No Item Use for You

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An ability or a situation that prevents the use of items.

In multiplayer games, sometimes "Stop Having Fun!" Guys will demand this to lessen luck, or scrubs will demand this to stop people from "being cheap with them", but this trope is only in effect if it's not an option, forced upon the player(s) by the actual game.

See also: No-Gear Level and Mooks Ate My Equipment. In a world where superpowers come from equipment, a Power Nullifier has the same effect.

Examples of No Item Use for You include:

Anime and Manga

  • Bleach "The New Captain Shusuke Amagai" anime arc: in episode #187, the Big Bad Captain Amagai reveals that his bakoto can neutralize the powers of Soul Reaper zanpakutos, thus preventing them from being used against him.
  • In Gakuen Alice, the main character, Mikan, has this as her Alice. She can disable all other Alice when she wants.

Card Games

  • A number of cards in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Card Game do this: Jinzo, Royal Decree, Prohibition and Naturia Bamboo Shoot, just to name a few.

Tabletop Games

  • Dungeons and Dragons: in 1st and 2nd Edition the Wand of Negation could prevent magic items from using their spells and spell-like functions.

Video Games

  • Pokémon: the moves Embargo and Magic Room for any items and Heal Block for any healing items, and the ability Unnerve for held Berries.
    • Several more "competitive" battle environments disallow the use of any items on your Pokémon, with the only assistance allowed being held items. This included all battles against other players until Pokémon Black and White, which introduced a "Wonder Launcher" option to include items in battle.
  • The White Seal floors in Dark Cloud 2 do this for healing items.
  • In Final Fantasy XII, the climb up the Pharos tower requires you to make a sacrifice before proceeding up the second section (which is five floors and one Boss Battle). One of the sacrifices you can choose is to give up your Items command.
  • In Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (the one by Criterion Games), the Racers can activate a Jammer weapon that not only prevents Cops within the radius of the Jammer's effect from using any weapons, but also makes the minimap disappear for Cops, reveals any Roadblocks called in beforehand and causes any Spike Strips deployed beforehand (by Cops, of course) to disappear.
  • In Metal Gear Solid, your weapons are de-activated when you get into the nuclear warheads store.
  • In Final Fantasy VII, one of the random effects that can be activated while you're fighting in the Golden Saucer Arena is the deactivation of your Item-command.
  • In Raidou Kuzunoha VS King Abaddon, one possible bad result of the Luck Roulettes is not being able to use items.
  • In Super Mario RPG, Bowyer shoots arrows to disable buttons on your controller, thus preventing Mario from either attacking, casting spells or using items. Later, midway through the battle with Croco in Moleville Mines, he can remove the ability to use any items.
  • In Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, the Boos in Bowser's castle can steal command blocks from the brothers during a battle. Depending on which block is stolen, the brothers can't jump, use their hammers or use their hand powers for the next turn.
    • The same happens during the battles with Popple.
  • In many Roguelikes, if an equipped item (a wielded weapon or worn piece of armor/jewelry) is cursed then it can't be removed. While the equipped cursed item can still be used like normal, this prevents the player from swapping in a different piece of equipment of the same type. Some games go further and take equipment layers into account: in Nethack if you're wearing cursed gloves then you'll be unable to change which rings you're wearing on your hands, since you can't take off your gloves to get at your bare fingers.
  • The Arenas in most games of the Tales (series) prohibit item use.
    • Equipping the Barbatos Ring in Tales of Vesperia or using a piece of equipment with the "Barbatosian" quality in Tales of Graces also prevents you from using items. They're named after the infamous Barbatos Goetia, who really doesn't like it when you use items while fighting him.
  • In most The Legend of Zelda games, there are items that cannot be used in all places. The zenith of the trope occurs in Spirit Tracks, where item usage as a whole is disabled during the very last fight of the Take 'Em All On! minigame.
  • Azure Dreams: Anorexia ability prevent monsters from eating consumables (i.e., the kind that heals HP or cures status ailments). They are mildly Goddamned Bats when they appear as enemies, and completely useless when they are your allies.
  • Particularly Egregious example in Heroes of Might and Magic IV: if a monster or character has protection from magic, they will also be unable to drink potions. So the choice is between brutally mauled by magic and unable to heal, or brutally mauled by fangs/claws/fists/whatever and unable to heal.
  • During one dungeon in Shadow Hearts, Yuri and Zhouzen are forced to split off from Alice and Margarete and have their ability to use items confiscated (hopefully you've leveled Zhouzen enough so that he's learned his healing spell). Alice and Margarete, meanwhile, have their skills sealed. Later, Yuri and Zhouzen have their skills sealed off, but don't get the ability to use items back until they get out of the dungeon. This isn't a complete case, though, since you can still use items outside of battle (though the game pretends otherwise).
  • Team Fortress 2's Medieval Mode takes away the ranged weapons of all but two classes (Sniper and Medic with the Huntsman and Crusader's Crossbow respectively) and forces everyone to fight with melee weapons. Stick grenades and car batteries are still allowed in though.
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