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{{trope}}
{{quote|''"I have no clue. I don't think it would be much fun honestly. Pun-Pun was never created with the intention of being played, and any game that allows a Pun-Pun character will quickly degenerate from there."''
The advantage/power/feat/character option equivalent of [[One Stat to Rule Them All]].
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As the trope name indicates, it is a godsend to players who enjoy [[Min-Maxing]].
These types of player abuses are most easily countered with [[Rule Zero]]
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{{examples}}
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* The Bottomless Appetite ability in ''[[Billy vs. SNAKEMAN]]'', especially when combined with TACOS (ally) and TACOs (items).
* Stamina from the Fitness pool in ''[[City of Heroes]]'' gives a permanent boost to a character's Endurance recovery rate, with the only drawback being that you have to take two other powers in the Fitness pool to unlock it. As a pool power, it can be taken by characters of any archetype, and so it came to be viewed as being a mandatory choice for any character to be viable. With the Issue 19 update, the Fitness pool has become inherent, granted to all characters automatically and freeing up the power choices that would otherwise be filled by Stamina and its prerequisites.
* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has the Talent system, which is a variant of the Alternate Advancement system from ''[[
** One example is playing a Priest. You have 3 specializations to choose from: Shadow (damage dealer, enemy debuffer), Holy (healer), and Discipline (a little of both, plus being a [[Barrier Warrior]]). Now, if you're going to be a Discipline Priest, it's almost guaranteed you'll take those talents that boost you "Power Word: Shield" (the "barrier" in the Discipline's [[Barrier Warrior]]). Also, if you want to do more than just cast shields on everybody, you might want to take those talents that buff the few offensive Holy spells you have. Unless your group is totally incompetent, you won't need to heal them all the time, right?
* In the early days of ''[[
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=== Tabletop Games ===
* ''[[Dungeons
** ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'': [http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0354.html "Wait, I'm confused--there are druids who DON'T take the Natural Spell feat??"]
** Likewise, anyone playing a Swordsage is going to pick up Adaptive Style at 1st level, as it lets you refresh (swap out) all of your maneuvers in the time it takes to recover ''one'' normally (The feat is considered good for most Martial Adepts, but key for Swordsage).
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** Tomb-Tainted Soul is the mandatory first-level feat for dread necromancers, because it means that their many negative-energy attacks can be used to infinitely heal themselves.
** Then there's the Embrace the Dark Chaos/Shun the Dark Chaos feat shuffle. To explain, Embrace the Dark Chaos replaces one of your feats with a vile feat, but forces you to be evil, damned when you die, and no-one like you (not to mention that vile feats generally suck). Shun the Dark Chaos means you can swap out that vile feat for a normal one. This allows one to replace all the sucky mandatory feats with any other feat. Where it really gets broken is that some races, like Elves, get weapon proficiency feats instead of just weapon proficiencies like everyone else that can then be shuffled away to get much better feats (in the case of Elves that's six extra feats).
** Dragon Magazine had the "Eidetic Caster" class archetype for wizards, which traded in the familiar class feature in return for ''not needing to use a spell book''. You still had to prepare spells every day, but you could now prepare every spell you knew from memory instead of needing spell books and special inks. That saves you tens of thousands of gold pieces over the lifespan of a character, as well as making you effectively impossible to imprison for longer than a day.
* In the [[D20 Modern]] sourcebook Cyberscape (a sourcebook about [[Cyborg|cybernetic implants]]), you get that little gem: An implant called Nasal Filter. It does [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]], filtering any airborne harmful chemicals or bacterias, giving a +6 to Fortitude saves (i.e. good extra protection) against airborne poisons and disease (including tear gas). [[But Wait! There's More!]] It's purchase DC is a mere 18 (meaning it can be purchased by any level one character) and it doesn't counts against implant limits (in the standard cybernetics rules, you can only have a limited number of implants, depending on how much constitution you have (that is to say how physically healthy you are)). Far from a gamebreaker in a game where gas masks can be readily bought from the Internet, but still an implant you have no legitimate reason not to take, just in case.
* Combat Reflexes in ''[[GURPS]]''. A poster on RPG.net claimed every player in his group took it and renamed it "Don't Suck". It [[Point Buy|costs 15]] to give +1 to dodge, parry, and block, then a pile of minor effects. Enhanced Dodge ''alone'' (+1 to dodge) costs 15 points. Puzzle that out. By [[Word of God|Word of Kromm]], it is intentionally under-priced to help lower-point characters [http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=739090&postcount=5 "not die all the time."]
** The ability to assemble advantages by modifying pre-existing ones makes inventing these an amusement for some. [http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.php?p=239055&postcount=216 M.U.N.C.H.K.I.N.] is one classic (though not actually legal) example. [[Game Master
* ''[[BESM]]'' has the same thing with Extra Actions. A single extra action essentially doubles your combat prowess (making two attacks instead of one), a second is tripling your ability, etc. Most GMs either ban the ability completely or limit it to speedster-type characters.
* Earlier versions of the merit Silver Resistance in ''[[Werewolf: The Apocalypse]]''.
** Similarly, Fair Glabro. Glabro Form is one of the five werewolf shapes, and while it typically boosts your Strength and Stamina, it leaves you looking like Lawrence Talbot under the full moon. That is, unless you take this two-point Merit that merely leaves you looking like a very hirsute bodybuilder.
*** Of course, you have to balance that against the fact that ''Werewolf'' was never heavy on the sorts of situations where looking weird would actually be a problem.
* In 4th edition ''[[Dungeons
** To clarify for those who haven't played it, player modifiers only automatically scale at +1 every two levels while monster modifiers scale at +1 per level meaning that you needed to come up with +15 in modifiers over 30 levels through feats, magic items, ability score increases, and tactics just to keep up. The game comes prebuilt to require this minmaxing and tells you the basics of how to do it.
** The Essentials supplement line added variant versions that also give specific secondary benefits based on the type of weapon (or magical implement) they're taken for, in order to add a little more consequence to weapon type as well as make the feat do more than just dully ratchet up your attack roll bonus.
* Though the specific rule has since been removed, the original ''[[The Legend of Zelda|Zelda d20]]'' rules included the feat "Attunement", which bonded the character with any creature with intelligence of at least 3, and provided bonuses that varied based on what creature it was. Attuning a character with a fairy provided a +1 bonus to all attack rolls (which beats out weapon focus, since the latter only applies to one kind of weapon) and a +2 bonus to Reflex saves (identical to the bonus given by the feat "Lightning Reflexes"), essentially giving the character two feats for the price of one. In addition, faeries had the ability to cast ''Cure serious wounds'' once per day as a 5th level caster. There was, however, the disadvantage that the player had to be within
** Not to mention the fact that Fairies are known to never shut up. [[Most Annoying Sound|"Hey, Listen!"]].
* In ''[[Legend of the Five Rings]]'', there both Elemental Blessing and Enlightenment reduce the cost of increasing your traits, making them more than pay for themselves [[Magikarp Power|in the long run.]] It's not even that long of a wait if you spend your points right.
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* In ''[[Los Angeles 2035]]'', two levels of Aikido are almost mandatory for every character. With those two levels, you have enough to buy the Reaction technique, giving you one free defensive action per turn. In a game here you gain actions as a result of your initiative roll, which is remade every turn, and need to spend one of your action to dodge or parry once, one extra defense each turn is a really good ability.
* One ''[[Exalted]]'' merit, with a name like Brutal Attack, allowed you to use Strength instead of Dexterity for attack rolls. This was a must-have for anyone who intended to engage the enemy in close combat, for a simple reason. Until the sourcebook containing merits and flaws came along, Dexterity was [[One Stat to Rule Them All]] and Strength was meh. As a result, there were a lot of cheap ways to increase your Strength, not so many for Dexterity. Especially absurd for Lunars, who could just take a tyrant lizard spirit shape and access, from character creation, Strength 14 in a system where 5 is defined as "peak human" strength.
=== Turn-Based Strategy ===
* In ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics]]'', there's the Archer class's Support Ability, Concentration, with which you never miss in physical and some magical attacks. Then there's the Samurai class's Blade Grasp Reaction Ability, which ensures that your units will rarely get physically hit ever again.
** And then there's the Calculator skillset, which lets you cast nearly any spell instantly, at infinite range, at 0 MP cost, essentially turning the character you give it to a [[Person of Mass Destruction]]. The Calculator has the shortcoming of its spell targeting being very different from any other class, with the result that the only way to hit the intended target(s) might also put some (or in extreme cases, all) of your own party members in the line of fire. Fortunately, that flaw can very easily be turned in an asset by spamming Holy (a strong spell that no enemy is immune to) and equipping your party members with items that absorb Holy. Once that's done, it's a ''good'' thing if your Calculator hits himself and/or an ally with his spell, because they'll be healed by it. The sheer amount of math required to use this effectively is easily bypassed by setting a calculator to be computer controlled, as the AI uses this class surprisingly well considering the lack of enemy Calculators.
** ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics Advance]]'' also has Concentrate, here increasing the accuracy of physical attacks by a flat 50% and status effects by 20% (20 and 50 of 100, not of base accuracy). This includes [[Instant Kill]] moves whose only weakness was a low natural accuracy. Less celebrated but still potent is focusing on classes with a large speed growth, since the game's initiative system allows sufficiently fast characters to get multiple turns.
** ''[[Final Fantasy Tactics A2|A2]]'' [[
* SP Regen in ''[[Super Robot Wars Original Generation]]''. [[Call a Hit Point a Smeerp|SP]], the SRW series equivalent of [[Mana]], is the most limited resource in the games and the hardest to replenish. In most games, you must equip a consumable item at the expense of mech parts or use very expensive support spells. SP Regen gives 10 SP per turn and many characters get very useful spells that only cost 10-15 SP.
** Ditto Attacker. Giving a 1.2x multiplier to damage dealt when above a certain morale threshold makes it mandatory for any boss-slayer and arguably just any unit in general. Attacker is meant to make up for the lack among the Original Generation cast of abilities like Mazin Power which do the same thing, but it just translates into everyone getting the skill instead of it being someone's signature trait.
** SRW Alpha 3 and Z took the less minmax-friendly route of making SP Regen an inherent skill available only to a select few pilots such as [[Turn
== Disadvantages ==
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* High elves in ''[[The Elder Scrolls|Daggerfall]]'' are immune to paralysis. The player can make a custom class with a critical weakness to paralysis, which allows the selection of more advantageous options, and will never trigger because the immunity takes priority over the critical weakness.
** Worse than that. Your custom class can have crippling weaknesses to virtually everything, and then just ignore them by buying immunity to all magic.
** Fixed in the ''Daggerfall Unity'' recreation. Purchasing a weakness to something a race is immune to reduces their immunity to a resistance.
=== Tabletop Games ===
* Flaws in ''[[Dungeons
** This applies to flaws in pretty much any system where they raise their ugly head. In ''oWoD'' games and ''GURPS'' you can almost always pick a bunch of minor disadvantages that will never ever hinder you in actual play. In worse cases, these disadvantages actually give you justifications for being an asshole.
** ''[[GURPS]]'' does price its advantages higher than the point value of the opposite-number disadvantage, though, in an attempt to mitigate this (ie. to pile up on points from disadvantages you generally have to take severe ones.)
*** GURPS also forbids taking an advantage and its corresponding disadvantage.
*** In addition, a disadvantage can be taken only if it would actually come up in normal play. Taking 'Phobia: Fear of Oceans' if you were doing a game set on the planet [[Dune|Arrakis]], for example, would be worth zero points.
** The ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' games have a flaw system that averts this; you get no extra points at character creation for taking the flaw, the only way your flaw gives you EXP is if it actually affects you in a completely negative way ''in play''.
** ''[[Deadlands]]'' did the same thing: Hindrances, as they were called, must come up in play to give you an advantage, though some of them were hysterically fun (like the one where your character [[Genre Savvy|knows he's in a pen-and-paper RPG]] and is [[Medium Awareness|paranoid about his "character sheet" burning up in a fire]].)
** Dragon Magazine had some of the best 3.5 flaws for this trope. One of them was called "No Familiar," for Sorcerers and Wizards, which was the same as a free feat with no drawbacks, since nobody ever used the familiar anyway (a weak creature that caused you to lose XP if it was killed.) If you actually did want your familiar for some reason, there was a feat that granted you a one with abilities based on your caster level instead of your class level, so if you were going into a Prestige class, this flaw-feat combo amounted to a free net advantage.
** ''[[D20 Modern]]'' has the "Sponsored" enchantment that reduces the cost of magic armor by 2 in exchange for being covered in logos. If for some reason paint doesn't work, there's a second property that lets armor look like normal clothing while still protecting as armor and it increases cost by only 1.
* Abstinent (Tobacco) in ''Aces And Eights: Shattered Frontier''. Free points, greater life expectancy, plus some money saved on top of it.
* Depending on the game, a min-maxer in some ''[[Old World of Darkness]]'' games could get points for some truly pathetic flaws. Do you wear glasses and have a mild caffeine addiction? That could be leveraged into two points in a game where new characters have only 15 discretionary ones to spend. A real munchkin could go so far as to buy shatter-resistant lenses, carry a back-up pair, and then have a small supply of caffeine pills on hand just in case the [[Story Teller]] ever tried to put the character at a disadvantage. Such lame flaws tended to get rejected by the GM, of course, but they were there in the rules as written.
* Despite the game's nature of having deadly, deadly disadvantages, ''[[Legend of the Five Rings]]'' is unique in that many of the disadvantages can simply never come up. A Caster can take Elemental Imbalance at maximum ranks for up to 8 free points, and all they have to do is simply never cast from that element which would otherwise be available to them. A Fire Shugenja giving up the ability to cast Earth spells doesn't lose much. Doubt gives several points, at the expense of being slightly worse at a skill you never use. Ascetic is similarly a good choice for characters who don't rely on equipment.
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*** It notably gives exactly the number of points needed for the Unflappability talent, which keeps you from panicking when the effects of [[Weirdness Magnet]] turn up.
** There is nothing technically illegal about taking the "emergencies only" modifier for a discount on advantages like Hard to Kill, which are by definition emergency powers anyway. In many cases it may be a good idea for combat powers in general, assuming that combat in your setting is, in general, life-threatening. A case can also be made for taking a temporary Bloodlust disadvantage for emergency combat powers that will only come up in lethal-force situations anyway.
*** Actually, Hard to Kill also has non-emergency uses, such as making your character more likely to not die from illness or critical failures during medical treatment.
* Averted for plot-related disadvantages in ''[[Mutants and Masterminds]]'', called "Complications". They only yield their benefit (free Hero Points) when and if they disadvantage your character in some way.
* "SINner" in the new version of ''[[Shadowrun]]''. You have a SIN, an ID number (basically an American Social Security number) that allows the government to track everything you do with it. The catch? There is ''nothing'' preventing you from purchasing and using fake SIN cards (and indeed, one of the sample characters has this combo!). Five free points and legitimacy as a citizen. Not a bad catch.
** There is actually a disadvantage -- for as long as you have a legitimate SIN in the system your real biometric data (fingerprints, DNA, etc.) are also in the system, meaning you have to be very careful not to leave behind physical evidence at crime scenes. SINless people riding the fake SIN train don't have this problem because they effectively can be DNA-matched only ''after'' they've already been arrested.<ref>It doesn't really matter how many names you have for Crime-Scene Fingerprint Match #XYZ if the address for all of them is "1060 West Addison" or equivalent, but a legitimate SIN has to use your real address.</ref>
** The alternative -- hacking your real SIN registry to change your biometric data -- is also non-feasible, because biometric identity verification is routine in many areas of 'civilized' daily life and an inability to use a fingerprint scanner or a retinal ID during your 'civilian' life would render you incapable of ''having'' one unless it was in some SINless zero-zone such as the Redmond Barrens anyway.
* In 5th edition ''[[The Dark Eye]]'', Principles: Loyalty is a disadvantage worth 20 points, which means it gives the same number of points as missing a hand. Even if the character has to be loyal to more than party members, Obligation to the same target (10-30 points, depending on how powerful and disruptive to life it is) can be stacked with minimal extra penalty. Half the professions (premade selections that can be picked to speed up the otherwise slow [[Point Buy]] based character creation) in the ''Aventuria Companion'' splat outright have the combo.
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''...I said a tip, top,
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