Basic Trope: More powerful weapons are more ornate and detailed. Simple, plain-looking weapons are lower-grade.
- Straight: The better the equipment you get, the more ornate it is.
- Exaggerated: Sensible armour and balanced weapons always pale in comparison to Impossibly Cool Weapons Scary Impractical Armour or a very shiny Chainmail Bikini.
- Justified:
- People who have the financial means to have powerful weapons forged, also have the means to make them look pretty. It shows their wealth and how dangerous they are.
- A highly hierarchical martial society awards weapon and armour ornaments to its best warriors, as a sign of importance, to impose respect on others, and to identify them easily on the battlefield.
- Inverted: Shiny ornate toys and big heavy decorated armour are for parade. They are fragile, heavier, impractical, and actual field armour and weapons of war are designed with only efficiency in mind.
- Subverted:
- The legendary, gorgeous Golden Blade of Heavenly Lights is made of solid gold, super heavy, ill-balanced, and bends or breaks at the first hit.
- Double Subverted: Because it was a fake one. The decoy sword is there to fool treasure hunters. It's heavy so that they will be handicapped when facing the deadly traps on the way out. The actual sword is accessed through a puzzle that involves not taking the decoy sword, which shows the seeker's discernment. The real thing is nearly identical, but is just as powerful as the legends say.
- Parodied:
- Sharpen your weapon enough and it spontaneously grows decorations...
- ... and vice-versa : add enough ornaments and it becomes more powerful.
- After a few years, battles are not won through superior numbers, strategy, or prowess, but on whoever has the fanciest army and equipment. Since it's quickly pretty obvious who would win, the losing side usually surrenders and goes home. Wars have become huge beauty contests, and nobody dies in them anymore.
- Zig Zagged: Equipment quality and aesthetics are not directly related. Rather, both are dependant on how much money and resources were put into making the weapon, and the smith's personal style. Thus, you can have beautiful equipment that is crap, plain-looking equipment that's effective, or equipment that is both pretty and effective - it's just exponentially more expensive.
- And depending on the culture, there are certain countries where you know for sure that a elaborate piece of equipment was made for a noble or rich person, and must be good ; while in others which are known for a general style-over-substance approach, you'd better take something that looks sturdy, and has proven to be.
- Averted: Aesthetics are secondary. Efficient equipment is plain-looking in general, because it saves production time, and doesn't need anything more.
- Enforced: It's a generally accepted video game code, thus players will easily identify which piece of equipment is better than which other. Plus, it helps the players immediately judge whether or not the opponent is below or dramatically above their level.
- For the same reason, players would feel cheated if the higher-end equipment they get weren't exaggeratedly baroque as well.
- Lampshaded: "'You seen how spikey and glowy her axe is ? I'm not getting near her."
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited:
- Alice is a smith of average quality. But she makes a lot of money crafting equipment that looks fancy, because a lot of (arguably not very experienced) people assume that Elaborate Equals Powerful. Most of them die in her armours, it's true, but at least they won't come back to complain and should have known better.
- Then one of them survives, and wants their money back or else...
- Alice is a smith of average quality. But she makes a lot of money crafting equipment that looks fancy, because a lot of (arguably not very experienced) people assume that Elaborate Equals Powerful. Most of them die in her armours, it's true, but at least they won't come back to complain and should have known better.
- Defied: Angie specifically chooses plain-looking equipment, because it's just as effective, costs less, and is less likely to attract robbers. Plus, all the shiny ornaments would wear off quickly after a few fights, and would be just as costly to maintain.
- Spikes on a blade or armour may be useful on the short term, but they can get stuck, bend easily and are impractical to maintain. Rounded armour that doesn't emphasize the body's curves deflects blows more efficiently.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Heroes and main characters tend to use fancier equipment, but if it's actually more effective, or if they are just better fighters than the masses.
- Deconstructed: ???
- Reconstructed: ???
- Played For Laughs: In a Dungeon-Based Economy, there are strict laws concerning equipment quality and they must have aesthetics to match so they can be quickly identified. Smiths and adventurers can be forced to add glitter or flaws on their equipment if the authorities estimate that it doesn't reflect how efficient and precious it really is.
- Played For Drama: The heroes acquire better stuff that looks very good as well. It makes them obvious targets for bandits, and despite superior prowess and equipment, they all go down in one big ambush.
More examples make for more powerful information.
