History Main / ElementalBaggage

* ''WildCards''' Water Lily believes that she condenses water from the air, but to account for the amounts she makes, it's later speculated that she can actually subconsciously transmute air and other matter around her into water, at one point creating a large flood.

* So far averted in the WhateleyUniverse. Riptide, who can control water, has had enough water to really kick ass only once - a stormy, rainy day in Boston. (But she got knocked out before she could use her powers.)

** ''ComicBook/UltimateFantasticFour'' had Johnny become a walking fusion reactor; his entire body has reconfigured itself to be as perfect an energy store as possible (which results in some bad effects on his health, as you might expect for someone who turns his stores of body fat into ''plasma''). WarrenEllis tried ''very'' hard to justify Johnny. He also has a protective layer of microscopic scales to protect him from this flame. Though that still doesn't explain how he flies...

* ''{{Okami}}'' also uses this one, where paintbrush techniques can pull various elements across the screen. It gets really bad when later brush techniques can pull these elements out of nowhere. Then again, we are talking about gods here....

[[quoteright:306:[[ComicBook/XMen http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/IceSlide_5071.jpg]]]]

* Used heavily within ''VideoGame/CityOfHeroes'' and its sister game, ''VideoGame/CityOfVillains''. Superpowered characters and {{NPC}}s regularly toss lightning, summon fire in a variety of forms, create blizzards or jagged shards of ice, even generate radioactive material on demand. Made most obvious during Hurl, which picks up a chunk of rock off the ground and tosses it, even when used in the middle of an ocean or on top of an empty shipping container, or in ''mid-air''.
** Or Propel, which materializes things like crates and pool tables for you to (you guessed it) propel at the enemy.
*** This, however, is explicitly stated to be a form of teleportation; it's a Gravity Control power.
*** And [[ImprobableWeaponUser it]] [[RuleOfCool is]] [[RuleOfFunny awesome]].
*** Doubly so when you discover that no two players see the same object. "Nice lamppost!" "That was a desk."

* In ''{{Chaotic}}'', the Liquilizer is capable of refilling itself with just the water in the air.

* This trope is averted in ''{{Drowtales}}'', where elemental sorcery requires the presence of the element in question. For example, [[AnIcePerson ice]] users need freezable liquid, and [[PlayingWithFire fire]] users either carry around so-called "fire pots" or strike a spark when they need some flames.

* In ''{{Exalted}}'', the Dragon-Blooded don't ''need'' elemental baggage. They '''''are''''' elemental baggage, scions of a long line of elemental heroes, sons and daughters of the (obviously) Immaculate Dragons.

* In TheDarkEye, most magical traditions need a small amount of one of the six elements is to summon a servant, djinn or master elemental of that particular element. If the element in question is not pure (sand instead of stone for a stone elemental) it will be more difficult, should it be purer, it will be easier (diamond instead of stone for a stone elemental).

* [[PoisonousPerson Coco]] from ''Manga/{{Toriko}}'' plays with this trope. He can only produce a limited amount of poison at a time as his poison is composed of his own bodily fluids, in other words, the poison he produces the more dehydrated he becomes. At the start of the series his maximum was 15 liters of poison, however due to his Gourmet Cells evolving and learning Food Immersion, he can produce a larger quantity of poison than before, although their is still a limit.

* Addressed during the Bohrok arc of the ''{{Bionicle}}'' comics. Gali's water-summoning abilities apparently work by forcing water vapor in the air to condense on command. However, she's able to summon a flood in the middle of a desert, even though there shouldn't be that much water vapor in the atmospheric column over a dry desert.
* In ''{{Bionicle}}'', each Toa wield an element. To control it, they need elemental energy that slowly recharges itself when not in use, or by absorbing their own element. This energy allows them to create their element out of thin air (shooting fire or water), or to control nearby supplies of it (earthquakes, wind, etc.). As soon as they run out, however, they can't do a thing.

* Truly {{Averted|Trope}} in ''CaptainPlanetAndThePlaneteers'': The Ring of Water could only control existing bodies of water. Used straight with the Ring of Fire, though.

* In ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', FunctionalMagic often allows elemental powers to be conjured out of nothing or it may otherwise require a small spell component to cast (with more expensive components needed for more powerful spells). Sometimes the powers are explicitly drawn from elemental planes (particularly summoning spells), which double as exotic adventuring locales. If you're actually ''on'' those planes, spells involving the plane's element get a free power boost, while spells involving their opposed element -- fire/water or earth/air -- are much harder to cast. There ''are'' a few spells which may only function if there's at least some amount of the element present, and these are usually given names such as "control water".

Related to ShapeshifterBaggage and the HyperspaceArsenal. Often implied for SnowMeansCold.

* In ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', this is {{Hand Wave}}d through the Elemental Planes of Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, from which these elements can be summoned, and which double as exotic adventuring locales. If you're actually ''on'' those planes, spells involving the plane's element get a free power boost, while spells involving their opposed element -- fire/water or earth/air -- are much harder to cast.

In many {{fantasy}} settings, FunctionalMagic will often allow the elemental ability to be simply [[ThePowerOfCreation created out of nothing]], requiring no source to function. Otherwise only a small amount of the element may be needed to power the spell or some other PowerSource or component may be used. It may also allow the user to draw elements from distant sources or even other [[ElementalPlane planes of existence]].

This violation of EquivalentExchange is less noticeable for users of more volatile elements such as air (which is present in large enough quantities in pretty much every setting), fire (although someone is bound to ask [[NoConservationOfEnergy where all those calories come from]], which is often HandWaved by having fire users be {{Big Eater}}s) or lightning (where one is usually more distracted by the character's PsychoElectro qualities). Earth users and especially water users using this trope are much clearer examples of ArtisticLicense and RuleOfCool being employed, depending on how much of the element is available.

** [[AnIcePerson Iceman]], also of the ''ComicBook/XMen''. He canonically makes his ice by drawing the moisture out of the air, but the huge sculptures he creates would be difficult to pull off even in the aforementioned ten thousand percent humidity. The precise mechanism depends on the writer; one was that he draws the moisture from an extra-dimensional source, but he needs actual moisture in the air to "pattern" it from. Thus, he's weaker in extremely arid conditions. In one issue of ''The Defenders'', Bobby manages to kill an alien fungus by draining all the moisture from a sealed room, but it takes much, much longer than you'd expect from the volume of ice he's producing.

This violation of EquivalentExchange is less noticeable for users of more volatile elements such as air (which is present in large enough quantities in pretty much every setting), fire (although someone is bound to ask [[NoConservationOfEnergy where all those calories come from]], which is often HandWaved by having fire users be {{Big Eater}}s) or lightning (where one is usually more distracted by the character's PsychoElectro qualities). Earth users and especially water users may have more trouble depending on the setting.

Compare ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman if the power is harder to get into use.

When this violation of EquivalentExchange occurs in a {{Fantasy}} setting, one can always claim that AWizardDidIt.[[note]] It should be noted though, metaphysically, a lot of the time elements in [[FunctionalMagic functional magic systems]] are used not as material substitutes or basic building blocks of matter as they are classically, but rather "forms" or "ideas" that is imposed on raw chaotic existence in order to cause an effect, either by changing things or creating things. This implies the world is not based, as ours appears to be, on real objective matter, but rather, a simple "existence" which elements directly affect. Or in other words, equivalent exchange simply doesn't apply sometimes because [[RealityIsOutToLunch reality was out to lunch]] in the first place.[[/note]] However, it gets more and more {{egregious}} the closer we come to a ScienceFiction setting. From the moment the powers start getting called [[{{Whatevermancy}} Greek-element-o-kinesis]] the authors have introduced a magnet for FanWank. The fans are going to demand explanations increasingly often and the writers are going to be in trouble.

Of course, FanWank or not, it will still look like a cancerous example of HoldingBackThePhlebotinum if the writers decide to do an episode where the elemental user is explicitly at a disadvantage because they can't find a large enough source of their element to control.

This phenomenon is less of an ailment for users of more volatile elements such as air (which is present in large enough quantities in pretty much every setting), fire (although someone is bound to ask [[NoConservationOfEnergy where all those calories come from]], which is often HandWaved by having fire users be {{Big Eater}}s) or lightning (where one is usually more distracted by the character's PsychoElectro qualities). Earth users and especially water users (as the examples above show) may have more trouble, but benevolent viewers will often allow for 10,000% humidity or really really dusty conditions. Not to be confused with SeasonalBaggage.

Compare ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman if the power is harder to get into use, or there's less RuleOfCool to make it acceptable.

** Which, unfortunately, doesn't explain where the energy comes from to power sonic attacks.
*** Most sonic attacks are used by ''[[AWizardDidIt wizards]]''--that, or they just have tiny, powerful subwoofers in their wands.
*** Also consider 'create food' spells, does that mean there is a 'plane of gruel'?
*** Theoretically, yes.
*** Which is often a source of spoofs in D&D parodies, as characters somehow or another wind up in a plane or demiplane of infinite food. See the [[Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick semi-elemental plane of ranch dressing]] [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0802.html here]].

* The Logia (and certain Paramecia) Devil Fruits of ''OnePiece'' run off the AWizardDidIt explanation: one of powers they grant is specifically noted to be the ability to produce as mass amounts of whatever element the Logia fruit in question represents.
* Initially averted in ''{{Naruto}}'', where for a long time pretty much all the water elemental powers were shown to use existing bodies of water. Later on, it fell headlong into this trope, with huge amounts of water appearing out of thin air. Of course, since the main character regularly [[ShapeshifterBaggage creates clones of himself out of nothing, and others have been known to increase their body mass hundreds of times or turn shadows into physical beings]], it seems like creating matter (elemental and otherwise) out of nothing is just something [[FunctionalMagic ninjutsu]] can do.

* In ''SuperSmashBros'', among other obvious examples, Charizard can always grab a boulder from just under his feet and smack someone with it.

* {{Storm}} from the ''Comicbook/{{X-Men}}''. This was used to (sort of) explain that she can ''control'' weather, but not really ''create'' it. (For instance, when she makes it rain ''inside'' a room, it becomes much drier ''outside''.) Compare [[TheMightyThor Thor]], who can make it rain ''anywhere'', because his powers are explicitly magical.
** [[AnIcePerson Iceman]], also of the ''Comicbook/{{X-Men}}''. He canonically makes his ice by drawing the moisture out of the air, but the huge sculptures he creates would be difficult to pull off even in the aforementioned ten thousand percent humidity. The precise mechanism depends on the writer; one was that he draws the moisture from an extra-dimensional source, but he needs actual moisture in the air to "pattern" it from. Thus, he's weaker in extremely arid conditions. In one issue of ''The Defenders'', Bobby manages to kill an alien fungus by draining all the moisture from a sealed room, but it takes much, much longer than you'd expect from the volume of ice he's producing.

[[quoteright:306:[[ComicBook/{{X-Men}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/IceSlide_5071.jpg]]]]

->''Unbelievable for him to be able to use such a water jutsu where there is no water!''
--> -- '''ANBU Captain''', ''{{Naruto}}''

** The ''OfficialHandbookOfTheMarvelUniverse'' tried to justify the Original Johnny's flames in a different way, saying that they're a [[PsychicPowers pyrokinetic ability]] to create a superheated plasma. The WordOfGod follow-up justification for why his flame goes out when the air supply is cut off is that he can only heat up ''oxygen molecules'', which has been contradicted time and time again in the actual stories.

* Most ''Anime/{{Pokemon}}'' are capable of expelling ridiculous quantities of their elements from their bodies. One episode of the anime had Ash's Squirtle fill up a whole truck with water using only Water Gun. In the games, a Pokédex entry mentions that Blastoise (about the size of a van) could fill an [[OlympicGames Olympic]] swimming pool. How did so much water end up inside the {{Mons}}? Nobody knows. Then again, that creature the size of a van fits in a ball the size of a clenched fist (which in the anime can become ''even smaller'').

* Apparently invoked only to be nastily averted in ''NowAndThenHereAndThere''. Lala Ru is introduced as having the ability to create endless water using her pendant. [[spoiler:This is later clarified as the pendant containing a vast but by now nearly emptied reservoir of water, the depletion of which is directly tied to Lala Ru's steadily worsening condition, and ''then'' it's heavily implied that, far from the pendant creating extra water, there's a connection between the slow emptying of Lala Ru's pendant and the fact the earth has turned into a desert. And then by the end Lala Ru finally uses the last of the water. And dies.]] But then, nothing in Now and Then, Here and There works out well for those involved.