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Damn his spoonyness!
spoony \SPOO-nee\, adjective:
1. Foolish; silly; excessively sentimental.
2. Foolishly or sentimentally in love.
-Dictionary.com
A gimmick class, character or unit often added by game designers trying to add variety. Sometimes their abilities are not as effective as just bashing an enemy with a sword, but other times the inverse can be true.
Contrast Game Breaker, Lethal Joke Character.
Examples:
- The Trope Namer is Prince 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 (though in the DS game the retranslator NPC found in the dwarven kingdom's Developer's Room states, "The bard is spoony. We checked!"). 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.
- The DS version buffed him considerably, and his 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—-but even then, he deals full damage from the back row, so defence is less important for him.
- 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 whopping 25 HP of healing. In the DS remake, 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.
- All this said, the famous line that named this trope doesn't appear in the original Japanese version. In its place is Tellah screaming "You bastard! How dare you!"; one way or another, it's not nearly as memorable as the line that took its place.
- The Dancer and Bard classes in Final Fantasy Tactics. Dancers can 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).
- Tactics also has two characters, a brother and sister named Rafa and Malak. Their unique ability hits 2-5 random squares in a 5 square, cross shaped area, making their attacks frequently do nothing at all. And while Rafa's spells does a fixed damage depending on her stats (as opposed to the usual Faith-based magic system of the game), Malak's functions better if he has a very low Faith; Rafa is almost useful if you train her as a white mage due to her high Faith, or as a move-find-item holder due to her low Brave, Malak can do excellent magic damage while being almost immune to magic himself, making him an excellent faith-based magic counter if used right.
- The FFT remake for the PSP has been more forgiving for the siblings, as it made their spells more reliable, upping the number of times it can theoretically hit to nine, and raising the chance it can hit the center tile target, so that one can center the spell on an enemy and expect it to hit at least once.
- Ironically, the way the abilities of the Bard and the Dancer are coded (map-effect songs with "only ally/only enemy" targeting, which use charge times) seem tailor-made for Rafa/Rapha and Malak/Marach. Add the Reaction abilities of both classes (Faith Boost for Bard, Bravery Boost for Dancer), the fact that the entire suite of abilities makes them suitable for the Short Charge/Swiftness Support Ability (which reduces Charge Time) and the fact that both classes are extreme opposites (to the point the classes are gender-exclusive), and you'd think Bard and Dancer were meant to fix these characters. Or give them some use. Or to make these characters less useful than they are in-game.
- Bard and Dancer have one side effect that makes them extremely valuable - every time their song/dance activates, they earn experience and job points. The reason this is a big deal is because a song or dance can activate two or three times between each of their actions, making it ideal for level grinding - particularly if you're currently using a class that can be charitably described as "glacial" in speed. Depending on how much you abuse this, you can master Calculator in one or two battles by having them use a song/dance as their secondary action.
- In Final Fantasy XI the Bard is an example of the Gamebreaker side, it 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. Summoners, traditionally the most powerful job in Final Fantasy games, fits this trope on the other side due to being able to do useful things less frequently than any other job.
- In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Blue Mages use the class' famed "get hit by enemy ability to learn it". Gadgeteers randomly inflict positive or negative effects on either side of battle. Illusionists hit every enemy unit on the map, most often for low damage. Templars have good defense and equipment, but their abilities are a random set of buffs and offenive skills.
- 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.
- Templars may also be a case of Crippling Overspecialization, as all their skills are well suited for fighting spell-casters (Astra, Rasp, Silence...) but not for much else.
- Blue Mages are huge Magikarp characters — with a spell set of powerful, diverse, and unique magics that work with almost any Hume class. Night, White Wind (heals HP equal to the caster's current HP level), Angel Whisper, Matra Magic, Bad Breath (inflicts enemy with a bunch of Standard Status Effects), and Twister are all fantastic spells. Plus, the Damage > MP ability requires your opponent to attack the Blue Mage with multiple characters or else do no damage at all.
- This troper even turned the main character into a Blue Mage and his favorite moment is when he inflict Rasp/Soul Sphere on Warrior-type (Low MP) enemies (If you're strong enough some of spellcaster would suffer this too.) and Matra Magic them!(exchange current HP value with current MP value) while they're having 0 MP ....Quite Entertaining KO!
- The game also uses the Spoony Bard thing as an insult; in one of the Bonga Bugle missions, one of the enemy units calls the Head Editor a "spoony seeq".
- 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.
- The DS remake also gave Scholars the nifty buff of doubling the effect of any item they use. This includes the attack items that cast Fire2, Bolt2, and Ice2 on the enemy, making them very powerful, at least until you realize that there is a finite number of such attack items in the game, making their usefulness very short lived. Oh well!
- Not if you've still got the Fire and Ice staves that I'm sure you had your white mage equip...
- 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 first edition bard was just The Mario.
- 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.
- Parts of my brain shut down at that sentence, but I don't know why.
- In many Neverwinter Nights PVP Arena servers, Bards are highly powerful due to their epic buffing skills and ability to take the powerhouse Red Dragon Disciple prestige class. It's very common to see the strongest melee tank characters be Bard/RDD/Some third class.
- In the first Baldurs Gate, the bard class was pretty much tragically underpowered compared to the others - there was no good reason to choose a bard over a rogue. Things got better with the sequel and with Icewind Dale.
- Quite the reverse in fact, bards were hideously strong in the first Baldurs Gate. Why? They used the rogue XP-table but used that level to determine their casting level. So a spell cast by a bard with a certain XP would be likely to be much more effective than a similar spell cast by a wizard. (Since you didn't reach any caster level caps until the very end of the game) This became much less significant later on (where mages caught up, and higher level spells became more important)
- Dancers/Bards (whose primary ability is to give units extra turns) in the Fire Emblem series vary widely in usefulness.
- The Dancer class was introduced in the third game with the ability to give an extra turn to one adjacent character. The character with this class was also a passable fighter with the ability to use a Rapier (a weapon generally restricted to the main characters).
- Dancers in the 4th Fire Emblem received a considerable jump in utility as they now gave an extra turn to all adjacent units. None of them were especially worthwhile as combat units, however.
- The Dancer in the 5th entry returned to only being able to give an extra turn to one adjacent unit, and was even worse at fighting. Furthermore to get the dancer required promoting her out of thief via a somewhat secret conversation. Whether she is better as a dancer or a thief depends on if you are attempting to speedrun the game or not.
- Come the 6th game, Dancers could no longer attack. Bards were also cut down from being a low-class Light Mage to being a male version of a Dancer.
- In the 7th game, Dancers got access to rings which they could use to provide temporary stat bonuses to adjacent people instead of giving off extra turns.
- In the 8th game, Dancers returned to the same formula used in the 6th game.
- 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 all but one are flying units (this counters the primary weakness of the class in previous games, as they no longer need to stay in the front to use their skills) 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.
- Other "gimick" units include.
- Manaketes, (dragons with their true form sealed into stones they use to transform into dragons and attack), are generally powerful, but have limited weapon supplies and, for the most part, join really late.
- Ballisticians from the first and 11th games: the only two characters in the class are not that great and have limited weaponry, as only one shop in the game sells ballista weapons.
- Laguz, men who, after a cirten number of turns, can transform into beasts. Useless with the exception of a few who can transform at will and the before mentioned herons (as who wants a unit that can only be used half the time, and isn't that powerful when they can?).
- 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. His name is even a combination of "Edward" and "Gilbert", Edward's Japanese name. In this strip
 , he almost gets called a Spoony Bard after demonstrating the utterly ineffectual powers of his magic harp.
- In Shadow Hearts: Covenant and From the New World. Lucia, the closest to a bard in the game has a skill that would allow her to add temporary buffs to the party (But she is not affected), as well as have a tarot draw that can both extremely buff or hurt you. But in addition to that, she also has a pretty good magic stat so she can be a feasible spellcaster. Ricardo in From the New World also functions in a same way, being a good mage, buffer with his songs, and can even shoot rockets out of his guitar. (Japan comes up with some crazy stuff)
- 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. If you accidentally built one in a base not next to pipes, it couldn't move at all, and the only way to be able to use the base to build new units was the Delete option.
- This unit is based off of the Train Gun in Super Famicom Wars. Though that unit could at least transport other units. And it was built on a property specifically for it.
- Indeed, Dual Strike unit additions varied between these and Game Breaker units like the Stealth Fighter (who could attack pretty much anything and only be attacked by other Stealths and Fighters while stealthed). Another Spoony was the Mega Tank, a monster of a tank that had low movement and ammo. While it could take on anything on any direct ground unit with ease, it was more vulnerable to artillery than other tanks due to its low movement and high cost. And lets not get started on the campaign-only oozium, a giant slime that could instantly destroy any unit just by moving on it... with a movement range of one square.
- Days of Ruin has the Seaplane, an overcomplicated version of the Attacker from Super Famicom Wars and Game Boy Wars 3, fitting right in with that description. It outclasses all other air units except the Fighter in 1-on-1 combat and can wreck land units almost as efficiently as the Bomber. However, it has to be built from the Aircraft Carrier, which itself is expensive, has to use its turn and some money to build the Seaplane, and otherwise isn't particularly useful, especially when a Submarine can kill it in one blow.
- Game Boy wars 3 has the APC S, which is basically an IFV with worse traits. The Tanker is also debatably this because its purpose is to resupply ships....which unfortunately don't need it much.
- 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).
- Some of the Druids' problems also came from a heavy gear dependency, and lack of available gear that was made specifically for non Restoration builds contributed to it. Even throughout Burning Crusade, Balance specced druids did not have enough leather to use Moonkin to its full potential.
- Mages early on pretty much had to chose Frost, due to a large number of fire immune bosses and Arcane being rather dysfunctional.
- 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 its 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 necessary 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 AoE 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.
- Demonology remains fairly useless in Pv P however, as with the more recent Pv P scene being filled by Burst Damage the Destruction tree is simply superior, plus it has two fairly amazing defensive talents in the form of Molten Skin (-6% to ALL damage taken) and Nether Protection (Chance on being hit by a spell to gain a 30% damage reduction from all spells of that school, so say hit by a fireball, 30% reduced fire damage). Also given that many of the defensive talents are near the bottom of the tree the Affliction tree's self-healing debuffs make it more than possible to make a more defensive Affliction built. That said, Demonology can now put out viable Pv E damage.
- Like druids, hunters initially had only one viable talent tree: Marksmanship. In addition, their pets were as worthless as the warlocks', so the class degenerated to standing still and letting your character automatically shoot at the target. Thus the derogatory term Huntard. The initial attempt to fix the class consisted of adding one additional ability acquired from a certain boss.. and usable only on the next boss.
- All three trees have gone through Spoony Bardness at one time, and usually then overcorrected into being the only viable tree while the others were nerfed to extinction. Right now, Survival is the prime DPS Hunter build, when not so long ago its only use was as a punchline.
- In the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, the developers have made a very deliberate effort to reverse the trend of having useless classes and/or talent trees. Some players say they went too far, to the point where they are starting to blend together. However, the vast majority of the above arguments in favor of a particular class or spec being Spoony Bards are now irrelevant.
- 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 just seems wrong, though.
- The Sentinel is a very bad choice for players looking to mix it up with Krogan and the like, but it is uniquely capable of disabling every kind of enemy and dealing heavy damage through its myraid powers. If you need weapon or armor skills as a Sentinel, you have screwed up royally.
- Conversely, the NPC Sentinel Kaiden Alenko has an AI that seems to enjoy screwing up royally and earns the title of Spoony with ten different kinds of emphasis.
- 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.
- In the Bioware-developed RPG Sonic Chronicles, Rouge the Bat is the only character that doesn't really bring anything to a team, with average stats and special moves that other characters can do better. Her unique talent is the ability to steal items, but that doesn't really come in very useful.
- Yeah, but nobody plays as Rouge for her abilities anyway.
- Her ability to steal items does have its uses: since enemies never drop any rings and their item drops aren't that useful or sell for much and collected rings never respawn, even in New Game Plus, she's more or less the only real way to get extra rings by stealing healing items that you can sell. This is aided by the fact that the item you get is entirely dependent on the level of her steal skill and that enemies have infinite amounts of items for her to steal. With the 2 turns she gets per combat round (3 with Hyper), it won't take that long to get 99 of both stealable items from any weak enemy and sell them for several times more rings than all the maps in the game have put together, assuming you don't screw up her Action Commands or use a Chao that makes them always successful.
- Salsa from Mother 3, granted like Gilbert from Final Fantasy IV, he is a Guest Star Party Member... But also like Gilbert, he is a total deadweight in battles during the time he's with you. Unable to hit for more than 10DMG, has the worst stats of all the characters, even Boney, and has special skills that don't have much use because of their piss-poor success rates, one would wonder why the developers bothered to even make him a party member rather than a NPC. In fact, he's so useless, you have to rely on the AI controlled Jeigan Character, Fassad, to beat a miniboss or even normal enemies as you progress through his chapter.
- This was likely done on purpose, to make the player feel as helpless as the poor monkey and further explain why he doesn't try to fight back and save his girlfriend himself.
- Wobbuffet from Pokemon had a moveset solely designed to Counter Attack twice the damage it received from a physical or special attack rather than directly dish out any itself. Unfortunately, in Gold/Silver/Crystal, this was easily beaten by constant switching (draining its Power Points) or switching to a Pokemon resistant to the type of one of Wobbuffet's Counter Attack moves, making it almost useless. Of course, once it got an ability that prevented switching and the move Encore in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, forcing the opponent to repeat the same move, it went from useless to banned from competitive play.
- The Merchant class from Ancient Domains of Mystery. They are bad spellcasters and poor fighters. Their main abilities? They have increased carrying capacity at higher levels, and they deal more damage by using coins as a throwing weapon.
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