Unusable Enemy Equipment: Difference between revisions

* ''[[The Chronicles of Riddick]]: Escape From Butcher Bay'' also does the DNA-gun thing. Enemy guards actually do drop their assault rifles when killed, but the rifle electrocutes you if you try to pick it up. Guards with pistols and shotguns can be freely liberated of their arms once downed, though.

** In ''Assault on Dark Athena'', the rifles are no longer DNA-encoded, which means when you find a merc you can take his weapon no matter what. However, the most commonly encountered enemy, the Ghost Drones, have their rifles surgically attached to their arms. Semi-averted in that you can use their guns while using their body as a meatshield, but this inhibits your ability to move.

** Which is odd, because Logan Grimnar, head of the Space <s>Vikings</s> Wolves is explicitly stated to use a Daemonic axe he looted from the corpse of a chaos champion, and mastered using only his willpower. Guess the rules don't apply to Chapter Masters.

*** The Space Wolves may as well have their motto be "Screw The Rules." Logan was looked upon as out of his damn mind even by his fellow Space Wolves when he decided to do it, before they realized "holy shit it WORKED."

** And then there's the Ork weapons, which only work for them because [[Clap Your Hands If You Believe|they actually shouldn't work for]]''[[Clap Your Hands If You Believe|anyone at all.]]''

** The Tau also got something for their Battlesuits and Stealthsuits as they have a fail safe system that will fry any human/ork who tries to steal the armor. One guardsman learned it the hard way.

*** And, at least in human case, it would be pointless anyway, as somebody openly using reverse-engineered alien equipment would piss off either Adeptus Mechanicus or Inquisition, or if less lucky both of 'em.

*** As in using it as an [[Improvised Weapon]] and blasting the enemy before dumping it off a bridge or a cliff or some sort of crushing. But salvaging enemy weapons as your own is pretty difficult for a human for any race. Ork weapons are explained above, Eldar weapons are psychically controlled even for something as simple as a Shuriken Catapult, Tyranid and Necron weapons are pretty self explanatory, this is Tau's way of handwaving why stealing their weapons don't work.

* In the ''[[Splinter Cell]]'' series, Sam Fisher, for whatever reason, can't use the guns of fallen enemies. For ammo and weapons, he must find them laying around by themselves. This becomes ridiculous in the Xbox version of ''Double Agent'', where at one point a choice made earlier in the game can net Sam a pistol carried by a guard... but it is impossible to take the pistols from any other guards!

** This was lampshaded at one point in ''Chaos Theory'', where Sam can find an email yelling at a [[Mook]] for ordering the wrong ammunition, that only Sam can use. By extension somewhat [[Justified Trope|justifying]] the trope, given that all the weapons shown are modeled on real weapons, very few of the enemies would carry ammunition for the weapons Sam uses. Also, no one in their right mind would trade a FN F2000 with suppressor and grenade launcher (specially designed for firing less-lethal rounds) for a terrorist's AK-47.

**** It was possible at one point to snipe an elite before he got into his wraith. You still couldn't drive it though. {{spoiler|Unless you hacked, also revealing it to have the same crosshair as the rocket launcher.}}

** In story the Elites will rather fight bare handed rather than used a loaded human weapon right next to them.

** ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' games: Since ''Morrowind'', you can access an enemy's inventory and take all of their equipment, including their weapons, armor and ammunition. You can even loot some of the arrows you shot at them! Some enemies, however, show equipment on their models that is not actually in-game equipment and therefore cannot be looted.

** Every single piece of enemy equipment in ''[[Titan Quest]]'' is a usable item. If they have a shiny weapon, you will get it. However, most pieces are far below normal quality.

*** And you get the Gale Boomerang and Ball and Chain from beating the two minibosses that use them.

** ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword|Skyward Sword]]'' plays with this trope a bit. In the fourth dungeon, Ancient Cistern, you obtain a whip which allows you to retrieve items from afar. Unfortunately, it can't temporarily snag weapons from enemies, instead only stealing Monster Horns (for upgrading your equipment) from certain Bokoblins. Later on, the boss of Ancient Cistern ({{spoiler|Koloktos}}) must be defeated by {{spoiler|disabling its limbs, which allows you to pick up one of its [[BFS|swords]] (which are able to ''smash through pillars'') and go buck wild on it. Unfortunately, you can't take the sword with you outside of the boss room.}}

* ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' has a notable quest where you need to collect weapons from specific monsters (which you could actually use, if you so wish), but as with all quest drops, the chance to get one is far lower than you'd expect. In fact, the chance of another weapon is higher.

** Related are the [[Twenty Bear Asses|boars that don't have livers]].

** If you cheat to get them, they will usually still work, the most notable one is the final bosses magic book in ''FE7'' which would let anyone use magic. Nils could actually do damage!

** This trope is justified with ''[[Fire Emblem]]'''s beast enemies. In these cases, the "weapons" are fangs, claws, or other parts of the beasts' anatomy.

* In ''Resistance: Fall of Man'' you can't get the fireball shooters used by Chimeran Titans when they die. Justified twice over, as said guns are as big as you are... and Titans die when their cooling units overload and explode, blowing them apart. It similarly justifies not being able to get the weapon Slipskulls use from their corpses by having it [[Arm Cannon|mounted onto their arm]] with metal bands. There's no obvious reason the Arc Cannon can't be recovered from Hardfang corpses, though—it's just not there when you try. If you look closely, they ''literally'' [[Everything Fades|vanish in a puff of smoke]]; no, there's no apparent reason why.

** In the game's [[New Game+]] mode, both the Slipskull weapons and the Arc Cannon are available to the player, alongside a couple of fancy new pieces of kit that you had no way of knowing existed. Of course, it might have been helpful to actually tell the player this at some point...

* A common staple in ''[[Nippon Ichi]]'' games, though considering everyone and their grandmother (sometimes coming up as a storypoint even) is portrayed as having [[Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?|Cthulhu-sacking]] prowess, it's generally accepted they simply annihilated the other person's equipment [[Everything Fades|along with the entirety of the enemy]]. Which doesn't explain how it comes back when you get them revived at the hospital, but there you go. If you see something you like, you must either steal it with a special item (it doesn't have to be used by a thief, but it's much harder otherwise) or capture the enemy and take the items away.

** The ''[[Disgaea]]'' games in particular have Geo Panels that can clone your characters - the clones are hostile and replicate the original ''exactly'', down to the equipment. It is impossible to steal their equipment even with the specialty items listed above, and only a weapon in the third iteration has the potential to knock only one of those items off the enemy when they do die to it; if you could freely steal equipment from the enemy, it would (much sooner than usual) [[Game Breaker|snap the game in half]].

* The ''[[Quest for Glory]]'' series was notorious for this trope. Even if you were equipped with only a dagger and leather armor, and you just killed dozens of enemies carrying scimitars, spears, maces, scale mail, shields, ball and chains, etc. they would invariably be too 'damaged' or 'worthless' for you to pick up, if the game even acknowledged their existence in the first place.

* ''Megaman Zero 4'' averted this. Zero's new weapon, the Z-Knuckle, is some kind of energized hand attachment which enables him to literally tear weapons off of enemies and use them himself. There's a huge variety of weapons and gadgets he can steal this way, but he can only use one at a time, and most of the projectile weapons have limited ammo (which a certain upgrade part can regenerate).

* ''[[EVE Online]]'' mostly averts this. In the case of player ships, a subset of the gear that the killed player was using will drop, and can be used by anybody with sufficient skills and a capable ship. However, NPC drops are only loosely related to the equipment they may have been observed to use during the fight.

** Played completely straight by Rogue Drones, which only ever drop crafting materials, and [[Demonic Spiders|The Sleepers]] who never drop their overpowered armor plating, missiles, or beam cannons.

* In ''[[Team Fortress 2]]'', weapons dropped by enemies act like medium-size ammo boxes, giving you 50% ammo, 100 metal (Engineers), and 50% cloak (Spies). The exception to this is the Heavy's Sandvich, which restores health to the person that picks it up, the Scout's baseball, which can be used by other Scouts, and the Engineer's toolbox, which fills ammo completely.

* ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'': You can't pick up the guns from enemies, you must wait for the weapons to show up lying around on their own somewhere. Once you do find one, however, [[Enough to Go Around|every character capable of using it gets their own copy]].

** In the PC version, you can mod the ini file to make enemy drop their weapon (noticeably the Heavy Machinegun from enemy Guard Mech), but the weapon will disappear after a while, in your hands, even if you are in the middle of using it to blast at enemies. It's also [[Game Breaking Bug|an incomplete and incredibly buggy feature]], so enable it at your own peril. The YMIR gun is [[Awesome but Impractical]], and most of the other guns aren't worth picking up.

** In 2nd Edition D&D the magic weapons of the Drow (underground evil elves) turn to dust after being exposed to sunlight. Drow equipment based on radiation magic works just like magically enhanced items, but neither needs to be actually enspelled nor can be disenchanted as common variety. This disintegration doesn't bother Drow themselves, as they raid surface rarely and only at night anyway.

** In 3.5ed, PCs, especially Rogues and Bards can train the "[http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/useMagicDevice.htm Use Magic Device]" skill and [[Bellisario's Maxim|somehow]] use it to fake an alignment... or race... or [[Feigning Intelligence|class]]. Making such gear merely difficult to use.

*** Although this seems to be at best a matter of personal taste more than an actual instance of this trope—4E holy symbols are by all appearances functionally generic divine-caster implements in terms of game mechanics, and if you can use one by virtue of being the right class, you can use them all (though only one at a time, of course).

*** In cases where it came up in my game, the party just happened to know about a simple ritual that swapped holy symbol properties.

* Generally averted in ''[[Borderlands]]''. Not every enemy drops their gun, but it IS a common occurrence. As each gun has many randomly generated elements, and some rare guns have distinct effects, you can get a hint or even know outright what weapon the enemy will drop when you kill them. Characters cannot equip armor (Besides a personal energy shield, which DO drop from every shielded enemy) however, and therefore you can never take the armor worn by enemies such as the Crimson Lance.

* In ''[[Pitfall]] The Lost Expedition'', Harry passes by crates full of TNT throughout the game and is assaulted by enemies that throw it. You cannot use it yourself until a friendly character hands you some during a cutscene late in the game.

* The playable characters in [[Undercover Cops]] cannot wield knives, bottles, bats, or axes. This is kinda justified considering they can all shoot energy beams and wield weapons 2 or 3 times their size.

* The World War II ''[[Medal of Honor]]'' games, such as ''[[Medal Of Honor Frontline]]'', prevent the player from picking up weapons from enemies. This is usually for gameplay purposes: the player would either have no need for the weapon (like a K98 bolt-action rifle) because superior ones are available in large numbers, or the enemies all carry the same guns as the player and simply provide ammo. However, almost all enemies will still drop ammunition for American weapons, suggestion that either the M1 Garand is able to chamber both .30-06 and 7.92mm Mauser, or that the K98s are all loaded with .30-06 rounds.

* In ''[[Minecraft]]'', Zombie Pigmen's gold swords and Skeleton's bows would once never drop upon their deaths. The 1.2 patch made these items Rare Drops, with a chance for these weapons being enchanted.

* ''[[White Knight Chronicles]]'' and its sequel revolve around a quintet of five [[McGuffin|20 foot-tall suits of living armor]] known as Incorrupti. Each Incorruptus has its own human pactmaker—four of them are full-time members of the player's party, and the fifth is the [[Big Bad]] ([[Big Bad Wannabe|Wannabe]]). But one of those four is a [[Sixth Ranger Traitor]], who's hiding the fact that their Inccoruptus is the evil [[The Rival|Black Knight]]. Its a poorly kept secret, even in-game, yet gameplay-wise [[Story and Gameplay Segregation|the game treats it like the character in question just doesn't have an Incorruptus at all]].

* ''[[Sword of the Stars]]'' got Boarding Pods and the ability to capture enemy ships in an [[Expansion Pack]]. But the captured ships will inexplicably vanish after the battle is over so you can't use their (possibly superior) technology.

* One of the more interesting [[Real Life]] examples was the Russian habit of deliberately building railroads at a different guage then the rest of Europe. This was to prevent them being used by invaders.

 

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[[Category:Video Game Items and Inventory]]