History Main / PowerAtAPrice

** Chrollo's power stealing ability has multiple absurd conditions that pretty much requires him to acquire powers through stealth or force. Actually using those powers also requires him to keep a book open at all times and forces him to fight with one hand. [[spoiler: Though when he fights Hisoka, he figures out a workaround that lets him use multiple powers and keep his hands free.]]

* ''Fanfic/APlaceInMyDreams'': One of the [[LightNovel/{{Campione}} Authorities]] that [[LightNovel/SwordArtOnlin Kirito]] got from Morpheus, [Dream a Dream of the Future], allows him to receive visions from up to a week into the future in his dreams, or even talk to a dream-facsimile of someone that's perfectly accurate, but when used, he's effectively in a coma that he can't be woken from until exactly eight hours have passed.

* ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'': As you'd expect from the series that gave us EquivalentExchange, this comes up a lot, but the most notable example is circleless transmutation, which is gained by attempting the taboo of human transmutation. You get the ability to perform alchemy without a circle, giving you tremendous power and flexibility. The cost? Well, for Ed, it's AnArmAndALeg. For Izumi, it's some internal organs, leaving her sterile and intermittently coughing up blood. [[spoiler:For Roy, it's his eyesight.]] It's unavoidable, and it's ''always'' bitterly ironic.

* ''In Batman(2016)'': The [[spoiler:Gotham-Twins]] are a typical example for this.[[spoiler: Their Powers are using up their life spans. as Gotham girl says:"what we bought weren't powers for life. It was life for powers."(issue #5)]]

** Damocles gives you twice as many items, but as soon as you get hit once, at any moment there's a miniscule chance the sword falls and [[OneHitKill kills you instantly]]. You can circumvent this with an ExtraLife or a perfectly times invincibility.

** Deals with the Devil provide some of the best items in the game, but you need to spend permanent {{Heart Container}}s to use them.

** Damocles gives you twice as many items. As soon as you get hit once however, at any moment there's a miniscule chance the sword will fall and [[OneHitKill kill]] you instantly.

* ''WesternAnimation/AladdinTheSeries'': Provides the page image. Mozenrath's gauntlet grants him great power, but wearing it causes him physical pain, and the gauntlet is also implied to have dissolved the flesh on his hand and arm until it's worn on down to the bone.

** The majority of the spells in the game cost either [[HealthMeter Stamina]] or [[SanityMeter Reason]] to cast, meaning that you're burning away your [[CastFromHitPoints strength]] or [[SanitySlippage sanity]] as fuel.

* Any known Human who has either incredible strength, beauty or intellect would tell you. That getting as gifted as they were, often requires an undying, borderline-obsessive conviction to some sort of process. For example, true Body Builders (for example Arnold Schwarzeneggar) ate only the right portions and only nutritional meals. Constantly they frequented the Gym, wasting potential decades to get the size they were. But as time withers and weakens the human form, even Titan-level muscle can sag and take extra care to maintain.

* Any known Human who has either incredible strength, beauty or intellect would tell you. That getting as gifted as they were, often requires an undying, borderline-obesessive conviction to some sort of process. For example, true Body Builders (for example Arnold Schwarzaneggar) ate only the right portions and only nutritional meals. Constantly they frequented the Gym, wasting potential decades to get the size they were. But as time withers and weakens the human form, even Titan-level muscle can sag and take extra care to maintain.

* Any known Human who has either incredible strength, height or intellect would tell you. That getting as gifted as they were, often requires an undying, borderline-obesessive conviction to some sort of process. For example, true Body Builders (for example Arnold Schwarzaneggar) ate only the right portions and only nutritional meals. Constantly they frequented the Gym, wasting potential decades to get the size they were. But as time withers and weakens the human form, even Titan-level muscle can sag and take extra care to maintain.

** Glass Cannon fires a repeatable gigantic tear, but every use lowers you to [[OneHitPointWonder half a heart remaining]], no questions asked. (''Repentance'' made it less ruinous by making you take 2 extra hearts worth of damage and temporarily breaking it while you take damage while holding it.)

** Magic Skin gives you any item from the current room, but removes a heart container for the rest of the run (it's filled with a useless Broken Heart). Also, the more you use Magic Skin, [[ClingyMacguffin the more likely you are to find it later]], tempting you to keep using it...
** Damocles gives you twice as many items, but as soon as you get hit once, it adds a miniscule chance every split second the sword falls and [[OneHitKill kills]] you instantly.

* ''VideoGame/TheTiamatSacrament'': The titular Tiamat Sacrament is a ritual that can grant a dragon great power, but it requires the consent of six of the Great Seven, and most of them are reluctant to allow this ritual. [[spoiler:The ritual causes dragonkind's Blood Memory to be reset, preventing new dragons from accessing the wisdom of their oldest members.]]
* ''VideoGame/TwentyXX'':
** You have, effectively, six stats: weapon damage, power damage, running speed, jump height, health and energy. Many, many augments you can pick up increase some at the expense of others: Forcemetal Shell, for example, increases your health at the expense of speed, while Glass Cannon buffs your damage output but lowers your health. Your maximum health ''does not'' have a minimum level, so if you pick up too many health-reducing items, you will die.
** Prototype Augments are even worse. These have sizeable benefits, but potentially ''devastating'' drawbacks. You might, for example, pick up a cloud of minions (this can get [[https://i.imgur.com/vAuvMcg.png very silly]], especially if you have a Splintering Twinifier), but while those will be attacking anything that gets close to you, you'll lose the ability to attack or use powers. Another couple ''massively'' increase either your damage output or the effects of all future stat boosts you get, but doubles or triples the damage you take. Still others cause you to burn ''maximum'' energy instead of recoverable energy in exchange for significantly increased power damage, make bosses harder in exchange for more rewards, or let you use a SetBonus without the full set at the expense of a harsh reduction to your damage. (That said, if you get lucky, you can find a System Restore, which lets you wipe away the drawback of all the Prototypes you have when you pick it up.)
* ''Videogame/GrimDawn:'' Thematically, the Witch God Solael is all about this. He has overwhelming power greater than either of his two siblings (with [[UnskilledButStrong none of the foresight or planning]]), and he will gladly grant you a piece ''if'', and ''only if'', you are willing to make great sacrifices for it. One of his followers in the ''Forgotten Gods'' expansion is glad to go at length on it; if you say this seems like the work of a cruel god, he'll fire back saying the world and life itself is cruel, since both will keep taking things away from you and never stop, while Solael gives you something worthy for all the suffering and lets you take things into your own hands afterwards.
* ''VideoGame/{{Stellaris}}'' has an entity known as "[[EldritchAbomination The End of the Cycle]]" which promises to grant your empire emmense power [[DealWithTheDevil if you agree to bring about "The End"]] (and ignore the tooltip warning you in big red letters, "'''[[SchmuckBait DO NOT DO THIS!]]'''"). It makes good on its promise, and grants you [[GameBreaker Game Breaking]] advantages for the next fifty years. Then, when it comes to collect on its part of the bargain, [[spoiler:it ''utterly destroys your empire'': every planet ''rendered uninhabitable'', every settlement ''destroyed'', every citizen ''killed'', save for one person who saw this was a bad idea and started a colony on the edge of the galaxy with what little resources they could scrounge together. Worse still, this is a price the ''entire galaxy'' will be expected to pay, as the souls of your slaughtered citizens form a fleet of nigh-indestructible terror that will set out to purge the cosmos of all life, with the afforementioned colony being ''[[ForcedToWatch saved]] [[ControllableHelplessness for]] [[CosmicHorrorStory last]]''. And even on the off chance that the fleet of the damned is routed and the galaxy saved, that lone colony will be slapped with a permanent diplomacy penalty so steep, that you can bet any other galactic power still around will want to wipe it out [[VideoGameCrueltyPunishment as recompense for nearly destroying the galaxy for your own avarice.]]]]

* ''VideoGame/CryingSuns'': Every battleship’s core system, apart from the default Excelsior class, provides some benefits while also imposing a drawback.
** The Kaos class's core system lets you carry an extra four squadrons and gives you some Scrap whenever you obtain a new squadron. In exchange, your squadrons are always [[MaximumHPReduction patched]] and cannot be repaired.
** The Jericho class's core system [[CooldownManipulation halves the cooldown time]] for the first shot of your non-direct damage battleship weapons and gives your squadrons a damage bonus against debuffed targets. In exchange, your squadrons have a DPS penalty against non-debuffed targets.
** The Geno class's core system lets your stealth squadrons enter stealth the instant they’re deployed instead of needing to wait, and increases the BackStab damage they inflict when they come out of stealth. In exchange, all your squadrons have 20% less maximum health.
** The Hammer class's core system makes your squadrons FriendlyFireproof and temporarily doubles their attack power whenever they get hit by friendly fire. In exchange, the movement speed of your squadrons is reduced by 15%.
** The Void class's core system increases your chances of starting a fight in an advantageous position, doubles the speed at which your squadrons capture things, and lets you have 6 officers instead of 5. In exchange, the number of commandos you can deploy on an expedition is reduced from 10 to 8.
* The [[{{Macguffin}} Raysphere]] of ''[[VideoGame/{{Infamous}} inFAMOUS]]'' is a powerful device that can grant people ([[spoiler:or at least those with the Conduit Gene]]) powerful, superhuman abilties. The cost? It does so by creating an explosion that will absorb the energy from any normal humans caught in the blast, killing them, and redirecting that energy into [[spoiler:any potential conduits]] that have also been caught in the blast. When Cole accidentally set it off in the beginning, the Raysphere destroyed 6 city blocks and killed thousands.

* ''Webcomic/ElGoonishShive'': Aberrations take this path to magical power. Sirleck in particular [[spoiler:has mutated into a horrific thing that would be perfectly comfortable in H.R. Giger's art.]]

* ''In Batman(2016)'': The [[spoiler:Gotham-Twins]] are a typical example for this.[[spoiler: Their Powers are using up their life spans. as Gotham girl says:"what we bought wasn't powers for life. It was life for powers."(issue #5)]]

* ''In Batman(2016)'': The [[spoiler:Gotham-Twins]] are a typical example for this.[[spoiler: Their Powers are using up their life spans. as Gothham girl says:"what we bought wasn't powers for life. It was life for powers."(issue #5)]]

* ''In Batman(2016)'': The [[spoiler:Gothham-Twins]] are a typical example for this.[[spoiler: Their Powers are using up their life spans. as Gothham girl says:"what we bought wasn't powers for life. It was life for powers."(issue #5)]]

* Humans in ''Manga/ChainsawMan'' can normally only obtain power by making [[DealWithTheDevil contracts with devils]], usually losing part of their body or [[CastFromLifespan shortening their lifespan]] with each use.

* The Manga/DeathNote grants any human who obtains one the power to instantly end the lives of others, simply by writing their names within the notebook's pages. One of the [[RuleMagic myriad rules]] of the Death Note, however, stipulates that any human who uses one will not be allowed to enter Heaven nor Hell when they die, as their souls would be destined for "Mu". [[spoiler:{{Subverted}} by WordOfGod, however: in the world of ''Death Note'', there is no Heaven or Hell, and humans will go to "Mu" regardless of if they use a Death Note.]]
* ''Manga/FullmetalAlchemist'': As you'd expect from the series that gave us EquivalentExchange, this comes up a lot, but the most notable example is circleless transmutation, which is gained by attempting the taboo of human transmutation. You get the ability to perform alchemy without a circle, giving you tremendous power and flexibility. The cost? Well, for Ed, it's AnArmAndALeg. For Izumi, it's some internal organs, leaving her sterile and intermittently coughing up blood. [[spoiler:For Roy, it's his eyesight.]] It's unavoidable, and it's ''always'' bitterly ironic.