Curses (呪い) are hexes that afflict the target with a wide variety of potent effects. Some curses are permanently set upon certain items as well: see Cursed Equipment for a list. These items must be removed in a Church before the bearer can equip anything else, but the curses chanted in battle can be removed with the Sheen spell.

Appearances

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride

Curses have several debilitating effects, and only characters with high Luck can reliably avoid them. The potential damnation are:

  • Reducing HP by 1 for every four steps.
  • Reducing MP by 1 for every four steps.
  • Randomly becoming stunned during battle.
  • Randomly causing spells and skills to fail during battle.
  • Forcing a character to randomly attack an ally.

Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King

Curses are cast by undead and demonic monsters, which force characters to lose a turn. The Hero is immune to all curses, save by one cast by the bonus boss in the post-game. Any curse-afflicting attacks “fizzle out” before they can reach the Hero, and he can use cursed equipment without penalty.

Enemies who can curse the party include Mummy boy, Blood mummy, Lesser demon,Demon thunderer, Hellstalker, Hipster, Swingin' hipster, Dark minister, and any enemy capable of using Cursed Mist or Cursed Verse.

Dragon Quest X

Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

Possible effects include:

  • Halving the maximum HP of a character for the battle.
  • Halving the maximum MP of a character for the battle.
  • Forcing the character to succumb to instant death with a high probability within a random number of turns.

Note that all curses have a chance each turn of inflicting an effect similar to paralysis on the afflicted party member.