Non Combatant Immunity

When video games don't start you off armed, they equip the player before they meet an enemy who can kill them. This is reasonable, since no one wants to fight a battle they not only can't win, but can't even fight. However, it does make it obvious when you can expect your first fight, since if you see a pistol lying on the floor in front of a closed door, you know you'll have to use it. Also occurs at the end of a No-Gear Level segment. When you get your inventory back, you know it's because you'll have to start relying on it again.

Alternatively, you do meet enemies before you can fight them, but they can't actually kill you, even if try to let them.

Related to Suspicious Videogame Generosity. Falls off the bottom of the scale of the Sorting Algorithm of Evil and the Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness. When it's averted, it's usually a case of a No-Gear Level for your first level.

Examples of Non Combatant Immunity include:

• Half-Life: Just as everything goes to hell you find a crowbar on the floor, ready to help you fight through the beginning.
  • Although there are a few enemies first- 2 in glass tubes and a lone headcrab that spawns right in front of you. Luckily, it's fairly easy to dodge.
  • Averted in Half-Life 2. The guards start attacking you before you've reached Kleiner and been handed your crowbar, and can kill you if you hang around.
• Bioshock: Just after exiting the bathysphere you're able to "Find a crowbar or something".
• Fallout 3: You're handed a pistol on the same day your father escapes and the vault's guards are instructed to attack you on sight, assuming you promise you won't murder anyone with it.
• Subverted in Eternal Darkness. During the hubworld sections, the mansion is free of any enemies. However, to keep the players suspicious and tense, you not only pick up a weapon, but also several upgrades that make those weapons obsolete, just so you know the game could send enemies after you, enhancing the Nothing Is Scarier effect.
  • You do however counter a few enemies there towards the end.
• Averted in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, where you spend the first several levels completely weaponless and must flee in terror from the hordes of angry villagers trying to kill you.
• Singularity and Metro2033 both feature an extended sequence in which your weapons are taken away from you, and you must flee throughout the level from pursuing enemy troops.
• Dead Space: Although you meet enemies before being armed, they can't actually kill you.
  • Averted in Dead Space 2 where the enemies can gore you gloriously while you are still in your straight jacket.
• World of Warcraft: During the Death Knight starting quest, the quest that provides you with your first weapon comes just before a quest in which you must duel a failed initiate. Applies to the initiate too, as they're chained right next to an equipment rack, and you can't attack them 'til they're geared up.
• You don't actually fight any Covenant at the beginning of Halo: Combat Evolved until you get a weapon.
• PVP mode in Terraria. Both you and the other person need to be in PVP mode to kill each other.
• You can wander through the woods in pajamas for a while at the start of Breath of Fire 3. Enemies don't start spawning till you get changed out of pajamas and into proper armor, and a sword.
• The first three or four hours of Dragon Quest VII are infamous for the fact that they contain no combat, just walking back and forth between two towns and solving a puzzle.
• Subverted in Xenosaga Episode 1 when the Gnosis attack the Woglinde. If you get caught in a battle against a Gnosis before Shion can get her weapon, it will kill her in a single attack. The game actually makes it a challenge in this early area to distract or remove the Gnosis without fighting them.
• When you first enter the Forsaken Fortress in The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker, you lose your sword on the way there and you have nothing else in your inventory that you can use as a weapon. The whole fortress is played in stealth mode and being spotted gets you thrown into a flimsy jail instead of attacking you. Once you do get your sword back, you can effectively kill the mooks patrolling around but they will fight back as well.