Unusable Enemy Equipment: Difference between revisions
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*** 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."
** ''[[Warhammer 40000]]: Fire Warrior'' averts it as all weapons can be used indiscriminately. La'Kais doesn't suffer any of the consequences for using Chaos Weapons since the Tau have an innate resistance against [[Hyperspace Is a Scary Place|the Warp]].
** 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
** 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.
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** Averted in ''Conviction'', where Sam can freely take weapons from fallen enemies.
* In ''Gothic'' players can always take and use the weapons of defeated enemies (even huge orc-axes), but never their armor. This leads to the best armor from the Old Camp being inaccessible. There are plot reasons why you'd never normally get it, but still...
** It is interesting to note that you can't ''get'' the armor, but you could definitely ''wear'' it, if you got it through other means (by using cheats, for example). Every armor on every human enemy is an actual, wearable item with its own
*** This was changed in the sequel, where this and some other kinds of "armor" don't actually exist as separate objects anymore.
* ''[[Jagged Alliance]] 2'' features an aspect of this trope. Late in the game one will get access to an experimental rifle that fires small explosive rockets. This features a trigger mechanism that reads the fingerprint of the first person to use it and then limits its use to that person. Said mechanism can be reset by a [[Player Character|PC]] or [[Non-Player Character|NPC]] with sufficient skill in electronics.
** The beginning of the game was also made artificially harder by the fact that, while your mercs started out with peashooters, the enemy [[Red Shirt
*** ...But even weapons that enemies actually drop aren't immediately useful due to their poor condition. Most weapons you find will be down to 70% or 80% condition and thus very likely to jam, so either [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|poor item condition doesn't effect enemies]] or [[Fake Difficulty|just tumbling to the ground causes major damage to items]].
** One of the ways to get around this was to literally [[Video Game Stealing|STEAL the equipment]] from a desired enemy by using one of your more stealthy mercs to sneak up on the enemy, loot him, and run.
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** The ''Opposing Force'' [[Expansion Pack]] takes this a step further, as you eventually get to use ''[[Living Weapon|live aliens]]'' as weapons.
* ''[[Shining Force]] 2'' has a few bosses that can drop items. These items can't be equipped, but one of them can be used to cast spells.
* Avoided entirely in ''[[Nethack]]'': if an enemy is using an item, you can loot it off their corpse when they die. But they ''don't'' all leave corpses
* This is present to some extent in ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'', where most weapons and armor (especially blasters) cannot be collected, but ancillary items (medpacks, stims, grenades, etc.) are commonplace drops. Since loot is randomized, this makes sense, but it also leads to the odd situation of an enemy dropping an item he isn't even carrying, such as Dark Jedi dropping a blaster rifle. Boss battles are a major exception to this trend, but this is the case sometimes even then (e.g. the Sith governor of Taris wields a double-[[Vibroweapon|vibroblade]] that can't be scrounged).
* In the ''[[Crusader: No Remorse|Crusader]]'' games, you can get ammunition, ordnance, medical supplies, money, and other equipment off of dead enemies... but ''never'' weapons or shields.
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** 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.
*** Although in ''[[Fire Emblem the Sacred Stones]]'', you ''could'' take monster weapons with some glitch abuse. It was pretty much the only way to teach anyone but Knoll or Ewan dark magic, and the only way to let Myrrh attack ''at all'' once her stone broke.
* 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,
** 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...
* There was oh so much stuff lying in the background of the ''[[Resident Evil]]'' series. Most notably, you find a squad of dead soldiers in the sewers of ''RE2'' with MP5s you cannot claim. Also, doesn't it seem odd that none of the hundreds of zombified police officers are carrying their sidearms or ammunition?
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** 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.
** On the other hand magical equipment in D&D generally tends to grow or shrink to fit the wearer "from halfling to ogre size", effectively eliminating the most realistic reason for a player being unable to use enemy equipment.
** And now, in 4th Edition, holy
*** Although this seems to be at best a matter of personal taste more than an actual instance of this
*** In cases where it came up in my game, the party just happened to know about a simple ritual that swapped holy symbol properties.
* In the Tabletop RPG ''Deadlands: Hell On Earth'', the Black Hats use vehicles and weaponry equipped with self-destruct devices that trigger if anyone without an identity chip tries to use them. Said chips are surgically implanted in the Black Hats, and naturally self-destruct if anyone tries to remove them.
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** On the other hand, you can snatch enemy melee weapons almost at will. While usually their weapons aren't anything special, spears can be thrown and be used to disable large groups of enemies with a singe spin.
* ''[[Scarface the World Is Yours]]''. A 'boss' in the last level can and will spam you with rockets if you have bad luck. Once you nuetralize him, only one rocket is available for use despite the territory you must cover from then on. In the majority of the game, weapons can be looted and tossed in the back of special cars. See how many chainsaws you can collect?
* In ''[[Resonance of Fate]]'', you can't pick up any of the guns from dead human enemies. You'd probably want
* In ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'' and its sequels, loot is randomized and somewhat rare. This means that you cannot take the blasters the enemy was just using against you. More ridiculously, it also means that an enemy may drop an item they obviously aren't even carry, such as Dark Jedi dropping blaster rifles.
* Averted to a degree in ''[[Deus Ex]]''. The game seems to be inconsistent at times about whether the guy you just stunned/kill will drop ammunition or grenades, for example, but almost everyone and their dog seems to have spare combat knives on hand, whether or not they pulled one on you. Very rarely do you get to actually scavenge a proper firearm, at least early on.
* Mostly averted in ''[[Final Fantasy XI]]'', as many beastmen that you fight use weapons and shields that actually have the same texture models as player-usable equipment. On the other hand, some beastmen dropped items, such as the Quadav Helm, explicitly say that playable characters cannot wear them, and are generally either used for [[Twenty Bear Asses]] quests or for synthesis materials.
* Played straight in [[Rainbow Six]] (or at least the earlier games), although justified. In addition to practical reasons listed above, most missions require suppressed weapons, which the bad guys rarely have. No ammo drops either, as enemies rarely use the same ammo, and when they do, it's generally a non-compatible magazine style. Annoyingly, (unless I'm mistaken) you can't get ammo off from your fallen comrades either, even if they are using the same weapons. Made slightly more annoying since there are no [[One Bullet Clips]].
* Some ''[[Monster Rancher]]'' games have unusuable enemy ''monsters.'' In ''2,'' there was a series of wild monsters whom you could fight and obtain cards for, but never own. In ''4,'' in addition to your [[
* 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.
* A non-videogame example is the [[Impossibly Cool Weapon|Lawgiver]] from ''[[Judge Dredd]]''. The gun is encoded to fire only when its registered user pulls the trigger. Any attempts by anyone else results in the [[An Arm and a Leg|loss of a limb]] by way of a [[Stuff Blowing Up|small explosive charge]]. Of course, it is possible to override this function in an emergency, as Senior Judges have access to instructions on how to do this.
* 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
* ''[[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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