Might and Magic

Might and Magic is a Science Fantasy cycle of first person party-based PC RPGs, later spawning some spinoffs such as the Heroes of Might and Magic Turn-Based Strategy games.

Jon Van Caneghem created the first game in 1987, and it became the first series to seriously compete with the Wizardry and Ultima franchises amongst role-players. The first five games were introduced under his New World Computing company, before they were bought out by 3DO and Executive Meddling began.

The games' definitive trait has always been Science Fiction elements beneath the surface of an otherwise Standard Fantasy Setting game. Usually, the climax reveals that ancient Precursors are responsible for lots of what is going on in the world, and the Big Bad is a robot or an alien. Indeed, as it overlaps with Heroes of Might and Magic universe, it turns out that Devils from Heroes of Might and Magic III are actually aliens. How Unscientific.

Gameplay-wise, Might and Magic games are all centered around first-person party-based Dungeon Crawling in an open world. The games heavily emphasize combat and puzzle-solving over story and character interaction. Dialogue is kept to a minimum.

One constant throughout the franchise for gameplay is the six “statistics”:

• Might: How much you damage a foe when you hit it.
• Endurance: How well you can take a hit from a foe.
• Accuracy: How well you are at hitting a foe to begin with.
• Personality: Common sense, charisma and persuasiveness, affects cleric Spell Points.
• Intellect: Knowledge, affects sorcerer Spell Points.
• Speed: Quickness and agility, affects armor class and combat order during battles
• Luck: A character’s chance of succeeding, when all else fails. A random element whose effects are unpredictable.

The games in the franchise are:

• Might and Magic Book One: The Secret of the Inner Sanctum ^[1]
• Might and Magic II: Gates to Another World
• Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra
• Might and Magic IV: Clouds of Xeen
• Might and Magic V: Darkside of Xeen
• Might and Magic: World of Xeen^[2]
• Might and Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven
• Might and Magic VII: For Blood and Honor
• Might and Magic VIII: Day of the Destroyer
• Might and Magic IX ^[3]
• Might and Magic X: Legacy

The game also began a successful Spin-Off series, Heroes of Might and Magic, a turn-based strategy game featuring locations and personalities from the original franchise, which had six sequels of its own. Other Spin Offs included Arcomage, Crusaders, Warriors, Legends, Shifters, Might and Magic Mobile, Dark Messiah of Might and Magic, and Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes. These lesser spin-offs are often regarded as failures, and to most fans, part of the franchise In Name Only.

The most recent additions to the franchise were Might and Magic: Duel of Champions (an Allegedly Free Trading Card Game using the settings of the games) in 2012, and Might and Magic Showdown, a strategy game that was available on Steam but canceled even before the Early Release program ended.

Tropes Applying to All Games in the Franchise

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Not just Sheltem, he's just the worst example. Robots or computers in this game are true crapshoots, as many are evil things that are going to try to kill you. There are exceptions, like Corak, the Dragon Pharoah and Melion. Escaton plays around with it: he does exactly what his creators want him to do, and it's not a case of Gone Horribly Right — but due to the details of what that thing he is to do is, that makes your world collateral damage, and he can't go against that part of his programming no matter how much he wants to. A number of other, less sapient, robots met across the games are simply doing what they are meant to do — guarding places against persons without the proper security clearances, which you do not have, thus they are trying to kill you.
• Ability Required to Proceed: Several games have this, such as learning skills to pass mountains and forests in I-V, or having to learn flight or water-walking to get to island areas on maps in VI-IX.
• Absurdly Spacious Sewer: There's one in just about every game that doubles as a dungeon. How important it is to the main storyline depends on the game.
• After the End: Before the Silence, as it is called, the Ancients had far more influence on their colonies, and the inhabitants of Terra, Xeen, and Enroth benefitted from miraculous technology like skyships, computers, and of course, Blasters, all of them created and powered by Heavenly Forges. Varn and Cron were two of many ongoing projects in their overall experiments that would have formed additional worlds. It is implied that the Ancients still maintain some worlds like this. However, the first Kreegan invasion began with them destroying the Web of Worlds, cutting power to the Heavenly Forges and disabling communication to the worlds where the games are set. Over the next millennia, the inhabitants degenerated into a medieval-type culture, the miraculous devices of “the gods” only remaining as legends.
• Always Accurate Attack: Implosion. This spell hits the target directly instead of firing a magical projectile, meaning there is no way to dodge it and only magic resistance or Air Magic immunity can stop it.
• Animal Motifs: Starting in the third game, each game has one or more Temples of Doom with an animal theme: Temple of Moo (III), Temple of Yak (IV), Temple of Snakes (VI), Temple of Baa (VI and VII), Temple of Eep (VIII), Temple of Honk (IX), and Temple of Meow (X). Lord Anthony Stone even lampshades this in VI
• Aquatic Mook: Every game has mobs that you encounter while swimming or Walking on Water. In I through V this often overlaps with Beef Gate, as they tend to be stronger than the mobs on land. In the older games, Aquatic Mooks can follow you onto land.
• Bigger Bad: The Creators are a group of beings that are mentioned occasionally as enemies of the Ancients, creating vile monsters with the intent to hinder and disrupt the Ancients’ plans. However, none of these schemes had anything to do with Sheltem. ^[4] A common Fan Theory is that the Kreegan are the Creators, but Word of God has debunked this. However, the spin-off Heroes Chronicles: The Fiery Moon (where the antagonists are minions of the Creators) does seem to confirm that they are up to no good.
• Artistic License Engineering: Crossbows do less damage than bows in these games, which is not a fully accurate adaptation. Medieval crossbows were stronger, more accurate, and easier to use than regular bows; the advantage bows had were that in a trained archer’s hands was speed and ease of reloading.
• Awesome But Impractical: This Trope can vary depending on the game, but some examples are universal:
  • Finger of Death. This Sorcerer Spell appears in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th games, and instantly kills a target if it hits. Which it won’t. The chances of it working is very low, and any enemy it’s worth using it on likely has some spell resistance, lowering the chance even more, so you’re much better with spells like Disintegrate or Lightning Bolts.
  • Downplayed with Implosion, which appears in about half the games. It does have uses, but isn’t as good as it seems. The spell description says it “Creates a hole in space, at the center of the target creature, sucking it into nothingness.” What it actually does is inflict 1,000 points of damage to one target. While that seems considerable, any target on which the spell is worth using is likely resistant to magic, meaning it might do only 500 points damage or even just 250. Still good, but not the best.
• Badass Grandpa: Each game can take years in-game to complete. Characters over 70 years old might die of old age. This is especially a problem in the first game where training takes one year per level. There are ways to magically make your party younger, but there are also curses that can age them, so watch out.
• Bandit Mook: Each game is certain to have at least a few monsters (often with the word “Thief”, “Robber’, “Thug” or something similar in their names) who can swipe gold, gems, food, or items from you during a battle. Some of the nastier ones can swipe all your gold and/or gems (like Leprechauns in the second game) or every item in a character’s backpack (like Invisible Things in the first).
• Beef Gate: This is pretty much a staple in most games of the franchise. You can go wherever you want, at the beginning (though forests and mountains act as Broken Bridges until you learn the fairly easy skill to get them), though in some cases you need an access key to enter specific dungeons or towns. However, if you go off the beaten path (the main roads in II, the Western Continent in III, into the dungeons in IV or anywhere in V) too early in the game, you will find yourself in the middle of monsters you can't handle. The later games are no better. Although there's a certain linearity to all of them, but you can still wander into harder regions before you should thanks to the open world format.
• Bigger on the Inside: All games tend to have dungeons that are larger than the maps they are situated on. Especially notable in VI where maps often have multiple dungeons where each are bigger than the maps where they are supposed to be located. Granted, some of them are partly underground, but the places such as Castle Darkmoor or Alamos have no real excuse.
• Blackout Basement: Dungeons (which tend to be more dangerous than overworld exploration) are pitch black in the earlier games and still dim in later ones, requiring items or Spells to provide illumination.
• Booby Trap: If a container or door is locked, it is rarely a question of whether or not there’s a trap on it, but a question of how nasty the trap is. A party without someone who can disarm them will not survive long in any of these games.
• Boring But Practical:
  • Bows, especially in the third game onward.
  • Many low-level spells Can't Catch Up when you start to learn the harder ones. Sparks, however, are usually an exception, as they do more damage the higher your skill and level of mastery gets. So for example, in the seventh game - where you can learn Grandmaster Air - you can create 9 sparks that do 12 points damage apiece, and use them to do things like set traps for enemies or hit enemies in pits or under bridges where they can’t get to you.
• Bottomless Magazines: Ranged weapons - slings, bows, crossbows, and blasters - always have unlimited ammunition.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Almost every class can learn to use the Bow (or at least the Crossbow) in addition to their regular weapon.
• Cash Gate: You will definitely need money in these games, not only for equipment, but for training. This is the worst in VI and VII, while completing your spellbook is going to cost millions, even with the merchant Skill.
• Chainmail Bikini: Averted for female heroes, who wear the same practical armor the males wear, the one exception being one of them in the opening cutscene to VI. Enemies occasionally play it straight, like the Crazed Natives from II.
• Character Witness: Donating to a temple will sometimes give your party a protection buff. Donation prices also vary depending on the game and town within game.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
  • Items that increase a character’s stats can be identified by color. Red enhances Might, orange Intellect, yellow Accuracy, green Endurance, blue Personality, purple Speed, and white Luck.
  • Also, when Wizard’s Eye is used in these games, creatures and objects are indicated by “dots” on the mini map. Hostile creatures are red dots, friendly NPCs are green, and corpses are yellow. At higher levels, blue dots indicate items that can be picked up and interactable “points of interest”
• Convection, Schmonvection: As per video game logic, lava hurts you if you're standing on it, but if you're slightly above it, you're safe, even if you're in a caldera of an active volcano or in an underground city full of open lava fields. You can even use spells like Levitation to safely move over it. Most jarring in VIII, where the Vampire’s version of Levitation completely negates the damage from lava. Exactly why is a mystery, as no spell can make you truly impervious to fire.
• Clarke's Third Law: Residents of the various worlds view the technology of the Ancients as a type of magic; Corak and Sheltem are called either Mystics or Wizards (and Corak encourages this deception) while Blasters are called “Ancient Weapons”, and “Iron Wizards” are, in fact, robots. What residents call the “Heavenly Forges” are Star Trek Replicators in all but name. However, as players become more powerful and more experienced, they start to see the truth easier. For instance, in the second game, the players will eventually encounter a stronger version of Iron Wizards called Alien Probes.
• Deader Than Dead: It is possible to not only be killed in battle, but to have your body completely destroyed (eradicated). Getting this problem taken care of is a bit more expensive, to say the least. Getting zombified is even worse, and you can't reverse it yourself.
• Death From Above: Spells like Starburst, Meteor Shower, Sun Ray and Moon Ray all rain doom upon foes.
• Due to the Dead: Grave robbing is bad in this franchise. Looting a sarcophagus or selling human bones and other remains in most games is considered evil, and in games where you have a Reputation score, doing so will lower it. Of course, taking other stuff in tombs is all right, for some reason
• Dump Stat: Intelligence has no effect on classes lacking elemental spellcasting abilities, while Personality is useless for classes that can't cast self magic. Very few classes (Druids and Rangers) make actual use of both.
  • Averted, however, in VII and VIII, where each outdoor region has a Game, Contest, Test, or Challenge that rewards characters with extra skill points for having high stats. Even Knights can benefit from having Intellect of 200 or higher in these challenges, as they can then gain 10 skill points from a Challenge of Intellect. You can bypass it with temporary boosts though.
• Elegant Weapon for a More Civilized Age: Blasters are rare, but they’re still around in most games, although they only play an important part of the plot in some of the later games. Some have even managed to master their use.
• Elemental Embodiment : Elementals are enemies in most games, and play a vital part of the plot in II (where the defeating the four Elemental Lords is essential to completing the game) and VIII where Escalon harnesses their power
• Evil Versus Evil: The four Elemental Lords are constantly at war with each other, their battles resulting in the creation of the various worlds and their inhabitants - who had to eventually rise up against them.
• Fountain of Youth : Almost all the games have an area that can reduce aging, and in some cases more than one. Some will reverse any sort of aging, but some will only reverse unnatural aging. In most cases, these are hard to access until late game.
• Flunky Boss: Actually, it might be easier to list bosses that do not qualify. Most have at least a small mob of normal monsters helping them, and a few have dozens.
• Gladiator Games: Most games in the series have an Arena you can go to where you can fight monsters to win gold (and in some cases, experience). The rules vary depending on which game, and the monsters are chosen at random, although you can usually pick the level of difficulty. (Although the difficulty levels often get more difficult overall as your own experience levels get higher.) Sometimes you have to pay a fee to enter, and other times you can only go on certain days. In at least one game, a promotion quest depends on going there.
• Have You Seen My God?: The Silence is named such because that was the time the Ancients stopped communicating with their colonists. Not that it was their fault.
• Hit So Hard the Calendar Felt It : The Silence defined the calendar in the setting. Years are given the notation BS (Before the Silence) or AS (After the Silence).
• Healing Spring: A common fixture of all the games. Not just springs either, there are barrels of liquid, wells, magical orbs, and other odd items. Some will instead raise ability scores or even Levels, usually temporarily, but sometimes permanently. Some, however, have side effects, and some cause Poison or some other bad condition. Some have a benevolent condition and a negative one.
• Holy Hand Grenade: Turn Undead is a useful low-Level spell that, depending on the game, will destroy undead creatures or cause them to flee. Holy Word is a far stronger version.
• Hour of Power: The Trope Namer first appeared in IV; this spell in most cases casts five combat-oriented spells - Haste, Heroism, Shield, Stoneskin, and Bless - all in one go. Curiously, it can easily last more than an hour, depending on the caster’s Skill level. Some games also have a variant called Day of Protection, which Simultaneously casts Protection from Fire, Air, Water, Earth, Mind and Body, plus Feather Fall and Wizard Eye on all party members. Again, duration depends on Skill level, so it doesn’t always last a full day and might last longer.
• If It Was Funny the First Time:
  • In many games, there's a hidden Easter Egg where your party earns the title of "Super Goober". Typically, it involves fighting very difficult enemies to reach an optional location.
  • In almost every game, there is an NPC who will tell you the following joke:

NPC: There are only three certainties in life: Death, Taxes, and that you'll hear the comment about death and taxes sooner or later.

• Incredibly Lame Pun: Most of the Shout-Outs are these.
• Inexplicable Treasure Chest: Used in the entire franchise. In the earliest games, using the Search option after a monster was defeated would usually cause a chest to appear
• Informed Ability: Happens a lot. Many quests require you to kill a Boss who's supposedly a leader or king of a group of common monsters, but when you actually fight the guy, he's really not much stronger than a typical member of the species. For example, in VI you have to kill Ethric the Mad, who is supposedly "the first - and thus most powerful - lich" but he's really just the same as any other Power Lich. Not that Power Liches are pushovers, of course, but there are two other liches in the game - Agar and the Lich King - who are stronger.
• Inn Security : Inverted completely, as inns are always the safest place to stay in every game. In fact, in VII, you can even safely rent a room in enemy territory (not recommended, however, as resting causes your Invisible spell to wear off) and inns are actually safer than the castle that serves as the party‘s home.
• Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja: The Ninja is a class onto itself in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th games. A composite of Knight and Robber, a Ninja can assassinate a foe on their first attack (which is what the game calls a Critical Hit) can disarm traps (though not as well as Robbers) and use special weapons unique to them, like the Katana and Naganita. In VII, Ninja is the second promotion for a Monk who takes the Dark path; these Ninja are better than Masters (their Light Counterparts) at the martial and stealth-based skills, but not as good at magical skills.
• Lost Colony: In most games, the apparent fantasy world setting is eventually revealed to be one of these towards the end. Although, the first five games play with this theme, as the colonies were not “lost”, but rather deliberately deprioritized (the Ancients do keep an eye on them, just not a close one). VI to VIII varied the theme by making it clear from an early point that the world in question was a Lost Colony (the inhabitants themselves know it, and in fact base their dating system on when the colony became lost). IX and X do not acknowledge it at all, but the presence of characters from the previous games imply it is true.
• Lost Technology: Supposedly, before the Silence, all worlds in the setting were high tech; stories of the “Time of Wonders” suggest wondrous devices like interstellar travel, energy weapons, and teleportation devices. When the Kreegan attacked the local wire node, most of this technology ceased to function, but some pieces of what was before are still around, and when a crisis occurs…
• Lowest Cosmic Denominator: For a setting with paladins, clerical magic, druids, a spell called "divine intervention" and churchy temples, Might and Magic has always been extremely vague about its internal mythology. There are no named deities (except in the tenth game), no defined religious codes of morality, no holidays, or anything like that. It's fair for a game to just treat divine magic as a merchant that provides healing if it doesn't want to get into that, but seeing as each game has a Religion of Evil acting as antagonistic, they start making you think about these things and you start realizing there's no real answer or reason why anyone should trust the normal temples more than the evil cults.
  • This does in fact become more poignant in VI, where the Obviously Evil Temple of Baa will not only heal your party but do so for very cheap - though they are trying hard to be seen as Villains With Good Publicity, given their goal.
  • X turns this on its head, where an early “evil cult” is in fact a corrupt splinter group of the predominant church where your party goes to heal.
• Lunacy: Moon Ray is a powerful Cleric spell that can be used in the first, second, third, fourth, and sixth games; it heals the party and damages foes, but can only be used outdoors, and in the case of VI, only at night.
• Magic Missile: Spells like Magic Arrow, Fire Arrow, Electric Arrow, Acid Arrow, and Energy Blast, mostly low level spells. Later games had spells like Fire Bolt and Cold Beam which are pretty much the same thing.
• Magikarp Power: In most games, Spellcasters are weak at the beginning, as they have low hit points, low mana points, and their spells aren't incredibly efficient anyway. By the end of the game they will essentially become demigods able to rain holy hellfire upon foes and shield the whole party from the most lethal of conditions. Of especial note is in VII and X - the former giving access to some rather powerful spells after the choice of path which is available only to Clerics and Sorcerers (at full potential anyway), while in the latter the spells at master level (again, with exceptions accessible only to mages) are much stronger than those at expert level, and grandmaster level makes them doubly efficient.
• Mecha-Mooks: They tend to show up late game, often in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
• Mono-Gender Monsters: All games have mostly Boyster types with a few Girlsters; there are some examples of mooks with both genders (like the Cannibals in VI), but in those cases the males and females have slightly different gameplay mechanics.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: One example prevalent in all games is how monsters cast spells. Your spellcasters use Spell Points, meaning they spend points to cast spells, and the more powerful the spell, the more Spell Points it uses. Monsters who can cast spells, however, have unlimited Spell Points. While they often have just one spell at their disposal, a Minotaur King who can cast Finger of Death every other turn is something to be wary of.
• Neglectful Precursors: Subverted. The Ancients seem to have vanished from the face of the galaxy, leaving the inhabitants of their various artificial worlds to deal with the likes of Sheltem and the Kreegan on their own. However, it's not that simple: As VIII makes clear, they are fighting the Kreegan, they just don't have the resources to save their lost colonies and experiments from the Kreegan most of the time (or, for that matter, to destroy most infested colonies), what with the ongoing galaxy-scale war, Sheltem, a multi-world threat who is completely impossible for heroes from a Lost Colony to defeat, rates only a single Corak unit with no backup.
• Nintendo Hard: These games are notoriously difficult; with early games, players who managed to finish them were exceptions rather than the rule.
• Obligatory Joke: Each game has at least one Star Trek reference and at least one Monty Python reference. It is widely believed by players that Jon Van Caneghem was a fan of both.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Badass Beards? Check. Tough guy attitude? Check. Good in character classes that rely on fighting and heavy armor? Check. In games where you can use them in your party, they fit the bill. X compromises this a little, with the Rune Priest, a class available to dwarves who breaks tradition slightly by being able to use powerful Fire magic; still, they are otherwise much like other dwarves.
• Patchwork Map: Pretty much all the games have this, although seeing as these worlds are biospheres built via intentional design, they make sense.
• Persona Non Grata: Most taverns in these games will not serve a party member who has the Drunk condition, a rule any respectable establishment should have. Although, in many cases they won’t serve someone who is Poisoned or Diseased either - even if it was their food that made them sick.
• Poison Is Corrosive : In most games, acid-based attacks and spells do Poison damage.
• The Power of the Sun: Sun Ray is a potent offensive Light or Fire spell (depending on the game) that can be used in the first, third, fourth, sixth, seventh, and eighth games. It does more damage than Moon Ray, but only damages one monster.
• The Red Mage: Druids are this. They can learn the Cleric and Sorcerer Spell Skills, but can never become as good at them as actual Clerics and Sorcerers, and in later games, cannot learn Light or Dark.
• Respawning Enemies: Depends on the game:
  • In the first five games, enemies respawn after you leave a map and return, although in III this can be prevented on overworld maps by destroying whatever generates them.
  • Dungeons in III respawned after two in-game years.
  • In VI, VII, and VIII, mobs respawn on overworld maps and in dungeons after three months of in-game time has passed. There are exceptions to that rule, however. For example, the Hive in VI, which respawns every week, while the Walls of Mist and Breeding Grounds in VII respawn every time you leave and reenter.
  • In X, this is Averted. Mobs do not respawn, meaning the XP you can gain is capped.
• Riddle for the Ages: Who or what was Sorpigal? The first, sixth, and tenth games all have towns with this name, but nobody still alive in those towns knows where the name came from.
• RPGs Equal Combat: While the games put a lot of emphasis on puzzle-solving and exploration, this Trope is played very straight, combat being the primary method to achieve goals.
• Save Scumming: This could not be done in the first two games, but later it was almost obligatory and sometimes abusable. Slay a monster, save, move to the next monster, and repeat as often as needed, and eventually, you could defeat creatures far more powerful than yourself. There were exceptions, of course, like the Arena challenges, where you could not save until you won the battle, and thus had to complete each in one go.
  • This was particularly abusable when it came to looting, as there is a bug in VI through VIII that will occasionally cause a just-looted corpse to remain in the game where you can loot it again with exactly the same loot tables. By repeatedly saving and loading every time the bug causes the corpse to remain, you can outfit your party several times over (this even works with Artifacts and Relics if the enemy is strong enough) and get a ton of gold as a bonus (especially if combined with periodic trips to town and back to the corpse when your inventory is full). Of course, this is really only worth doing on enemies that drop good loot in the first place, like the dragon on the starting island in VII that you can beat by running around it in circles so that its fire breath never hits you...
  • This is also very useful when you have to deal with monsters like Ghosts that cause magical aging, which is very hard to reverse, and you're going to have to deal with things like this sooner or later. For example, in VI, you have to go to Corlagan's Estate to do the Wizard to Archmage promotion quest (not required, but highly recommended if you have a Sorcerer) and it has lots of Ghosts. The only ways to reverse magical aging in that game is a black potion (which permanently reduces all of your stats in the process) and a magical fountain on Hermit's Isle which you won't be able to access until much later.
• Saving the World: Your goal in most games. Except for VII where the world is in no immediate danger and the Dark ending lets you Take Over the World.
• Schizo-Tech: The games always start out in what appears to be a standard fantasy RPG setting. Eventually, the heroes and the players discover Ancient Technology, robots, and similar things that don't seem to belong, until finally discovering that their world is a Lost Colony created by Sufficiently Advanced Aliens.
• Science Fantasy: Each game in this franchise commonly starts out as an apparently pure fantasy world, but towards the end it is revealed the world is actually a Lost Colony, and Lost Technology is brought into the plot. Later games would introduce the Science Fiction elements earlier. VI and VII, for example, allowed you to mow down Liches with your blaster pistols.
  • Or become a lich, which is possible in the later games. A lich with a laser pistol, scuba gear, and infiltrating a spaceship to steal technology.
  • IX never got around to having any explicit Science Fiction elements, leaving them to a few references that people that played the older games would recognize as not actually being fantasy after all. X had no explicit Science Fiction elements, being set in Ubisoft's Ashan setting... Explicit being the key word there. Two quests heavily implies that Ashan is in the old setting after all, one of them featuring what appears to be a character from the mid-90s novels... a character that happened to have been an undercover operative for a post-Silence interstellar state.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: Build a party composed of only one class. Knights are a good choice (if you want a challenge, that is) as are Druids.
• Shows Damage: In the third game onward, a splash of blood on a character’s portrait was used to indicate when a character is hurt, the larger the splash, the more damage done. This counts for monsters too; even skeletons and other monsters that should, by all logic, have no blood in their bodies. Portraits also change a character’s expression if he is inflicted with a condition, causing him to show fear if Afraid, sick if Poisoned or Diseased, and so on.
• Splash Damage: In some games, spells like Fireball and Dragon Breath can do damage to your party if you cast it at close range.
• Squishy Wizard: Sorcerers, pretty much. In most games, they only have 2 or 3 hit points per level to start, can only use Padded or Leather Armor (in other words, the worst type of armor in whatever game you’re playing) and usually can only use the Dagger, Staff, and sometimes Bows as weapons. Druids are slightly tougher than Sorcerers in the older games, having a base of 6 hit points per level, but just as weak as Sorcerers in later games, and just as limited with Weapons and Armor.
• Star Power: Starburst, a spell that rains falling stars upon enemies.
• Sufficiently Advanced Aliens: The Ancients, beings of godlike power who build biospheres and Magitech devices, practicing Magic Genetics to create entire worlds.
• Suicidal Overconfidence: Monsters will almost always charge to attack as soon as they see you (unless they have ranged attacks, admittedly a smarter option), no matter how powerful you look. Some will flee if outmatched, but usually only if injured.
• Super Drowning Skills: Most games, bodies of water are flat surfaces that could not be traversed upon unless you used the Water Walk spell, which may result in TPK if it wears off when you’re using it. Some would inflict damage repeatedly until you were on dry land. The Swimming skill was present in III and IV, which let the party cross shallow water, so long as all party members have it
• Surpassed the Teacher: In all games in the series except X, advancing a level requires training at a facility located in a town. However, while any of them in the first and second games can train any player to maximum level, games from the third onward have limits for each facility, usually proportionate to how dangerous encounters are in and around that town. For instance, in III, the Training Center in Fountain Head (the First Town) can train your characters up to Level 10. To progress further you need to go to Baywatch, where you can train up to 15, and so on to towns in more difficult areas until you reach level 25, at which point Blistering Heights is the only place you can train.
• Teleport Interdiction: Spells like Teleport are very useful, but many games have places that cannot be teleported into and/or out of. Obviously, this is done to keep some quests from being too easy, but you rarely know that a Teleport Interdiction is in effect until you try to teleport into (or out of) it,
• Terraform: This is what the Ancients’ “Great Experiment” is. Planets are “seeded” in order to create an ecosystem able to sustain life, while biospheres called VARNs are built on giant spaceships for transport to these worlds. Rate of success varies:
  • The first and second games involve two biospheres on one of the giant spaceships, which (as the third game reveals) are intended for Terra, with Sheltem’s mad plan of revenge involving sabotaging the trip and destroying them.
  • In III, Terra is a failed experiment; Sheltem was supposed to be the orchestrator of the project and Terra’s Guardian, but he malfunctioned, and the ship (here called the Shikbath Zera) carrying the biospheres intended for Terra crashed; five of them were implanted onto Terra, but not intact. The game eventually reveals that the spaceship holding the biospheres from the first two games had been orbiting Terra the whole time. Corak was supposed to eliminate Sheltem, then assume his role of the new Guardian of Terra (the plot of the third game), and then assimilate the biospheres from the ship, but the game ended with Sheltem escaping and Corak and the party in pursuit. The fate of those colonies and Terra are thus left unknown.
  • Xeen is a project nearing completion, and the player can even see it transform into an actual completed world by finishing the game. Enroth was a successful project, although the Kreegan invasion has placed it in danger for more than one reason.
• Temple of Doom: Every game will have at least one, likely more. Some even have one as the Noob Cave.
• There Are No Tents: Zigzagged. In all the games, you can indeed camp out anywhere you like, so long as there are no hostile monsters nearby, but doing so requires rations; how many depends on the type of terrain (grassy knolls cost few, hostile terrains like swamp and snow cost a lot), and there is always the chance monsters will spawn and attack you. There are inns, but in the first and second game, their purpose is to save the game, as you can’t do so elsewhere. In the third through fifth games you can save anywhere, the purpose of inns is to buy food and information. From six onward, you can rest at inns, the benefit being that they are the only places that are 100% safe.
• The Three Certainties in Life: A Running Gag in the games is for an NPC to state that there are only three certainties in life: Death, Taxes, and that you'll hear the comment about death and taxes sooner or later
• Unwitting Pawn: It seems a big part of the Ancients’ Great Experiment involves tricking the Elemental rulers into fighting each other in order to make worlds habitable for colonization.
• Useless Useful Spell: Varies from Game to game. Usually the utility and buffing spells are incredibly useful (Fly, Town Portal, Feather Fall), as well as spells that hit a single target (Implosion) or do splash damage (Incinerate, Dragon Breath, Starburst). Status effects rarely work (The only one that is decently successful is Dragon Sleep, and that only works on dragons, and even then, not all the time), spells that hit everything on sight have usually so low damage it is not worth it (Inferno, Prismatic Light), and spells that scale with Level (Energy Burst, Cold Ray, Lightning Bolt, Fireball) can be incredibly powerful, but their SP cost also scales with level, so they are usually Awesome, but Impractical until the player gets really high leveled.
  • Spells like Flame Arrow, Magic Arrow, and Cold Beam that hit for single digit of damage will fall wayside very quickly, since their damage does not scale up with the skill at all or only very slowly. Sparks, however, Averts this because of their damage scaling plus their total number raising for higher mastery and remain good spell from the start until the very end of the game that can be cast cheaply and with low recovery time.
• Vancian Magic: Zigzagged. While Clerics and Sorcerers sometimes gain a few spells by leveling up, most must be learned by purchasing them from guilds, and in some of the later games, learning a Skill associated with them. Once a Spell is learned, however, a caster can use it as much as they like, so long as they have enough Spell Points to do so.
• Wide Open Sandbox: The first three games were notorious for this, as they really don’t tell you where to go or what to do. You're expected to explore the game until you pick up enough clues to stumble into the true objective. Most egregious is the second game, where the backstory in the game manual is almost entirely a Red Herring and the real villain is a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere unless you've played the first one. All games have far more material in the side quests than the main questline, so the storyline can only be deciphered in hindsight.
• With This Herring: Each player in every game starts with nothing lowest-tier armor and one weapon; later games at least give you the ones that match starting proficiency. The later games may have some opportunities to make easy money, but not many.
• Weaponized Teleportation: “Endless Hallway” traps are common in this franchise. You have a very long, often winding hallway, with many areas having hidden teleport squares that move the party backwards. Only by figuring out exactly which squares and using spells like Jump to move you ahead can you proceed.
• You All Look Familiar: In most games, each type of merchant has one, possibly two, or rarely three different animations that occur when you enter that type of building. Thus, a barmaid, blacksmith, or clerk in one town will likely look identical to those in others.
• You All Meet in An Inn: Played straight, seeing as character creation is done at the inn in the first town, although Xeen does give a reason why the party members are there in the first place. The later games are more creative.

Tropes Applying to the original DOS-era games (I through V)

• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Sheltem, obviously, although Corak averts it.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: In this era, a party can have a maximum of six characters. They offer additional slots for hirelings; these are for most purposes full-blown characters, except you have to pay them and they can be switched as the need arises.
• Big Bad: Sheltem, although he tries to fool you in the Xeen games with Lord Xeen.
• Bigger Bad: In retrospect, the Kreegan are this for these five games, having been the ones who destroyed the Wire Node that the Ancients used for communication and transport to and from the worlds where the games take place, causing the Heavenly Forges to stop functioning and starting the Silence.
• Bizarre World Shapes: While all the settings of Might and Magic are artificially-created worlds that act as biospheres for the Ancients’ Great Experiment, some of them in these five games are oddly shaped. Cron and Varn are biospheres on a giant spaceship. Terra is a Ringworld Planet, and Xeen is also a Flat World, but it’s inhabitable on both sides.
• Canine Companion: Guard Dog is a spell present in the first two games; it creates a magical hound that guards the party while they sleep, preventing surprise attacks.
• Cool Starship: While you never see it from the outside, the Shikbath Zera obviously qualifies, a spaceship so unbelievably huge that there are several biospheres the size of small continents on it.
• Damn, Nature! You Scary:: The early generations had a lot of outdoor hazards. If a game had a Lethal Lava Land, there were volcanic eruptions that could cause a TPK fast, wastelands and deserts couldn’t be crossed without getting lost (unless you had the right item or Skill), swamps had dangerous quicksand, blizzards could blow your party to different parts of the map, and so on.
• Disintegrator Ray: Disintegration is a useful spell that targets multiple enemies, with a chance of eradicating them and dealing damage if it does not.
• Dungeon Bypass: Teleport is a Spell found in all five games that can get you through a tough part of a dungeon quickly.
• Epic Flail: The cleric spell Fiery Flail (available in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th games) is one of the best offensive spells for them, creating a giant flail out of magic.
• Escape Rope: The Cleric spell Surface (available in the first two games) works like this, transporting the party from an underground dungeon to the outdoor map above it. Town Portal is even better.
• Featureless Protagonist: Played straight in the first and second games; after that, the games use character portraits.
• Hidden Agenda Villain: Sheltem seems like a Generic Doomsday Villain until Xeen, where his goal and motivations are finally revealed.
• Hidden Villain: Sheltem is this in all games except III, either concealing his identity with a disguise (I and Xeen) or concealing his existence entirely (II)
• Quicksand Sucks: Swamps have quicksand that can insta-kill one or two members of your party; Levitate was a very useful spell for exploring them.
• Obviously Evil: Sheltem. Seriously, just look at him!
• Protagonist Without a Past: Played straight, usually. The heroes in V have a small backstory and reason why they’re adventuring together; for the others, it’s up to the player to interpret their origins however he sees fit.
• Useless Item: Hints and rumors gotten at taverns or inns are rarely worth the effort.
• Useless Useful Spell: Low level Spells that incapacitate enemies like Sleep and Apparation are okay at very low level, but they lose their effectiveness quickly.
• Warp Whistle: The Spell Fly takes you to a specific point on any outdoor map, usually to the safest place on that map.
• We Buy Anything: Played straight. Anything at all can be sold at the blacksmith shops
• We Sell Everything: Also played straight, as towns in these games have one store that sells everything you need except food.

Tropes Applying to second generation (VI through X)

• Airborne Mook: The 3D engine made this possible, adding flying mooks to hinder the heroes, especially if you try to transverse mountains or similar obstacles by flying. This is even part of the plot in VI, where the Dragon Towers are supposed to fire upon flying monsters that try to prey on townsfolk, but are malfunctioning and fire upon anything that flies, including your party.
• Always-Accurate Attack: Implosion, which hits the target directly instead of firing like a Projectile Spell, meaning there is no way to dodge it and only Air Magic immunity can stop it.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Depends on the game. In VI, VII, and IX your party is allowed 4 members. You can have up to two Hirelings in each game, but only in IX are they able to fight. In Might and Magic VIII, you can hire any number of party members, but can only have up to 5 in your party at a time.
• Awesome But Impractical : Armageddon. This Dark spell does 50 points of damage to everything on the current map, so if you are, say, in the Mire of the Damned, it will get rid of all those pesky Ghosts and Harpys. Unfortunately, it also kills all the peasants in the town, so your Reputation will take a dive. This isn’t an issue in places like Eofol, Paradise Valley or The Plane Between the Planes, but the spell won’t hurt the monsters there nearly as much.
• Blatant Lies: Merchants are pretty shifty in these games. If the party member dealing with a merchant doesn't have the Merchant skill, the merchant will claim to be practically giving away their wares, will contemptuously describe the items you're selling as practically worthless, and will say that your damaged gear is almost impossible to repair. If, however, you have the Merchant skill, the merchants will give you better prices, showing that the default responses were an attempt to cheat consumers without much business savvy out of their money.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: On the character creation screens, each available character pleads with you to select them when you scroll through them. Kind of annoying, but fortunately this only happens once per game.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Any time a Gold Dragon (or at times, any Dragon) appears here, it qualifies. These things are tough, and they'd likely qualify as actual Bosses if not for the fact that they weren't unique
• Cast From Hit Points : Haste is a powerful Fire spell that reduces the cooldown of your party’s actions, but it also causes the Weakened condition when it wears off.
• Cursed with Awesome: The “Insane” debuff increases your strength a lot while reducing other stats such as intelligence or accuracy. However, since melee classes such as Knights and Trolls depend a lot on strength and hardly care for intellect, being insane is beneficial for them.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: These games have odd keyboard controls that more modern players will have a hard time adjusting to. For example, the Page Down causes the party to look up, while Delete causes them to look down, with End centering the view. This is not too much in itself, but when you use the Fly spell, Page Up is to ascend, and Insert is to descend, an odd setup that is very hard to get a hang of.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Zigzagged with Dark Magic. Even the trainers will often remind you that, much like any weapon, Dark Magic is only “Evil” if wielded with evil intent.
  • Light Is Not Good: Consequently, Light Magic is only “Good” when used for good purposes.
• Day Old Legend: One of the special traits a weapon can have in some games is “Antique”, which raises its value. It’s possible to enchant an ordinary weapon in order to give it a trait, and it might end up with this trait. Certainly not a true antique, even if it’s worth the same as one with the trait.
• Disintegrator Ray: Blasters often work like this when enemies use them. But not when you use them.
• Dual-Wielding: In 6, 7, and 8, Master Skill with Sword lets a character use the sword in the off-hand and another weapon in his main hand; Expert Skill in Dagger lets the player use a Dagger in the off-hand and another weapon in the main. (Of course, in each case, you must have two Weapon Skills or use two of the same weapon.) In X, Dual Wield is a separate Skill.
• Elaborate Underground Base: The final dungeon in several of the games is one of these, being the sci-fi corridors beneath the fantasy world
• Eleventh-Hour Superpower:If you can get Blasters at all, they're going to be this. Case in point: in VI you can get them only after completing the objective in Tomb of VARN, which is also the third-to-last objective of the game (the following being to acquire the weapons themselves). In VII you can get them only in Eeofol (which requires a difficult trek through Marathon Level) and one dungeon in Shoals (which is only unlocked after completing the mission in Eeofol and is the place of the final task).
• Elemental Powers: Magic in the whole franchise is divided into schools based on elements, although this did not become official until VI. The basics are Air, Water, Fire, and Earth, while Dark and Light is more advanced magic. Each player also has six Resistance scores, measuring how well he can resist each form of magic. (It starts at zero, but magic and items can increase it.) Monsters use attacks based on these elements too, and also often have Resistances (some have two, and some very powerful ones have several). Energy is a special seventh form that usually only comes into play late in the games; this cannot be resisted. Blaster weapons cause Energy damage, and so do some of the most powerful monsters. X adds another type of magic called Primordial, another type of advanced magic.
• Explosive Breeder: The true motivation of the Kreegan. They are driven by instinct to create more of their own kind, so much that they exhaust the resources of a planet very quickly, reducing it to a dead, lifeless world before abandoning it and leaving for another.
• Game Within a Game: VII and VIII featured Arcomage, a card game that was sort of like a tabletop CCG that you could play in taverns. (An early quest in VII resulted in you getting the deck you needed to play it.) Each tavern had its own House Rules. 3DO actually marketed Arcomage as a title of its own.
• Grail in the Garbage: In VI, VII, and VIII, if you check out the stables in the towns you will find horseshoes. Of course, a stable is a place where you'd expect to find horseshoes, most likely, but in these games, horseshoes increase your Skill Points by 2 when you use them, making them incredibly valuable.
• Grid Inventory: All the games in this series except IX, With X, it was also a Bag of Sharing.
• Guns Are Useless: Mostly averted with Ancient Weapons, a.k.a. blasters and blaster rifles, as they are pretty good endgame weapons. They don’t do much damage, the damage cannot be increased by your Might score or your skill in Blasters, and unlike other weapons, they cannot be enchanted. However, on the other hand, they do have excellent rage, an extremely high rate of fire, so you can deal Death of a Thousand Cuts to foes, especially when you fight in the real-time mode. Plus they do Energy damage, a form of damage which most monsters don't have any resistance to, meaning a successful hit always does full damage.
• Hell Is That Noise: In most of these games, most mobs make noise (for instance, Goblins shout something in their language, Harpies squawk, Ghosts make an eerie whooshing noise, Skeletons make a rattling, and so on) and you’ll quickly figure out which mobs make what sound.
• Hoist by His Own Petard The powerful spell Armageddon spell might result in this if you don't keep an eye on your HP while casting it. Same with spells with splash or area-of-effect damage such as Dragon Breath or Meteor Shower if you don't keep your distance. All of them at least warn you about it in description.
• Hostile Terraforming: Kreegan are this, their atrocities causing the places they inhabit to become lifeless deserts or volcanic wastelands. In the Heroes series, it is implied they do this because they enjoy such surroundings, but in the core series, it seems this is a side effect of their drives as Planet Looters.
• Identify Item: Whenever you get a new weapon, armor or accessory, you won't be able to see what it does (or even its name) unless you identify it first. The easiest and fastest way to do it is through the Item ID skill, though if for some reason none of your party members have this skill, the appropriate shop can identify it for a price. You can still equip it even if it's unidentified, though.
• Infinity+1 Sword: Artifacts and Relics are usually this, although some of them are Infinity-1 Sword, like Mordred in VI. Blasters will usually only be acquired late in the game, but they are very powerful.
• Infinity+1 Element: Dark (due to Dark Magic containing strongest nukes), Light (almost nothing resists it, except your allies) and if it's present, Energy (Blasters; it's also type of damage dealt by strongest monsters such as Gold, Crystal Dragons or Robots, and it can't be resisted at all by anything in the game).
• Inventory Management Puzzle: A common problem with VI, VII, and VIII. Long weapons like spears and tridents extend the whole length of the inventory, and items are added to the inventory horizontally, so you can carry dozens of gems or rings, which all occupy 1x1 space in your inventory, with all your party members, and then be unable to grab a trident even though about 3/4th of your space is free. Since in some cases it is hard to know what enemy will drop, the only solution is the application of this trope.
• Karl Marx Hates Your Guts: Played straight, but avoidable. If you have the Merchant skill in games where it is offered, you can raise the resale price of items, and in games where you can achieve Grandmaster in Merchant, you can sell at retail price.
• Karma Meter: The higher your Reputation Score, the more likely NPCs will trust you.
• Larynx Dissonance: Subverted. It might seem like the NPC you’re taking too has a voice that doesn’t fit his or her gender, until you realize that it is your character who is speaking.
• Magic Wand: These items have to be equipped as one would a weapon, can be used by any class, and each can cast a specific spell a limited number of times. Different types of wands cast different spells, of different intensity. For example, in VI, basic Wands cast 1st level spells, Fairy Wands look like branches and cast 2nd Level spells, the Alicorn Wands are made from unicorn horn and cast Level 5 spells, an Arcane Wands are tipped with a cockatrice egg and can cast Level 6 spells, and finally, Mystic Wands, made from a dragon’s claw, can cast the most potent spells.
• Money Multiplier: Some hirelings - the Banker, Factor, and Pirate - increase the amount of Gold you find; the Banker is the best, increasing the amount by 20% in exchange for 1,000 Gold up front and 10% of the total profit.
• Morality Meter: In these games you have a Reputation Score, which can vary from Notorious to Saintly. Doing good deeds (like donating to temples and doing certain quests) can increase it, while evil actions (like killing civilians or the town guard) decrease it.
• Obviously Evil: Kreegan. Pretty easy to see why residents of Enroth think they’re demons.
• Our Demons Are Different: The Kreegan are not truly demons (more like Scary Dogmatic Aliens that look like demons) and have been known to vary even within the series. In Heroes of Might and Magic we see Kreegans as stereotypical demons of Abrahamic mythology who establish towns and have human workers, slaves and collaborators and even taverns, monuments to Satanic deities and medieval technology. They like living in volcanic areas purely for comfort and prefer to raise volcanoes with magic before expanding. In the RPG series they are almost the opposite, more like more organized versions of Xenomorphs. The initial spaceships make well-planned hard landings to the most fertile areas and start draining the soil nutrients to feed their population and hive queens and aggravate roaming creatures. Their initial technology is biotechnological with modern hydraulics on doors, and their expansion "cities" are Organic Technology hives like Colony Zod which also drain nutrients from the soil but have rudimentary force fields and elevators. There are zero human underlings living with them (though they do make use of human underlings, just not directly in their own settlements) and they attack anything that comes near them.
• Our Liches Are Different: Actually, the ones presented as enemies aren't much different at all (as far as RPGs go). However, in games where you can choose a Dark path, wizards in your party actually become liches after completing the second Promotion Quest, complete with the Soul Jars that liches tend to use. This grants a few immunities along with enhanced stats, but it actually does not grant them any special form of immortality. This may not even truly make them undead; if you're killed after becoming a lich, a spell that raises the dead revives you, as a lich again... Kind of weird, really….
• Palette Swap: Here's how monsters work: Each monster has three tiers that can best be described as lesser, medium, and greater (in terms of how powerful they are) and the only real physical difference is color. Of course, the three varieties of a monster tend to be found together. Boss Monsters are sometimes exceptions, but many of them are just Palette Swaps of common monsters.
  • In VII they didn't even swap palettes, they just re-tinted the already animated sprites. A fan-made patch later corrected this. If you use Hardware Accelerated 3D video setting, they don't appear to be of different colors. But if you change the video setting to Software 3D, the sprites are recolored much more realistically.
  • Bosses usually have little physical difference than the tier 3 version of the respective monster. For example, in VII, Zenofex looks no different than a standard Devil Captain.
• Patchwork Map: Downplayed. They tend to have a problem with altitude, where the difference between a snow capped mountain and a lush forest can be a few dozen steps. Averted otherwise - while the transitions may seem to be brutal (for example the green fields of Alvar vs. Ironsand Desert in VIII), the neighboring zones are separated by 5 days of walk.
• Pig in a Poke: You can pull this scam on a merchant with Wands. These items are worth a lot of gold, but the number of charges does not effect the price. So you could use a Wand until it has one charge left, then sell it for full price. So if you’re ever in the mood for revenge against those greedy merchants trying to bilk you...
• Pyrrhic Victory: The world of Enroth is destroyed in Heroes of Might and Magic, making the heroes’ efforts in games VI through VIII nearly pointless, although later games in the Heroes series shows that a large number of citizens were able to evacuate. This goes for the Kreegan too, who suffered far more casualties and loss of their leader.
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: The 3D games in this franchise are notorious for it. Somewhat lampshaded in-game, as some item descriptions for a lot of the uglier equipment tends how awful it looks.
• Riddle for the Ages: Exactly what Angels (who appear in VII, and many games of the Heroes franchise) are. The Devils who appear in 6 and 7 are eventually revealed to be the Kreegan (alien invaders who resemble devils) but that does pose the question of what Angels are or where they came from; lore-wise, they just seemed to show up to aid the armies loyal to King Roland and most in-game do not talk much. The developers are actually split on this, sort of. Designer Gregory Fulton suggested they might be androids (like lesser versions of Corak) built by the Ancients to fight the Kreegan, and it was heavily implied that in Heroes IV, they orchestrated the mass evacuation of Enroth through the Beta Station, indicating they at least knew how the Ancients’ technology worked. Van Kannegem himself, however, claims Angels were simply magical beings, and that the android theory is “another of Fulton's nonsense", but did not offer any other explanation. Regardless, the question of their origins remains open.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Naturally, this is key to surviving the Early Game Hell in most of the games, whether it’s to genuinely retreat or for a Defensive Feint Trap. There are even some NPCs who will tell you that there is no dishonor in fleeing a fight you cannot win. As far as mobs are concerned, enemies have three types of AI that determine when and if they will retreat. “Wimp” (retreat when reduced to 75% of full health), Normal (retreat when reduced to 50% of full health), Aggressive (at 50% of full health), and Suicidal (never retreats).
• Single-Precept Religion: There’s really not much to the Path of Light or the Path of Dark. Both have clerics, the first is (usually) good and doesn’t like undead much, while the second is (usually) evil and likes undead. That’s it. Ironically, the villainous Religions of Evil you oppose have more depth.
• Soul Jar: Trope Namer. Dark-aligned wizards (including yours, if you take the Path of Dark) use them to become Liches.
• Too Awesome to Use:
  • Some scrolls are like this. With some small exceptions, there is no shop, monster drop or chest that guarantees the access to certain scrolls. Consequently, you will save the best scrolls with the spells you can't get any other way until you really need them, and weaker scrolls will be sold as Vendor Trash.
  • More powerful magic wands are like this. Better magic wands with stronger spells. While VII and VIII have a spell you can use to recharge them, it has the drawback of reducing the number of charges every time it is used, unless you are a Grandmaster of Water Magic at level at least 20. Therefore you’ll be hesitant to use them.
• Trauma Inn: Downplayed. Resting at an inn restores HP and SP while curing minor conditions like Afraid and Paralyzed, but not more serious conditions like Poison and Disease.
• Useless Useful Spell: Magic of the schools of Self can be extremely important when it comes to patching your team with healing magic like ** Power Cure or Resurrection, but the offensive spells of these schools are almost useless. The strongest monsters seem almost immune to Mind Magic, so trying to Charm or Stun a Minotaur or Behemoth is a waste of time and MP.
  • True with most low-level combat spells. Flame Arrow and Magic Arrow will be cast aside quickly, as low-level spells like this do not scale with level. Sparks, however, Averts this because of the damage scaling plus their total number raising for higher mastery. It remains a good spell from the start until the very end of the game that can be cast cheaply and with low recovery time.
• Vendor Trash:
  • Gems. They are very valuable, take very little space in your inventory and they cannot be enchanted, so the sole reason for their existence is to be sold for a quick buck.
  • Some Rings and Amulets don't have any enchantment and don't provide any bonuses. Unlike gems however, you can opt for enchanting them yourself instead of selling them.
  • Spell books will be also relegated to this if you don't have anyone who can learn the spell during the game or towards the end of the game when your party knows most of the available spells. They give you even more money than gems, albeit they are slightly bigger.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: The Dark Magic spell Armageddon will do 50 points of damage to everything on the current map, which means it kills peasants like flies, often seriously hurting your reputation.
• Virtual Paper Doll: They had this sort of graphical interface for equipment in VI, VII, and VIII - it looked pretty awful.
• We Buy Anything: Downplayed. While the Blacksmiths, Armorsmiths, and Alchemist shops will not buy, fix, or identify objects outside their craft, General Stores will buy anything, at reduced payment.
• We Sell Everything: Mostly Averted. Each town has Weapon shops, Armor shops, and Magic shops, and they don’t sell outside their specialty, although the Magic shops might have some Armor other than the type you wear on your torso.
• Wild Card: There are some rare items you can find like a Deck of Fate or Genie Lamp that can give you bonuses to abilities, Skill Points, gold, or food. However, the bonuses they give seem random, along with how much of the bonus they give, and sometimes if you use them, they can turn the user to stone, kill him, or even Eradicate him. In truth, these effects are not random at all, but depend on dates. Each month grants a different type of boon, using them later in the month gives you more of that month's boon, and something bad happens if you use them on certain days of the week. Unfortunately, these things are so rare that you either need to combine trial and error with Save Scumming or use a cheat sheet to find out when to best use them.
• You Call That a Wound?: Non-combatant hirelings in these games are immune to the various perils that threaten your party, even though they are presumably standing right there next to you. For example, a foe’s Fireball won’t hurt them, falling (into water, lava, or off a mountain) won’t hurt them, and so on. The only danger they are in is likely the Dark spells you might cast to sacrifice them.