Sandbox / Discard And Draw Wick Check

OP by: mathfreak231

Category: Misuse

Intro

Discard and Draw is about characters permanently losing a power and gaining another, or a player of a game making a choice to give up one power/stat in exchange for another. It's got a clear enough definition but I'm worried the name is getting it confused for literal Card Cycling.

Background of prior TRS

This page was already brought to TRS 2 years ago, which I unfortunately only realized after completing this check. The scope of that thread was only to handle confusion for card game mechanics and otherwise used a very loose definition to check for misuse. The result was to create Card Cycling. I still see a high amount of wicks to Discard and Draw in the TabletopGame/ namespace, but I can't find any that were added after the TRS, so I guess just nobody bothered to clean the most obvious namespace. Still, I want to broaden the scope of this TRS to other ways this trope is misused. Notably, the thread also considered if this was a duplicate of Re-Power, but my opinion is that Re-Power is a super-trope, as it pertains to characters, anyways.

Question

Is it being confused for Card Cycling? Are there other cases of misuse? 50 wicks were checked.

Findings

• 24/50 were correct usage i.e. a character permanently loses one power and gains another, or a player makes a choice to permanently give up one power/stat in exchange for another.
• 26/50 were misuse.
  1. 2/50 mentioned mutually exclusive skills, but the change could be reversed at will.
  2. 4/50 mentioned the character gaining back their old skills in addition to keeping the new ones.
  3. 3/50 were about gimmick characters that repeatedly changed skills. This might actually fit as its own trope, maybe a subtrope to Confusion Fu, but doesn't fit Discard and Draw because there's nothing stopping them from getting the old skill back.
  4. 3/50 were about a tradeoff compared to other characters or classes, not a change of one character.
  5. 3/50 were about a tradeoff in different installments of a game series, which were caused more likely by mechanical changes in the game itself, not a development of one character.
  6. 3/50 were about some artifact being exchanged for a different one but no mention of powers being traded.
  7. 3/50 were actually Card Cycling, or some other mistake of the title's card metaphor.
  8. 5/50 didn't have enough context to be categorized.

Permanent change (correct)

1. Literature.The Founders Trilogy: Near the end of Foundryside, Valeria alters the plate in Sancia's head, causing her to lose her powers of object empathy and gain powers related to hearing and manipulating scriving, i. e. becoming an "editor".
2. StoryBreakerPower.Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Stone Ocean's Big Bad, Enrico Pucci, starts out as simply clever and dangerous, whose Stand, Whitesnake, is versatile but lacking in a stand-up fight. Then he evolves it into C-Moon, which has less flexibility but a lot more power. Then, just as the heroes figure out C-Moon and have him on the ropes, he evolves it again. Cue Made in Heaven, whose power is the ability to exponentially accelerate time for everything except living things. However, Pucci himself can move at the same speed as the accelerated time, essentially giving him Super-Speed that even the fastest Stands can't keep up with - only Jotaro's Star Platinum can hope to strike Made in Heaven by stopping time, and Pucci eventually gets fast enough to have set up traps for when he does to force a Sadistic Choice. Even worse, the time stopping ability of Star Platinum is drastically shortened by the accelerating time and continues to do so gradually along with Pucci himself getting faster and faster. Thanks to this power and his planning, he surrounds and rips most of the heroes to shreds in seconds and time continues to accelerate to the end of the universe and carries every living being on Earth into the next before they can die. Additionally, Made In Heaven is essentially the powers of the previous time manipulating Stands combined: it has the ability to accelerate time to the point of resetting the entire universe and looping time infinitely similar to Bites the Dust. It's also fast enough to completely disorient its foes like King Crimson. And finally, from Pucci's point of view, Made in Heaven is like The World's time stopping ability but it's on constantly with no limit to it whatsoever, rendering Star Platinum practically useless by this point. Fortunately, Pucci does fall to the final boy Emporio Alnino, but even then it's mainly because of his arrogance and a few Logical Weaknesses of the time acceleration power.
3. Flying Brick: Dynamo5 Cap was one, but the "flying" and "brick" parts got split between Livvie and Bridget, so they make do with Fastball Special maneuvers. After the Discard and Draw, Gage gets a suit of armor that seems like it'll make him a more traditional version.
4. VideoGame.Red Resurrection: Using New Soviet Man transforms all friendly basic infantry in the targeted area into Homosos Cyborgs, a heavy infantry unit armed with a generalist anti-ground cannon and no AA capability. This means that this trope will apply if the original infantry are Flak Troopers or Guardian GIs (who can no longer fire on the air), mercenaries or Initiates (who lose the ability to earn money) and Rikishi (who trade off the ability to slow down foes), but this rarely happens in practice, since players prefer to use New Soviet Man on Conscripts (the cheapest basic infantry available), in which case it is mostly a straight upgrade.
5. Characters.Age Of Empires III Non European Major Civilizations: The "Old Han Reform" Home City Card in the Industrial Age increases their Chu Ko Nu and Qiang Pikeman's hitpoints and attack at the cost of the Old Han Army and Standard Army's costs increasing. The Chinese, however, would rarely allow games to get so far as to make such a power spike necessary, since rushes featuring the Old Han troops often hit before the Fortress Age is even reached!
6. VideoGame.The Word Tree: Unlocking ether grants several new effects that increase itself and three buyables, but previous resources get divided heavily. Then at 5.4e54 ether you start gaining eater which lowers ether but restores the previous multipliers and has a new set of buyables.
7. VideoGame.Hades:
   • Some Hammer of Daedalus upgrades replace your Special or Charged Attack with a completely different attack, or come with a downside. In these cases, the new attack is usually much better than the old one, or the downsides come with bonuses that more than make up for the loss.
   • The Anvil of Fates removes one of your Hammer of Daedalus upgrades, but grants two new random ones.
   • Various weapon Aspects, especially the hidden Aspects, exchange parts of your moveset for new features.
8. Characters.Blaz Blue Central Fiction: At the end of Remix Heart she loses the powers of the Intermediary Grimoire but becomes the Blank Grimoire.
9. 11th-Hour Superpower: The final episode of the first season of The Legend of Korra plays with this trope. Korra gains airbending, but only after she loses the ability to bend the other three elements. Later, she regains those bending abilities and gets access to the Avatar State... but this is after the Big Bad has been defeated. However, she also gains the ability to restore bending to anyone who lost it, which lets her help the Big Bad's victims.
10. WesternAnimation.Ben 102016: In this version, the show name avoids becoming an Artifact Title, since every time Ben gains a new alien form, another gets locked. The one time it didn't happen (when he unlocked Gax in the Season 1 finale "Omni-tricked") the Omnitrix starts malfunctioning.
11. FireEmblemHeroes.Tropes A To E: While many base refines upgrade the effects for weapons, some of the unique weapons that can be refined have the old effect replaced with similar or new abilities, or even evolve their weapons to gain new weapons with different effects. Most Beast Units have their weapons almost entirely adjusted for refines due to being different in playstyle from other units, so they need to be adjusted to fit in the games meta as time goes on.
12. Characters.Kamen Rider Ex Aid Protagonists: As Lazer Turbo, he loses the ability to transform into a bike in exchange for a base Level 2-esque humanoid form that can fight independently and arm itself with Masamune's cache of Proto Gashats.
13. VideoGame.Shotgun King The Final Checkmate: Some of the upgrades to either side will strengthen them in one aspect of another in exchange of weakening them in others, such as removing one piece in exchange of adding another piece.
14. Main.Beat Them At Their Own Game: On Heroes, this is now Peter's new strategy thanks to the Discard and Draw ability that he regains after losing his original ability and taking the ability-granting formula.
15. Characters.Jaune Arc Lord Of Hunger Darth Nihilus: When Nihilus was transformed into a wound in the Force and gained the ability to drain life from others, it seems to have come at the cost of his physical prowess atrophying.
16. Characters.Fate Kaleid Liner Prisma Illya: It used to be a Berserker card, but changed into Rider because of Beatrice’s resolve. While Beatrice can no longer use Mjölnir, she is now able to summon Gullfaxi, which she initially couldn’t do while under the Berserker Class.
17. Characters.Echoes The Arashi Clan: In the very first chapter he lost all of his Kyuubi powers in exchange for his Space Master powers that drive the entire plot. This version also inherited Kushina's Bloodline which he can now use because the Kyuubi isn't screwing with his chakra anymore.
18. Characters.Elden Ring Godfrey: Slaying Serosh and unleashing his repressed savagery results in him trading his battle axe and armor for Super-Speed and super powered wrestling moves; his attacks do less damage overall with less reach, and his defense also decreases, but he becomes unpredictable due to his awkward grab timings and is capable of quickly killing you in turn with his high burst damage, and his shockwave moves have longer reach.
19. Characters.Pokemon Generation VI Chespin To Hawlucha: Chesnaught becomes half-Fighting type after evolving, losing a weakness to the Bug-Type and becoming resistent to Rock-Type moves, with new weaknesses to Psychic and Fairy-Type moves and the Flying-Type becomes dangerous to Chesnaught.
20. Characters.Monster Hunter First Generation Monsters: Gravios does not emit poison like Basarios (its younger self) does. However, it has much better control of its beam, able to sweep with it and fire it in controlled bursts. As expected of being an adult now, it’s also much bigger and stronger.
21. Characters.Bofuri I Dont Want To Get Hurt So Ill Max Out My Defense: "Heaven's Throne" is a skill that produces a divine throne for her to sit on. It's effect prevent her from using 'evil' type skills like Atrocity and Big Urn Curse, but in exchange reduces damage by 20% and heals her by 2% per second, all while having complete immunity to knockback. It synergizes with Myrter's devotion so well that as long as she has allies they cannot die and neither can she.
22. VideoGame.Half Life 2: In the Citadel, Gordon loses all of his equipment with the exception of the gravity gun and his HEV suit, both of which become supercharged by dark energy. The gravity gun can interact with energy spheres and all organic matter, killing the latter instantly when held or hit by a projected object; meanwhile, Gordon's suit gains increased reactive armor energy reserves and can recharge both armor and health reserves from Combine power stations with greater efficiency.
23. Characters.Fire Emblem The Sacred Stones Playable Characters: Ewan is one of the very few characters in the series who can promote to a class that shares no weapon proficiencies with his previous class - by promoting from Pupil to Shaman, he loses anima magic entirely and picks up dark magic. After that, he can get anima back by promoting to Druid or promote to Summoner and never regain it.
24. Characters.Codex Equus Unaffiliated Deities O To R: As a Twice as Fancy Pony, her tribal Pony magic was weakened in favor of strengthening her Cutie Mark-related magic.

Reversible change

1. Characters.Ben 10 Omnitrix Aliens:
   • Since Ben can only use one transformation at a time, his set of powers will change according to which form he is using.
   • As the Omnitrix houses far more potential alien forms than any one user could hope to sort through on the fly, it generally operates in sets of ten randomly selected (though generally balanced) forms. Others in its database can be unlocked later, but it will default to another set of ten if left inactive for too long, requiring older forms to be re-unlocked.
   • The Ultimatrix is an experimental knockoff of the Omnitrix that allows access to "Ultimate forms," simulated evolutions of the alien species during a constant wartime scenario. These Ultimates are generally stronger and more offensively powerful, but the Ultimatrix is still rather shoddily designed, and thus is more prone to glitches and bugs. Most notably, even though Ben's learnt how to transform without accidentally turning into a different alien by this point, the Ultimatrix is still prone to mistransformations.
2. HonkaiImpact3rd.Tropes A To F: The "Augment Core" upgrades for the Valkyrie battlesuits tend to replace a good number of their skills with other, usually better, ones. They can be switched on and off, too.

Actually keeps old powers

1. Manga.Mega Man NT Warrior 2001: MegaMan's old Super Modes are often ignored once they become So Last Season, and replaced with the new Power-Up d'jour but MegaMan never actually disposes of them, allowing on one occasion the return of Hub Style in the middle of the BN 4 arc.
2. Characters.Mai Ball Kijikita: Even at a younger age her kicks were so powerful it broke two ribs of a fully grown adult while playing football in a park. As the injury may have been caused by a wayward hit, she began practicing to make sure her passes are always accurate. However, this affected her kicks, and thus she can only shoot straight at the goalkeeper at first. emphasis on "at first", i'm going to assume this means it's not a permanent tradeoff in the end
3. Characters.Pokemon Generation VIII Impidimp To Calyrex: Its Grass typing gets exchanged for Ice typing in Ice Rider form and Ghost typing in Shadow Rider form, though it does retain access to a diverse array of Grass-type moves in all forms.
4. Characters.Thunderbolts Founding Members: She traded a sonic scream with some degree of mind control properties for Imagination-Based Superpower based around solid sound constructs, allowing both flight and Spontaneous Weapon Creation. She later regained her original powers. This actually caused problems for her in the early Thunderbolts days, as she had no idea how to use her new powers.

Constantly changes skills as gimmick

1. Characters.Hearthstone Heroes Of Warcraft Battlegrounds: Every turn, he loses his previous hero power and gains a totally new one.
2. Characters.Total War Warhammer The Daemons Of Chaos: His ability to shuffle his spell list works by equipping "fragments" of each of the eight core lores (unlocked through his skill tree), which each replace two spells from the Lore of Tzeentch with two pre-packaged spells from that lore.
3. Characters.Dota 2 Intelligence N To Z: Whenever Rubick uses Spell Steal, he automatically forgets the currently stolen spell. If he has Aghanim's Scepter (which allows him to remember two stolen spells), stealing a new ability replaces the older ability.

Tradeoff compared to other characters

1. VideoGame.Blaz Blue Entropy Effect: Hakumen's dash is unique as it has a hitbox and can strike foes by charging into them with knockback. As a tradeoff, Hakumen's dash lacks invulnerability frames by default and can only gain an invulnerable dash by claiming a specific Potential.
2. VideoGame.Depth: Winning a game as either the Tiger, Bull, or Mako shark unlocks a kindred species with similar performance and gimmick, which are the Lemon, Copper, and Blue sharks, respectively. These kindred species have similar yet mechanically-different gameplay and abilities, but conform to roughly the same general style.
3. MagicKnight.Video Games: Sienna, the Bright Wizard from Vermintide, specializes in Playing with Fire from afar, but she's perfectly capable of wading into battle with hordes of skaven mooks with sword in hand if need be. Vermintide II ups the ante with her Unchained class, a tank class which sacrifices ranged ability for short-range powers and the ability to endure and dish incredible amounts of damage — as long as she can manage to avoid a Heroic RRoD from channeling so much raw magic.

Tradeoff compared to other installment

1. Characters.Digimon Ghost Game Antagonists: He's seemingly incapable of creating Drippins, unlike his Xros Wars counterpart. On the other hand, one touch from him can easily turn people and Digimon into water droplets.
2. VideoGame.Dark Souls Daughters Of Ash: The Crystal Golems lose the ability to curse you, but can now camouflage and stay invisible until approached. there's no explanation of how the ability is lost so i'm assuming it's just a feature in the mod
3. Characters.Pokemon Generation III Wailmer To Deoxys: Generation VI removed the Steel-type's resistance to Dark- and Ghost-type moves, giving this line two additional weaknesses. But at the same time, they got a type advantage against the newly introduced Fairy-type. Mega-Metagross is especially effective as a Fairy killer, able to take down even Xerneas with relative ease.

Trades things but doesn't explain how it affects powers

1. Recap.The Omnitrix Hero S 4 E 15 The Ultimate Opponent PT 2: Flash sacrifices the Omnitrix's core to save the city, but shortly afterwards replaces it with Shadow's Ultimatrix core, essentially replacing the Omnitrix with the Ultimatrix.
2. Recap.Kamen Rider Geats Ep 18 Divergence II Bravo Jyamar Ball Showdown: Due to being suspected to be the Desastar, the Riders take away the Ninja Buckle from Keiwa. Despite this, he clears a secret mission shortly after that gives him the Command Twin Buckle.
3. VideoGame.Super Robot Wars: Not only do characters following their series' continuity abandon old units for Mid Season Upgrades, it's possible to put supporting characters in those abandoned units to make them useful again. Amuro Ray leaving behind the Nu Gundam for the Hi-Nu Gundam? Put Roux Louka in the former; got a spare mass produced Great Mazinger or two? Stronger units for Sayaka Yumi and Jun Hono.

Card Cycling or other card-related misuse

1. Recap.Yu Gi Oh GXS 1 E 23 The Little Belowski: Belowski's strategy. He summons weak fairies, activates his Mokey Mokey Smackdown spell card to increase his Mokey Mokey monsters' attack to 3000 whenever another fairy is destroyed, replenishes his monster supply with Human Wave Tactics and uses life point restoring cards.
2. TabletopGame.My Little Pony Collectible Card Game: There are some cards with effects that have the player do this.
   • "Dr. Hooves, Too Splashy" lets the player draw two cards and then discard two cards when said player confronts this card's problem.
   • "A.K. Yearling, Adventure Writer" can exhaust herself to let her player draw two cards and then discard two cards.
   • "Nightmare Moon" forces both players to discard their hands and draw three cards when she flips.
   • "Tank, Burrower" allows you to draw and card and then discard one when he enters play.
   • "Starlight Glimmer, Chrono Trigger" eventually does this to the entire field. Her effect banishes cards from the tops of both players' decks. Then, if there's 20 cards banished by her effect, she clears the board, banishes herself, and puts all friends and troublemakers banished by her effect into play.
3. TabletopGame.Force Of Will: Quite a few cards, but most lean towards Draw and Discard rather than the other way around.

ZCE or other

1. ComicBook.Jackpot And Black Cat: Jackpots powers work like this with her spinning her slot bracelet.
2. Characters.Kamen Rider Saber Movie And Spinoff Exclusive Characters: Amazing Siren provides a large number of terrifying powers, such as memory alteration, illusions, and erasure...but it doesn't have Eternal Phoenix's Resurrective Immortality.
3. Fanfic.Town And Out Brockton Bay: Dinah apparently Second-Triggered with a more manageable power.
4. Characters.Death Battle Season Seven Part 2: After losing her powers to an evil version of Cindy Moon, she initially used special isotopes that temporarily restored her powers. She gave that up and found herself obtaining her world's version of the Venom symbiote.
5. Characters.Ben 10 Villains Alien Force: He uses an Ultimatrix device to "stabilize [his] transformations" and upgrades it to allow him to go Ultimate again as well.

Conclusion + ideas

The trope has a moderate misuse rate. Categories of misuse are numbered above. Here are some ideas for improvement:

• #6 and #7 for sure would be mitigated by a rename that drops the metaphor and focuses more clearly on changing powers (but since #7 was the original TRS scope, it could probably be solved with a proper cleanup of game namespaces).
• #1-4 can be mitigated by a title that emphasizes a permanent change done to one character.
• #3 and #5 could be yarded out as their own tropes. Some of #5 fit Adaptational Superpower Change already, but there are also cases where the character didn't change at all, just the (meta)game did.
• Alternatively to a rename, the trope definition could be expanded to include some more of these use cases. However, I don't like this option because a permanent power trade-off is a meaningful trope that loses a lot of meaning if the powers can just be switched back or regained.
• A split could be done between powers gained/lost as part of a narrative vs. as part of a game mechanic, so there could be clearer titles for both. I like many of the names bounced around in the old TRS, but they would apply only to the former.