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With This Herring: Difference between revisions
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Often the first step in a [[Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness]]. [[A Taste of Power]] subverts this trope... At first.
{{examples
== Anime & Manga ==
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* Also Justified in ''[[Knights of the Old Republic]] II: The Sith Lords''. The Exile begins the game waking up inside the medical bay of a now-derelict mining facility, thus explaining the lack of equipment. The Exile then goes on to wage a shadow war against the Sith, making it plausible that nobody would have heard of her mission (hence the lack of store discounts). And while the premise of the game explains your lack of starting force powers, it's still a little non-specific about why all the other abilities (combat skills, tactics, diplomacy etc). of a legendary hero of the Mandalorian Wars would have evaporated so absolutely. [[Hand Wave|Hand waved]] a couple of times by Kreia.
** The Exile was a legendary ''leader'', due to the weird Force bond thing that makes people want to follow her. She was actually a rather mediocre Jedi, as noted several times during the game.
* In ''[[Resident Evil]] 4'', Leon Kennedy is sent to rescue the president's daughter with little more than a knife and a simple 9mm handgun. Needless to say, Uncle Sam probably should have sprung for an assault rifle for Leon. Even if they didn't know the town had been infected by a [[The Virus|mind-controlling parasite]], this ''is'' [[The
** In ''[[Resident Evil]] 5'', however, this is actually justified. {{spoiler|1=One of the CEOs of the companies you work for is setting you up.}}
** In the original ''[[Resident Evil 2]]'', you can find a picture of the team in which one unidentified member is packing a '''mortar''', suggesting that S.T.A.R.S. was ''over''-supplied, if anything. But tragically, neither he nor the mortar appears in the game, and he is deleted from the photo in remakes.
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* ''7.62mm High Caliber'' plays this straight in the main game, sending you off to Algeira with a Tokarev TT-33, two magazines, and a box of ammo. The mercs you can hire early on often don't have much better equipment, maybe having a grenade or knife with them.
** The Blue Sun mod both [[Justified Trope|justifies this]] and averts it; you begin with a Beretta 92, two magazines, and a box of ammo and the mod FAQ recommends that players take a short quest in Puerto Viejo to earn a Beretta Px4 Storm and some ammo, but you're told at the beginning that your guide, Paco, has disappeared with your luggage. After running around Algeira for about a day with Paco, you eventually find it {{spoiler|in the police station in Sagrada}} and are given a longarm that matches your character class (like a [[Rare Guns|SPAS-12]] or a Thompson), grenades, medical supplies, and a helmet and ballistic armor.
* The classic Konami arcade game ''Rush'n Attack'' sends you against an army with nothing but a knife. For ''the entire game.'' On the other hand, the enemy is restricted to nearly the same limitation: Only about one-tenth of the ''entire enemy army'' has guns (some which you can steal), and all those nifty tanks and rockets in the scenery do nothing but stand there. Army-on-a-budget perhaps? Then again, [[One
* Played outrageously straight in ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]''. The first training area sets you up with equipment somewhat better then the D&D standard forming the underlying rule system. And in D&D a level 1 character is considered better then an average soldier (who have weaker NPC classes) all of which might make for an aversion of this trope. However your normal D&D 1st level quest does not place you in the middle of a major city crisis working directly for a high level paladin (second only to the city's lord) who also gives you an extremely high class teleportation item and have you being the only availible heroes to resolve a crisis that has already seen an intervention from one of the settings epic level archmages. With better equipment available mere yards away from the castle in shops.
** The ''Hordes of the Underdark'' expansion for ''[[Neverwinter Nights]]'' justifies it by having your character wake up to see that the Drow has sent someone to steal your equipment. Even if you manage to kill the thief, the chest holding most of your gear teleports away. At least the owner of the inn lets you have access to his armory (since he was already paying you to do a job against the Drow).
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** Potentially justified as you are buying weapons and armor from other "gods", or (in the case of blueprints) paying for the materials to construct the potentially powerful designs. The armor you got for pre-ordering the game though attempts to avert this.
* In ''[[Nethack]]'', you get a [[Mission From God]] to retrieve a talisman. You'd think the deity who sent you on the mission would, in the hopes of giving you the highest chance of success, give you the strongest equipment possible right off the bat, and would immediately come to your aid whenever you pray. Nope! Instead, you have to sacrifice corpses to them for a CHANCE that they'll decide to grant you a strong weapon, and if you ask them for help too often they punish you.
** This can be considered a sensible approach by the gods. Literally thousands of idiots are sent on the same quest, the vast majority of them dying through sheer stupidity. There simply aren't enough [[Infinity
** Another slight aversion to the trope is that each class comes in with the tools they figure they'll need. Wizards come in with a smorgasbord of magical items; Knights arrive in full battle arms and armor with their steed; Rangers come in with a bow and enough ammo to pincushion at least 10 floors worth of creatures. Unless you're a tourist (and even they get darts), you're entering the dungeons with a pretty dependable starting kit.
* Averted in ''[[ADOM]]'': characters get whatever starting equipment is appropriate to their race and class. Monks begin the game virtually empty-handed, for instance, while paladins arrive already kitted out with weapons and armor of fairly good quality. Merchants get a sackful of items in one category, and necromancers (you guessed it) get one undead slave.
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** The worst [[With This Herring]] abuse in the ''[[X-COM (Video Game)|X-COM]]'' series is not your equipment, which is miserable, or your funding, which is miserly, but your soldiers. Rather than give you the elite special-ops Delta/SAS/Spetznaz/GSG-9 types you would expect, you get a bunch of folks who have inhumanly bad reflexes and apparently didn't even go through basic training; some of them would almost certainly have failed the physical to boot.
*** At least your starting weapons are pretty good by human standards... in ''Terror From The Deep'' though, they're quite pathetic. [[Justified Trope]] in that current underwater firearms are relatively weak and little-used.
* ''[[Phantom Brave]]'' justifies the weak starting weapons by having Marona [[All of the Other Reindeer|be ostracized for her powers]], but everything you can pick up and use to attack has the potential to become the [[Infinity
* ''Spellforce''. The clothes on your back and a sword are your main equipment. As an additional perk, it will cost you a small fortune to upgrade your weapons and/or spells every level.
* ''[[UFO After Blank|UFO Aftermath]]'', although [[Justified Trope|justified]] in that you start out just [[After the End|after aliens rain deadly spores from space and turn the planet into a mutant-encrusted wasteland]]. Essentially you get Uzis, grenades and shotguns, and have to loot the P90s, Super Striker grenade launchers, and [[BFG|extraterrestrial railguns]] as you go.
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** ''[[The Legendof Zelda CDI Games (Video Game)|The Faces of Evil]]'' tries to justify it, and the sentence suffers a [[Memetic Mutation]] like everything else in these games: "-Great! I'll grab my stuff! -There is no time, your sword is enough!"
** Thankfully averted in ''[[The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask (Video Game)|Majora's Mask]]'', where Link has both a sword and shield at the beginning. Unfortunately he ends up getting turned into a Deku, so he can't use them for a short time, but at least he actually has them this time.
* This ''can'' easily happen in ''[[Dwarf Fortress]]'', if you fail to properly prepare your seven-dwarf expedition with the needed skills and material before setting out for the selected fortress site. Some people [[Self
* A commercial for the video game version of ''[[The Jungle Book]]'' [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshaded]] this trope. A guide tells the viewer (or an unseen listener) about the dangers of the jungle and then says, "But you ain't getting nothing; you're just getting bananas and underwear. Ever get to level 10 in your underwear, boy?!"
* Averted quite throughly in ''[[Crackdown]]'': the player starts off with an assault rifle with an adjustable scope, access to the best vehicles in the game, the ability to jump ten feet straight up while standing still, and the strength to rip a car door off its hinges... and everything ''goes up from there''.
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* In both ''[[Icewind Dale]]'' games, your party starts their quest in one of the most inhospitable regions of the [[Forgotten Realms]] with nothing but their clothes and quarterstaves. This is particularly ridiculous in the second game, as your party just signed up to be mercernaries.
** Hilariously referenced in a [[Let's Play]] of the game, where the female monk repeatedly comment on how she's freezing all the time, having apparently forgotten to bring ''pants'' on her journey to the frozen hellhole that is Icewind Dale. (Admittedly, she did start with low wisdom until someone else pointed out how important it is for monks, so it is in character for her...)
* ''[[Ace Combat]]'' games usually (but not always; see the [[So Last Season]] article for a rundown of the [[Zig Zagging Trope]]) start you off with a dinky outdated fighter. True, you start as a newcomer who only earns [[Dude, Where's My Respect?|a fearsome reputation]] later, but surely they could stand to start you off with a 4th-gen plane. Perhaps most [[Egregious]] in ''Zero'', where Cipher is ostentatiously a mercenary, but clearly comes from some backwater outfit that doesn't have up-to-date birds.
** Not really that egregious; the narrator makes it pretty clear that Cipher was a nobody before he was hired by Ustio- just because he's a mercenary doesn't mean he's wealthy, and Ustio was pretty desperate at the time. In contrast to Cipher's humble beginnings, Pixy is tooling around in an F-15C and already has a solid reputation.
* Partially averted in free MMORPG ''[[Mabinogi (Video Game)|Mabinogi]]''. The starting armour, ordinary clothing, is practically worthless; but the starting weapon is more effective than nearly any of the others you can get (particularly since it compensates for your low stats, wheras all the good weapons require considerably higher stats or skills to be more useful than the beginner version).
* Played with in ''[[Diablo]]'' and ''Diablo II''. In both games, you don't start out with much, but your initial equipment isn't terrible. It'll do for a bit until you can get better stuff. Justified in both games because A) you're not really all that special of an adventurer and B) the areas you're in are typically going through hard times.
* Averted almost completely in ''[[Soul Nomad and The World Eaters]]''. The reason none of the Hidden Village guard except Danette joins you is because there's few of them to begin with and they need to protect Layna (who is two centuries old by now and needs to sleep for days on end to live), you can't buy items from anybody for various reasons except from [[Jerkass|Gig]] (and it's unlikely anybody else even ''has'' the stuff you get from Gig anyway, since the Items in the game are really you just using Gig's powers through the use of "Gig Edicts"), nearly every bit of civilization you go to that isn't against you will offer you their best soldiers to join your party, and the monetary unit you use in the game are "Gig Points", rather than an actual currency, which explains why nobody funds you.
** It's also worth noting that Danette and the main character both use [[Infinity
* Justified in ''[[Bio Shock]]'', which starts you off fresh from a plane crash in the middle of the ocean. Of course you have no equipment to speak of to defend yourself from the horrors in Rapture. What's the first thing you pick up? A wrench. You were of course {{spoiler|kindly asked to "Find a [[Half Life|crowbar]] or something."}}
* Eventually justified in ''[[Cave Story (Video Game)|Cave Story]]''. You begin the game with no weapons, no memories, and three hit points. And then you find out that you're {{spoiler|a war robot, and your original mission was to invade the island (bristling with killer creatures) and destroy [[Artifact of Doom|the Demon Crown]] that grants its wearer insane power. ''Ten years ago.'' You were able to defeat the Crown's bearer then, but failed to destroy the Crown, and you got the everloving crap beaten out of you in the process and went into standby mode.}} Hence why, {{spoiler|ten years later}}, you have to start from scratch to finish the job.
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* ''[[Dragon Age|Dragon Age: Origins]]'' does this, but by the time you're a full member of the Wardens and would expect to be equipped you're already as well kitted as everyone but the officers anyway (with variation depending on origin).
* In ''[[Faxanadu]]'', the king would provide you 1500 gold in order to help you start your quest to save the World Tree. 1500 gold was about enough to buy some basic equipment and a potion. Amusingly, because of how the game's logic worked, if you bought the right combination of items to use up all your cash, you could go back to the king and get another 1500 gold.
* ''[[Urban Chaos Riot Response]]'' had a funny aversion of this. In response to the [[Ax Crazy]] Burners running around the city, you and the rest of your elite zero-tolerance unit are given pistols, which would suck in any other scenario, but this pistol is extremely accurate, packs a punch, has a lot of ammo and is a god when fully upgraded. Even when you're given newer toys or just loot some from the corpses of your enemies, you'll find that you'll be using the pistol a lot. And don't forget the [[Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me|riot shield]] and [[Non
* The first ''[[Dino Crisis]]'' begins with cutscenes and an introductory area featuring Regina (the player character) and her fellow soldiers. The others have large automatic rifles, Regina is carrying only a pistol. What the heck, did she forget all her gear? Some cheat codes actually allowed you to begin the game with different weapons, so you could give her a riot gun just so she'd look suitably badass in those scenes.
* The cutscene before starting in ''[[Painkiller]]'' has an angel ask Daniel the protagonist point blank: "Do you need weapons?" Daniel responds angrily that he can take care of himself. To be fair, he does suspect that such generosity would come with a price he'd have to pay later. Following which, the game begins and immediately turns this trope on its ass. The eponymous Painkiller is a weapon and holy freaking God what a sign of things to come. It's essentially a handheld blender that can fire off its business end which can then anchor into any surface and act as a focus point for a vicious laser beam. It's one of the most devastatingly effective and creative weapons in a game that is basically all about devastatingly effective and creative weapons, and practically a [[Disc One Nuke]] compared to most other FPS that start you with a shitty pistol or melee weapon. It's one of the few FPS of its type in which you can go through the entire game using only this starting weapon without ever coming close to [[Self
* Justified then averted in ''[[Metro 2033]]'': initially you can only grab a revolver when your home station comes under attack, but once everything calms down you're sent to the quartermaster and fitted out with body armour, a gas mask, flashlight, a submachine gun and generous portions of ammunition. NPCs are similarly helpful later on in the game.
* At the beginning of ''[[Aveyond]] 3'' (either Lord Of Twilight or Gates of Night, depending on which you got first) the King of Thais subverts this slightly by giving Edward Excalibur, but Excalibur's power depends on what stone it has equipped and the one he gives you sucks, so. Besides, he doesn't give you any armour or any gold or any equipment at all for the other team members.
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== Web Comics ==
* ''[[
** Being based on the first ''[[Final Fantasy (Franchise)|Final Fantasy]]'' game, the webcomic justifies and parodies this by the king simply being a total [[Jerkass]] and maniac who gives the party nothing ''to'' save his daughter and the only thing they get ''for'' saving her [[Broken Bridge|is a bridge built]]... that he was making anyway and named after himself. Also, directly referenced in [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2001/08/01/episode-063-fighters-got-a-point-i-think/ this comic], where it's apparently irrelevant as the weapons in the town [[Sorting Algorithm of Weapon Effectiveness|all sucks for some reason]].
** Speaking of, after Sarda depowered them and later imploded from [[Phlebotinum Overload]], the gang has to face up to taking Chaos out. They have to do this in twenty-four hours to avert Chaos' plot to destroy the world (which likely involves a [[Time Crash]]); needless to say, they're having a bit of trouble getting their act together after faffing about and ruining civilization up to this point.
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* Similar to the Iraq example, Sherman crews in WWII strapped just about anything they could find to their tanks to try and counter superior Axis armor and antitank weaponry. Sandbags were particularly common.
** Infantry have a tendency to hop aboard passing Armored Fighting Vehicles that're going their way. Tank crews have upon occasion referred to such infantry as "applique armor".
* In [[World War Two]], the United States built great numbers of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator FP-45 Liberator], a pistol whose main building material was stamped cheapness. The idea was to parachute them in large quantities into cities where significant [[La Résistance|resistance]] presence could be amassed, so long as the resistance members could be given something to fight with besides sticks and stones. The FP-45 was not a suitable combat weapon: unprecise, low-powered and fiddly and time-consuming to reload, its only reason for being was to allow civilians to find a lone German trooper, [[One
** The .45 ACP round it used made it effective enough in terms of stopping power, and as weapons historian Ian Hogg pointed out, it ''had'' to be, since if that one shot (through a very short, smooth-bore barrel) missed, you were [[Oh Crap|twelve different kinds of screwed]].
** Its successor the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_gun Deer gun], a similarly crappy weapon chambered in 9mm, was to be used the same way in Vietnam.
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[[Category:With This Herring]]
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