History Main / AwesomeButImpractical

** AwesomeButImpractical/{{Minecraft}}

!!Examples:

* Discussed in the video ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsgA8dJjCe4&t=600s 5 Most Insanely Massive Projects Never Completed]]'' by [=Dark5=]:

Keep in mind, Awesome, But Impractical is not CoolButInefficient, which is where something appears to be awesome, but has no real benefit to using. Awesome, But Impractical ''is'' genuinely useful, it just requires such a cost and/or is so ridiculously conditional that you're probably not going to use it very often. Sometimes, Awesome, But Impractical moves carry a situational advantage, or are so DifficultButAwesome that even highly skilled players have trouble using them — but there '''is''' an advantage over normal moves if you can afford to pay the penalties. Sure, maybe that mini-nuke will [[TotalPartyKill irradiate and possibly kill your party]], but [[GodzillaThreshold if you're in a big enough pinch, possibility of death beats guaranteed death, so you may as well try it.]]

Yes, it seems that the designers put so much time into maxing out the "ultimate" factor of the ultimate attack that they forgot to actually make it usable. Maybe it [[YouRequireMoreVespeneGas requires too many resources]] to use, causing its allure of "awesome" to be lost as fast as your party's money. Maybe it requires some sort of bizarre set-up to enact, making your normal attacks and spells much easier to apply inside of battle. Maybe it has a considerable chance of [[CriticalFailure failing]] or [[SelfDamagingAttackBackfire backfiring]] that makes it unreliable from the start. Or maybe in mathematical terms it doesn't deliver as much bang for the buck as "inferior" alternatives.

* ''WebVideo/SMPEarth'': Planes -- they can achieve high-speed flight, but require fuel and cost a lot. Wilbur Soot tried to capitalize on this by building a paywall bridge across the Atlantic ocean, but that became AwesomeButImpractical in itself, because Wilbur was killed ''seven times'' while building that bridge.

Related to the BraggingRightsReward and InventionalWisdom on occasion. See also UselessUsefulSpell, BlessedWithSuck. Contrast TooAwesomeToUse, BoringButPractical, GameBreaker, SimpleYetAwesome. Compare ''and'' contrast DifficultButAwesome; there, the focus usually is on Impractical turning out to be Awesome. Crosses with DeathOrGloryAttack when a miss will result in nasty consequences, and PowerfulButInaccurate when lack of accuracy is the reason for the impracticality. ScaryImpracticalArmor is a SubTrope, as well as ImpracticallyFancyOutfit. In RealLife, this trope is often the reason behind IWantMyJetPack, and why a RareGun is rare in real life but common in fiction.

** AwesomeButImpratical/{{Minecraft}}

** Welthauptstadt Germania: UsefulNotes/NaziGermany's plan to rebuild UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}} in their image and serve as the capital of their proposed Greater German Reich. Their proposal would have seen the construction of such megastructures as a Triumphal Arch six times the size of the Arc de Triomphe and a massive domed People's Hall. The end results would not only have been too heavy for the city's soft soil to handle, but would have created an utterly inhospitable living environment for the city's ordinary citizens. On top of all that, [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust thousands of Jews, Romani, homosexuals, and political prisoners were worked to death]] in order to facilitate its construction. Only a handful of the proposed structures were built, and most were demolished after the collapse of the Nazi regime.

** Project Pluto: A proposal for a cruise missile utilizing a nuclear-powered ramjet engine. While its range would have been greater than any other missile at the time, it would irradiate everything in its path, making it impossible to fly over friendly territory or even launch from American soil, and was quickly rendered obsolete by the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

** Project Plowshare: An attempt to use nuclear explosives for peaceful, non-military purposes such as oil fracking and natural gas extraction. Not only was it soon done in by public opposition and international treaties banning the underground detonation of nuclear weapons, but the oil and gas extracted was of insufficient quality in addition to being contaminated by the radiation from the explosives.
** Project Mohole: An attempt to drill into the Mohorovičić discontinuity -- the boundary layer the between Earth's crust and mantle -- via multiple boreholes on the ocean floor and bring up core samples. Not only was the project criticized as being unnecessarily expensive and using up funds that could have been better used for other scientific endeavors, but very little useful information on the planet's internal composition was obtained anyway.
** Welthauptstadt Germania: UsefulNotes/NaziGermany's plan to rebuild UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}} in their image and serve as the capital of their proposed Greater German Reich. Their proposal would have seen the construction of such megastructures as a Triumphal Arch six times the size of the Arc de Triomphe and a massive domed People's Hall. The end results would not only have been too heavy for the city's soft soil to handle, but would have created an utterly inhospitable living environment for the city's ordinary citizens. On top of all that, [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust thousands of Jews, Romani, homosexuals, and political prisoner were worked to death]] in order to facilitate its construction. Only a handful of the proposed structures were built, and most were demolished after the collapse of the Nazi regime.

** Welthauptstadt Germania: UsefulNotes/NaziGermany's plan to rebuild UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}} in their image and serve as the capital of their proposed Greater German Reich. As the Nazi architects preferred sheer size to elegance, their proposal would have seen the construction of such megastructures as a Triumphal Arch six times the size of the Arc de Triomphe and a massive domed People's Hall. The end results would not only have been too heavy for the city's soft soil to handle, but would have created an utterly inhospitable living environment for the city's ordinary citizens. On top of all that, [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust thousands of Jews, Romani, homosexuals, and political prisoner were worked to death]] in order to facilitate its construction. Only a handful of the proposed structures were built, and most were demolished after the collapse of the Nazi regime.

* ''WebVideo/FalseSwipeGaming'': Reshiram boasts the unresisted STAB combo of Dragon/Fire,[[note]]until the Fairy-type was introduce in Gen 6[[/note]] and can 2-hit KO just about anything in Gen 5. However, its inability to switch in safely, vulnerability to entry hazards, and low speed rendered impractical to use. And when Kyuruem-White was released and did everything Reshiram did but better, Reshiram was rendered unviable.

'''Hitomi:''' ... Huh. And Zaibach [[BoringButPractical mines them in mass quantities]]?\\

'''Van:''' Yup! ... When you put it that way, it sounds pretty stupid, huh?\\

* ''WebAnimation/MurderDrones'':
** The protagonist Uzi creates a railgun design to fight the titular Murder Drones. When she is actually able to use it, the blast is powerful enough to blow one's head off in a single shot. However, this one shot is likely all one would get as it requires about 30 minutes to recharge and the Murder Drones also possess a potent regeneration ability and can simply repair the damage done to them, meaning that the shot will only be a temporary setback unless both the head and torso are destroyed.
** The Murder/Disassembly Drones themselves also count. They have the ability to transform their limbs into a variety of melee and projectile weaponry, they can fly at supersonic speeds, have a potent nanite acid that eats through metal in minutes and can immediately regenerate from all but the most devastating of damage. However, they also have a serious issue with overheating so extreme that they are at risk of dying from it even though the planet they are on is a frozen wasteland with direct sunlight also being dangerous to them. The only way they can stave off overheating is to [[HorrorHunger drink the oil of worker drones]] meaning that the disassembly drones will die of once they are all gone. It's heavily implied that this is a deliberate design flaw on the part of the company that made them as once the worker drones have been eradicated the disassembly drones [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness will no longer be useful]].

* Marckus' Stake-jacket from ''WebAnimation/HunterTheParenting]]. It can be used to stake any vampire that attacks him from the front, but it's useless at any other angle, requires him to put himself in danger, and runs the risk of him staking himself with one wrong move.

[[caption-width-right:350:So awesome... until you try [[FixedForwardFacingWeapon aiming]] or reloading it.[[note]] And let's not forget about the recoil...[[/note]]]]

The very act of using a million tons of firepower on a few weaklings (a.k.a [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill overkill]]) is also Awesome, But Impractical.

[[folder:Web Video]]
* ''WebVideo/FalseSwipeGaming'': Reshiram boasts the unresisted STAB combo of Dragon/Fire,[[note]]until the Fairy-type was introduce in Gen 6[[/note]] and can 2-hit KO just about anything in Gen 5. However, it's inability to switch in safely, vulnerability to entry hazards, and low speed rendered impractical to use. And when Kyuruem-White was released and did everything Reshiram did but better, Reshiram was rendered unviable.

Keep in mind, Awesome, But Impractical is not CoolButInefficient, which is where something appears to be awesome, but has no real benefit to using. Awesome, But Impractical ''is'' genuinely useful, it just requires such a cost that you're probably not going to use it very often. Sometimes, Awesome, But Impractical moves carry a situational advantage, or are so DifficultButAwesome that even highly skilled players have trouble using them — but there '''is''' an advantage over normal moves if you can afford to pay the penalties. Sure, maybe that mini-nuke will [[TotalPartyKill irradiate and possibly kill your party]], but [[GodzillaThreshold if you're in a big enough pinch, possibility of death beats guaranteed death, so you may as well try it.]]

'''[[GenreSavvy Hitomi]]:''' ... Huh. And Zaibach [[BoringButPractical mines them in mass quantities]]?\\

** ''[[AwesomeButImpractical/YuGiOh Yu-Gi-Oh!]]''