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Useless Useful Non-Combat Abilities: Difference between revisions
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* The effects provided by the non-combat abilities can be more easily achieved other ways.
* The effects provide things which aren't necessary or even useful in the game.
* The non-combat skills are so easy to succeed with that there's no need to put points into/focus on them.
* The use of that skill is situational.
* There are simply not enough places in the level design that allow these skills to be used to their full potential. A hacking skill is only useful if there are enough systems that can be hacked to avoid combat reasonably often.
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* Some examples from ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]]'':
** ''Security'': All locked doors can be bashed open very easily, making lockpicking unnecessary.
*** Unless it's the second game. Bashing a chest open will usually break something valuable. you may be able to get "parts" from it.
** ''Stealth'': See the first example under [[Useless Useful Stealth]]. The only time it is remotely useful is when you're sneaking past the rancor in the Taris sewers or choose Mission to break you out of the holding cells.
** ''Awareness'': There are very few stealthed enemies in the game, and those that are stealthed cannot be detected with the awareness skill (they can only be detected after being triggered by an [[Event Flag]]), making awareness useful only for detecting mines, and mines are so easy to spot they can usually be spotted without investing very many points into this skill.
*** The second game at least made Awareness useful for the main character by making it double as Sense Motive in conversations.
** Notably, [[BioWare]] has been learning from this. In [[Mass Effect]], the skills for Decryption and Electronics (used to open chests and repair damaged electronic equipment, usually for items that are likely to be [[Vendor Trash]]) have useful combat abilities attached (though Charm and Intimidate are still strictly optional). In [[Jade Empire]], social skills are based on your combat skills and not purchased separately, though they can be improved independently through techniques or gems.
** Speaking of [[BioWare]], [[Dragon Age|Dragon Age: Origins]] averts this trope with the Coercion skill, which makes your life much easier.
*** But it does have useless skills too. Combat Tactics is a notable one because you can manually control your characters anyway; Stealing goes nowhere because there is exactly one NPC worth pickpocketing and all you get is more [[Money for Nothing|useless money]].
* However, despite that Coercion is the most useful skill for the player character in ''[[Dragon Age]]'' (You can make other people craft things; only ''you'' can learn Coercion), the game still has Traps. You can get infinite supplies of Elfroot (Key ingredient in health poultices) if you made the right choices with the Dalish elves (And for cheap, too), poisons can also be a nice boon if you're playing as a rogue or controlling Zevran. (Though not making that big of a difference if you [[Game Breaker|maxed out cunning]]) However, Traps lags behind, you don't get as many of the materials for it as easily as you can for Herbalism and Poison making, and as a whole they're rather situational. Pretty much the best way to use them effectively is to [[Save Scumming|trigger an encounter, then revert to an earlier save so you can set up traps and bring them over]] or [[Guide Dang It|have prior knowledge]]. However, one of the ''best'' uses of traps is to make a [[Bonus Boss]] easier. {{spoiler|Surround the area where you fight Flemeth with traps, talk to her, and when she turns hostile...they all go off}}. While it may not be ''entirely'' useless in that regards, you can literally go the ''entire'' game without even investing a single point in traps or even using the traps you find.
** Which is not to say that Trapmaking is actually useless - if one knows what they're doing, it's a great source of experience and money too.
** ''Awakening'' also gives us Runecrafting, which you can go the entire game without using because it's ''expensive'' to master. (Good thing ''Awakening'' throws money at you like rain)
*** Too bad you need it to get [[Infinity+1 Sword|Vigilance]].
*** And to get +24 damage on your weapon. Or -30% recovery time between weapon swings (read: +42% DPS).
* Examples from 3.5e ''[[Dungeons
** ''Craft'': At low to mid-levels, this was relatively useless because any item that could be made in a reasonable amount of time with the skill could be purchased very cheaply anyway. However, at high levels, craft could become a [[Game Breaker]] in combination with certain spells, most notably Fabricate, which allows the caster to instantly craft a number of objects limited only by the volume of material used, thus making a lot of money very fast. (Craft was removed from 4e due to these issues, although not without controversy.)
** ''Profession'': Even worse than Craft, the amount of money one could make with these skills was far lower than the amount of treasure found during even a single 1st level combat encounter. Unless the campaign involved a special situation where these skills could be useful, or your DM allowed you to use the skill in a particularly creative way to gain a bonus in a different situation, there was no reason to take this skill. (This skill was also removed from 4e.)
** ''[[D20 Modern]]'', which is built on the same system as ''[[Dungeons
*** Perform in particular says nothing more about an effect than "Masterful performance. Audience awed". The D&D 3.5 counterpart at least assumed you were busking and earned some money for your efforts (although see Profession, above). When asked about this, the game's designers basically admitted it had no purpose beyond giving flavour to a character or whatever the GM might homebrew.
** Interestingly enough, with the most recent [[Expansion Pack]] to ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2]]'' (that would be Storms of Zehir) and a new overworld map, a number of otherwise marginally useful skills suddenly become much more useful, such as Survival (you can track specific enemies AND get a bonus in resting and random battles) and most of the communications skills (Bluff, Diplomacy and Intimidate can be used prior to a random battle to gain a not-insignificant advantage).
** On the other hand, some games that use D&D rules but focus mostly on combat make almost all skills useless. ''Eye of the Beholder'', for instance, made Forgery completely worthless, Diplomacy, Intimidate, and Climb mostly useless, and even the cool-sounding Spellcraft rather less impressive than you'd think.
** All this being said, [[Subverted Trope|without DM intervention Diplomacy can become a game-breaker...and because of that, so too can any skill due to the Exemplar prestige class]].
* Other common categories of examples:
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** The only reason someone would want to use these types of abilities often is to avoid being instantly killed by a Tonberry since they have an ability that causes damage based on how many units that target has killed and by the time you fight these guys, they will usually do 999 damage every single time they decide to use said ability.
* Early versions of the old Macintosh [[Shareware]] RPG ''[[Realmz]]'' had a large number of skills like Break Bars/Gate/Door, Climb Wall, Hear Noise, Hide In Shadows, Move Silently and Pick Pocket that were practically never used, as well as heaps of oddball spells such as Dig, Hold Portal, Locate Object, Ventriloquism and Wizard Eye, and items like iron spikes, mirrors and wine. Most of these were removed in later versions, long before the ''Divinity'' [[Game Mod|scenario editor]] was released.
* ''[[Two Worlds]]'' lets you put points into a "swimming" skill, which lets you wear armor in water and increases your swimming speed. Since you can't drown, never fight in water, never have a time limit, and can put on and take off armor instantly, this serves purely as a convenience.
* ''[[Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines]]'': While you don't get EXP for beating normal enemies and may get more/just as much for avoiding fights, quests and the main plot still railroad you into enemy and boss encounters, especially in the more action-heavy latter half, meaning EXP spent on diplomacy and stealth skills is wasted.
* Tabletop RPGs: though most tabletop RPGs have stat for non-physical skills, most GMs won't let the characters solve social interactions with dice rolls. It doesn't matter if your [[Manipulative Bastard|character]] has [[Informed Ability|an amazing score in Persuasion]], you-the-player still have to make up their lies and be convincing. Dice are mostly there to help you get the desired result, they're not an automatic win. However, DMs will often treat an awesome roll/ability score as a license to get away with [[Blatant Lies]] and be believed.
* [[
* Skills in ''[[Star Ocean]]'' generally tend to be of the "Skippable" variety. ''HOWEVER''...if you take the time to invest in skills, you'll wind up ''highly'' rewarded with free items that restore HP&MP, infinite experience, building ''the best items in the game'', and [[Guide Dang It|learning your relationship values]].
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[[Category:Videogame Effects and Spells]]
[[Category:This Index Is Useless]]
[[Category:
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