Inverse Law of Utility and Lethality: Difference between revisions

* This is acknowledged in the ''[[Thief]]'' games, in which gas arrows, which release silent knockout gas, are among the best weapons available in the game. While ''Thief'' guards do not distinguish between dead and unconscious bodies and raise the alarm either way, gas arrows require no sneaking-up-close, work even on alerted opponents, and cause a silent faint while ordinary arrows cause screaming and bloodstains. Some missions also forbid lethal force.

* The MMORPG ''[[City of Heroes]]'' allows you to "arrest" villains by beating them into a pulp, slashing them with swords, freezing them, blasting them with radiation, shooting them with gun and arrows, or plain setting them on fire. Amusingly, civilians are utterly immune to splash damage from these battles in the streets which makes one wonder just why they need to be protected in the first place.

* ''[[Touhou]]'' has [[Cute Ghost Girl|Yuyuko Saigyouji]], with the ability to kill ''anything'' simply by inviting it to its death (actually "control of death", but it mainly manifests this way). Perhaps the ultimate example of this trope, as it is absolutely lethal and almost completely useless, especially when compared to [[Superpower Lottery|other characters]], and she doesn't even use it that much (in fact when she first discovered she possessed the ability she ''[[Driven to Suicide|killed herself]]'' due to her fear of it). The one time in the games she even ''considers'' using it just supports this trope further, as it was against a character who couldn't die.

** In her own defense, Yuyuko seems to suspect that Mokou couldn't die from the start so her attempts were just confirmation. Her reaction to the other immortal Kaguya is understandably different as Kaguya is only technically human and also wields "manipulation of eternity."

** Likewise, in [[Knights of the Old Republic]] going darkside to use lots of Force Lightning and direct attack powers is pretty useless, given the existence of the neutral power [[Game Breaker|Force Wave]].

* Certain attacks in the ''[[Pokémon]]'' games will be this. Mostly, the one-hit KO moves, which will ignore defense and always take whatever it hits down in one hit, but only has an accuracy of 30% when an accuracy of 70% is considered low.

 

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