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An ability given to the player that is either quickly outclassed or has no obvious immediate benefit that can't be circumvented with Level Grinding. Occasionally, this can apply to a range of abilities or vehicles. Sometimes whole character classes can be totally overlooked, and support classes and spells are ignored in favor of more reliable equipment except in the one instance they're needed.
You get the feeling that the designers were trying to add variety, but either didn't consider the tactics of the player or were simply rushed for time. Another disadvantage is you can only spread common battle tactics exclusively between characters without having each character become more useless as a result.
See also Useless Useful Spell.
Examples:
- So named for the character Edward from Final Fantasy IV. After the death of an otherwise plot-unimportant daughter, the party's sage Tellah rails against the unfortunate lute player with a stream of insults and threats including "You spoony bard!", a somewhat Bowdlerised translation that became popular and was retained when the game was re-translated for the GBA version. Edward himself is singularly useless, employing a harp as a weapon and possessing the special ability of "singing" at enemies — a skill that's supposed to inflict status ailments but which frequently does nothing at all. Edward's other special ability, unsurprisingly, is to run away and hide for a turn. In "hard-type", though, he's slightly more useful because he can also spread potions amongst the whole party. Slightly.
- "Spoony" actually means lovesick so it makes sense, but now it's not as funny, is it?
- The DS version buffed him considerably:
- Bardsong became far more useful. You can pick the song you want, and one Edward learns actually heals your party while he isn't interrupted. And then you can give Bardsong to someone that isn't Edward...
- Late in the GBA version of the game, Edward becomes one of the fastest characters in the game. Equip him with the Apollo Harp, and he can easily dish out 2000+ damage every few seconds. And woe unto any dragon-type enemies you run into, as Edward will regularly dole out anywhere from 8000+ to max damage per hit. His only glaring weaknesses are his defense and lack of hit points, making him more of a Glass Cannon.
- Not to mention his other much-upgraded ability, Salve: in previous versions, all it did was to take a potion and split it between the party members for a whooping 25 HP of healing : here, it instead allows you to take any item and use it on the entire party at once with full effect, although it does use up as many of the said item as there are party members. Like the previous skill, it can also be later given to another character as well.
- And finally, Edward indirectly contributes towards making Edge a lot more useful than he normally would be: Throw can be used while Hiding, and thus he can throw stuff at enemies while being completely unhittable, although hidden characters have a tendency to return on their own after a set amount of time has passed. Aim is also useable when hiding, but it's not nearly as useful or damaging as Throw.
- In an interesting inversion, the Dancer class in Final Fantasy Tactics could use their weakest dance to enormously powerful effect in a properly tweaked party (3 Dancers and two Mimes with strength boosted as high as possible). This is generally the second most powerful party possible in the game. Without this strategy, however, the Dancer class was mostly useless (which theoretically makes it a Magikarp).
- Given the nature of the Final Fantasy Tactics battle system, though, both Bards and Dancers are actually a pretty good way to Level Grind, so long as there are a couple of strong characters in other classes around to protect them. Every successfully executed action of any kind results in EXP for the character, and the Sing and Dance skills will, if the Bards and Dancers stand still, allow them to get in turns more quickly and thus gain more EXP per battle than they would in a more powerful class.
- This was inverted in Final Fantasy XI in which the Bard is so popular (due to its completely free buffs) that most people say that you can get offers for Level Grinding parties without raising your invite flag (to signify that you are looking for a party); this gets to the point to which some people have to go into anonymous mode (which hides what job and level your character is) to avoid getting invites. Though this has happened with other jobs, bards are pretty much the only one that has always been like this. To complete the inversion, the Summoner, traditionally the most powerful job in Final Fantasy games, fits this trope instead due to being able to do useful things less frequently than any other job.
- In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance... ugh. For one thing, it's very difficult to build a Blue Mage into a viable character. Gadgeteers are completely useless; Sure, it's great to inflict Standard Status Effects on all opponents, but half the time, your own party will get hit. Illusionists are rarely any good, and while Target All spells can be useful from time to time, they're all practically the same. Templars have good defense and equipment, but their abilities are a joke, as well, and Soldiers are only used to unlock the classes that have those abilities as a prerequisite.
- Gadgeteers have an Elite Tweak that can just about save them - the famous "equip the entire team with Fortune Rings and spam Black Ingot" - if it hits you, nothing happens because the rings render immunity; if it hits them, they're dead in three turns. Still pretty cack, though.
- Also, in Final Fantasy Tactics A 2, the sequel, Blue mages are the best when you get them 'learn' really early in the game and then proceed to use them whenever you fight monsters. Still not exactly the most useful class ever, though.
- Final Fantasy III had a nice variety of classes, but there were several that were either only useful once in the game or were so useless that they could be totally overlooked. Its version of the Bard class is even worse than FFIV's Edward, with little attack power or defense and only one command ("Cheer") that has any use whatsoever. The Scholar, similarly, has little attack or defensive power, but has the "Scan" command which is vital in exactly one battle in the game, against Hyne. The DS remake, however, did make the Bard at least marginally useful.
- Played with in Kingdom Hearts II, where Demyx, a member of the game's Quirky Miniboss Squad, uses Obfuscating Stupidity to make you think that he's a Spoony Bard, which is reinforced when, the first time you face him, he whips a sitar out of Hammerspace and makes you fight a swarm of weak summons under an ample time limit, before giving up and taking a Villain Exit Stage Right. When he shows up again later, though, Sora says something that Demyx finds offensive and then the act drops, the kid gloves come off, and the fight you thought you would laugh your way through turns out to be That One Boss instead.
- Approximately one-third to a half of all the classes, and their class abilities, in the video game versions of Dungeons And Dragons more or less end up seeing little to no use except for roleplaying reasons or Elite Tweak builds, one of the primary offenders up through the ages being (you guessed it) the bard class.
- Interestingly enough, the Bard class in the Tabletop RPG that the video games are based on, Bards are only weak if you use only the basic set of books. (And even then, they're not weak, they just don't excel in any one area.) Add almost any other sourcebooks, and the Bard can become a fairly powerful spellcaster, melee fighter, or skill user, at least on par with other classes, if not better than most. They still get played very little anyway. Of course, in the tabletop edition, fighters and most other physical classes are the Spoony Bards - anything they can do, a spellcasting class can either do, or negate with much less effort.
- However, in Dungeons and Dragons Online, the MMORPG of Dn D, Bards are much appreciated. They aren't used often, but if a bard says "gather for buff", the rest of the party will stop what they are doing because everyone enjoys being buffed.
- Dancers/Bards in the Fire Emblem series vary widely in usefulness.
- Dancers in the 4th Fire Emblem (Sylvia, Lynn, Laylea) were very useful because, in one turn, they gave 4 different units the ability to move and attack a second time, as well as having the ability to use rings to buff people and even giving bonuses to nearby allies; in addition, the game lacked an Arbitrary Headcount Limit. (There was also a lone bard, Levin, but the class wouldn't fit this trope until the 6th game; Levin was basically a fancier mage)
- Come the 6th game, Bards (Elphin) and Dancers (Lalam) were restricted to giving 1 person the ability to act again, no longer had rings, and couldn't attack.
- In the 7th game, rings and bonuses returned, but Bards (Nils) and Dancers (Ninian) can still only give extra turns to one unit per round and still can't attack (To compensate, their speed let them dodge almost anything). The rings are frequently abused on maps with arena access.
- In the 8th game Dancers (or better said, Dancer: Tethys) lost their rings and still only let one person move again, but they kept their high evasion and a glitch allowed them to attack.
- In the 9th they were replaced by Herons (or rather, a single Heron) who are basically flying bards, except they can grant extra turns to up to four units at a time when transformed, restore status and HP to up to four adjacent units at a time when transformed, and have magic resistance and evasion through the roof so they can effectively be used as a mage bait.
- In the 10th game Herons have all the abilities from 9, plus various buffs (all with infinite uses) and the inherent ability to move after using them as well as the ability to attack using "cards", but these don't allow counters and are generally more for show and easy levels then anything else.
- And now for a platforming example: Rospark from Mega Man ZX Advent. Slow and can't jump worth anything, it's only good in the case of an Eigen Plot, where he can climb on vines.
- Gildward, the bard from the webcomic Adventurers!, is a parody of the original Spoony Bard from Final Fantasy IV. In this strip
 , he almost gets called a Spoony Bard after demonstrating the utterly ineffectual powers of his magic harp.
- Inverted in Tales Of Destiny. Johnny can buff, provide secondary healing, and blast away enemies with his lyrical notes. Pretty awesome attacks with high combo potential, too.
- Turn-based strategy example: the Piperunner in Advance Wars. While it has 2-5 Range with high power against most units, it can only move on pipes, and can't even move on roads.
- This unit is based off of the Train Gun in Super Famicom Wars. Though that unit could at least transport other units.
- While the base classes in World Of Warcraft are all useful, some their respective talent trees just werent up to snuff initially, and some still struggle.
- Druids initially had one really functional tree, Restoration (healing). Balance (nuking) still struggles, being similiar to mages without great area-target spells and mezzing (unless they are facing animals).
- Mages early on pretty much had to chose Frost, due to a large number of fire immune bosses and Arcane being rather disfunctional.
- Enhancement Shamans, Fury Warriors and Retribution Paladins all share the same problem: they have damage outputs comparable (or surpassing) to rogues but lack their utility moves. Ironically enough, they are best when paired with each other, but due to the general requirements of a group (damage dealers are prefered to have some Crowd Control skills aka Mezzing), its a pretty rare sight.
- The Warlock class used to be a Spoony Bard in raids due to it's dependance on debuffs. Why was that a problem? Because the game only allowed 8 debuffs on a single target. 3 of which are taken by the tank, others were taken by effects like the slowing debuff caused by frost spells, and other debuffs nessesary depending on the encounter. Worse yet, there was no priority system so any random debuff could push out something like Sunder Armor (which is utterly vital for a warrior tank to keep the targets attention) off the table. Meanwhile, their pets (and those of hunters) were mostly useless, dying easily to area-effects. The only way out was focusing on imitating mages. The debuff problem was solved. The pet problem... not so much.
- Demons now gain the previously Felguard (a special pet) exclusive ability Avoidance, which lowers incoming Ao E damage by roughly 75%. Demonology has also been shifted to something of a Pv P tree and emphasis on pets in Pv E has been rather lowered. The Felhunter revamp (Shadow Bite being a mana restore, party int/spirit buff) may change that, however.
- While none of the classes in Mass Effect are totally worthless or unplayable, choosing to be a Sentinel without first having unlocked weapon skills as bonuses for other playthroughs can be exceptionally difficult. Sentinels are a combination of tech and biotic skills. The skills they get are reasonably good, but the trade-off for this is that they get no weapon or armor skills. Now, Sentinels DO have, as part of their "class" package (each class has a skill line carrying the name of the class that gives special benefits), a bonus to pistol accuracy and damage...so not ALL is lost. For the most part though, it's a lot better to take one of the combat-paired hybrid classes, or even going full Engineer or Adept.
- Or you could have your other two squad members be combat specialists. Somehow having the Designated Hero of the game act as a backup guy seems just wrong, though, somehow.
- If you're trying to shoot things as a Sentinel, you're clearly doing something wrong. That said, this troper did a runthrough of the game with a team consisting of Kaidan, Liara, and Sentinel Shepard. They ended up being nicknamed "Team Lockdown" because nothing could get near them without getting hit by a dozen tech and biotic abilites.
- From this troper's experiences, it's more like it means something went wrong. You just can't count on being able to bull your way through to safety as a Sentinel if the guys you're supporting end up on the ground and you can't pop another Unity for a few minutes.
- Generally, the Sentinel and a couple other classes like the Engineer are only viable on lower difficulties due to their low damage output and low hit points. The Adept might be the most useful, as despite the low hit points, when properly leveled up it can stun enemies and recharge its shields more or less indefinitely. Also, pistols can be very strong when leveled up, especially with Marksman.
- While virtually every profession in Guild Wars, with the possible exception of the Monk, have those that consider it redundant in one form of play or another, Mesmers - the game's designated Mezzer - are especially susceptible in Pv E play, due to the tendency of monsters, especially boss monsters, to be resistant or immune to those abilities that make them feared in Pv P, combined with the belief that an overwhelming offense coupled with sufficient defenses makes mezzing redundant.
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