History AwesomeButImpractical / TableTopGames

*** Well, Obelisk pretty much subverts this, being almost unstoppable with the right set-up and just really needing like 2 or 3 turns to finish the job anyway, but Ra is this trope incarnated. First, unlike Obelisk, he can't be Special Summoned at all. Second, he has no protection effect, except when he's Summoned. Third, his ATK and DEF is always 0, unless you pay ''all your Life Points except 100'' to have it gain ATK and DEF equal to what you paid. If you attack your opponent directly, ''maybe'' you can finish him off before he can do his CherryTapping. Fourth, his last effect allows you to pay 1000 Life Points to destroy any card. That's really useful, but since you can't Special Summon Ra, you need to skip using his ATK gaining effect to use this, which also means ''keeping a 0 ATK monster completely vulnerable at your side of the field''. Wow.

* Most Tribute/Advance Monsters in the ''{{Yu-Gi-Oh}}'' card game. You can spend an enormous amount of resources on it and lose the whole thing to a simple Bottomless Trap Hole.

** The 40K scale Tau Manta transport gunship from Forgeworld. At a massive 63x86cm (25x34 inches), this thing not only does not belong on a table, it ''is'' a table. And at [[CrackIsCheaper nearly a thousand UK Pounds]], there aren't likely to be too many players who can afford on.

** Then came 5 edition which not only made it cheaper (form 650 to 500 which is cheap in 3,000+ point games it's made for) and harder to kill
** A lot of special characters fall into this, especially the ones that are pure beatsticks. They are extremely powerful, but also extremely expensive and, if not immune to instant death, die to a single tank round. That's why you don't see the likes of Typhus or Marneus Calgar very often. The most used special charcters either buff your other units (like Vulcan, Ghazghkull or Fatereaver) or are {{GameBreaker}}s (like Elrad).

* ''StarfleetBattles'' had battleships. Huge and powerful, and enough to make your oponent look for his [[BrownPants brown pants]], they were horrificly expensive (especially in campaign play), and effectively required an expensive support fleet to protect and augment it. In the end, 'historically' only the Klingons ever built any, and only two of a planned nine.

** Not to mention the fact that a tank that massive will surely be caught in the same problem of the Maus [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_VIII_Maus]], first it won't be able to cross several types of terrains, making it just a glorified and costly bunker in many situations; second it won't be able to operate anywhere near a building since the vibrations from the threads will knock entire sections of building off, causing it and its allied troops to be burried by the rubble; third it will be practicly useless at short range, making it a target for tank hunters team.
*** Which is why you always use dedicated support with your Baneblade to take out those tank hunter teams, and its role is more specialized for [[CurbStompBattle destroying enemies]] in open terrain, unlike the smaller and far more common Leman Russ variants that are more suited for urban combat.
*** Plus, the material used in [[TheEmpire The Imperium's]] buildings is noted to be far stronger than what we have today, so there probably won't be any rubble.
*** Some people actually pointed out that due to the rules for coming in from reserves, a Baneblade technically cant be put reserve, despite it being an option (and the only way to ensure it doesnt get scrapped in Spearhead). This is because the literal wording of Reserves means that the unit has to move from off the board onto the board using it's normal movement allowance. A Baneblade moves 6 inches a turn, it's almost a foot in length!

*** Which is why you always use dedicated support with your Baneblade to take out those tank hunter teams, and it's role is more specialized for [[CurbStompBattle destroying enemies]] in open terrain, unlike the smaller and far more common Leman Russ variants that are more suited for urban combat.

*** Which is why you always use dedicated support with your Baneblade to take out those tank hunter teams, and it's role is more specialized for [[CurbStompBattle ass-raping]] in open terrain, unlike the smaller and far more common Leman Russ variants that are more suited for urban combat.

* Several years ago in the ''[[MagicTheGathering Magic: the Gathering]]'' [[TournamentPlay tournament scene]], the idea popped up that any card costing more than four mana had to basically win you the game single-handedly or it wasn't good enough. This has changed somewhat in recent years (and the originator of the meme has since disavowed it himself) with WizardsOfTheCoast's attempts to make the flashy-but-expensive cards more viable and tone down the power level of small creatures and cheap effects; nonetheless, high-cost cards are still seen as mainly the purview of social gamers who play for fun rather than that of pro tournament players. This concept is demonstrated in [[http://www.ugmadness.net/index.php?date=2004-09-01 this strip]] of the webcomic ''UGMadness''.
** A good embodiment of the trope would be the Ultimatum cycle from the recent ''Shards of Alara'' set, five rare sorceries with impressive effects each that all but guarantee you'll win the game the turn you play one... if you can only get seven points of colored mana in ''just'' the right combination together.
*** And then they went and figured out that [[http://magiccards.info/ala/en/164.html Cruel Ultimatum]] fitted so cleanly into the five-color control decks (which specialise in reaching unusual and specific combinations of mana to get strong, efficient answers to its opponent's threats) that even these embodiments of AwesomeButImpractical made their way into one of the dominant decks of its day.
** Dragons in general tend to be extraordinarily powerful cards but incredibly difficult to get into play, with high casting costs. A particular example from the game's early days were the Elder Dragons, five cards with powerful stats and splashy effects but which were almost impossible to play thanks to their casting costs ''and'' which required a constant influx of mana every turn to keep them in play.
** Occasionally it happens that a card goes from AwesomeButImpractical to AwesomeYetPractical as a result of the release of subsequent cards. One example is the card [[http://magiccards.info/cs/en/145.html Dark Depths]], which is capable of producing an indestructible creature capable of one-shotting an opponent, but which required the massive investment of 30 mana to do so. Then, in Fall 2009, the card [[http://magiccards.info/query?q=!vampire+ hexmage Vampire Hexmage]] was printed, which allowed the process to be circumvented for just two mana. Dark Depths promptly became a major force at the next professional tournament.
** The [[EldritchAbomination Eldrazi]] are designed for this, espcially [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=193452 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn]]. Sure it costs 15 mana to play, but it is ''devastating'' if you get it out. And to avert anticlimaxes it gives you an extra turn to avoid summoning sickness, and it's immune to the vast majority things that could dispose of it before it gets one good swing in.

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[[folder:VideoGames - First-Person Shooter]]
* ''CallOfDuty 4: Modern Warfare'' lets you unlock two additional scopes for most guns, the red dot sight and the ACOG scope. However, the ACOG scope, which provides 4x zoom, is unlockable even for weapons on which it does more bad than good; putting an ACOG [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment scope]] on the SVD Dragunov sniper rifle not only reduces its accuracy (the default scope is easier to aim with), but it also makes aiming at nearby targets harder, and you can't hold your breath when using it, so there is always breathing sway. In addition, the 4x zoom is largely wasted as most maps do not have open spaces big enough to make it useful.
** The ACOG [[DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment scope]] could be useful to sniper rifle in closer combat since you don't need to steady to pull off a shot, but the golden gun camouflages are very much AwesomeButImpractical in most of the criteria for the trope - most of them require you kill 175 enemies with headshots to equip it, which is out of the reach of players who wish to use Prestige mode, which causes you to wipe your levels and challenges (which also means progress towards the golden camouflages is wiped) to get a new icon, and this can be done ten times. As you might have guessed, the gold camouflages also make it easier to see you, being gold and all.
** The ACOG is noticeably more useful on the fully-automatic weapons like the M4 Carbine, though, because the additional breathing sway is negated by the zoom helping you put more of the target in the center of your screen, which is all you need when you let the automatic fire rip.
** In ModernWarfare 2, you can get a tactical nuke, which is basically a "Game Over, I Win" button. The Impractical Part? It requires a 25-kill streak. This is easier said than done, and even if you do kill 25 people in a row without dying, you're probably going to win anyway unless it's a big game or a long game.
* In ''{{Turok}}: Dinosaur Hunter,'' the two final weapons are perhaps the most useless. The Fusion Cannon and Chronosceptor (the latter of which whose [[PlotCoupon pieces]] the game [[GottaCatchThemAll revolves around finding]]) are extremely powerful, but also slow to fire. You're a sitting duck taking damage as the guns charge up, and if the enemy isn't stationary, it'll probably get out of the weapon's blast radius. Furthermore, the Cannon only holds two Fusion Charges without a Backpack, and they're ''extremely'' hard to find. The Chronosceptor holds three shots and can't be reloaded at all.
** The Fusion Cannon shoots a small slow-moving red flare that explodes after two seconds or so, filling the screen with orange smoke, and several shockwaves afterward. The Chronosceptor shoots a semi-homing laser that explodes not once but twice on contact.
*** The Chronoscepter is actually very useful against the final boss, as it will reduce him to about a third of his health (which takes a ''lot'' of time to wear down using normal weapons) if you manage to connect with all the shots. Likewise, the Fusion Cannon is a good thing to have against the penultimate boss, though it's a lot clumsier to use than the Chronoscepter.
** Additionally, there's also the Nuke in ''Turok 2'', which takes a moment to charge, then shoots a laser, gathering energy at the target, finally exploding after 4 seconds, turning enemies into charcoal. Ten seconds later, any enemy affected by the initial blast [[StuffBlowingUp suddenly explodes]].
*** Except for the final boss. Despite the fact that you can only obtain the last Nuke piece just before fighting him, the weapon does ''absolutely nothing'' to him in the game's final battle.
*** That being said, said final boss will sometimes call on [[GoddamnBats a swarm of nasty, fast-moving, hard to hit enemies]] to attack you during the battle. While the Nuke doesn't affect the boss himself, it really comes in handy dealing with these, as it will take out all of them at once with a single shot, and hey, it's not like it can be used for anything else . . .
*** Actually, you obtain it before the penultimate boss (The Mother), and it doesn't work on her either.
* Pretty much any beam-missile combo except the Super Missile in ''{{Metroid}} Prime'' games. They tend to cost far too much [[TooAwesomeToUse ammo]] to use in order to be effective. Although, each combination comes with its own [[PowerGlows pretty effects]].
** The Wavebuster can be used to make Meta Ridley absurdly easy (only in the original version, though. The bug was fixed in PAL release and the Player's Choice version) as well as the cloaked drone in the Phazon Mines. And other than the Flamethrower, they're all useful on Prime itself.
** The Sonic Boom from ''Prime 2'' can do an ungodly amount of damage to the Emperor Ing's eye-form (up to a third of his energy bar per hit, depending on difficulty). However, it costs 30 rounds of each ammo to fire, and you're trying to hit an extremely narrow moving target while dodging all the boss's regular attacks. It does have some use against large mobs, since enemies taken out by it can drop both Light and Dark ammo.
*** Annihilator beam in ''Prime 2'' (of which beamcombo the sonicboom is) in general. No enemy is resistant to it, it homes, and it has a very high rate of fire. On the other hand, each shot doesn't do a lot of damage, and it uses up both kinds of ammo.
*** The Sunburst and Darkburst are awesome (they fire ''miniature stars and black holes'', respectively) but impractical too, they cost too much ammo for not enough damage. There is one Dark Ingsmasher in Ing Hive you will use them on consistently, because there is a recharge room next door so you go postal for the lolz.
* The Gravity Hammer and Energy Sword in ''{{Halo}} 3''. The Energy Sword is only good for killing one specific species of Flood, and the Gravity Hammer is fairly useless. They look pretty cool, but most other weapon combos are more efficient and safer to use.
** The Gravity Hammer gets a bit more love in ''Halo: [=ODST=]'', where it has a bigger impact area, allowing you to maul multiple grunts and jackals with one swing. However, it has ''less'' love as well, because it's much harder to use (you're not the superstrong Master Chief, after all), and it's strangely not as good against shields as it used to be.
* In ''TeamFortress2'', all classes have a taunt that can one-shot an opponent in melee range. All of them are impractically slow, and quite awesome to get a kill with during a match. Notable contenders include the Pyro, who was the first to be able to kill with his Hadouken taunt, the Scouts' enemy-launching baseball bat taunt, the Soldier's suicide-grenade taunt, and the Spy's knife-fencing which alerts otherwise oblivious opponents to their presence before the fatal blow.
* The ''Urban Terror'' mod for ''QuakeIIIArena'' introduces quite possibly ''the'' most Awesome But Impractical method of killing in a FirstPersonShooter - the GoombaStomp. Yeah. It's even ''called'' the Goomba Stomp. And it's a OneHitKill. Thing is, you can't just jump on someone, you have to have some... [[NotTheFallThatKillsYou distance...]]
** The ''TeamFortress2'' server 2Fort2Furious has this as a unique server mod. The code for the mod is not public, thus only that server has the feature. Amusingly enough, a message pops up on everyone's screen telling who killed whom with the technique. It can even kill Ubercharged (otherwise invincible) opponents. Otherwise, it sounds as if it is nearly identical to the Urban Terror version.
* In ''Left4Dead'', at certain points players will come across [[GatlingGood a mounted minigun]] that can, predictably, wipe out hordes of zombies in seconds. The trouble is, the weapon is almost never mounted in such a position as to effectively cover more than a few of the many directions attacks can come from. Using it effectively requires the 3 PlayerCharacters who aren't using the minigun to watch the gunner's back, and on higher difficulties where the risk of friendly fire damage becomes a very real threat, most players find it far more prudent to simply ignore the minigun, put their backs to the wall, and fight off the incoming zombies with small arms fire.
** The Tank's rock throw ability in VS mode is also awesome but useless. It takes the Tank about 3 seconds to lift up a huge chunk of slab and throw it, which by then the Survivor players have either taken cover or [[KillItWithFire set you on fire.]]
** The Grenade Launcher can wipe the floor with the gibs, gore and unidentifiable bodyparts of any infected in the game (minus the Tank) with a single shot, stun the Tank (being the only primary weapon capable of doing so) and just plain awesome (it's a grenade launcher). However, due to its arcing trajectory, the fact that you cannot refill its ammunition, its ridiculous friendly fire damage, and how long it takes to reload it (which has to be done after every shot) makes it anything but practical to use, unless you happen to find one right before a crescendo or the finale (and even then, its usability is questionable due to the aforementioned friendly fire).
*** Likewise the Chainsaw. It does the most damage per second of any weapon in the game, as well as being able to tear apart a tank in under 10 seconds flat. It's also a goddamn chainsaw. The problem? It draws every infected within earshot to you, and it only has 1 minute of fuel (which, like the Grenade launcher, cannot be refueled despite you having gas tanks lying around).
**** However, the limitations with the Chainsaw can be mitigated and even utilized to advantage. Tucked in a doorway or such, a Chainsaw drawing the horde will provide unsurpassed protection.
* The bugbait in ''HalfLife 2''. It lets you summon Antlions and manipulate them to attack the Combine soldiers, but the bugs only appear for a few levels, making this item completely useless for the rest of the game.
** To add more insult to injury, Antlions will go after nearby Combine and sentry guns unprovoked, leaving you with few opportunities to actually ''use'' the bugbait, except to make them run out as a distraction or into a tripmine. The alternate fire, which draws them to you, is ''completely'' useless, because any nearby Antlions will come to you automatically unless there are enemies around to fight, and if there are, that's probably what you want them doing anyway.
*** It does ONE thing once you no longer get antlions. If thrown on a Combine soldier(any combine soldier), it briefly stuns them. If you keep hitting one with it, he'll just stand there waving his arms around his head.
** Also, the Revolver pretty much packs the second biggest punch in the entire game, but it carries so little ammo (and it's so rare to find) that you end up using your Sniper Rifle (actually a crossbow) more often.
* Half the weapons in {{Duke Nukem 3D}} fall in this trope, by either eating ammo(Devastator), only being useful at close range(Shrink Ray), or only being useful in specific situations(Laser Trip Bomb).
* A rare in-universe example, ''{{Bioshock}}'s Big Daddy Prototype was able to dual-wield the power drill and rivet gun, as well as use plasmids. This was too expensive a build to mass-produce (and too difficult to pacify if they should hulk out), so they decided to divide the weapon types into ''Rosie'' (gun) and ''Bouncer'' (drill) types, neither of which could use plasmids. The pair-bond for the original also worked too well; those who didn't go into a coma went insane when their Little sister got harvested/rescued.
* ''CounterStrike'' has a wide variety of weapons to choose from, some of these include the [[GunsAkimbo dual Elites]], the famed Kevlar-piercing Five-seveN; the assault rifle with a scope; Steyr AUG; and a machine gun with a 100-round belt. All of them suck. "Duelies" are unreliable, take long to load, and cost more than a simple SMG, Five-Seven has been {{nerf}}ed for balance, Steyr AUG is overpriced, and the machine gun is heavy and inaccurate. Few players really venture outside the tested and approved Colt/AK line.
* ''SoldierOfFortune 2'' has the OICW; a scoped assault rifle with a 20 mm grenade launcher. The main problem is that you ''have'' to use the laser system to check the range before firing a grenade, which simply takes far too long in a firefight. If you have time to sit and muck about with the scope, it's easier to just use the rifle component to snipe them in the head. The huge size (it takes up a ridiculous amount of screen real estate when equipped) and lack of ammo (being an experimental weapon, your enemies don't carry it, so you can't scavenge ammo from corpses) don't help either.
** The Rocket Launcher, Flamethrower, and Microwave Pulse Gun in the original. All take up three spaces in your inventory, eat up hard-to-find ammo quickly, and are rather unwieldy in firefights.
* From ''PerfectDark'': try tossing a Grenade on Proximity Pinball in any place that's not a straight narrow hallway, especially in the campaign. Chances are it'll end up bouncing straight back into you (killing you instantly) or into an important mission objective (failing the mission, of course).
** Even in a narrow hallway you could get screwed. Throw it straight down and if you don't get out in time, it's back. Even throwing it at an angle from outside can possibly bounce back to you several seconds later if you're still nearby.
* {{Daikatana}}'s[[IncrediblyLamePun Daikatana]]. Yes, you know the game is SoBadItsHorrible when the '''TITLE WEAPON''' sucks. The sword Always leaves your opponent on 1hp. In theory, this would allow you to deliver the finishing blow, but in practice, the opponent would often slice you to pieces before you could deliver a second strike. Not to mention that it blocks the screen, and, when fully leveled up, starts sparkling simply to block the screen more.
* A meta version of this trope was why the version of BFG 9000 in ''{{Doom}}'''s [[http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_press_release_beta press release beta]], which [[http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/File:BFG2704.png rapidly launched a lot of fireballs]], was cut in favor of the version in the final game which simply launches a single powerful plasma ball; not only it "looked like Christmas", but it slowed the computer down to a crawl.
* The Power Bomb in Metroid Other M somewhat qualifies for this. It's the strongest weapon in the game, and you can only use it for one fricking battle. And that's after being devoured by a Metroid Queen. After beating the game, however, it is freely available, though it has a recharge time of just about two minutes, which renders it kind of useless in battle, as most fights against regular enemies take less than a minute.

*** It should, however, be noted that a simple Unsummon can get easily take care of the indestructible creature forever, due to the way creature tokens work. [[BoringButPractical Said spell]] costs ''one'' mana to play and is probably one of the most common cards outside of basic lands, meaning you can buy it for about $0.04]]. Kinda kicks this one back into AwesomeButImpractical territory. Especially in Vintage or Extended format, where there's about twenty different kinds of Unsummon spell around.
*** We said [[AwesomeYetPractical Awesome]], not [[BoringInvincibleHero Invincible]].