One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce

"You got the best of both worlds, don't you? All of our strengths, none of our weaknesses."

— Deacon Frost, Blade (1998)

In a World… where superpowers are commonplace, or at least common enough to be common knowledge, it tends to be the case that these powers come with certain drawbacks. Maybe there's a price that has to be paid, or a ritual that must be performed, or they're correspondingly bad at a different skill, or some other caveat that can make having these powers a pain, or using them annoyingly cumbersome. Then you have this character.

They were born under the right stars or to the right combination of parents, blessed with the protection of a supernatural entity, armed with certain unique talents or just plain lucky: he happens to be the only one in the whole world (or one of a small minority) who is exempt from this ironclad rule. A wizard who can cast magic without a wand, for instance, or a superhuman immune to the local flavor of Kryptonite. A more "fair" treatment may make holding the sauce a trade-off for reduced powers such as with the Dhampyr or other Half-Human Hybrid characters. Ultimately this is not required though and all the trope concerns are heroes who are special because they can flout the physical, magical, etc. rules that all other metanormals in the setting are chained by.

The name is a play on a phrase commonly used for making a special order at a restaurant: "Hold the X" means "This dish normally includes X, but I would like it without X." This is a pun because "hero" is also a kind of sandwich, so it's like you're ordering a Hero sandwich, but without the Weaksauce Weakness.

A Sub-Trope of Conditional Powers and Wrong Context Magic. Often a Unique Protagonist Asset. In a world where Competitive Balance is in effect, a Lightning Bruiser or Master of All can be considered a form of this trope. Normal supers can invoke this trope with a Kryptonite-Proof Suit.

Not to be confused with one hero holding another hero's weaksauce.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Bleach, mastering the Bankai can take a Shinigami as long as ten years. This is because, even though the Bankai is in most cases essentially only a bigger version of the Shikai, the amount of power can be 5 to 10 times greater and thus much more difficult to control. Enter The Hero, Ichigo, whose Bankai actually compresses his spiritual power, circumventing the above problem, and actually giving him more speed and control. It should be noted Yamamoto's bankai "Zanka no Tachi" also seems to follow this.
• In Brynhildr in the Darkness, witches risk death via melting if they overuse their powers or if the Harness device in their neck is ejected. They also risk a monster called a Drassil hatching from the Harness, which will also kill them. Hatsuna Wakabayashi's main powers are Healing Hands and a Healing Factor. Her ability to heal herself is so powerful that she can recover even from melting, and she is also the only character to survive and recover from her Drassil hatching.
• In addition to physical deformities, the other Borners in Canaan have to take regular shots of medication to avoid death from their virus-originated superpowers. The eponymous protagonist has neither of these problems (though her hair did go white because of them). For comparison, another character who received an internal and therefore invisible physical mutation, in her case two appendixes. Not exactly super-powered synthesia. It does bring up the question of if she'd still have to take the medication if she got them removed, too...
• Clare, the protagonist of Claymore, seems to be completely immune to Awakening (even when she is deliberately trying to!), which threatens every other Claymore. The main reason for that is believed to be Jean's sacrifice to bring her back from the brink of Awakening before, which left Clare with a psychological block that prevents her from transforming, though this may also have something to do with her being only quarter-yoma. When Clare finally does Awaken, it is nowhere near as monstrous or horrifying as the other Awakened, and is essentially Teresa of the Faint Smile reborn. The Organization caught on and mass-produced quarter-yoma, with general success. While they're generally weaker than regular Claymores, the probability of a frenzied Awakening is next to nil, while lesser Awakenings give them the powers of various Yoma with conscious control. The senior Claymores outright claim the quarter-yoma Claymores are the future.
• Darker than Black's Hei doesn't appear to have a Remuneration. It's explained some Contractors can lose their Renumeration but retain their powers, specifically if they lose their original bodies (such as the case with Mao). This turns out to be the reason for Hei's lack of renumeration as well — since they're technically his sister's powers obtained via Fusion Dance, he's not obliged to fulfill the renumeration. He does, however, have one hell of an appetite to fulfill because of it since he's basically eating for two.
• Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba: Nezuko is a mixed case of sorts. Other demons refresh their power by eating human flesh. She resists the urge by sheer force of will and sleeps for weeks at a time instead to recharge. She also eventually becomes immune to sunlight.
• Inverted in Dragon Ball Z. Saiyans Goku and Raditz both become extremely weak when their tails are grabbed, but when the heroes try this tactic against Vegeta and Nappa, the two explain that they've trained away that specific weakness. Vegeta also demonstrates that unlike Goku or Gohan, he can keep full control when he turns into a giant ape.
• Dragon Slayers in Fairy Tail are humans imbued with the physiology of dragons, though this comes with the risk of permanently turning into dragons if they overuse their power. By the time Natsu and his fellow Dragon Slayers learn this, they aren't aware that their dragons have already made them immune by magically sealing themselves within their bodies. However, this is downplayed by the fact that they still suffer from an even bigger Weaksauce Weakness: incapacitating motion sickness.
• Fate Series:
  • Fate/Prototype: Rider has a special mask that allows him to exist even though his Master died. It is not perfect because he has to regularly kill people and eat their souls to sustain himself.
  • Fate/stay night [Unlimited Blade Works]: Normally, a Servant would be handicapped by a poor Mana supply. However, not only does Gilgamesh have a massive innate reservoir of Mana, his Gate of Babylon only requires minimal amounts of Mana to be used. Shirou and Rin discuss this when they realize this is why Gilgamesh can fight at full power even when he has Shinji Matou for a Master.
• Fullmetal Alchemist: Edward Elric is, unlike most other alchemists, able to do alchemy without using a circle. This, of course, came with its own problems. Several other alchemists can also do this, though they paid their price as well. The wiser alchemists without this power have circles on their clothing or tattooed on their body, making it even easier for them to use their powers than for Edward who still needs to clap his hands together, but most alchemists who carry their transmutation circles around with them are powerless if those circles get disturbed and can only do specialized alchemy — Mustang can only create fire, Kimblee can only blow stuff up, et cetera. Alchemy without an array is far more versatile, to the point that Ed can actually cancel out others' alchemic reactions. His alchemy is only limited by his knowledge and creativity, which means that he and other alchemists who have seen the Truth have a massive advantage even over alchemists with array tattoos.
• Inuyasha: Half-yokai like the titular character have superhuman yokai abilities, the more complex and less animalistic personality of a human, and they can't be directly killed by spiritual attacks like full-blooded yokai can. The one downside is that they have a unique Weaksauce Weakness of their own, which involves a periodic time of weakness when they temporarily become fully human.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Battle Tendency: The Pillar Men are immortal, incredibly tough, and can regenerate essentially endlessly. Their only problem is their Weaksauce Weakness of sunlight, which both petrifies their bodies and halts their regeneration (which also applies to the solar-channeling martial art of Hamon and ultraviolet radiation). The motivation of the main villain is to use a ritual to become the Ultimate Life Form, which would give him the genes and abilities of every creature on the planet, which would naturally include the ability of everything but Pillar Men and vampires to withstand sunlight. Once he achieves his goal, he's so powerful that the narration claims that nothing on the planet can kill him permanently.
• Kill la Kill: Ryuko's Kamui Senketsu turns out to be the only non-malevolent life fiber.
• The protagonist of Medaka Box is the only Abnormal who isn't psychopathic by default.
• In Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury, Gundams are distinguished from their fellow mobile suits by their pilots being able to use the GUND Format technology to link their bodies directly into the suit's systems. This allows them to accomplish feats that would be impossible for any other mobile suit and enables the use of highly dangerous Attack Drones, but also creates a backlash in the pilot that wreaks havoc on their body and puts them in serious pain, to the point that it can be outright lethal if taken too far. However, the suit of the main character, the Aerial, lacks this weakness entirely for mysterious reasons — placing it in a legal gray area for a normally banned technology, and spurring on other characters to try to discern why it lacks that weakness. What no one knows is that the Aerial holds the brain patterns of Prospera Mercury's eldest daughter Ericht Samaya, and she easily takes up the burden without any side effects.
• My Hero Academia:
  • A minor example: Izuku's Quirk One for All is the only quirk immune to villain All for One's Power Parasite abilities, as it cannot be transferred to another without the user's consent. Later events in the series reveal that Izuku had another unexpected advantage. One For All is revealed to stockpile not only raw energy, but the individual Quirks of each of its holders. Normally, a human body can only handle one Quirk and suffers grave physical and psychological damage if another is somehow artificially added. One For All makes it even worse as each Quirk in its collection is enhanced by its stockpile of energy. All its prior holders suffered accelerated aging that severely cut their lifespans. It took over a century for anyone to become aware of this side-effect because all but one of the prior wielders of One For All died in battle before they displayed symptoms. All Might and Izuku were both immune to this effect because neither of them had Quirks to begin with, making them the ideal empty vessels to house One For All.
  • Todoroki is also immune to the logical side-effects of overusing his elemental Quirks (creating ice causing the liquids in his body to freeze and creating fire causing him to overheat) by switching between them... Or he would be, if he didn't refuse to use his fire Quirk due to childhood trauma. Once he starts coming to terms with his issues, he uses both and starts combining them for effects far greater than either side could do alone.
• Rosario + Vampire: After a series of near-death instances, Tsukune gains vampire powers from various blood transfusions. Unlike the female lead Moka, this comes without the Weaksauce Weakness. He effectively has no weaknesses (well, other than the potential to go berserk and Crucifixes), which gives him an advantage.

Comic Books

• Aquaman, as an Atlantean, could always breathe underwater indefinitely, but could only stay on the surface for up to an hour, tops — that is, until Geoff Johns took over and made it so that all prominent or at least high-blooded Atlanteans such as Aquaman, Mera and Tula are effectively amphibious. What's more, being adapted to living fathoms under the ocean makes them super-durable and powerful on land and gives them the nice little bonus of being able to leap great distances. Cue the shocked faces of every person who once laughed at them in the opening issues of the New 52 run.
• In Green Lantern: Emerald Knights, Kyle Rayner finds himself sent to the time when Hal Jordan was still a rookie having trouble with Sinestro. While helping resolve the situation, Kyle lampshades this trope.
  Kyle: Yeah, how 'bout that? No weakness, no 24-hour time limit. It's got yours beat.
• Superman:
  • Kryptonians can only be hurt by Kryptonite from their own universe meaning that Batman couldn't hurt Superman from Earth-2 with his Kryptonite Ring during Infinite Crisis. Power Girl is supposed to be immune to Kryptonite because she hails from another universe but it depends whether the writers remember this or not.
  • During the Bronze Age, even the mainstream Superman got in on the act for a little while after the Kryptonite Nevermore storyline after all kryptonite in the world was converted to iron.
  • In several Silver Age stories, Supergirl became immune to Kryptonite for a short while.
  • In The Unknown Supergirl, Mr. Mxyzptlk turns Supergirl temporarily invulnerable to Green Kryptonite as part of one prank. As invulnerable, Supergirl took Superman away from one Kryptonite meteor, and then she caught the radioactive rock with her bare hands and buried it deep underground.
  • While most Kryptonians are susceptible to magic, Superboy-Prime ended up being altered just enough that being slugged by a lightning-infused Black Adam did zilch to him.
  • "Imaginary" stories depicting Kryptonian-human offspring tend to depict them as being half as powerful as their kryptonian parents but also half as weak to kryptonite.
  • In Last Son, Superman and Lois Lane's foster son Chris Kent lacks the kryptonite weakness due to be conceived in the Phantom Zone. The drawback is occasional Rapid Aging.
  • In All-Star Superman, flying up close to the sun has vastly increased Superman's powers and made him immune to green Kryptonite. Black K can still affect him though.
  • The older, stronger Superman of Kingdom Come can't be hurt by Kryptonite due to absorbing more sunlight over the years.
  • The Hunt for Reactron: Thara Ak-Var cannot be harmed by Kryptonite when she transforms into Flamebird, which she shows when she contemptuously grabs and crushes Reactron's piece of Golden Kryptonite.

Fan Works

• Godzilla Junior from The Bridge (MLP) was born with his radiation-based mutation and powers because he mutated in his egg rather than as an adult, meaning he has far better control and regulation over them than his father did. This gives the bonus that he can recharge based off just solar radiation rather than needing to raid power plants for fuel.
• Code Prime: Cybertronian Combiners are a rare subspecies of Cybertronians that have the ability to combine into a larger and more powerful Cybertronian. The downside to this ability, is that the combined form also combines the minds of the Cybertronians, which reduces the combined form into a Dumb Muscle. The Black Wyverns however, do not have this weakness when they form the Hercules, a Combining Knightmare that was created by the Enigma of Combination, as their minds are instead synched together thanks to Leila’s Geass.
• Fate/Parallel Fantasia: False Caster has the Dragon Blood Talismans, which give her unlimited mana, meaning she can survive without a Master and fight indefinitely. Of course, she has a limit on how much mana she can process at one time, so she can still wear herself out.
• JoJo New Universe: When All Might is summoned as a Berserker in the Fourth Holy Grail War, he has a few advantages that overcome most weaknesses in both his life and his class, which has Gilgamesh comparing him to Enkidu:
  • One, as a Heroic Spirit he's summoned in his prime. This means he not only has the full Quirk of One For All before giving it to Izuku, but he lacks the Career-Ending Injury he has in the manga.
  • Two, he doesn't have any notable moments of rage or wrath in his past for even a moderate Madness Enhancement. While this means a very minimal boost to his strength (which is already superhuman as when he was alive), it also means he still has access to his sense of reason and tactical wit. This also benefits his Master Kariya Matou, as there is less of a mana drain.
• In Neither a Bird nor a Plane, it's Deku!, Izuku is Kryptonian. While this means he has weaknesses to magic, intense sound, kryptonite, and red sunlight that he didn't have in canon, he has a huge draw over Quirk users: his powers are not tied to his vital biological functions. As a result, he doesn't suffer from side effects like Uraraka's nausea or Bakugou's arm strain when using his powers.
• In Origin Story, the Kryptonian Alex Harris retains her species' normal weakness against kryptonite. The thing is, she lives in the Marvel Universe, where there is no kryptonite. Averted in that she also retains her species' weakness against magic, which is found in abundance in the Marvel Universe.
• Puella Magi Adfligo Systema: In the source material, Puella Magi Madoka Magica, use of a magical girl's powers cause Grief to build up in their Soul Gems, and if they don't kill Witches and harvest Grief Seeds to cleanse their Soul Gems, the buildup of Grief can eventually turn them into the Witches they fight. Enter the quest hero Sabrina, whose magical girl powers specifically allow her to control Grief — allowing her to cleanse Soul Gems and Grief Seeds herself (including her own), tear apart the Grief that makes after five minutes. up a Witch's form, and use the collected Grief as a weapon.
• Tales of Kitty-Whiskers and Ladybug: Children Miraculous users, like Trucy Wright as Kitty-Whisker in this fic, can only use their signature power once and then lose their transformation after five minutes. Apollo Justice as Ladybug can use his powers multiple times as long as he has enough energy thanks to being an adult.
• The Paragon protagonist of With This Ring undergoes a Fusion Dance with the universal embodiment of avarice, and comes away from the experience with "orange enlightenment" — constant total awareness of his own desires. This allows him to use an orange power ring without the usual risk of becoming lost in short-term obsession, and even wield the orange light at the same time as feeling other emotions (the necessary level of emotional focus normally makes this impractical without enlightenment).
• WonderShock: Alice possesses what's known as an ADAM-Gene, or A-Gene for short. This allows her to inject herself with and utilize Plasmids as much as she desires without the risk of becoming a Splicer.

Films — Live-Action

• Blade Trilogy: Blade (the "Daywalker") is a half-vampire with "all of their strengths, and none of their weaknesses". The slogan is mostly accurate: he isn't harmed by things like silver, sunlight or garlic, but he still feels blood hunger and he ages normally.
• In Happy Gilmore, Happy uses a running start for his golf swing. This actually can add distance in real life, but no one uses it seriously because it's impossible to drive accurately this way. Happy, on the other hand, is able to drive so accurately with a running start that he makes a par 4 hole-in-one.

Literature

• When Bella is turned in Breaking Dawn, she doesn't suffer from the typical uncontrollable vampire hunger.
• Most of the human population in Codex Alera can use one or two types of elemental fury, which invariably leaves them vulnerable to other types. The exception are powerful noble families, particularly the High Lords, which generally have access to all six types of furies, making them incredibly powerful and without obvious weaknesses. This is most prominent with Watercrafters, compared to Watercrafter-Metalcrafters. Watercrafting has a constant disadvantage (an empathic sense that cannot be shut off) and not just deficiencies in the furycrafting that can be exploited. Metalcrafting can compensate for that by artificially repressing the wielder's emotions.
• In The Dresden Files, Outsiders, being literal alien demons, are so heavily resistant to magic which means that only the oldest, most experienced wizards have a chance of defeating them. The protagonist, despite being a relatively young wizard, can bypass this resistance instinctively to attack them effectively. This is because he is a Starborn. It doesn't do him much good though, because 99% of the creatures he fights are from his own universe, and Outsiders are extremely difficult to fight even with this ability.
• In Dune, the intentional creation of one of these by eugenic planning is the goal of the Bene Gesserit order: the Kwisatz Haderach, a man possessing the normally Gender Restricted Abilities of a Bene Gesserit sister, while also capable of accessing parts of the mind a woman could not. Paul Atreides is the culmination of this effort, albeit a generation early, and he exceeds every expectation. Being the Kwisatz Haderach grants him unparalleled prescience with the ability to see all possible futures, and even to use this prescience in place of sight after he is blinded, on top of virtually unmatched fighting prowess and the human computer abilities of a Mentat.
• Elemental Masters:
  • Elemental Mages and Masters are usually unable to contact elementals of the opposing element, but Earth Master Rosamund von Schwarzvald is able to speak with and even command Air elementals. In her own book, Blood Red, this is because she's working with a pagan god to deal with a terrible evil, while in From a High Tower, it's because the Great Air Elementals choose to speak with her when she's mentoring Giselle.
  • In The Serpent's Shadow, it's mentioned that Earth Masters are extremely sensitive to pollution and can't stand living in London. Maya is a special case, going about her daily life in London with no difficulty. This is at least partly because she has a cleansed sanctuary to live in, but she doesn't even really notice the pollution when she's outside (she's more likely to complain about the heat).
• Fate Series:
  • Fate/Zero:
    • Heroes summoned as the The Berserker in the Holy Grail War normally lose their skills in exchange for raw power, but Berserker, aka Lancelot, has an ability called Eternal Arms Mastership that allows him to retain his combat abilities even in the grip of madness. It makes him incredibly overpowered.
    • Caster has a Noble Phantasm called Prelati's Spellbook, which gives him an infinite supply of Mana. This means he is not handicapped by having a non-magus as a Master and doesn't immediately die when said Master is killed, since the Spellbook was what was sustaining him. Also, unlike regular Noble Phantasms, Prelati's Spellbook can regenerate itself when damaged.
  • Fate/Apocrypha: Berserker of Black/Frankenstein's Monster has a skill called Galvanism that allows her to absorb Mana from her surroundings. This means she is not handicapped by having a weakling like Caules for a Master and she can fight indefinitely. Sieg absorbs her powers after her death, which allows him to spam Balmung's Sword Beam and fight evenly with Amakusa Shiro.
  • Fate/strange Fake: True Assassin has a skill called Shadow Lantern that lets him absorb Mana from darkness itself, allowing him to function without draining his Master.
• Jane from The Iron Dragon's Daughter has this nice passive skill of being immune to regular defensive in-world charms. Most of those charms are made with specific magical species in mind. Being a human, Jane is too rare a creature in this world for the charms to account for.
• In the Magister Trilogy, all human magic is Cast from Lifespan. While this means that most witches must be very careful with their magic, because they have a very strictly finite amount, there exist a handful of men known as Magisters who deliberately burn up their own lifespan and latch onto someone else's. This makes them effectively immortal and thus grants near-infinite power. A Magister can only be killed if you catch them by surprise and kill them before they can defend or heal themselves with magic, or if you catch them during Transition, the few seconds between when one consort dies and when they bond another.
• Shakugan no Shana: Yuji Sakai isn't doomed to vanish from existence like other Torches thanks to a special artifact called the Midnight Lost Child that periodically replenishes his energy.
• Sonja Blue is the first person ever to become a vampire without dying, and therefore far more powerful than any but the oldest, strongest Master vampires.
• Eli Monpress from The Spirit Thief has the ability to simply talk to spirits and convince them to do his bidding, as opposed to the other wizards in the world who need to make pacts with spirits in order to access their power.
• Many vampire hunter series with a half-breed protagonist, like Vampire Hunter D, have a theme of being immune to vampire weakness. Even then they aren't immune; they are just so powerful that they resist the effects. In D's case, it's because of his father.
• In The Warded Man, sunlight destroys magic. Demons burn in sunlight, and humans who are Invested with power lose it when the sun touches them. Three of the major protagonists are notable as the exceptions to this rule:
  • Arlen and Renna got around this by eating demonflesh, which eventually altered their biology to the point where they could hold Investiture within themselves where the sunlight couldn't touch it.
  • Jardir, on the other hand, uses the Spear and Crown of the Deliverer, artifacts made of demonbone wrapped in electrum. As with Arlen and Renna, the demonbone core can hold a magical charge, while the electrum coating protects the demonbone from sunlight and lets Jardir draw out the power.

Live-Action TV

• WandaVision: As Agatha Harkness tells Wanda, most witches need a coven to teach them magic, and then rely on incantations to work said magic. Wanda, on the other hand, had no coven and does not speak aloud when using her magic, and is able to work spells beyond most other witches in spite of that. Agatha uses this lack of weaksauce as evidence that Wanda is the fabled Scarlet Witch.

Video Games

• Baldur's Gate III: The vampire spawn Astarion, who can be a Player Character or a companion in the party, is inexplicably protected from sunlight by his illithid parasite. It's a tenuous Hand Wave, but necessary to prevent either excluding him from the party or planning all the gameplay around keeping him out of the sun.
• Alucard of the Castlevania series reaps many benefits from his status as a Dhampyr, such as resistance to sunlight and holy symbols along with the ability to survive without feeding on blood. However, he does play more fair than many other examples by logically being only half as powerful as a full-blooded vampire. Not that this stops him from inheriting his father's magic...
• In Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Adam Jenson turns out not to need the anti-rejection drug other cyborgs do (thus allowing him to avoid the side effects, as well as have fairly extensive upgrades). In a sidequest, you can discover that this was a result of experiments he was a part of as a child. His girlfriend reverse-engineering this trait is the breakthrough discovery she was about to announce to the world at the start of the game as well as what leads to the creation of JC and his brother in the original Deus Ex.
• The Elder Scrolls:
  • A minor example, but over the main questline of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, you contract the deadly Corprus, which causes your stats to be wildly upset while giving you immunity to other disease. You eventually cure the negative symptoms but keep the immunity.
  • The power of the Thu'um in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is normally reserved for (a) Dragons or (b) those willing to devote years of training to "the Way of the Voice". Not so for the prophesied "Dragonborn", who can use any Thu'um after merely seeing the word written down, provided s/he's consumed a healthy breakfast of dragon souls.
• In the Fable series, the main character's bloodline is unique in that it results in heroes that can access all three disciplines (Strength, Skill, and Will), while most heroes are only able to access one.
• In Marvel's Spider-Man 2, Peter acquires the Venom symbiote, and as per usual within the Spider Verse, it gives him increased strength and nifty new powers, but also corrupts him (and anyone else it bonds with) by amping up his negative emotions and sending his aggression and adrenaline off the charts. Once he rids himself of it, he still has some traces of it in his system which keeps causing problems. Miles and Martin Li help him bring it under control by Li transferring all of his power into it, which turns it into the Anti-Venom suit. Thus, Peter now has all the Venom powers without the psychological side-effects, and it also does extra damage against "normal" symbiotes.
• Persona:
  • The main characters of Persona 3 and 4 are both special cases who can have multiple Personas, avoiding the set weaknesses of every other Persona user. In 4, while everyone else has to own up to their own darker thoughts, the main character doesn't have a hidden dark side to face. In contrast, The Animation does make him face his fears to break out of a Lotus-Eater Machine and unlock his Super Mode. Notably, this doesn't apply to the first and second games, in which the characters gain their Personae in different fashion.
    • As a contrast, the main character of Persona 5, Joker, also has the Wild Card ability, but he gets his persona power the same way as the rest of the Phantom Thieves: by being confronted with an unacceptable injustice and refusing to let it go.
    • When all three main characters end up meeting in Persona Q2, they note that their abilities are similar and, in close proximity to each other, mildly reality warping, as noted by the Velvet Room attendants and how it gives them decided advantages in both combat and leadership. And then they all lament that they can't change their personas willingly in this world.
  • Much of Elizabeth's story in Persona 4: Arena revolves around her trying to learn more about the nature of this "Wild Card" ability that the P3 and P4 protagonists possess. She can already do pretty much anything, but even to her it remains something special and mysterious.
• Downplayed in Planescape: Torment: The Nameless One is the only character capable of changing classes, meaning he can become a Fighter, Mage or Thief as the needs require, but unlike some of his companions cannot play a hybrid class, meaning his stats grow slower.
• Exaggerated with Asellus in SaGa Frontier. Humans and mystics normally have separate kinds of abilities, strengths and weaknesses; humans learn skills and increase their stats by using them in combat, while Mystics increase their stats and get combat skills by absorbing monsters with their Mystic Weapons, and are also usually equipped with unremovable Mystic armors (which are normally fairly weak) in their gear slots. The Half-Mystic Asellus is essentially a human who can train like a human and use the Mystical Weapons to empower herself, making her a human with all the advantages of mystics and none of their disadvantages. The combination of powers allows her to easily break the stat cap that almost everyone else has to adhere to; other Mystics can theoretically do this, but it's impractical because their base stats can't improve.
• In The World Ends with You, Neku is one of the few players who has access to multiple powers/pins (most of his partners just have one ability that they make use of, e.g., Shiki's ability to animate her stuffed animal).

Webcomics

• Straylight Tiger takes place in a world where mages and were-beasts are beaten back from supremacist ambitions by muggles who can safely handle magic-disrupting Unobtainium. The protagonist is a Half-Human Hybrid who has been genetically engineered by her parents to have magic powers and a were-tiger form with no Kryptonite factor.
• In The Young Protectors, a side effect of the mysterious "Grey Working" causes everyone with magical power to go completely insane. Spooky Jones, the Protectors' resident spellcaster, shows no signs of this, which might have something to do with why a Demon Lord calls him an "abomination".

Web Original

• Gimble is the only gadgeteer in the Academy of Superheroes universe to whom The Spark of Genius does not apply; her technology can be used by anyone and everyone, even Anchors.
• Worm:
  • Eidolon's power is that he has all the powers. No matter what power you bring against him, he has several perfect counters to it on hand. And he can ignore the Manton Effect. The only limitation is he can only access three powers at once, but considering that one of those powers can be invincibility...
  • Contessa is one of two Thinkers on the planet whose powers aren't disrupted by other Thinkers, and the specific nature of her Combat Clairvoyance means that without this weakness she's essentially unbeatable. Unfortunately, the other is the Simurgh, who is immune to all precog abilities including Contessa's.
  • Weld, as a parahuman made of living metal, is in the unique position of being immune both to powers that only work on metal and powers that only work on flesh.
  • More generally, people who can ignore the Manton Effect (the tendency of powers to be unable to directly affect people) are very rare and valuable.

Western Animation

• In the universe of Avatar: The Last Airbender, benders (people who can potentially manipulate water, earth, fire, or air) are born with the ability to be control a single element, meaning an earthbender can never learn waterbending (for example) — except the Avatar, who can learn to use all four elements. This is enhanced even further by the Avatar State in which the Avatar can access the knowledge of all his/her past lives, resulting in powers akin to a Physical God. A fully realised Avatar is quite literally a nigh-unstoppable force of nature. This is helped by something Iroh demonstrates, since while normal benders are locked into one element, they can learn the styles of other benders,^note since each element is bent using different martial art stances and disciplines so they can learn different applications of their native element with benders of different elements. This is yet another reason why the Avatar is so powerful given his or her collective knowledge can be used across all four elements.
• Generator Rex:
  • In a world where every living thing is infected with nanomachines, Rex is one of the few people able to control them. He still has to deal with Laser-Guided Amnesia and the occasional Body Horror, but that's miniscule compared to what the average EVO is subjected to.
  • Bobo Haha. All the nanites did to him was make him smarter. Granted, he also lacks any Lovecraftian Superpower that is typically dished out, but the monkey dodged all the downsides of being an EVO.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: While all unicorns are capable of magic, most of them only learn magic that is related to their special talent, aside from general telekinesis. Twilight Sparkle's special talent is an affinity for magic in general, which, combined with her being a massive bookworm, allows her to learn a larger variety of spells than most unicorns. Other unicorns with similar power levels and versatility (such as Sunset Shimmer^note although Sunset is confined to the Equestria Girls spinoffs, and as such moatly appears in human form, locking off her powers aside from empathy and Starlight Glimmer) appear later, but by that point Twilight has become an alicorn, giving her the abilities of all three major pony races.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Most of the princesses have to regularly recharge their magic with their runestones, with the exception of some princesses who don't use runestones like Scorpia and Entrapta and thus don't have magic. Since most of the runestones are quite large and non-portable, the princesses cannot stay away from their realms for too long. Adora/She-Ra's runestone is her Sword of Protection, meaning she is empowered anywhere. In addition, She-Ra can use the Sword of Protection to recharge the other princesses. She has a different weakness in that she can be separated from her sword and rendered unable to transform. In the final season, the Sword of Protection is destroyed, rendering her unable to transform for a while. She eventually manages to transform on her own and summon a new sword with her innate magic, meaning she can't be depowered anymore.

Real Life

• Things like breeding, genetic engineering, medicine, and eventually transhumanism are about stripping the Weaksauce from either ourselves or other living things we interact with.
• In a geopolitical sense, the United States of America. It spans an entire continent, like Russia, but isn't so huge as to be cumbersome. And unlike Russia, its two neighboring nations haven't been serious threats for 200 years, and they haven't even been mild threats for about as long. It also has a massive internal navigable waterway for shipping that needed only minor maintenance and a small handful of cheap and easy canals to link them all together, the first of which was done without engineers! So it's nearly an island, like Britain, and any power capable of fighting its army would need to sail to get there, like Britain. But unlike Britain, all its power and resources were within its starting borders and not overseas. The USA has the geopolitical strengths of Britain, Russia, and the old Roman Empire rolled into one, with almost none of the weaknesses. Almost. What this means is that the American military has next to no defensive mandate and exists entirely as an offensive and forward deployable tool. It has never garrisoned foreign lands for its own security, only for extra power.

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