Ammo-Using Melee Weapon

You've almost defeated That One Boss. His Mecha-Mooks are slain, his Multiple Life Bars depleted. You raise your Laser Blade for one last mighty blow, and it fizzles out as it runs out of batteries. If this has happened to you, you may be wielding an Ammo-Using Melee Weapon.

Most common in Video Games, Ammo-Using Melee Weapons are melee weapons that use ammo. This ammo might be anything from gasoline to fusion batteries to the souls of your enemies, but without it, the weapon either won't function, will do significantly reduced damage, or will lose some special ability. They are generally powerful, often more powerful than many ranged weapons due to Competitive Balance, as their lack of range balances out their high damage.

Prime candidates for this trope are chainsaws, Vibroweapons, Hot Blades, Laser Blades, Pile Bunkers, Rocket Powered Weapons, and Flaming Swords. Due to the mostly fictional and generally Awesome, but Impractical nature of these weapons, it is generally not Truth in Television, except in cases of power tools being used as Improvised Weapons.

The inverse of melee Emergency Weapons and Ranged Emergency Weapons, which are typically much weaker and have the selling point of not using ammo. Sister trope to the more mundane Breakable Weapons, though they can overlap in particularly high maintenance cases. Often an Enhanced Archaic Weapon. If your weapon uses ammo for ranged attacks but is also designed to be used as a melee weapon, it is likely a Mix-and-Match Weapon. If it's not designed for melee attacks but you use it for them anyway, that's Pistol-Whipping.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Lyrical Nanoha: Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's introduces the so-called "cartridge system" to the series, which is a Device upgrade that provides one-off attack boosts by consuming "cartridges" of compressed mana and has to be "reloaded" when empty. Ironically, despite cartridges literally looking like rifle rounds, the first two Devices introduced to use them are a longsword and a warhammer, using ammo to boost melee attacks.
• Rebuild World: There's a category of high tech swords that work by releasing liquid metal Abnormal Ammo and shaping it at will via force fields, with adjustable length and thickness depending on the situation. Each blade is disposable, with more metal being poured to replace it. These are introduced being used by the Cyber Ninja Nelia, and Akira ends up getting a device for one to make sure he's not stuck with a Wrecked Weapon which is a perpetual challenge.

Film — Live-Action

• Godzilla vs. Kong: Kong's axe needs to charged up with nuclear energy in order to function at full strength (signified by how much it glows). Without a charge, it's only able to dent MechaGodzilla a little, but once infused with Godzilla's atomic breath, it chops through the robot like a knife through warm butter.

Literature

• Alan Dean Foster's Star Wars novel Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Luke Skywalker attaches his lightsaber to a blaster pistol so it can drain energy from the blaster pistol and recharge itself.
• The Scar: When Uther Doul's Possible Sword is activated, each swing passes through every path that it could potentially have taken, inflicting hundreds of cuts. It's Lost Technology and he doesn't have any way to replace the batteries, so he only turns it on for seriously important fights.

Tabletop Games

• Dark Conspiracy: The Darktek sourcebook has several melee weapons that require energy to use.
  • The Minisaw is like a small chainsaw. Its internal battery powers it for 1 minute or it can use a belt pack battery that lasts 15 minutes.
  • A hit by a Stun Stick hits inflicts a powerful jolt of electricity. Its battery provides enough for 2 jolts and a belt-pack battery can supply 20 such jolts.
• Some 5e Dungeons & Dragons weapons have a number of charges that can be expended to produce useful effects, and automatically regain charges at dawn (some of them disappear if the last charge is used).
• Gamma World 1st Edition: Four weapons used in melee combat are powered by hydrogen or chemical energy cells that last for various amounts of time: vibro dagger (30 minutes), vibro blade (20 minutes), energy mace (15 minutes) and stun whip (30 minutes).
• Mechanical Dream: Weirdtech weapons often uses orpee fruit to power them and melee weapons like the grindsword are no exception.
• In Planet Mercenary the "Reload" Mayhem Card applies to melee weapons as much as ranged, the rulebook suggests roleplaying it as the blade getting slippery with blood or stuck in the opponent.
• Shadowrun supplement Street Samurai Catalog: The AZ-150 Super Stun Baton delivers a strong jolt of electricity that can knock a victim unconscious. It can be used 12 times and must then be recharged.The Reinco Shock Glove uses stun baton technology to render targets unconscious with an electrical charge. It has up to eight uses before needing to be recharged.
• Tenra Bansho Zero: When attacking with a gemblade weapon, the user can fire 1 or more soulgems (shards of Hihi'irokane) in order to increase their damage. Versions of these weapons which have been adapted to gunpowder are also available, which are newer and slightly inferior to the original gemblades, but easier to attain.
• Implied in Wrath And Glory. Because the complications chart for attacks does not distinguish between melee and ranged weapons, melee weapons can generate the "out of ammo" complication. Plausible with powered weapons like chainswords and Power Fists, common enough mainstays in Warhammer 40,000.
• Starfinder has this for many of its powered melee weapons. After all, the energy to make a plasma sword has to come from somewhere. Note that not all melee weapons require them, even the heavier advanced ones.
• A few of the more esoteric MechWarrior RPG melee weapons require power cells to function. These include stun batons and a variety of Vibroweapons, from small vibroblades the size of small knives all the way up to Vibro-Katanas, which are supposedly very good against Elemental Power Armor troops.

Video Games

• Arcanum: The shocking staff and Tesla-staff consume batteries every time they're wielded.
• Ashes 2063: In the Enriched edition and Afterglow, the Jackhammer uses up its gasoline meter to attack^note but not when idling. If you run out, it becomes totally unusable until you find another jackhammer or someone willing to sell you fuel.
• Assault Suits Valken has the titular assault suit ejecting shells when throwing a punch, suggesting it uses them to enhance its striking power in a manner similar to an ArmoredTrooper.
• BioShock 2: Zig-zagged with the drill. It needs fuel to spin, but it can be swung freely while off.
• Death Road to Canada features chainsaws and weedwhackers, both of which run on gasoline, the same consumed by your vehicle. There are electrical versions that have an internal battery; once that's spent, the weapon is just shop fodder.
• Destiny and Destiny 2 have swords infused with energy that can also fire Sword Beams and block enemy projectiles, with both actions draining ammo count depending on the intensity of the move and the sword's guard efficiency, respectively. In the latter game, Season of the Warmind would revamp swords by removing the ammo drain from blocking, while also tying the guard duration to the energy gauge you also use to launch the sword's special attack. The Witch Queen added glaives to the game's sandbox, which can be used freely as melee weapons or fire projectile blades at the cost of Special ammo.
• Deus Ex: The riot prod stuns and knocks out enemies with electricity, and requires one prod charger per use, with a 4 round clip.
  • It returns as the stun prod in Deus Ex: Invisible War but due to the universal ammo mechanic it now draws from the same pool as every other weapon in the game.
• In Doom (2016) and Doom Eternal, the Chainsaw and Crucible sword require ammo, though in Eternal the Chainsaw slowly regenerates up to 1/3 of its full capacity.
• In The Elder Scrolls series, enchanted weapons must be periodically recharged with filled soul gems or their enchantments will stop working. Downplayed in Morrowind, where in addition to recharging with soul gems, enchanted weapons do recharge on their own, albeit very slowly.
• In El Paso, Elsewhere, James Savage collects Wooden Stakes that deal a hefty amount of damage (killing basic Mooks in one hit) to enemies, vampires or not. They get used up whenever he successfully attacks an enemy with them, with the amount he can carry at a time depending on the Modular Difficulty.
• In Evil Dead: Hail to the King, Ash needs an axe as his chainsaw uses precious gas to work.
• In Fallout and Fallout 2 the Power Fist, Ripper and Cattle Prod use Small Energy Cells. This feature did not return in the Bethesda games. In Fallout: New Vegas, the Zap and Displacer Gloves were going to use Energy Cells (an energy cell can still be seen on their models), and the Ballistic Fist was going to use shotgun ammo, but the engine didn't support this and the game's rushed development left no time to implement it.
• In Final Fantasy VIII, gunblades work by firing a round inside the blade and using the now vibrating blade to cut deeper than they could otherwise. In gameplay terms, however, only Irvine's actual firearms require ammo, and even then only for his Limit Break.
• The Halo series has the Energy Sword and Gravity Hammer, which have limited charges but cannot be reloaded, as well as the multiplayer only Golf Club.
• Heat Signature: The Crashblade can disable any shield and kill the shielded enemy behind it in one stroke, but only has one use before it turns into a regular longblade. Cherry's Fatal Attraction can pierce through shields and armor, teleports you to the enemy you're killing with it, and can be recharged between missions.
• Heavy Metal F.A.K.K.²: The Chainsaw Sword uses the same gasoline as the flamethrower.
• Hexen: Zigzagged with the Fighter's weapons: Timon's Axe is solely a melee weapon, but is powered by Blue Mana which causes lightning to flash around it. It can still be used if you don't have any left, but for far less damage. The Hammer of Contrition, despite being a warhammer, has both melee and ranged attacks, only uses mana for the latter and can be brandished without green mana, while the Quietus, to all appearances a sword, has no melee capability.
• Into the Breach: The Prime-class weapons Titanite Blade, Mercury Fist and Fissure Fist are melee weapons that both do significant damage but can only be used a limited number of times each battle.
• Killing Floor 2:
  • The Pulverizer is a sledgehammer with a magazine of explosives feeding into it. Using heavy attack will detonate one on impact, adding a shaped explosion to the actual swing. If the magazine is empty, only the actual hit will do damage. The light attack, jab, and block don't use ammunition.
  • The Eviscerator is a Swiss-Army Weapon that launches spinning circular blades, but also has a larger circular saw mounted in front. The projectile discs are loaded from a magazine, while the front saw uses a tank full of fuel to spin, rapidly doing damage to whatever is in front of you. Jabbing and blocking likewise use neither ammunition.
• In Left 4 Dead 2, the Chainsaw is the most damaging weapon in the game, able to tear through anything in the game in seconds if you're brave enough to walk up to it and hold down the trigger. But it still runs on gas, and when it runs out, it's useless and the survivor promptly discards it for a bog-standard pistol. Unfortunately, there's no replenishing it, even with the containers of gasoline you'll occasional find lying around the map.
• Jetstream Sam's sword in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance doesn't use ammunition... but its sheath does. A rifle's firing mechanism uses up ammunition from a regular magazine to catapult the sword out of the sheath, letting the wielder make a single, extremely fast cut before it has to be wielded normally.
• The Gunlance in Monster Hunter fires short-range explosive shells to enhance its damage output. These need to be reloaded periodically, but the hunter never runs out of shells on their person. To a lesser extent, the Charge Blade and Switch Axe might count. It's not exactly ammunition but "energy phials", but when expended they do need to be reloaded.
• No More Heroes: Travis Touchdown's beam katanas will gradually run out of battery power, and must be manually re-charged by shaking.
• Nuclear Throne: Most melee weapons logically require no ammo whatsoever, but the Jackhammer, Laser Sword, Laser Hammer, and Laser Screwdriver all require ammo, the former using up Explosive ammo, and the latter 3 using Energy Weapon ammo.
• Parasite Eve 2: Aya's Gunblade uses shotgun shells in two different ways. It can fire shells like a regular shotgun or it can be activated during a melee attack to cause far more damage than normal (gunblade's regular swipe deals decent damage but nothing spectacular).
• Ratchet & Clank loves this trope for its whips. Ratchet: Deadlocked has the scorpion flail, Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal and Secret Agent Clank both have the plasma whip, and in Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction the Razor Claws and Shock Ravager use ammo.
• In the original Red Faction, the UCB-24 Control Baton can be used as a club - which doesn't use up ammunition - or as a taser, which does use up its battery and even has its own reload animation.
• RFCK Endless War: All combat requires you to spend slime. This includes swords, bats, nun-chucks and scythes. How this works is still up to speculation.
• In Runescape Augmented melee weapons drain charge from the character's Universal Charge Pack in combat. If the character's charge pack is completely drained then their augmented weapons have their stats reduced to those of level 1 weapons and don't give any bonuses for their perks.
• All weapons in Shadow the Hedgehog use ammo that can be replenished by picking up the same weapon. This extends to every melee weapon as well, including spears, swords, and signposts.^note Ironically, the sole exception to this is when using a specific melee weapon to fire ranged Sword Beams. Thus creating a situation where melee weapons use ammo at all times except when using ranged attacks.
• In Starcraft I, this is how Fenix dies in a cutscene. He's attacked by a Hydralisk, but powers up his Psi-blades to fight back. His blades suddenly flicker out, and the scene cuts out with a clear Oh, Crap! expression on Fenix's face.
• The Super Robot Wars series typically depicts melee weapons as drawing on a mech's energy reserves, but a few weapons across the series do use ammo. Pile Bunker-type weapons are the most likely to be ammo-based, like the Alt Eisen's Revolving Stake; Dai-guard's Knot Punisher; and the Scopedog's punch, which acts like a piston driven by an explosive cartridge.
• Team Fortress 2 features the Ullapool Caber, which is a grenade that the Demoman carries around and swings at people. Predictably, it blows up when he hits someone with it, leaving him with a pitiable scrap of a grenade for a replacement melee and forcing him to return to a resupply locker if he wants it back.
• Tormented Souls has the Electric Lance as the stronger melee weapon that is powered up with battery cells (compared to the more basic Crowbar which requires no ammunition).
• Transformers: Devastation: Some melee weapons, specifically ones with elemental properties like Thermo Swords and Energon Swords, have a limited number of charges that get used up when they're used. Most other melee weapons don't, however.

Real Life

• The bang stick is a weapon used against sharks and other dangerous marine predators. It's a stick with a built-in device that fires a firearm shell (handgun/rifle bullet or shotgun shell) into a target when the end of the stick is pressed against the target. After being fired, the firearm shell is replaced.

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