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Useless Useful Spell: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{cleanup|Examples Need Sorting by genre (4X, FPS, Beat'Em Up, etc.), to remain consistent with the rest of the wiki. See the full list of genres [[All The Tropes:Creating a Page by Hand#Groups for Examples|here]].}}
{{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]''}}
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=== Tabletop RPG ===
* ''[[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
** 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.
*** The other thing you have to consider here is that the Epic Spellcasting rules effectively turn any character with 21+ CL into a [[Person of Mass Destruction]]. I'm talking insanity here. The fact that they pretty much ignore most of the limits and immunities created by normal spellcasting is just icing on the cake. Using the printed rules you can quite easily synthesize a spell that, when cast once, effectively makes the caster powerful enough to kick the asses of every single character ever printed in any supplement. At once. Without using magic. The levels from 20-21 aren't so much [[Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards|quadratic]] in growth as much as dividing by zero.
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** The doppelganger in ''Symphony of the Night'' is also susceptible to its effect.
** Similarly, an early-acquired weapon, the Red Rust, will curse enemies (preventing them from attacking). Of course, it's slower and ''weaker'' than ''punching with fists'', has a random chance of failing to swing on Alucard's part, and ''only affects one? enemy in the game''.
** And again in Castlevania: SotN, we've got Dark Metamorphosis, which allows our vampeal hero to heal with the blood shed by enemies... of course, most things, exploding into flames on death and dying in one hit, or being animated armor or skeletons or whatever else, don't bleed; the most powerful early-game weapons (Jewel Knuckles and spells) won't draw blood from any enemy; and the late game most powerful weapons (Crissaegrim, Alucard Shield, spells) are such complete [[Game Breaker
** You wanna talk [[Game Breaker|game breakers?]] How about Alucard's [[Your Soul Is Mine|Soul]] [[Life Drain|Steal]] spell. Cast it and orbs of health are pulled from every enemy on screen (including bosses!). So long as you have the mana, you can fire it over and over again. Once your stats are high enough you can just walk around using Soul Steal like a vampire with an eating disorder (the "eat a lot" kind, not the "don't eat at all" kind).
*** Even better: one section of the inverted castle has these huge rotating gold skulls that can't die. Can you say easy HP refill?
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* Any magic spell in ''[[Ys]] IV: Mask of the Sun'' and ''[[Ys]] V''. And you can't use magic at all in the latter's boss battles.
* Most status effect skills in ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' fall into this trope at higher difficulty levels. This is due to everyone (players and enemies) being immune to them if they have shields/barrier/armor remaining. On higher difficulty levels, every enemy outside the tutorial segment in the beginning has at least one of these. By the time you get through these defenses, killing your target only takes a couple more shots.
** Though, it is worth mentioning that on lower difficulty levels, skills like Dominate and Hacking, which are nearly useless in the higher difficulty levels are basically [[Game
* Elemental spells and weapons become less useful as your reach higher levels in ''[[Infinity Blade]]'' since most enemies will have some elemental resistances. The God King will become immune to everything after beating him once making Healing the only magic worth using against him. Appropriately enough, this means that the eponymous Infinity Blade, which deals more non-elemental damage than any other weapon in the game, is the best weapon to use against him.
* In ''[[Borderlands]]'' the entire shock element is useless as it's only useful for removing shields that only appear on a select number of human enemies and are easily dealt with without shock weapon. Furthermore the Hunter class gets a late game ability to bypass shields all together. Their only real use is against a few enemies that spawn is a very specific location and the hardest boss in the game.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]▼
[[Category:Videogame Effects and Spells]]
[[Category:This Index Is Useless]]
▲[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Examples Need Sorting]]
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