Useless Useful Spell: Difference between revisions
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** Repeating light crossbows requires an exotic weapon proficiency feat to use but can be cocked as a free action at the cost of a full round action every five shots. A normal light crossbow has the same basic status, but costs less, uses normal bolts, is more common and can obtain the same rate of fire with rapid reload, which allows it to be reloaded as a free action. Rapid Reload (Light Crossbow) is a strictly better feat in every single way than Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Repeating Light Crossbow). Rapid Reload in turn is generally worse than Martial Weapon Proficiency (Longbow) since a longbow has the same or better stats and doesn't need an action to reload.
* In addition to most of the above 3.5 examples, ''[[Pathfinder]]'' has a sword cane item that does 1d6 damage, costs 45 GP and requires good senses to realize it's not a normal cane. Clubs deal 1d6 damage, are free and absolutely indistinguishable from a cane ''because they are'' (this is part of why canes were fashion accessories at one point: They make fantastic clubs or, with the right embellishments, maces). The ability to have a cane that works as a club is even explicit in one of the example characters.
** The Second Edition rules have this by design on any spell or effect that can outright remove an opponent from an encounter (like inducing sleep, mind control, knocking unconscious or sudden death): such abilities have the "incapacitation" trait that indicates the user's check result is one degree of success worse or the target's save result is one degree of success better if the target's level is more than twice the spell's level or more than the user's level for non-spell effects, making high-level encounters impossible to cheese in a single round.
* ''[[Fantasy Craft]]'', another successor based on 3.5's OGL content, tries to play it straight by including the Terminal descriptor which gives mini-bosses a +4 bonus on their save and bosses a +8 bonus. ''Tries'' because they missed a lot and actually introduced one big exception in fire damage. In Fantasy Craft taking fire damage forces a target to make a reflex save (based on the damage taken, not standard spell DCs, and easily impossible) then a will save or spend their entire turn trying to extinguish the fire, which is impossible if the caster or their allies keep attacking them with fire.
* In some ways the blast weapons of ''[[Warhammer 40,000]]'' is starting to turn this way. Most blast weapons are quite powerful, especially heavy ordinance weapons, but due to the new way of resolving Blast weapons, you'd be pretty lucky if the shot land anywhere near your intended target (it's entirely possible that the shot will make a "return to sender" move, and there's a good chance of it happening too!). While a Space Marine can be very accurate with his aim-based Krak Missile, he is a worse shot than a drunk stormtrooper when it comes to firing the explosive Frag variant. Both missiles are fired from the same weapon.
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