When All You Have Is a Hammer: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

 

A character has a limited offensive repertoire, but the writer wants to make him look clever anyway, so he faces him off against something which requires a little bit of strategy. Unfortunately, this strategy ends up being "Just do what you always do, but slightly better." It's not that our hero is uninventive. He may be an outright [[MacGyver]], but he just doesn't have much to work with.

[[Damage Sponge Boss]] can be a justification for this trope.

 

 

Not related to [[Drop the Hammer|characters who use hammers as their (primary) weapon]]. Unless, of course, they use nothing but this hammer at every opportunity.

 

== Anime and Manga ==

* Light Yagami's only weapon is a ''[[Death Note]]''. [[Artifact of Death|It kills people]]. Can't do much else, of course, so every crime tends to receive the same punishment. By the end of the series, the worst criminals in the world are things like purse-snatchers, so they receive the axe as well.

* ''[[Naruto]]'' uses this trope a lot. About halfway into the series, the title character learns this nifty technique called a "Rasengan" and from then on whenever he encounters a problem he infallibly resorts to punching it in the face with this technique. If that doesn't work, 9 times out of 10 he resorts to some ''variation'' of it to win.

** ''Before'' he learned Rasengan, his favorite (only) tactic was to bum rush with his [[Doppelganger Attack|shadow clones]] a lot, then when that by itself inevitably failed, use it in combination with [[Voluntary Shapeshifting|his disguises]] to sneak his real self into position while his clones distract the villain.

* ''[[Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann]]''. [[This Is a Drill|Hope you like drills]].

* ''[[GaoGaiGar]]'', where it is a case of [[Incredibly Lame Pun|"When All You Have Is A Goldion Hammer"]].

** Hitsugaya and Harribel get trapped in a battle that consists of this. No matter how pretty or powerful their strategies get against each other, every single tactic boils down to Hitsugaya trying to throw more ice at Harribel than she can cope with and Harribel trying to throw more water at Hitsugaya than he can cope with.

** Yasutara Sado's El Directo was his hammer for a very long time, until he got his second hammer, Le Muerete.

** Actually subverted: Rakan has seen every trick in the book, twice. Much of his apparent invincibility comes from his flexibility, knowledge, and cleverness. Of course, he [[Obfuscating Stupidity|keeps this a secret]], only using his intelligence when it's evident that his "Rakan Smash" technique won't work.

*** And then when intelligence and strategy prove useless against {{spoiler|Fate}}, he shows just how ridiculously strong his "Rakan Smash" technique is regardless.

** When he faced Drake, the leader of the Orange Crew, Ash used this tactic to take down Drake's first Pokemon. That first Pokemon was a Ditto that would copy the appearance and moves of its opponent, which caught Ash and Pikachu off guard when the match began. Misty suggested that Ash change Pokemon, but he pointed out that Ditto would simply change shape again into whichever Pokemon he sent out next. He eventually defeated the Ditto by simply having Pikachu blast it with everything he had, realizing that while the Ditto might have copied Pikachu's abilities, it couldn't copy Pikachu's power level and couldn't take as much punishment.

* ''[[Speed Racer]]'' [[The Movie]]: When told that racing isn't going to solve the world's problems, he says, "Racing is the only thing I know how to do, and I gotta do something."

* ''[[Rurouni Kenshin]]'''s Saito Hajime follows the philosophy that a warrior does not need several special moves. He needs only a single move refined to the point of perfection. Thus, his only named attack is his Gatotsu and uses variations when the situation calls for them. Opponent above you? Gatotsu second form. Opponent dodging? Gatotsu slash form. Need to bust down a door? Gatotsu. Need to clear rubble? Gatotsu, of course!

** In the final series of battles, when Saito's "perfect" attack is foiled by his opponent and Gatotsu is defeated (or so the opponent thinks), Saito shows that all he needs is a slight variation in his move to win.

* In ''[[Saint Seiya]]'', Athena's Saints typically have anywhere between [[Theme Deck|three to four attack techniques]]: a basic, general-purpose one; a mid-level one for difficult foes; a situational specialty; and a [[Dangerous Forbidden Technique]] that [[Taking You with Me|might kill the Saint and his foe]]. Seiya himself has three, but he has only used the ''Pegasus Rolling Crush'' and ''Pegasus Comet Punch'' exactly ''once each'', preferring to just [[Spam Attack|spam]] his ''[[Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs|Pegasus Meteor Punch]]'' against every. Single. Enemy. Always. And if it [[It Only Works Once|doesn't]] [[The Worf Barrage|work]], he'll do it again, but faster.

** Seiya actually uses the Rolling Crush and the Comet Punch when they're practical. The Comet Punch is just one big blast, easy enough to block or dodge so he needs an opening for it to work. The Rolling Crush is more of the same; it's kinda useless if you can't grab your opponent and have room to jump.

** Also Mikoto, who ends all fights with her trusty [[Wave Motion Gun|Railgun]] and Accelerator, who end all by [[Attack Reflector|changing vectors]]. Given that most, if not, all people their owns one kind of power, we might say that most heroes in the series ends their problems with the only hammer they have.

*** Misaka tends to avert this trope in her ''Railgun'' spin-off, however, in which she uses her basic power (electricity manipulation) in a staggering array of different ways. This includes subverting security systems, reading electrical impulses in people's brains, and magnetizing the armouring in concrete in order to walk on walls ([[Fridge Logic|which begs the question of what exactly her shoe soles are made of]]...). She rarely uses the actual Railgun move because it's [[Limit Break|not exactly collateral damage-free]].

* Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the ''[[Sengoku Basara]]'' anime has [[The Strategist]] Hanbei make plans for him: The man himself approaches problems mainly by punching them, and if that does not work, punching it harder. His introduction sees him defang the Uesugi and Takeda clan by punching all their arrows out of the sky (and punching a hole in the cloud cover in the process), and he defeats Chousokabe Motochika and his enormous floating fortress by ''punching the Setochi inland sea so hard that it splits''.

* [[Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt|Panty and Stocking With Garterbelt]]: A little quiz, shall we? {{spoiler|It's the Darkest Hour. Your partner in crime-fighting has been Put On A Bus, you've been left depowered, and the friendly neighbourhood Big Bad has kidnapped the closest thing you have to a Love Interest in order to open a gate to Hell with his penis. So, what do you do? If you have any idea what this show has been like previously, you should know that Panty's answer is fuck a guy. The best part? It turns out to be EXACTLY the right thing to do.}}

* Virtually every episode of ''[[G Gundam]]'' ends with Domun ending his battle with the same move. When he learns a new move, he doesn't increase his repertoire, he just replaces the hammer. Given the name of the first two finishing moves he uses, you could say that he effectively wins fights by giving his enemies [[Incredibly Lame Pun|The Finger]].

* [[Kekkaishi]] has a good deal of this. As a [[Barrier Warrior|Kekkaishi]] killing monsters typically comes down to 1) Form Barrier. 2) Explode what's in barrier. It starts to get interesting when characters realize that there's a hell of a lot you can do with just a box shaped barrier. Thin, long ones are like spikes, many small ones act like restraints, a barrier inside another barrier explodes exponentially harder. They have other powers, but they typically don't need them.

*** Somewhat ironically, if they stopped using the humanly-dodgeable, single target bright green spell and instead went for instant-effect spells like cutting curses or massive [[Area of Effect]] [[Kill'Em All]] spells like [[Kill It with Fire|Fiendfyre]], they might have won. After all, {{spoiler|Harry would have had a hard time reincarnating as a pile of ashes, or a torn-up corpse.}} At the very least, they might have been more effective. Then again, if the Death Eaters had been smart, the series would have been over in book four or five.

*** The only ''verbal'' spells Voldemort uses are the three unforgivable ones. Period. And he wouldn't even have died in the first place if he'd just used Stupefy or even Imperius on Lily!

** Again in the [[Star Wars Expanded Universe]]: when he established the Academy, Luke initially doesn't see the use for any weapon but lightsabers. Corran points out, however, that lightsabers have no stun setting, and convinces Luke to have the trainees study basic unarmed combat too.

*** Somewhat justified when you consider that he was taught in a few months an art that should have taken years, all Yoda and Obiwan had time to do was teach him the hammer.

* At the climax of [[Fred Saberhagen]]'s ''Third Book of Swords'', Vulcan, wielding Shieldbreaker, is being wrestled to the ground by a group of unarmed human beings, only to discover that the otherwise invincible [[Infinity+1 Sword|Sword of Force]] [[Weaksauce Weakness|doesn't work on the unarmed]]. To make matters worse, the [[Clingy MacGuffin|Sword won't let itself be thrown away during a fight]], and also prevents Vulcan from using any of his other powers. So he tries using the Sword against the walls of the building, hoping to bring the house down on the heads of his attackers:

{{quote|Concentrated now in the one Sword was all of Vulcan's power, and all his hope. He knew that he must win with it, or die.}}

* [[Cloudcuckoolander|Lawrence Pritchard Waterhouse]] in [[Cryptonomicon]] is more or less useless in any situation that doesn't involve mathematics. It's rather astounding the number of different ways he does manage to bring this particular hammer to bear.

 

 

* Despite being surprisingly sophisticated in its character drama and plot development, ''[[Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future]]'' was prone to resolving all its moments of suspense by the simple expedient of having it turn out that the heroes were not hurt quite so badly as it had at first appeared.

* In several episodes of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', when the story required a less than super character to handle a situation on their own, it was suggested that Buffy sit that one out as it didn't require slaying, citing Buffy's tendency to respond to even minor conflict with violence. And while she has quite a repertoire, her go-to weapon is a good-ol' pointy stick.

** She also uses an Anti-tank weapon to take down a particularely tough demon on one occasion.

* [[How I Met Your Mother|Lily Aldrin]] solves all of life's problems by treating them as she would in a kindergarten class and recommends her friends do the same.

* There is an interesting variation on the ''[[Leverage]]'' episode [[Rashomon Style|The Rashomon Job]] where each of the various thieves tried to steal the same rare dagger on the same night using their designated skills and inadvertently sabotaged each other, only to realize that the mastermind of the group had really ended up with it. This was before any of them ever really met, mind. it also turned out that {{spoiler|the dagger was really a fake and that it was all just an insurance scam}}.

** Eliot often plays this straight as well. His primary means of gaining a proper disguise is to beat up the person wearing it and steal it.

* In the ''[[Red Dwarf]]'' episode ''Meltdown'', Pythagoras believes there is a solution to the war, possibly involving triangles. Einstein is annoyed saying "Always with the triangles".

* ''[[Babylon 5]]'': John Sheridan's motto appears to be, "When in doubt, [[Deus Ex Nukina|nuclear warheads]]."

 

== Tabletop Games ==

*** Well, that and being surprisingly well trained and disciplined; outstripping the Tau, Orks, Tyranids, and 99% of Chaos' forces 1-1.

** That said, their bigger guns tend to be ''really'' effective.

** Nurgle has an amusingly meta variant of this. He [[Friend to All Living Things|loves all life, and only wants to shower all living things with his gifts to show how much he loves them.]] [[Your Princess Is in Another Castle|He's]] [[Subverted Trope|the]] [[Affably Evil|God]] [[Body Horror|of]] [[Plaguemaster|Plague]]. So, yeah. He even hits on his would-be [[Love Interest]], the Eldar Goddess of Healing, [[Rescue Romance|who he freed from the grip of his less-well-inclined cousin]], by feeding her his concoctions and seeing how long it takes her to recover.

* ''[[GURPS]]'' give us the Hidebound Disadvantage, meaning a character prefers to use tried and true methods, or in some cases is psychologically unable to do otherwise, that have served them well in the past.

** Other (typically less useful) classes also forced specialization on individual characters. For instance, Shugenja had to forbid a quarter of their class list from their class list, Warlocks could only ever learn about 1/4 of the available Invocations, and all spontaneous casters (save the Spirit Shaman) had to permanently commit to a small pool of the spells on their list. The sublime martial artists of ''The Book of Nine Swords'' faced similar restrictions.

** 3.x had this in spades among players. The best fighter build, for instance, is considered to be one which uses feats to give a ridiculous number of bonuses to a charge, then praying for that one charge to kill the opponent.

** Although spellcasters aren't generally subject to this as much, since their big advantage tends to be a lot of versatility, there's a feat called Arcane Thesis, which lets you really specialize in a single spell above all others. Paired with a few other abilities, you can pile on the metamagic for an empowered, twin, chain, repeat, maximized, enervating, admixed, searing orb of cold that deals solely fire damage, and enough of it to literally kill gods. But, you won't be able to do much else, and it's actually considered one of the weaker ways to go. Yes, godslaying is subpar for casters. Go figure.

* ''[[Exalted]]'':

** The [[Deal with the Devil|Green Sun Princes]] are explicitly told to [[Defied|move away from this paradigm]]. What separates them from their Yozi masters is that they can think outside of the box and mix-and-match their masters' gimmicks to best deal with the situation at hands.

* Though the sheer length of time that [[Magic: The Gathering]] has been around means that each of the five colors have a vast and expansive repertoire of spells at their disposal, each color tends to fall back on the same themes time and again. The biggest offenders are Red, the color of "throw fire/lightning/goblins at it", and Green, the color of "throw nature at it".

** "Of course you should [[Kill It with Fire|fight fire with fire]]. You should fight ''everything'' with fire." Jaya Ballard, Task Mage.

 

== Video Games ==

* ''[[Summon Night]]'' exemplifies this trope.

** The hammer is a Craft Knight's first weapon, as well as a tool for producing more weapons.

** Then in the second game, Aera (or the guy, whatever his name is) is given the materials to make a basic dagger... which promptly breaks after the first boss fight. Then she gets another set... which ends up poorly forged and breaks immediately. Cue Hammer Time at the local forest.

** Also, the hammer is the [[Emergency Weapon]] of the game, and is always used whenever the player breaks all of their equipped weapons (or has none equipped to start with).

* Lampshaded by Master Chief in ''[[Halo]] 3'': "I thought I'd shoot my way out. Mix things up a bit."

* ''[[Sonic the Hedgehog]]'':

** [[Shadow the Hedgehog|Shadow]] has all the same abilities as Sonic...but in his [[Day in The Limelight]], his usual homing attacks took a back seat to ''guns'' as a weapon of choice.

* ''[[Iji]]'': The second battle against Assassin Asha pretty much boils down to this, due to the guy having [[Super Reflexes|"Plasma Cannon reflexes"]]. He will dodge ''anything'' (including the [[Bring My Brown Pants|Nuke weapon]] you might have fired on him in Sector 5) that isn't the Shotgun or Buster Gun, because he thinks dodging such pathetic weapons is shameful. He will continue ''not'' dodging pellets even on the verge of death. The Shotgun is the only weapon you have on Ultimortal that isn't the Resonance Detonator (you get the Reflector on that difficulty before the battle with Tor), so...

* Chester from the original ''[[Tales of Phantasia]]'' has only one attack: his arrow shot. He hits high, low, and ''hard''. He doesn't even need a special skill or a need to locate an enemy's weakness to be powerful.

* Qara in ''[[Neverwinter Nights 2]]'' is a [[Sociopathic Hero]] sorceress who specializes in fire spells. Naturally her preferred solution for solving problems is to [[Kill It with Fire|blast everything in sight]]. She ends up drafted into the party after ''nearly burning down the tavern''; the innkeeper (your foster father's half-brother) basically has her paying for the damage in sweat.

* [[Lampshaded]] in ''[[Kid Icarus: Uprising]]''. During the Lightning Chariot level, Pit comes across an obstacle he needs to get past to proceed. When he wonders aloud what to do about it, [[Deadpan Snarker|Hades]] says "The same thing you do with everything. Shoot it."

 

== Web Comics ==

* [[Another Gaming Comic]] has Nuclear Dan who is fire obsessed, with his entire spell list being a fire spell, he even spent a levels worth of points on fire imunity so he could firball himself and not die.

* ''[[8-Bit Theater]]'':

** Fighter thinks very much this way. He's dumb enough to miss important clues to the workings of the world around him, but he's also exceedingly skilled with his swords (not to mention fixated on them). At a certain point he creates "[[Sword Chucks]]" (a combination of swords and nunchucks, that allows him to wield four swords simultaneously). His spiritual mentor appears to him in the form of a giant sword wearing glasses. Oh, and when conversations don't involve swords, he completely ignores them. We also have [[Heroic Sociopath|Black Mage]], who tries to solve most problems with [[Knife Nut|stabbing]] or a [[Kamehame Hadoken|Hadoken spell]]. This trope in regards to Fighter is taken to its logical extreme when he faces his own worst vice, the manifestation of Sloth, which accuses him of always falling back on his sword techniques instead of improving himself in new ways, like using his mind. Fighter gets past it by {{spoiler|killing it with his swords, saying "my mind told me this would be faster."}}

** The Light Warriors in general seem to adhere to this philosophy. Their general plan for any situation is "kill everyone and steal anything that isn't tied down and on fire." So far it's worked, mostly through luck.

** Red Mage believes that there is no obstacle that cannot be overcome by ''vigorous'' application of the Animal Husbandry skill.

** Thief resolves most problem by stealing stuff, and then stealing some more stuff, be it riches, mcguffins, plot devices, the actual soul of his enemies and other intangible stuff, to the point of {{spoiler|stealing his class change from himself in the future. This actually comes back to bite him when, during the battle with Sarda, his past self steals his class change.}}

*** Of course, Vaarsuvius proves capable of learning from experience and {{spoiler|turns this one around on Xykon immediately, inflicting a humiliating defeat -- which but for a stroke of luck could have been much, much worse than it was for the lich -- using just two potions to revive O-Chul, [[Ambiguous Gender|zir]] level one class feature raven companion to carry Xykon's stolen phylactery, and zir 3rd-level Explosive Runes spell to guard said phylactery.}}

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'':

* ''[[Starslip]]'''s Memnon Vanderbeam apparently thinks all the universe's problems can be solved through art theory. And tries to prove it. [[Hilarity Ensues|Hilarity usually ensues.]]

* Kyros in ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' generally tries to solve problems by putting more mana into his flame spells, causing much work for the Death of Insanely Overpowered Fireballs.

** It gets better, too. According to the GM's house rule, characters can only spend experience to improve skills they actually used. All Kyros ever uses is his fireball. Ergo...

** Kyros's ''latest'' trick? Help the party on the quest they've been botching for the last several (realtime) years by ''annihilating a mountain range''. You can panic now.

{{quote|'''Mimic:''' To a hammer, the world is full of nails.

'''Rusty:''' Eat nails? }}

* The way the Strife Specibus system works in ''[[Homestuck]]'' forces the users to have only one (and, later, at most a limited) type of weapons. As the story progresses, these weapons gets bigger and badder, but still of the same type as earlier in the story.

* ''[[Basic Instructions]]'' occasionally features a group of weird and dysfunctional superheroes. One of these, considered pathetic even by the others is the "[[Knife Nut|Knifeketeer]]". He's a (not very) [[Badass Normal]] who stabs people with knives. That's it. When the others complained that most heroes prefer non-lethal tactics, he got himself a [[Green Arrow|boxing glove knife]]. Yes, a boxing glove on a knife handle. That he then "stabs" people with.

** His associate Rocket Hat is a subversion of this, in that he is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|a guy with rockets mounted on his hat]], who uses them in all sort of inventive ways. (Flying, highspeed headbutting, impromptu blowtorch, and so on.)

{{spoiler|'''Grape''': So what was the entire point of--}}

{{spoiler|'''Peanut''': [[Shrug of God|I DON'T KNOW]]}} }}

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

* Hitler and Napoleon (odd bedfellows, indeed) fell victim to this; both became so used to achieving foreign policy victories through war that they became reliant on warfare to secure all their successes. This culminated in disastrous invasions of Russia.

* Before them, the imperial administrations of Germany and the Habsburg Empire. The policy of the German High Command is a particularly egregious example of this; they developed and presented precisely one grand strategy of mobilisation and deployment to the other heads of government, the 'Schlieffen Plan'; an invasion of France through Belgium. [[What Could Have Been|We may never know how much shorter and less bloody the war could have been if it weren't for the German invasion of Belgium, and Britain and America's great likelihood of staying out of it in the light of that fact.]] [[Armor-Piercing Question|Why, in a potential conflict with Russia alone, would Germany want to force France into fighting and risk getting Britain involved to boot?]] [[They Just Didn't Care|There are]] [[General Ripper|a couple of theories...]]

* A lot of kenjutsu/iaijutsu techniques come down to executing shomen-uchi (straight downward cut to the top of the head) as the killing strike.

** Krav Maga is similar except in that case the killing blows usually involve breaking the attacker's jaw, frequently after [[Groin Attack|hitting him in the nuts]].

* One FIRST robotics team adopted the motto "Nothing's impossible with a rubber mallet and enough strength of heart!" when trying to properly adjust the timing belt on their mecanum wheels (a difficult and delicate task involving much rubber mallet use).

** Another has the unofficial motto, "Life would be meaningless without 7/16-inch wrenches."

** Same with a lot of wikis. Notably [[That Other Wiki]]'s discussion pages.

* When all you have is a hammer, make sure it's the right one and not a broken link.

*** Alternatively, money and sex.

* The Perl programming language relies heavily on regular expressions, a language for super-precise text searching. Unfortunately, it makes Perl programs super-hard to read.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:For Massive Damage]]