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{{trope}}
{{quote|''In series that are focused on combat and fighting, the more combat-oriented a power is, the less useful it will be both in combat and out of it. And the more destructive a power is, the less useful it will be for anything.''}}
So, [[What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?]]? It's only useful in a [[Plot Tailored to
Okay, how about [[Heroes Prefer Swords|swords]]? Being a super cool swordsman is better than a wimpy [[White Mage]]. Except, if you hit anyone, you're likely to cause massive bleeding, and so unarmed opponents can pull [[Never Bring a Knife
The same goes for [[Guns Are Worthless|guns]]: if you aren't a graduate from the [[Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy]], then you need [[Improbable Aiming Skills]] or to use [[Trick Arrow
The same goes for skills like explosives, martial arts, and other martial [[Chekhov's Skill|Chekhovs Skills]].
You've just run into the
But [[Friend to All Living Things|the guy who can talk to squirrels]] can get [[
In [[Tabletop Games]], where the violence part is satisfyingly effective, this can be described as [[Munchkin|characters who overspecialize in combat]] over social interaction hitting a brick wall when they can't hack and slash past an obstacle. These "wimpy" social characters can, if (role) played well, accomplish amazing things even if they aren't combat monsters. (Example: A Fighter can kill [[The Dragon]] in [[Combat
Often, this phenomenon will go completely unnoticed inside a show or game, becoming at most the subject of a [[Plot Tailored to
{{examples}}
== [[Anime]]/[[Manga]] ==
* Kouhei from ''[[
* Orihime from ''[[Bleach]]'' has a nearly useless offensive power, but is probably the ultimate support figure; rather than just healing wounds, she "rejects" them (i.e., turns back time in a small area and makes it so that the wounds never happened). She can also create a near-impenetrable wall.
** On the other side of the trope, she has a projectile that can cut anything in half, but constantly misfires due to an unwillingness to harm. However she's also confidently stated that she can 'reject' any and EVERY event on a target, until they simply cease to exist. She's also raised the dead, and could probably even reverse the hollowfication process if she tried.
** Another facet of her power is explored when she and Ichigo search for Rukia throughout the Soul Society after the battles have ended - She has her Rikka search for her, too, showing that she not only has the rejection powers, she also controls six faeries that can run certain errands for her.
* Sailor Uranus in [[Sailor Moon]] gets a nifty mythology trinket courtesy of a magic sword. As you might expect from a television show, the amount it's used by an owner who has less issues with lethal force is surprisingly low versus a rather effective but generic magic attack.
* Yami Yugi on ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh!]]''. [[Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Abridged Series
* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' manga: Setsuna's concern over [[Good Is Dumb|her weakening skills as a warrior]] turn to a concern over her lack of any ''other'' skills, and she imagines herself having to work a part-time job at a convenience store to support her girlfriend. Distracted by thoughts of failures, she then slices a giant metal ball that had been flying at Konoka [[Absurdly Sharp Blade|clean in half]] [[Offhand Backhand|without even noticing.]]
** Later on, Chachamaru comments that she was concerned that she wouldn't have a chance to use her artifact because of this law. Said artifact is a {{spoiler|Kill Sat which despite being shaped [[Cute Kitten|like a cat]] is more than powerful enough to take out an [[Eldritch Abomination]].}}
* Yajirobe of ''[[
* This mostly doesn't come into play in ''[[Darker
* Ten Ten from ''[[Naruto]]'' is an example of this. In a world of ninja, magic fireballs, demons and [[God Mode]] eye techniques, Ten Ten uses normal weapons at her disposal. And because of this she is practically useless, which is jarring as any one of her weapons could end a battle real quick, as it's been shown countless times that no matter how strong a enemy is they usually have to dodge a kunai flying at their face.
* [[
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* The ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' had a rather [[Egregious]] mix of this and [[When All You Have Is a Hammer]] when they made Psylocke, one of their [[Psychic Powers|team telepaths]], over into an Asian [[Action Girl]]. She gained kung-fu, [[Le Parkour]], and the ability to focus her telepathy into a 'psi-blade,' which would instantly short-circuit the nervous system of anyone she stabbed with it, resulting in incapacitation or, [[Mooks|in rare cases]], death. Unfortunately, the blade became pretty much the entirety of her heroic repertoire shortly thereafter. Combined with the Inverse Law, it made the poor girl look like the weak link in the X-Chain, and it took [[New Powers
** This trope made considerable angst-fodder for Havok, since unlike his teammates his power couldn't be used for anything but lethal purpose. Any shot of his plasma either incinerates or, equally useless, is completely deflected.
* [[DC Comics
* Like Wheeler below, the ''[[Fantastic Four (Comic Book)|Fantastic Four]]'s'' Human Torch has a power whose most obvious offensive use is too gruesome. He's only allowed to burn objects, never people (though he's been known to bluff [[Mook
** Interestingly, impressionable kids are a problem for Johnny ''in-story'' too. He's been driven to [[Ten
** Villains with flame powers are a little less constrained, especially in recent years. The classic [[Flash]] villain Heat Wave is burning people alive these days.
* Inverted in the original ''[[Wanted]]'' comic: the protagonist is The Killer; his ''only'' superpower is being unnaturally good at dealing death. While this would be unworkable in an ongoing comic (''[[Punisher]]'' aside), it's mighty good in a miniseries.
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== Fan Works ==
* Paul exemplifies this trope in ''[[
** The others could potentially be pretty lethal themselves, but their magic is far more applicable to everyday use.
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== [[Film]] ==
* ''[[Mystery Men]]'' has a lot of minor powers used this way to great effect as their league of <s>C</s> <s>D</s> <s>E</s> Q-list heroes foil the bad guys. The people with more traditional powers, not so much.
* In the ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (
** Not entirely true. Sometimes he manages to land incapacitating but shallow cuts. Still, nothing lethal (or even fight ending).
* The ''[[Harry Potter]]'' movies seemed to employ this trope as well. While in the books, spells can have many physical effects on their targets, in the movies, nearly all spells are designed to knock your opponent back a few feet. Even the ones that weren't.
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** There were also cases where Watson's medical expertise became significant, since although Holmes knows everything there's to know about pathology, and so on, he doesn't always know common habits or working methods of professional doctors, which may be clues.
** In fact, the few stories narrated by Holmes himself, with Watson absent, are those that Watson would have solved first as a doctor.
*** May be a [[Shout
* Played with in ''[[
** It's not as stupid as it sounds. Why? Because the trees from their homeworld range up to something like half a mile wide. That'd be some crazy thick bark.
*** Not stupid at all. Look at Therizinosaurus ("Scythe Lizard") with it's nasty set of foot-long sickle-shaped claws used for... eating leaves. They even look a bit like Hork-Bajir.
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* For elves in the ''[[The Halfblood Chronicles]]'', males usually have ''far'' more magical power than females, but as it turns out, weak females have a lot more ''control'', allowing them to do a wide variety of useful things by using very little magic to alter their surroundings, like plants (food/shelter), animals (taming/control), minds (rewriting memories), themselves (minor shapeshifting), and enemies (stopping hearts). Not as flashy as giant illusions, fireballs, earthquakes, and so forth, but it gets the job done.
** At one point it's raining. Very inconvenient. The men all agree that it's too dangerous and draining to try to alter the weather patterns, and so they must get wet. The women alter the fabric of their hats into makeshift umbrellas and snicker to each other.
* Like Kouhei below, Bink from ''[[
* A version of the fire example is mentioned in ''[[The Tough Guide to Fantasyland]]'' in reference to a frequent idea that the first thing your callow apprentice-magic user learns to do is light a candle through sheer concentration (and they are considered weak if this is the only thing they can do). The author sardonically notes that it's a good thing no one in the real world has this "minor" power. Notably, no character is ever shown honing the ability so that they can ignite buildings and other people at will.
** But in the very first book of the ''Myth'' series by [[Robert Asprin]], Skeeve only gets the hang of lighting the candle just before his master (casually) mentions how handy it would be during burglaries.
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** [[Lampshaded]] by other characters who point out Harry's seeming preference for casting "Expelliarmus" all the time. Also note that by the end of final book, its ''plot importance'' in the series is quite large comparable to "Avada Kedavra".
*** One doesn't have to use Expelliarmus to win the wand, they just need to beat the person in a duel. Disarming counts as besting an opponent in a duel, but so would killing them, or even just knocking them out.
* In [[Brandon Sanderson]]'s ''[[
* [[The Dresden Files|Harry Dresden]] and his apprentice, {{spoiler|Molly Carpenter}}, have this going on with their respective focuses. Harry's very good at combat magic, which includes massive gouts of flame, wind, and force, and while he's got some skill with magical tinkering, he'll never be any good at subtle magics. {{spoiler|Molly}}, on the other hand, is incredibly skilled with mind magic and veils, meaning that {{spoiler|she's}} got a lot of non-combat potential... but somewhat lacking at working up the will to protect {{spoiler|herself}} in battle.
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
* Maya from ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'' has a particularly bad case of [[Bad Powers, Bad People]]: the ability to make everyone around her faint, then die. That said, she [[Subverted Trope|subverts]] this trope and uses the power quite frequently to great effect thanks to her brother helping "cure" those afflicted before they die. Once she could do it solo though, she almost took down the [[Joker Immunity|unbelievably resilient]] [[Magnificent Bastard]] Sylar. On the other hand, Sylar's power is the ability to intuitively understand how things work. That doesn't sound so amazing until Sylar quickly figures out he can use it to learn other people's superpowers, making him one of the most powerful people in the world.
** The show also developed the inverse law of utility and special effects cost. This is why you only see Nathan soar across the sky once, while Micah repeatedly took control of machines - much easier to shoot. Greg Grunberg (playing Matt Parkman) said his character had "''the power of leaning''", since that was the only thing he had to do to read minds. Not coincidentally, it saw plenty of use.
* In ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'' Willow (by herself) isn't a good fighter (or else she will snap if using magic to kill), but her ability at research and supportive magic is invaluable.
** That's probably a case of [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards]], actually.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* A ''[[Shadowrun]]'' Decker is incredibly useful whenever faced with a problematic computer system, but generally finds it hard to kill things without other tools. On the other hand, adepts and more militarily-focused characters are quite good at killing things, but will usually find said abilities less than useful when the prebuilt campaign assumes some non-combat personnel.
* ''[[
** And despite this status he would still have a 45% chance of failing at any Jeet Kune Do, and a 4% chance of screwing up bad enough to cause serious injury or death. Gotta love the Percentile System.
*** The actual skill percentage represents how good you are at that skill while under extreme duress. As in, other people are trying to kill you and the environment isn't being much more friendly. So that's a 55% chance to succeed in a very bad situation. When it comes to practice or formalized competitions, your effective skill is going to be much, much higher and can be performed very easily, meaning a 55% skill is extremely impressive.
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** [[Goddamned Bats|Treeborn Frog]]. It's a 100 ATK (and DEF) monster that sucks amazingly in its native theme (Frogs), but when you control no Spells or Traps (hence why he sucks with Frogs, they love their Wetlands) you get to bring him back from the dead. Especially useful when you run a Monarch Deck, where Monarchs need an easy piece of tribute fodder to allow them to fire off their effects.
** [http://yugioh.wikia.com/wiki/Emissary_from_Pandemonium Emissary from] [[Hell Hound|Pandemonium]], who embodies this trope by being a Level 7 Tuner Monster. Tuners, to say it simply, combine with one or more other monsters to form a Synchro Monster whose level EQUALS that of the combined monsters EXACTLY. Meaning that to summon a Level 8 Synchro Monster... yeah. However, by summoning him with ONE Tribute instead of two and halving his ATK and DEF, you drop him down to Level 5, which is a lot more usable.
** [[Mascot Mook|Winged Kuriboh]]. He's an adorable little fuzzball with low ATK and DEF, who will protect your Life Points during the turn that he bites the dust. However, he also happens to have TWO [[Super Mode
** Sasuke Samurai. He's from [[Ganbare Goemon|a Konami game]], and he's arguably the worst thing a guy on the defensive can run into short of [[This Is a Drill|Neo-Spacian Grand Mole]]
** Neo-Spacian Grand Mole, a 900 ATK monster (in a game where anything short of 1000 is arguably weak, hence most of the previous entries) with an uncanny effect. Whenever he battles something, both him and his opponent are returned to their owner's hand. This means that anything in your path is effectively null and void if you can keep getting your Grand Mole out to do battle with it. Bonus points (and usually an easy win) if you have a solid attacker on your field and are using Grand Mole to remove the only defending monster your opponent controls from said solid attacker's path (needless to say, this tactic has been run into the ground, and is the reason why you can only have ONE of Grand Mole in a given deck).
** Neko Mane King fits this trope to a T. With a combined ATK and DEF of '''''zero''''', you'd think it's completely useless... yet, if your opponent sends it to the Graveyard by any kind of card effect (destroying it on the field, discarding it from your hand, milling it off the top of your deck), their turn ends right then and there. Lucky Cat + Brick Wall = This.
** And then, of course, on the "Lethality" side of this scale, we have the infamous Blue-Eyes White Dragon, which serves no other purpose than to be pure, unbridled beatstick... especially if you upgrade to the [[Fusion Dance|Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon]], which is a fusion of ''three'' of these things whose firepower is only matched by 2 monsters in the whole game... one of whom, Master Dragon Knight, is basically (and literally) a further fusion of this monster and Black Luster Soldier (who, on his own, is basically Blue-Eyes White Dragon with a sword and shield). So yeah, Blue-Eyes basically goes from [[Hand Cannon|boom]] to [[BFG|bigger boom]] to [[Wave Motion Gun|even bigger boom]].
*** Brought to an unprecedented awesome when you find the series of supporter cards specifically MADE to back up the Blue Eyes. The theme deck that centers around the Blue Eyes is a prime example. Paladin of the White Dragon can be freely tributed at the time of its summoning to bring forth a FREE Blue Eyes White Dragon into battle, Kaibaman with the same effect with no strings attached, White stone of destruction to add a Blue eyes to your hand and with the setup, it can easily be a free trip to unloading all three on your side of the field as much as possible. Kaiba was also quick to make his signature combo the Ultimate dragon split which means that on direct attack, it can deal 13500 direct damage to any player, a one turn kill.
* Depending on "culture rating," the ''[[Ravenloft]]'' campaign setting allows some sixteenth and seventeenth century firearms to evoke a Gothic Horror atmosphere, but makes sure [[Guns Are Worthless]] and unreliable so that the [[Dungeons
* [[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]] has a wide variety of skills, from Libary Use and Credit Rating to Machine Gun and Pilot (plane). Guess which ones prove more useful.
** By and large, that is in keeping with how most Lovecraftian protagonists get by, although a dismaying number of them do end up dead or insane, so following in their footsteps may not be the best default.
* Newbie players of ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]'' probably think "Machine Empathy" is an awesome mutation to get. Veteran players ask for a spare character sheet so they can get started on their next character ahead of time.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Guards in the ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]'' series tend to raise the alarm upon seeing dead bodies or hearing gunshots. If they find a sleeping guard, they just wake him up. This makes the tranquilizer gun with built-in silencer the most useful weapon in the game.
** In ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 2'', this is true. In ''MGS3'' and ''MGS4'', guards that are knocked unconscious in any way (punched out, thrown to the ground and knocked out, or tranquilizer darts) will wake up and immediately call HQ to report that "He got me!" Every soldier in the area immediately goes into Caution mode, which makes sneaking harder.
*** Thus leading to the rarified precision shooting required to shoot out their radios... which generally works pretty well, until the game decides that it hasn't heard from a particular goon on schedule, and sends the area into Alert mode to figure out what happened.
*** At least in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 3'', it was still true. A [[Boom! Headshot!|headshot]] with either the tranquilizer gun or the pistol will instantly drop a soldier. But, should your aim be less than perfect, the tranquilizer will just take a moment longer to knock the guy out, while the pistol will cause him to raise an immediate alert. The smart play seems to be to tranquilize enemies from a distance, and then murder them in their sleep. Or, less gruesomely, leave the area before they wake up or dump them in a locker.
* 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."
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** 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.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* [[Lampshaded]] in ''[[Jump Leads]]'', where [[Diabolical Mastermind]] Donald Grey equips his mooks with non-lethal weapons.
{{quote|
* Inverted in the ''Magical Mina'' sub-series of ''[[Tsunami Channel]]''. Mina's sword magic and wind magic were designed for combat, [[Action Girl|and she enjoys using them that way]], but she'll also cheerfully use her sword magic to instantly slice an apple into many neat pieces, and her wind magic to dry her hair.
* In ''[[
* Actually taken advantage of in [https://web.archive.org/web/20120508122918/http://magellanverse.com/?p=2554 this] ''[[Magellan]]'' comic. During a [[Hero Academy|superpower combat exercise]], a firebreathing cadet gives the protagonist a warning shot. The protagonist's ally points out that since her blasts are liable to kill the [[Badass Normal]] protagonist, she can't actually use her powers for anything other than warning shots.
== Web Original ==
* The Freeze Ray of ''[[
* Painfully obvious in the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|idealism]] of ''[[The Descendants]]''. [[Anti-Villain|Vorpal]], a fan of [[Lewis Carroll]] whose power is ''precisely'' what you'd expect from someone who says "snicker-snack" when using them, only gets to use the power twice 'on-screen' so far (and not particularly successfully). Nightshade and Morganna have roughly similar issues. Zero is a lot less effective against humans than demons or inugami, since freezing people in a block of frozen oxygen apparently isn't fair. Chaos's non-lethal air concentration control gets much, much more mileage, as does Occult's wide variety of [[Barrier Warrior|shields]]. Kareem's astral sight seems like it'd be useless in a fight, as the man can not even see or exist on the physical plane like everyone else {{spoiler|until very recently}}, but is the default [[New Powers
* Tennyo of the [[Whateley Universe]] has some extremely powerful abilities, making her a [[Person of Mass Destruction]]. But she can't use those high-level abilities without risking killing innocent bystanders, turning the area into an irradiated disaster area, or ''ripping a hole in space-time''. Oops.
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*** It's never stated outright, but from what we see of their military conflicts, the real reason the Fire Nation wins its wars (Ba Sing Se aside) probably isn't the destructive power of firebending, but that they have the best technology in the world.
** Also, Azula was shown to use firebending as a rudimentary for of a rocket to achieve flight in a few episodes. Plus conceivable shooting lightning could help develop electric power initially, plus fire was the basis for the industrial revolution. The Fire Nation has been shown to be the most developed nation.
*** About that lightning thing, it has actually been shown to be true, in ''[[
** Also quite present within [[Fan Nickname|Ozai's Angels]] between Mai and Ty Lee. The former specializes in throwing implements while the latter is able to disable opponents by striking points on body. Even with her slightly [[Cloudcuckoolander]] personality, Ty Lee is widely considered much more effective, what with the fact that as of yet, Mai has never managed to actually strike skin, and yet has very little trouble when it comes to [[Knife Outline|harmlessly pinning down clothes]]. ([[Word of God|The Creators]] state that Mai doesn't want to actually kill people so she does this on purpose.)
** This trope is also present with Sokka. In the first two series, he hit a fair few people with his club and boomerang (which is bladed or not depending on what it hits). However, [[Inverse Law of Sharpness and Accuracy|he never managed to hit]] anyone with his knife or the sword.
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**** Sokka is more willing to kill than any of the other main characters, and he does so on several occasions - Combustion Man and the tanks he dropped to a [[Disney Villain Death]] in "The Northern Air Temple" come to mind. But he's not going to kill a pinned, helpless 14-year-old girl. It's not that kind of show.
* Wheeler from ''[[Captain Planet]]'' suffered from this trope pretty often. You'd think the ability to incinerate anything would come in useful when fighting [[Strawman Political|beings of pure, motiveless, and unadulterated evil]], but for some reason that just didn't take off on a kid's show.
* Watch ''[[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'' some time. Donny and Michelangelo seem to be the only ones allowed to actually hit anyone with their weapons [[Mecha
** But it's averted in the new movie: Although [[Bloodless Carnage|there's no blood or anything]], it's fairly clear that Leonardo, Raphael, and even April are hitting Foot Ninjas with their swords.
** Given that original comic books featured a lot more brutality. Having Turtles constantly be covered in scars, and having actually killing Foot with said weapons. And cutting off Saki's head.
** Curious example from the 80's cartoon; after a couple of seasons, parents complain about Michelangelo's nunchuks, cause kids supposedly started to imitate him (remember the toy nunchucks covered in foamy? ...well simply they just remove the cover and beat the plastic out of each other), so in later seasons the producers replace Mikey's weapon with a rope/grappling hook thing. Talking about something pretty lame.
*** The thing is, a grappling hook weapon can be pretty lethal (Manriki-gusari is based on it, I believe) if you consider choking and flinging it at a vulnerable spot. The real kicker is that the least harmful weapon to imitate, and most difficult to
* In the mid '90s ''[[X-Men]]'' cartoons, Wolverine was never allowed to slash anything that would bleed, while Jubilee could shoot fireworks at anyone. Gambit never threw his cards directly at people, instead throwing them nearby so the force of explosion would knock them down.
** Charging a card to explode and then handing it to someone who doesn't know your powers is just A-OK, though.
** In one episode of ''[[Wolverine and
* The first time Batman meets Scarecrow in [[Batman:
** Which actually makes sense, considering the Scarecow's MO.
* Another Batman example, in the [[Batman Beyond]] episode April Moon, Terry is up against three villains who fight with deadly prosthetic limbs: one [[Whip It Good|whips metal tentacles]] from his wrists, one can encase himself in [[Powered Armor|powered armour]] and one has [[Chainsaw Good|chainsaws on his elbows and knees]]. Guess which of the three goes down without landing a single hit on the bat. Granted, the placement of the chainsaws makes their use in combat awkward at
* ''[[Samurai Jack]]'' only uses his sword against robots and occasionally an enemy holding a sword.
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*** [[Sarcasm Mode|Because, seriously, who could have expected mud and snow]] ''[[Sarcasm Mode|in Russia?]]''
*** To be fair, German tanks were made for the conditions in Western Europe while Soviet tanks were made for travelling around in Russia. German tanks had narrow tracks and they sank down in the snow more than Russian tanks that had wide tracks. German tanks, while technically superior were put out of commission by minor things and had no spare parts available. Soviet tanks were inferior but had numbers and durability on their side.
** Justified in that the Russians were pressed for time, and so had to deploy them as soon as they could, regardless of their faults, and they did make a lot of improvements later when they weren't on the back foot. [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|''What is good for Russians, deadly for Germans''. Old Russian saying.
*** Similarly with the American Sherman tank and German tanks like the Panther. Military experts thought the Sherman wouldn't need more armor because tank on tank combat was not expected. If hit a Sherman would tend to catch on fire while Panthers had to be hit from the side to be destroyed because of their powerful frontal armor. Nevertheless there were tens of thousands of Shermans versus about 900 Panthers. The Pershing tank was an improvement.
** Germany's "supertanks." There was one on the drawing boards (the Monster) that would have fired shells that were ''themselves'' nearly the size of the Soviet tanks. One-hit insta-kill on nearly anything (including battleships, if you could somehow find a way to use tanks against battleships), sure, but the impracticality of such a weapon (and the stupendous amount of resources it would have consumed) should be obvious. The ones actually built ... the Maus series, for example ... were much smaller (though still huge), and correspondingly more useful, but in this case "more useful" mostly does not really reach the level of "actually useful".
* Nuclear weapons. Not one has been fired in war since 1945, and they mostly sit around gathering dust and quietly persuading other parties not to try to use theirs. Units whose primary function is to employ nuclear weapons generally sit out any conflict that actually brews up, and need to be protected at great effort. Conventional weapons, by contrast, are much less powerful... and are actually useful in a fight that falls short of [[World War III]].
** Ironically, as conventional wars between powers that both have nukes have not occurred since their introduction, they may be incredibly useful. The old saw about, 'the best weapon is the one that's never fired,' refers to a weapon which intimidates the opponent into not attacking. It's a little hard for anyone less [[Incredibly Lame Pun|MAD]] than [[Doctor Strangelove]] to consider them [[Awesome Yet Practical]], however. Pakistan and India did have [
*** To quote from [[Iron Man]] "They say the best weapon is one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only need to fire once", and so it was with nuclear weapons.
**** Well, twice.
***** [[Zombieland
*** [[Ad Hominem|Comic book movies]] are not a [[Appeal to Authority|widely recognized source]] for [
*** A bolt-from the blue attack was generally discounted. Their primary purpose was to deter a Soviet invasion of Western Europe. The perceived importance of tactical nuclear weapons is usually underestimated.
* Interestingly, the sport of boxing was initially made more dangerous by the addition of gloves. The cushioning made headshots a much more viable mode of attack for the striker as they no longer had to worry as much about damaging their hands.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Applied Phlebotinum]]
[[Category:Laws and Formulas]]
[[Category:Meta Concepts]]
[[Category:Magic and Powers]]
[[Category:
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