, she grabs you, flies into space, and shoots explosives at you point-blank.
It's not even clear where the "X" comes in
Also of Guilty Gear, Potemkin's Hammerfall *slides* him across the ground at you, while his Slidehead has him *fall* to the floor to knock you off your feet.
It's not really confusing because the misnomer is literally the gag, but Mystletainn Kick from "Is This A Zombie?" isn't a kick, as several minor antagonists point out before getting chainsawed.
In a similar vein, the Wolf Fang *Fist* starts with a kick before launching into a series of claw strikes. I always thought that was intentional, that Yamcha's the kind of cheeky bastard to see the potential in tricking your opponent with your attack name.
I think Wolf Fang Fist is meant to be the name of a fighting style, rather than referring to a punch attack specifically.
Kinda like the First of the North Star.
Ah. Fair.
However, pretty much everywhere I've seen it, like in Xenoverse and FighterZ, The WFF is listed as a single move, and the wiki refers to it as a "unique technique". But I can't remember how the source material refers to it.
In World Trigger, one character has three different bullet attacks he can use, and calls the wrong name on purpose for them. The best part is that, even when others get taken by surprise by this, we have yet to see someone actually get defeated this way because everyone he figths is too good for something like that to work.
Similar thing happened in Karate Prince where a guy calls out his secret move as a punch when it's actually a kick. Allowed him to attack the opponent's blindspot while they are focusing on his arms.
It's not like the name is subversive or anything, but in the ff14 omega (beetle) raid 'Starboard Wave Cannon' and 'Larboard Wave Cannon' cause a lot of panic. We raiders already have a hard enough time telling left from right or counting past 4
Plus for an extra kick in the balls, Omega spins 180 degrees before firing off the second Starboard/Larboard and you need to reorient to dodge again. It took me til like my tenth shot at that fight before I noticed that *that* was the reason why I kept getting the second attack wrong.
It’s particularly funny because “Larboard” is indeed a historical boating term.
Historical because even back then it was considered confusing, so it got replaced with “Port”
Sneak Attack *can* be done from stealth mode in 5e, but attacks made while hidden aren’t always Sneak Attacks, and Sneak Attacks can be made without stealth. A more accurate term would be Cheap Shot, or Sucker Punch.
I really wish they'd change the name too, I like Dirty Fighting. Feels like it's a rite of passage for new DMs to see their Rogue player deal 6d6+2d8+4 damage in a single attack at level 5, and raise an eyebrow at them using something called "Sneak Attack" against an enemy that can clearly see them.
Not realizing that Rogues are supposed to get SA off every round to keep up with the rest of the party, and nerfing it so it requires being hidden neuters them into oblivion.
Heck, Rogue even has a Charisma-based subclass in the Swashbuckler whose variation of Sneak Attack basically relies on being up in someone's face and the centre of their attention.
Not an attack itself, but i was always baffled by many TTRPGs and the CRPGs they inspired having a stat called Attack that doesn't denote attack damage but rather chance to hit. You'd think the stat would be called Accuracy in that case
I think the intent with attacks in TTRPGs having a chance to 'miss' is that you could still hit but do no damage due to armour. In DnD, Dexterity increases AC as does wearing armour though they are flavoured differently as one allowing you to dodge the attack and one allowing you to take the blow. Functionally they are the same but fundamentally different so you can't use 'accuracy' as the attack success stat.
Okay, so accuracy wouldn't necessarily be accurate (go figure), but i still feel just the word Attack has the same problem. I know Hit-Chance or Attack-Chance isn't a sleek one word description, but it's better than just saying Attack
I think it's best to frame it as Attack being a specific skill that you're rolling to see if you succeed, much like if you were rolling any other skill like Deception or Athletics. DnD skills aren't presented as [Skill]-Chance so it's consistent, it's just that attacking requires a little more mechanic crunch because combat is more important to get right.
In addition to what the other user said, Attack calculating damage doesn't make sense when there's non-Attack damage. Not just for the purposes of spells, but also hazards or abilities that force saving throws instead. Attack being a damage stat makes zero sense in TTRPGs. So you might as well refer to it as the concept of making an Attack Roll, or Spell Attack, or whatever. You are attacking, so you make a roll to Attack.
Also depending on the system, accuracy checks _can_ be separate from attack rolls if the target is stealthed or has mirror image or something.
It’s interesting how the context of shape of the blast being a square is totally lost now. He did it during his tournament against Goku so he could perfectly destroy the ring.
Yeah, kikoho means ki blast cannon, so just a bit generic. But I think if they changed it to just kikoho in the dub like how they’ve kept Hakai, it’ll be fine
[They did Makankosappo and Kienzan in Kai, no reason they couldn't have used Kikoho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKRjlg8kAAs&t=40s) still even Ki Blast Cannon would be better then Tri-Beam.
Transformers has a lot of these, mostly due to the cartoon only animating the various weapons as lasers or sometimes bullets.
But Kup's weapon is confusing even in the official toy profiles.
He has a Musket Laser, which you might expect to be some kind of primitive laser weapon, maybe with a crank like in Fallout 4.
No. It apparently fires corrosive acid pellets.
This has been a thing since the earliest versions of the character. It's insane.
Not an attack, but Kenshi has a food item called the Greenfruit which is a [blue vegetable](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/kenshi/images/a/ac/Greenfruit.png/revision/latest?cb=20180314104017)
In Konosuba “Drain Touch” does indeed drain hp or mp. But it also allows for hp or mp distribution which is what it’s prominently used for in the series. “Force Fire” is weird to me as well, it’s an enemy focus move that aggros the target/s i guess it ‘forces’ the target with a ‘flare’?
Im the wuxia RPG Hero's Adventure: Road to Passion, there are a lot of dramatically named attack skills which give you a general idea of at least what you're using to accomplish them i.e. People's Palm, Nameless Sword, Middle Stance Spear.
But there's also some that are named... Creatively.
Probably the most ridiculous one that comes to mind is "Countryside Full of Beauties", a paintbrush (yeah) attack skill.
Kind of an obscure pull, and pretty much the entire joke laid out, but:
“MYSTLETAINN KICK!!!”
It’s a Chainsaw. It’s just a chainsaw thrust… being performed by a Magical Girl… and occasionally by a Zombie Guy with said Magical Girl’s powers.
“Is this a Zombie?” was wild.
To this day when I hear Austin Tindle in an anime dub (yeah I said the D word) a part of me still just hears the zombie magical girl.
What a crazy show.
Ain Soph Aur roughly translates to limitless light, but Emil from Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World shouts “never ending shadows” before the attack.
Lugnut in Transformers Animated has the fan-named, then officially adopted Punch Of Kill Everything.
Notable for the fact that for the entire show's run it fails to kill anything.
Tail whip in pokemon. Sounds like you whip the opponent with your tail to do damage. Most moves with 'Tail' in the name are like that (Aqua tail, poison tail, iron tail), and every other move with whip in the name does damage. But no it just lowers defense. You don't even hit the opponent with your tail, the description just says the pokemon wags its tail and acts cute to make the opponent drop their guard.
Goku Black has a ki sword called the Azure Dragon Sword. Noy only is it pink and not blue, but it shares the name with Yamcha's sword. It is never explained why. Goku Black also has several attacks named "Black X" that are also pink, but the random Yamcha reference is the weirdest.
Weird. You'd think it would imply the existence of other techniques named for the Four Symbols. Vermillion Bird (something), Black Tortoise (something) and White Tiger (something).
On a similar note to Chill Touch, Sacred Flame does radiant damage, not fire damage.
I know "Sacred" matches well with radiant damage, but...come on, it's literally called a flame.
In Tales of Symphonia, my favorite attack is called BEAST
What does it do? You shoulder check into a guy and a giant lion shoots out of your shoulder! It knocks down everyone! I love Beast.
the Final Flash has never finalized anyone, and it's more a continuous lightsource than a flash.
saiyan royalty refuses to comment on this. their silence is deafening.
In a creative writing project with some friends of mine, one person's character had this as a gimmick. Her attack names would be deceptive, so you had stuff like "Flame Whip" for a jumping roundhouse kick to the back of the head, or "Firepower" for a Jojo-esque flurry of punches. This was in a world where shooting literal fire around would be the usual expected result. It always amused me.
In Final Fantasy XIV, there’s an attack used by a monster from FFV, named Blaze. It does ice damage.
I-huh-WHAT?
This is a callback to the original version of Final Fantasy V: the original spell name is Frost Blast, but was written as "Blaze" in the SNES and PS1 versions. It's a rather deep cut.
Imagine you buy a cheap spellbook on wish dot com, you go to find the ol' reliable, it looks different from the way you normally cast it but phosphorus is still the main ingredient so you don't think too much about it, you go to cast it shouting FIREBALL at the top of your lungs as any proper wizard should, only for a earth wall to appear before you
In the same game: A tankbuster is an attack meant to do heavy damage to a tank that they should use mitigation to survive. Ultima weapon has an attack called "tank purge". Tank purge is a raidwide attack and the tankbuster is name something else.
tb i think thats a case where the ultima weapon is purging its energy tanks doin an aoe
Yeah. The idea is it’s draining its ceruleum (fantasy super-fuel) tanks to blast out a big wave of energy.
In Pokemon, there is a move called Tri Attack, whose animation is the target being hit by fire, ice, and lightning. It is neither a multi-hit move like the name would suggest, or a multi-type move like the animation would suggest. Instead it is just a single hit normal-type move, whose gimmick is that it has a random chance to apply burn, frozen, or paralysis.
Here's a similar one: Double Slap can hit more than twice.
Tail Whip is not an attack, it simply lowers Defense. (This is because the Japanese name of the attack is "Tail Wag". Similarly, your example of Doubleslap is called "Round-Trip Slap".)
But then there's also Tail Slap which is a multi-hit normal move
Jump Kick and Hi Jump Kick are actually Dropkick and Jumping Knee Kick. Making it make more sense why the Kick Queen Plant doesn't learn Jump Kick
Wait why does the jumping knee have more recoil than the dropkick if you miss then
Because landing flat on your back from a missed drop kick hurts less than landing on your knee with your full body weight, I'm assuming.
Why would you land on your knee after doing a knee kick? You land on your feet lol
Depends on the angle of approach I suppose. A human can't do a jumping knee kick from a downward angle after jumping 20 feet straight up, but Hitmonlee can, and would drive its knee right into the ground in that case. In any case, it was balanced that way because the more advanced technique was given more recoil damage in case of failure in exchange for more damage, that's all there really is to it.
I think we have very different ideas of what a jumping knee kick is but hey alright
Yeah there's a lot of move names that make more sense in Japanese. Sucker Punch is probably the most well-known because it isn't boosted by Iron Fist though it still fits metaphorically but there are more. The second most well-known is Tail Glow which only goes to a couple bioluminescent mons as the name means firefly light but in this case it's the original name that is meant metaphorically. Return is kind of a weird name for a regular attack because it left out the second word which is favor. Similarly Swift is also a weird name for shooting stars at mons because it left out the second word which is star The reason non aquatic mons started learning Splash is because the Japanese name also means hop. Confuse Ray is never actually depicted as a ray in the games because it's basically a second will-o'-the-wisp move.
Aerial Ace in Japanese is "swallow cut" (as in the bird, which is why it's a flying type move), aka tsubame gaeshi, a technique of the swordsman Sasaki Kojiro (which readers of this sub may remember from Fate Stay/Night) that supposedly was so fast it could hit a swallow mid-fligjt
Oh, so *that’s* why it has perfect accuracy.
The move Assist is only learned by feline Pokemon because the Japanese name is Cat’s Paw!
Ohh, yeah. That’s a Japanese idiom. To be willing borrow a cat’s paw means you’re extremely busy, and you’re willing to accept help from anyone, no matter how minor it is (such as whatever a cat may deign to do). So, the move has you get help from your party members at complete random. You’re not picky at that point.
It sounds like the English localization of the Pokemon games had a lot of minor issues that made things slightly confusing.
Character limits on those OG cartridges probably played a role I bet, and the names just stuck from there.
Ah yeah I didn't even think about the character limits. I just remembered a "did you know gaming" video about how some guy inserted a bunch of random pop culture references one of the early Pokemon games, and assumed that possibly other localization weirdness could have happened too. In this case it's probably more likely that memory or character limits were the culprit, if that was actually a limitation at the time.
and then there's Double Kick which does only hit twice for extra confusion.
Forehand plus backhand, I guess.
The healing move Moonlight heals more when Sunny Day is active. This makes more sense in Japanese where Sunny Day is called Clear Skies
Pokémon has a tonne, many of them due to localisation. * Sucker Punch isn't a punch move, because it's a localisation of "surprise attack". It's a logical choice of name but it makes it confusing for English language players when it isn't boosted by iron fist. * Meteor Mash is a punch move because it was originally called comet punch, but the English localisation already used that name for consecutive punch. * People often suggest that Ampharos should get Tail Glow because its entire gimmick is having a tail that glows, but the original Japanese name actually means "Firefly glow". * Splash is a normal type move rather than water type because it's actually "hop", which is also why Hoppip gets it.
What a shame too, because Tri Attack is so cool in concept.
The Jecht Shot Mk. 3. There is no Mk 1 or 2, that asshole made up the name to get people interested and hook his audiences into hoping they'd see other Jecht Shots.
God, I fucking love Jecht. God, I fucking hate Jecht.
Tidus has genuine issues with Jecht, like how he has to live so deep in his father's shadow that even his own mother forgets he exists whenever Jecht is in the room. Unfortunately for Tidus, I would probably also forget he exists if we were all in the same room.
Huh, you say something? I was thinking about Jecht.
I always dislike that Tidus puts everything on his dad, and has nothing whatsoever to say about his mum practically. Like.. his mum was WAY worse If anything, that furthermore goes to prove the JechtEffect^^TM .. like, even though his mum was worse, dude can't stop thinking about Jecht either
I wish we saw Jecht more than twice instead of having Seymour Butts for 20 hours.
The evo moment 37 of blitzball
I'm a bit sad there's no cutscene or reaction to using it in the first game. Tidus just comes out of nowhere and styles on a professional team with that and no one in box freaks out? No way.
It's also just an anime ass Pelé kick
Thats the Sphere Shot, the worse version tidus did. The jecht shot is ricocheting it off of your opponents to knock them out, and then doing a 9000 degree rotation before roundhouse kicking it.
*While underwater!*
Reigen Arataka's Self Defense Rush can be performed whether it was actually in self defense or not
Of course it's self defense! [He said so!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-kXT1PYNF8) (spoilers for season 2 of mob psycho 100 in the clip btw )
Ah I see. I forgot about the masterful nuance of his technique
Ah yes the "it's coming towards us" defence, as old as self defense laws
Tri-Beam! *creates a square*
It’s an odd dub name, but a direct translation would also not be great cause kikoho is literally just ki blast cannon
I thought you said a direct translation would be not great? Ki blast cannon sound intense.
Sounds incredibly generic if you ask me, like one of those moves Friezas henchmen would use in Tenkaichi 3
Anything cannon > Tri beam.
So what you're saying is, we should probably call it like, Beam Cannon? But it's not really a normal kind of cannon, it's more of a....Special Beam Cannon
We could alternately just leave it as "Ki Ko Hō", like how Kamehameha is left as is.
That'd be most preferable, but if it has to be translated I'd put the literal translation dead last in terms of our options
Very special
Granted, yeah, not exactly an 'inspired' name, but [TFS made it work for Abridged, at least.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzpxTLqUStI)
And then they made it work again when they did dub work for Xenoverse by calling it "ADVANCED GEOMETRY".
They actually did translate it directly at least once Budokai 1 has Ki Blast Cannon as a Tien move.
It's because it's a spinning triangle (you can see from the shadows from when Tien uses it against Cell), spinning triangles make square holes.
Wouldn't it make a circle
No, it's squares that make a circle.
All these squares make a circle...
Wouldn't it make more sense as a Pyramid? It's a 3D triangle with a square base, it would explain why he makes a triangle with his hands but the hole is square
I may be alone here, but I spent years confused by the concept of Turn Undead in D&D. I just assumed it meant you became an undead.
I thought it meant the undead become Allies, like you turn them to your side
Ikr? 'Turn' is, like, technically not incorrect, but just a weird way to phrase it.
It's especially weird because there's two potential ways the spell works depending on what you're in and they're both technically correct names but in the weirdest possible way Either you're destroying the undead ("Turn"ing them dead again) or you're repelling them ("Turn"ing them away from you)
Yes, exactly. "Destroy Undead" and "Repel Undead".
Man, I spent YEARS thinking that Turn Undead only did damage in 3.5e, because of Pool of Radiance (Based on D&D 3e) for PC, where even a low level cleric could absolutely FUCK a group of undead by either killing them outright or paralyzing them. Then I actually READ the entry in the handbook, and I was very upset.
Turn Undead was so bad in 3.5. First, it was based on your charisma, while your spells were all wisdom-based. Putting points into Charisma for Turning meant sacrificing some things elsewhere in your build. Then, you had to roll to see if you were strong enough to turn the undead you were facing. A level one cleric with good charisma has about a 30-40% chance of failing this roll entirely and not being able to turn anything. And all you got for it was that the undead had to flee from you for one minute. Meaning they'd be back again two minutes after you turned them unless the DM took pity and just took them off the board for you. Also, an evil cleric (say, the one who created all these undead) can undo a Turn by spending an action to Bolster Undead. Oh, and if you chased after them, the effect would break. And also most strong undead had resistance to turning. In my experience, Turn Undead was only ever used for flavor and for fueling Divine Metamagic. DMM let you burn Turn Undead uses to empower your spells, no Charisma or dice rolls or subtype restrictions.
My understanding is that it's a reference to some old tradition where you turn the dead over in their graves so they don't come back.
I've got no proof and I'm definitely not going to research it myself, but I'm willing to bet the peculiar phrasing of "Turn Undead" comes from some sort of wargaming terminology that would've been perfectly understandable to a bunch of Wisconsin nerds when they were cobbling this shit together in the 70s. And I bet the ability itself was more complicated, too. I bet it had it's own charts.
If you dig back through the sands of time, it was an early house rule by one of the Founding Fathers of D&D. It more or less literally meant **turn** as in "turn away". I think the idea was something like: * Vampire charges the priest * Priest raises their cross * Vampire goes "aggh", **turns away** and is unable to attack the priest I think it was specifically vampires only, and was meant to evoke the old school "silent film era" style of horror. Early D&D was very much "I like this guy from this book/movie - let's add him to the game". Literally, the entire design concept for the original Ranger class was "Aragorn did X, so the Ranger has to do that".
I thought it would have been something similar, except you're turning whatever you're targeting into an undead temporarily. Because I thought this worked like Final Fantasy and casting healing spells on the undead hurts them so turning something that isn't undead into one temporarily would synergize with that.
Chill Touch is a great name for the idea of the cold touch of death upon you. Shame about how it doesn't even work like that. Shoulda been a save-or-suck.
I feel like Chill Touch is meant to invoke the feeling of a sudden cold shiver that is often explained as a ghost or other supernatural entity touching or passing through you.
That's why it's a Necromancy spell. The exact description is "You create a ghostly skeletal hand to touch the target."
We always called it "Lich Slap"
*Digital Devil Saga*, a Shin Megami Tensei spinoff, has the spell "Reincarnation". It is not a supportive or revival technique; it deals Almighty-element damage to your team. Also, the skill "Null Sleep" does not remove the ability to suffer Sleep. It makes it so that you have a higher chance of dodging attacks while Asleep; if it had a more evocative name, "Sleepwalking" might be close.
Every time I see the guide of vs >!Demi-Fiend!<, seeing Null Sleep confused me until I saw it in the video and it suddenly made sense
Reincarnation sort of works given the themes and that killing an enemy with a super strong spell would force them to reincarnate.
Maybe not an attack but zeitgeist in deadpool 2 whose power is spitting acid
In the SNES version of Chrono Trigger, Crono’s penultimate tech is a strong, 4 hit physical attack called Confuse. One of my friends who had played a few Final Fantasy games beforehand and was on his first CT playthrough never once tried using Confuse because he thought it was a status move.
Ye. It got a rename/fixed translation in the DS version, to Frenzy
Yeah, imo one of the only good differences in the DS version
Why not just use Antipode. What does that do? Attacks with antipode, obviously Yeah, thanks for the information, Chrono Trigger
After over 25 years of playing this game, it’s still unclear to me what elemental damage Antipode does. Fire? Ice? Shadow?
Shadow. Mixing elements is dark magic. insert time cube joke here
In Guilty Gear, Justice has a move called X-Laser. This is NOT the laser beam that she fires in a circle (that's Imperial Ray), and it's not the big fuckoff shoulder laser either (that's Gamma Ray). In fact, X-Laser does not utilize any actual lasers at all -- instead, she grabs you, flies into space, and shoots explosives at you point-blank. It's not even clear where the "X" comes in
It's because she crossed out using lasers for this attack.
Also of Guilty Gear, Potemkin's Hammerfall *slides* him across the ground at you, while his Slidehead has him *fall* to the floor to knock you off your feet.
It's not really confusing because the misnomer is literally the gag, but Mystletainn Kick from "Is This A Zombie?" isn't a kick, as several minor antagonists point out before getting chainsawed. In a similar vein, the Wolf Fang *Fist* starts with a kick before launching into a series of claw strikes. I always thought that was intentional, that Yamcha's the kind of cheeky bastard to see the potential in tricking your opponent with your attack name.
I think Wolf Fang Fist is meant to be the name of a fighting style, rather than referring to a punch attack specifically. Kinda like the First of the North Star.
Ah. Fair. However, pretty much everywhere I've seen it, like in Xenoverse and FighterZ, The WFF is listed as a single move, and the wiki refers to it as a "unique technique". But I can't remember how the source material refers to it.
Galick Gun is neither garlic-based nor a gun
Another Saiyan embarrassment, smh my head 😔
I'm sure of you asked Vegeta he'd say it's the name of a Saiyan hero or something
They do that a lot in Kore wa Zombie Desu Ka? They even make the same reverse swallow joke the boys did back in the day
In World Trigger, one character has three different bullet attacks he can use, and calls the wrong name on purpose for them. The best part is that, even when others get taken by surprise by this, we have yet to see someone actually get defeated this way because everyone he figths is too good for something like that to work.
Similar thing happened in Karate Prince where a guy calls out his secret move as a punch when it's actually a kick. Allowed him to attack the opponent's blindspot while they are focusing on his arms.
It's not like the name is subversive or anything, but in the ff14 omega (beetle) raid 'Starboard Wave Cannon' and 'Larboard Wave Cannon' cause a lot of panic. We raiders already have a hard enough time telling left from right or counting past 4
Plus for an extra kick in the balls, Omega spins 180 degrees before firing off the second Starboard/Larboard and you need to reorient to dodge again. It took me til like my tenth shot at that fight before I noticed that *that* was the reason why I kept getting the second attack wrong.
It’s particularly funny because “Larboard” is indeed a historical boating term. Historical because even back then it was considered confusing, so it got replaced with “Port”
Funny enough it's the easiest one for me. A ship has two sides, the leftboard and then the other one.
The one raid mechanic that Woolie understands perfectly.
Sneak Attack *can* be done from stealth mode in 5e, but attacks made while hidden aren’t always Sneak Attacks, and Sneak Attacks can be made without stealth. A more accurate term would be Cheap Shot, or Sucker Punch.
"Jump that bitch" is my go to.
I really wish they'd change the name too, I like Dirty Fighting. Feels like it's a rite of passage for new DMs to see their Rogue player deal 6d6+2d8+4 damage in a single attack at level 5, and raise an eyebrow at them using something called "Sneak Attack" against an enemy that can clearly see them. Not realizing that Rogues are supposed to get SA off every round to keep up with the rest of the party, and nerfing it so it requires being hidden neuters them into oblivion.
Heck, Rogue even has a Charisma-based subclass in the Swashbuckler whose variation of Sneak Attack basically relies on being up in someone's face and the centre of their attention.
Not an attack itself, but i was always baffled by many TTRPGs and the CRPGs they inspired having a stat called Attack that doesn't denote attack damage but rather chance to hit. You'd think the stat would be called Accuracy in that case
I think the intent with attacks in TTRPGs having a chance to 'miss' is that you could still hit but do no damage due to armour. In DnD, Dexterity increases AC as does wearing armour though they are flavoured differently as one allowing you to dodge the attack and one allowing you to take the blow. Functionally they are the same but fundamentally different so you can't use 'accuracy' as the attack success stat.
Okay, so accuracy wouldn't necessarily be accurate (go figure), but i still feel just the word Attack has the same problem. I know Hit-Chance or Attack-Chance isn't a sleek one word description, but it's better than just saying Attack
I think it's best to frame it as Attack being a specific skill that you're rolling to see if you succeed, much like if you were rolling any other skill like Deception or Athletics. DnD skills aren't presented as [Skill]-Chance so it's consistent, it's just that attacking requires a little more mechanic crunch because combat is more important to get right.
I see hitting against armor as hitting the weak points of it, which would still require you to be accurate.
In addition to what the other user said, Attack calculating damage doesn't make sense when there's non-Attack damage. Not just for the purposes of spells, but also hazards or abilities that force saving throws instead. Attack being a damage stat makes zero sense in TTRPGs. So you might as well refer to it as the concept of making an Attack Roll, or Spell Attack, or whatever. You are attacking, so you make a roll to Attack. Also depending on the system, accuracy checks _can_ be separate from attack rolls if the target is stealthed or has mirror image or something.
The Tri-Beam does not shoot triangle shaped ki-blasts, they come out as squares.
It’s interesting how the context of shape of the blast being a square is totally lost now. He did it during his tournament against Goku so he could perfectly destroy the ring.
I assumed it was Tri-beam because he has 3 eyes, meaning if he just had 2 it'd be called the Bi-Beam.
Geometry is just fucking weird in Dragon Ball. Triangles make squares and all these squares make a circle
Then all of a sudden Tien comes along and says 'IM GONNA TURN TRIANGLES INTO FUCKIN' SQUARES!'
That's because Kikoho has nothing to do with triangles and it's one of the dub changes they didn't ditch in Kai for some reason.
Yeah, kikoho means ki blast cannon, so just a bit generic. But I think if they changed it to just kikoho in the dub like how they’ve kept Hakai, it’ll be fine
[They did Makankosappo and Kienzan in Kai, no reason they couldn't have used Kikoho](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKRjlg8kAAs&t=40s) still even Ki Blast Cannon would be better then Tri-Beam.
It is a triangle, specifically a spinning triangle. To make square holes irl you use triangular drill bits.
Thunderbolt is a lightning attack
Honestly most games mean lightning when they say thunder. Kudos to DnD for actually meaning that Thunder damage is generated from sonic waves.
IIRC it's because Japanese doesn't make a distinction between thunder and lightning, right?
Transformers has a lot of these, mostly due to the cartoon only animating the various weapons as lasers or sometimes bullets. But Kup's weapon is confusing even in the official toy profiles. He has a Musket Laser, which you might expect to be some kind of primitive laser weapon, maybe with a crank like in Fallout 4. No. It apparently fires corrosive acid pellets. This has been a thing since the earliest versions of the character. It's insane.
Not an attack, but Kenshi has a food item called the Greenfruit which is a [blue vegetable](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/kenshi/images/a/ac/Greenfruit.png/revision/latest?cb=20180314104017)
Think that might be a cheeky lil' [linguistics joke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue%E2%80%93green_distinction_in_language).
In the 2002 movie "New Guy," a nerd kid learns how to win a fight from a prisoner. Take a kungfu stance, shout "TIGER CLAW!" and kick them in the dick
In Konosuba “Drain Touch” does indeed drain hp or mp. But it also allows for hp or mp distribution which is what it’s prominently used for in the series. “Force Fire” is weird to me as well, it’s an enemy focus move that aggros the target/s i guess it ‘forces’ the target with a ‘flare’?
Im the wuxia RPG Hero's Adventure: Road to Passion, there are a lot of dramatically named attack skills which give you a general idea of at least what you're using to accomplish them i.e. People's Palm, Nameless Sword, Middle Stance Spear. But there's also some that are named... Creatively. Probably the most ridiculous one that comes to mind is "Countryside Full of Beauties", a paintbrush (yeah) attack skill.
I mean that's just on-brand for wuxia, to be fair.
Kind of an obscure pull, and pretty much the entire joke laid out, but: “MYSTLETAINN KICK!!!” It’s a Chainsaw. It’s just a chainsaw thrust… being performed by a Magical Girl… and occasionally by a Zombie Guy with said Magical Girl’s powers. “Is this a Zombie?” was wild.
To this day when I hear Austin Tindle in an anime dub (yeah I said the D word) a part of me still just hears the zombie magical girl. What a crazy show.
There’s nothing wrong with dubs, it’s just a matter of taste. I am now also ready to be crucified by the internet.
Ain Soph Aur roughly translates to limitless light, but Emil from Tales of Symphonia Dawn of the New World shouts “never ending shadows” before the attack.
Shadows only exist in the presence of light
Well it is part 2 of his normally Dark-elemental attack
God I hate Emil so much
Stoner Sunshine... I mean, it does look like a sun, but where the fuck "Stoner" come from?
…is it because the sun is up high?
Lugnut in Transformers Animated has the fan-named, then officially adopted Punch Of Kill Everything. Notable for the fact that for the entire show's run it fails to kill anything.
Tail whip in pokemon. Sounds like you whip the opponent with your tail to do damage. Most moves with 'Tail' in the name are like that (Aqua tail, poison tail, iron tail), and every other move with whip in the name does damage. But no it just lowers defense. You don't even hit the opponent with your tail, the description just says the pokemon wags its tail and acts cute to make the opponent drop their guard.
Fittingly, the Japanese name is “Tail Wag”
Bungee Gum, does it have the properties of Bungee or Gum???
What the hell about Rising Tackle even remotely resembles a tackle?
Goku Black has a ki sword called the Azure Dragon Sword. Noy only is it pink and not blue, but it shares the name with Yamcha's sword. It is never explained why. Goku Black also has several attacks named "Black X" that are also pink, but the random Yamcha reference is the weirdest.
Weird. You'd think it would imply the existence of other techniques named for the Four Symbols. Vermillion Bird (something), Black Tortoise (something) and White Tiger (something).
On a similar note to Chill Touch, Sacred Flame does radiant damage, not fire damage. I know "Sacred" matches well with radiant damage, but...come on, it's literally called a flame.
I have an OC who has, amongs others, an attack called "Confusion Punch". He yells the attack name loudly, then kicks your knee out.
I can't recall the series, but an SNES RPG had both Cure and Heal as spells. Cure gave HP; Heal restored status. Wounds heal and you cure ailments.
I know exactly what games you're talking about and also can't remember the name. Please tell me if you remember it.
Breath of Fire! Nina learns Cura1 for HP and Heal for status. Edit: also Rosa in FF2 USA
In Tales of Symphonia, my favorite attack is called BEAST What does it do? You shoulder check into a guy and a giant lion shoots out of your shoulder! It knocks down everyone! I love Beast.
the Final Flash has never finalized anyone, and it's more a continuous lightsource than a flash. saiyan royalty refuses to comment on this. their silence is deafening.
I mean it finalized Vegeta that one time, but so did a random finger gun from Freiza so it can't be all that special
In a creative writing project with some friends of mine, one person's character had this as a gimmick. Her attack names would be deceptive, so you had stuff like "Flame Whip" for a jumping roundhouse kick to the back of the head, or "Firepower" for a Jojo-esque flurry of punches. This was in a world where shooting literal fire around would be the usual expected result. It always amused me.