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Useless Useful Spell: Difference between revisions
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{{quote|"Wait, what's this? You only have status-inducing magic spells? Why, those ''suck!''"|''[http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/169933 Final Fantasy VII: All About Random Battles]''}}
A staple of [[Role-Playing Game
# [[Boss Battle|Bosses]], [[Sub Boss|sub-bosses]], and other types of enemies that actually pose a threat to the player are always extremely resistant or [[Contractual Boss Immunity|immune to such attacks.]] If they weren't, the '''Useless Useful Spell''' would [[Game Breaker|make things far too easy]], and may even be a form of [[Disc One Nuke]].
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The opposite of this trope is [[Not Completely Useless]]. In fact, if an otherwise '''Useless Useful Spell''' is redeemed by being used against a specific boss, it may become just that.
{{examples}}
=== Card Games ===
* Gryphon Wing and Anti Raigeki in ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh! (Tabletop Game)|Yu-Gi-Oh]]''. They're particularly nasty counters to Harpie's Feather Duster and Raigeki, respectivly. Except that unless you ''know'' your opponent has one of those cards 'and' you're not going by Tournament rules (which dictate that Harpie's Feather Duster and Raigeki are banned)...it's just wasting space in your deck. To add insult to injury, Harpie's Feather Duster was a friggin rare card while Gryphon Wing came in a ''Structure Deck''.▼
** Averted somewhat with White Hole, which prevents your monsters from being destroyed from the opponent's Dark Hole. Dark Hole is fairly used and rarely on the banned list for too long, so it has some utility to it. You're still better off with Dark Bribe, though.▼
* ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' has quite a few:▼
** [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=201268 Sorrow's Path] is too complicated and ''far'' too expensive. Being able to swap your opponent's blocking creatures is merely okay. Having to pay 2 life and suffer 2 damage to every creature you control is like saving money on glasses by [[Eye Scream|stabbing yourself in both eyes]].▼
** [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=2900 Apocalypse Chime] destroys all Homelands cards. If Homelands cards other than Autumn Willow and Baron Sengir were actually useful, this card would be.▼
** [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=19665 Common Cause]. Pointless since ''all'' Nonartifact creatures must be the same color, even your opponents. Stupid errata...▼
** Spells and abilities that endow creatures and to a lesser extent other permanents with specific abilities (including but not limited to the aura subtype of enchantments) may fall under this. Consider [http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?id=83088 Flight]. From the enchanted creature's perspective, it's potentially a great effect—it gains flying if it didn't have it already, allowing it to bypass most non-flying blockers and/or block flying attackers itself. Get to the point where you actually want to put the card into a deck, though, and you'll soon realize that if having flyers is important to your strategy, you'd best include a number of creatures that have the ability in and of themselves already in case you don't actually ''draw'' that Flight card...yet the more of those you have, the less good the card actually does you in the first place! (This logic does not, of course, apply to abilities that actually have a cumulative effect. However, many of the more commonly granted abilities—like flying, first strike, or trample—do not fall into this category.) Then there's the issue that the empowered creature isn't necessarily any harder to ''kill'', potentially taking the entire investment in extra cards, mana, and/or other resources to the graveyard with it...▼
** ''Magic the Gathering'' also has a fair share of "instant win" cards - as in, they actually SAY "You win the game" or "Target player loses the game". However, they're either highly situational, require a certain action that will almost certainly get interrupted, or are just ridiculously expensive.▼
** And finally, we have [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=1615 Great Wall], generally considered the worst card in the game. All it does is let you block creatures with plainswalk, of which there are only four that no one uses, only ''one'' of which was around when Great Wall was released.▼
*** What about Mudhole, a card that removes all the lands from a player's graveyard which is flat-out inferior to cheaper options (including Tormod's Crypt, an artifact with a 0 mana cost!) which just remove their entire graveyard? The only practical use would be to get around removing a specific non-land card in your opponent's graveyard to screw over some bizarre combo that doesn't even exist yet.▼
==
* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'', the original RPG, completely inverts this trope; traditionally Useless Useful Spells tend to be the most useful spells in the game, with direct damage spells falling well below them in power level. This is because most spells are equally likely to succeed in affecting a foe, thus a spell which can kill a foe is far more effective than a spell which can hurt one. Some status affecting spells automatically succeed, and many others are essentially the same as spells which outright kill foes because they completely disable them for long periods of time, allowing players to kill them at their leisure. Relatively few foes are immune to such spells, while many foes are resistant to elemental damage spells, adding insult to injury. A wide variety of spells which don't even directly harm opponents are also extremely powerful, and all in all this leads to wizards and other powerful spellcasters being [[Game Breaker|game breakers]]. This is played straight however in the "mobility" feat, which gives you an AC bonus against Attacks of Opportunity, the problem is that anyone who needs the [[Prestige Class]] or feats it qualifies you for has Tumble, which means you don't provoke [[Ao O]]...
** But it gets nasty in the ''[[Epic Level Handbook]]''. If you look at the creature section, you'll see 9 times out of 10 that the creature is immune to: Paralyze, Sleep, Polymorph, Level Drain, Instant Death, Necromancy Effects (those last 3 makes Epic Necromancers hinge their teeth in frustration), Stun, Mind Effects, Daze, Criticals (just to make critical specialization useless). Not to mention that in turn these monsters will almost certain have something like Implosion, Weird or Wail of Banshee at will (save or die for the whole group) and one or two nastier epic spell once a day. Not to mention Greater Dispel or Epic Dispel at will to take out any immunity to death spell the group might have. Of course this is sort of offset by the fact that by then the characters gain the ability to resurrect themselves at will with no XP penalties (there's a price, but minor by now). Still, I didn't get at the billion and one ways these creatures have to kill character class without any chance of revival.
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== Video Games ==
* ''[[Might and Magic]] VI'' is a weird mix of aversion and using this trope. For one, most mind spells are useless against almost all tough enemies, which is where you would want to use them. There is a spell called Finger of Death which instantly kills a foe but has small rate of success ([[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|however your foes have much higher rates than you]]) and it's completely ineffective against tougher foes; plus you don't have access to it early on. On the other hand, there is a percentage damage spell which is extremely effective against powerful enemies (mass distortion) and other feels-like-cheating spells join the chorus as well, such as Fly, Town Portal and Lloyd's Beacon (instant teleport, by placing gates wherever the hell you want). And again, on the other side of table, you have spirit magic, a whole school of magic, which becomes completely redundant when you acquire light and dark magic, save for the life sharing spell, because there are three spells in these schools which cast all of the protective and boosting spirit ones, at a much higher level (they also send a fair amount of the other schools to the trash). There are also spells like fear, petrify, paralyze, etc, which only work on very low-level foes, making them redundant (by the time you acquire them). There's a resurrection spell on spirit magic, but after you become master of water it becomes redundant, since you can town portal to a temple and have them resurrect you.
* Though this is mostly averted in the game, ''[[Persona 4]]'' has light and dark spells, which only work on mooks, because they insta-kill. This is also brought up in ''[[Persona 4: The Animation]]'', during the boss fight with Shadow Naoto.
** Not just Persona 4--Hama and Mudo have this problem in basically every [[Megami Tensei]] game.
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**Skitty and Delcatty's signature ability is Normalize, which all of their attacks into Normal-type moves. While it means they get STAB off of everything, Delcatty in particular (as the evolved from and more likely to be used competitively) can never hit anything for super-effective damage with this ability, plus it is walled by Ghost-types, and resisted by Rock- and Steel-types.
**This one is debatable, but Palossand has a unique ability in the form of Water Compaction, which provides a +2 boost to its Defense when hit by a certain type of move. What type's that you ask? Water: a common type that Palossand is weak to, and is likely to fall to in one or two hits thanks to its less-than-stellar Special Defense stat.
**Umbreon having access to Synchronoise is pretty mind boggling when you consider the move only works on opposing Pokemon the same types as the user. In this case, this Pokemon can only use Synchronoise against other Dark types, which also happen to be ''immune'' to Psychic-type attacks!
▲== Card Games ==
▲* Gryphon Wing and Anti Raigeki in ''Yu-Gi-Oh''. They're particularly nasty counters to Harpie's Feather Duster and Raigeki, respectivly. Except that unless you ''know'' your opponent has one of those cards 'and' you're not going by Tournament rules (which dictate that Harpie's Feather Duster and Raigeki are banned)...it's just wasting space in your deck. To add insult to injury, Harpie's Feather Duster was a friggin rare card while Gryphon Wing came in a ''Structure Deck''.
▲** Averted somewhat with White Hole, which prevents your monsters from being destroyed from the opponent's Dark Hole. Dark Hole is fairly used and rarely on the banned list for too long, so it has some utility to it. You're still better off with Dark Bribe, though.
▲* ''[[Magic: The Gathering]]'' has quite a few:
▲** [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=201268 Sorrow's Path] is too complicated and ''far'' too expensive. Being able to swap your opponent's blocking creatures is merely okay. Having to pay 2 life and suffer 2 damage to every creature you control is like saving money on glasses by [[Eye Scream|stabbing yourself in both eyes]].
▲** [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=2900 Apocalypse Chime] destroys all Homelands cards. If Homelands cards other than Autumn Willow and Baron Sengir were actually useful, this card would be.
▲** [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=19665 Common Cause]. Pointless since ''all'' Nonartifact creatures must be the same color, even your opponents. Stupid errata...
▲** Spells and abilities that endow creatures and to a lesser extent other permanents with specific abilities (including but not limited to the aura subtype of enchantments) may fall under this. Consider [http://ww2.wizards.com/gatherer/CardDetails.aspx?id=83088 Flight]. From the enchanted creature's perspective, it's potentially a great effect—it gains flying if it didn't have it already, allowing it to bypass most non-flying blockers and/or block flying attackers itself. Get to the point where you actually want to put the card into a deck, though, and you'll soon realize that if having flyers is important to your strategy, you'd best include a number of creatures that have the ability in and of themselves already in case you don't actually ''draw'' that Flight card...yet the more of those you have, the less good the card actually does you in the first place! (This logic does not, of course, apply to abilities that actually have a cumulative effect. However, many of the more commonly granted abilities—like flying, first strike, or trample—do not fall into this category.) Then there's the issue that the empowered creature isn't necessarily any harder to ''kill'', potentially taking the entire investment in extra cards, mana, and/or other resources to the graveyard with it...
▲** ''Magic the Gathering'' also has a fair share of "instant win" cards - as in, they actually SAY "You win the game" or "Target player loses the game". However, they're either highly situational, require a certain action that will almost certainly get interrupted, or are just ridiculously expensive.
▲** And finally, we have [http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=1615 Great Wall], generally considered the worst card in the game. All it does is let you block creatures with plainswalk, of which there are only four that no one uses, only ''one'' of which was around when Great Wall was released.
▲*** What about Mudhole, a card that removes all the lands from a player's graveyard which is flat-out inferior to cheaper options (including Tormod's Crypt, an artifact with a 0 mana cost!) which just remove their entire graveyard? The only practical use would be to get around removing a specific non-land card in your opponent's graveyard to screw over some bizarre combo that doesn't even exist yet.
== Aversions and parodies ==
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