Basic Trope: A power, feat, ability, perk, or other Character Customization option with advantages that far outweigh any disadvantages.
- Straight: In Tales of Troperia XIV, Wisdom is the One Stat to Rule Them All while Intelligence is the Dump Stat. During character creation, you may choose the perk "Street Smarts" which cuts your character's Intelligence in half but doubles his Wisdom.
- Exaggerated:
- Street Smarts maxes out Wisdom while reducing Intelligence to the minimum.
- Adding just a single extra point to Wisdom turns it into a Game-Breaker.
- Downplayed: Street Smarts only swaps a single Intelligence point for a Wisdom point.
- Justified: The game's setting highly discourages Intelligence in favor of Wisdom. As such, choosing Street Smarts is designed to give your character a massive bonus.
- Inverted: Wisdom is the Dump Stat while Intelligence is the One Stat to Rule Them All, rendering Street Smarts completely useless.
- Subverted:
- Choosing Street Smarts makes much of the game easier indeed, but locks you out of the Golden Ending.
- Street Smarts seems useful, but due to a bug, any Wisdom increases past the halfway point of the stat no longer have an impact.
- Street Smarts seems useful, but it locks you out of several perks that are both more powerful and more useful.
- Double Subverted:
- The intended Golden Ending isn't, due to Values Dissonance, They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot, and Creator's Pet. Players intentionally seek the second-best ending - which is completely impossible unless you take Street Smarts.
- ...But due to another bug, if you more than max out the stat (which one careful Street Smarts build can do), you can glitch your way around the saddest scripted character death in the game.
- Street Smarts is very useful, at first, but it locks you out of several perks that are both more powerful and more useful later on. However, there is an option for a Skill Point Reset later in the game which allows you to change the perks you've selected. This way, you can take Street Smarts early on when it is most useful, then switch it for the better perks later on.
- Parodied: The game features a "Min-Maxer's Mode" specifically designed to appeal to those types of players and Street Smarts is only available in that mode.
- Zig-Zagged: Street Smarts is useful early in the game, but a mid-game challenge requires a certain skill level in Intelligence to pass, cutting you off from the rest of the game until you level grind to increase your Intelligence. It then returns to being useless after that point while the final boss is most easily dispatched with high Wisdom.
- Averted: All stats are well-balanced which makes Min-Maxing risky.
- Enforced: Intelligence is the One Stat to Rule Them All and the game is designed to encourage kids to pursue and education.
- Lampshaded: A tooltip appears when selecting Street Smarts that calls the player out for being a Min-Maxer.
- Exploited:
- Defied: A balance patch is released which Nerfs Street Smarts, making Intelligence more useful while reducing the power of Wisdom.
- Discussed:
- Conversed:
- Deconstructed:
- The "best" build involves Street Smarts, but that unlocks lots of Fridge Horror, from the various dialog options that imply your character had a truly horrific past, to the permanent mallus to their ability to trust anyone ever, to the cutscenes at the end which show they failed at their one great dream of getting a PhD (due to not being smart enough).
- That one perk eventually proves to be a massive Game-Breaker, leading to Complacent Gaming Syndrome. The casual fans (who make up most of the playerbase) quit playing because they no longer find the game fun as they feel they are forced to play a certain way.
- Reconstructed:
- ...But the character has helped others they could never otherwise have reached, due to knowing what great pain is. Further, they are particularly good at working hard, which means they do get that PhD, five years down the road.
- Played for Laughs: Every time you die, an Author Avatar shows up and offers you the option to grab Street Smarts if you'd like. "Since you look like you could use a hand. And dying is good for the moral fiber. At least, I assume it is."
- Played for Drama:
- A hero is given a Sadistic Choice - between reliably saving most people with the minmaxed choice, or possibly saving everyone.
- There is a totally Min-Maxed option... that slowly eats your soul.
Back to Minmaxer's Delight.
