History Main / UselessUsefulSpell

*** This is still played straight with enemies in the ''TabletopGame/EpicLevelHandbook''. Nine times out of ten, epic enemies are immune to paralysis, sleep, polymorphing, level draining, instant death, and basically anything that could so much as slow them down. In turn, these monsters will almost always have abilities that amount to "save or die" for a whole group, and one or two even nastier epic spells. Plus, Epic Spellcasting effectively turns any character that's at least Level 21 into a PersonOfMassDestruction. The fact that they pretty much ignore most of the limits and immunities created by normal spellcasting means that status effects are never going to get used at all. In addition, 5th Edition end boss characters like dragons and Vampire Lords typically have Legendary Saves that allow them to automatically succeed in a saving throw a certain number of times per day (on top of huge natural bonuses to saving throws). So, good luck polymorphing that dragon.

# Some are [[HighlySpecificCounterplay very situational]], only seeing use to counteract a single type of enemy/ability only working in certain environments. These are annoying, since you may need these spells to win, but you barely use them outside of rare, very specific circumstances.

# Some are valuable in theory, but give little benefit to the character who gains the ability. Commonly by relying on a stat or tactic that the character can't properly use. A SquishyWizard isn't going to have much use of a spell that only boosts their own physical attack.

# Some are [[HighlySpecificCounterplay very situational]], only seeing use to counteract a single enemy's ability or only working in certain environments. These are annoying, since you may need these spells to win, but you barely use them outside of rare, very specific circumstances.

# Some only work on less powerful enemies. And since they usually drain your ManaMeter, they're not worth using to dispatch TheGoomba. The enemies who actually ''are'' powerful enough to [[GodzillaThreshold make you break out these spells]] are usually [[ContractualBossImmunity immune to their effects]] -- otherwise, they would be [[GameBreaker far too easy to defeat]].
# Some are [[HighlySpecificCounterplay very situational]], only seeing use to counteract a single enemy's ability. These are annoying, since you need these spells to win, but you barely use them otherwise. Others only work in specific environments, being dead weight in any other situation.
# Some are difficult to cast. They may cost a ton of MP or other resources. Or they may take forever to activate, making your character (and perhaps the entire party) vulnerable and giving the enemy an opening to attack unhindered. Those spells also telegraph themselves to smarter enemies, making it easier for them to set up a counter to them. Others might only function with specific other spells, requiring the user to complete an elaborate set up to get any use out of them at all.
# Some are redundant -- you could easily replicate the effects with equipment or other party members' abilities, which are easier and less costly to use.
# Some are valuable in theory, but give no benefit to the character who gains the ability. Commonly by relying on a stat or tactic that the character can't properly use. A SquishyWizard isn't going to have much use of a spell that only boosts their own physical attack.

Game designers over the years have tried to mitigate the effect of ContractualBossImmunity by making bosses not ''entirely'' immune to these spells; they just have less of an effect as they would with a regular enemy. It makes for a more interesting fight, as the player experiments with a wider variety of spells, sees how long the various status effects last, and tries to come up with a winning strategy. One interesting twist is for the boss to be affected like everyone else at first, then develop a resistance to it, meaning you have to choose the right moment to use the spell. Others let the spell have full effect, but empower the bosses so much the Spell is practically mandatory. Either from sheer raw stats or by having a technique or innate ability that'll utterly crush the party unless the Spell is used to counter it. Other systems design their spells to provide some additional benefit, such as providing stat boosts or additional damage, to ensure that the spells remain at least valid options.

# Some are [[HighlySpecificCounterplay very situational]], only seeing use to counteract a single enemy's ability. These are annoying, since you need these spells to win, but you barely use them otherwise.
# Some are difficult to cast. They may cost a ton of MP. Or they may take forever to activate, making your character (and perhaps the entire party) vulnerable and giving the enemy an opening to attack unhindered. Those spells also telegraph themselves to smarter enemies, making it easier for them to set up a counter to them.

# Some are valuable only in theory, giving a stat boost in an area you don't need or can't use. A SquishyWizard isn't going to have much use of a spell that boosts their physical attack.

Game designers over the years have tried to mitigate the effect of ContractualBossImmunity by making bosses not ''entirely'' immune to these spells; they just have less of an effect as they would with a regular enemy. It makes for a more interesting fight, as the player experiments with a wider variety of spells, sees how long the various status effects last, and tries to come up with a winning strategy. One interesting twist is for the boss to be affected like everyone else at first, then develop a resistance to it, meaning you have to choose the right moment to use the spell. And still others let the spell have full effect, and instead empower the bosses so much the Spell is practically mandatory, be it from sheer raw stats or because the Spell stops a technique or innate ability that'll utterly crush the party otherwise.

** 3.5 edition's Cleric spells like Righteous Might and Divine Power tend to fall into this category. A fully-buffed Cleric is perhaps the deadliest close-range combat fighter in the game, with absurdly high Strength and damage, along with full casting prowess and tons of other significant buffs. But by the time you're finished casting all the spells to buff the Cleric that much, the fight's either almost over or you'll need to focus on bringing people back from the dead. (This is one of the main reasons that the Persistant Spell metamagic feat, which could rig the buffs to last a whole day, was considered a GameBreaker, especially when combined with the cleric-only Divine Metamagic feat, which let clerics spend Turn Undead uses to power their metamagic.)

*** The tyranids have a variant of this. Warp Lance is a powerful Anti-tank weapon with a Strength value of 10 and AP value of 1 (the best the stats can be) as well as the Lance attribute, meaning the only thing it's short of being the best anti-tank weapon in the game is Melta. It however only has a range of 18 inches, just barely outside of charging range. On top of that the Zoanthrope is a classic example of a SquishyWizard, having a low number of wounds and a save easily penetrable by rapid-fire weapons, not to mention being gibbed by most tank weapons, the very things it's trying to hunt. There is also a slight chance that the Zoanthrope will suffer a brain tumor if the spell goes awry.

** Several cards are specifically designed to counter a very powerful card, and potentially reverse its effect on the opponent. Gryphon Wing counters Harpie's Feather Duster, Anti-Raigeki counters Raigeki, Call of the Dead counters Monster Reborn, etc. However, those powerful cards are either Limited or banned, and these specific counter cards are [[CripplingOverspecialization absolutely useless in any other situation]]. It's often simpler to negate powerful plays with more general-purpose effect negations.

* The ''Literature/{{Sorcery}}'' series of books has '''48''' different spells... and barely enough option to cast each and every single one of them throughout the adventure. Seasoned players will instead rely mostly on some of the earlier spells like [[ShockAndAwe thunderbolt]] or [[PlayingWithFire fireball]], and some lower-cost and economical ones such as confusion, {{telepathy}} or razor edge (and the occasional SummonMagic to call for goblins as backup) but most of the time a successful playthrough of all four books will include on average between 20 to 30 available spells used. Of course, it ''is'' possible to finish the game with all 48 spells, but that one is more of a SelfImposedChallenge.

Game designers over the years have tried to mitigate the effect of ContractualBossImmunity by making bosses not ''entirely'' immune to these spells; they just have less of an effect as they would with a regular enemy. It makes for a more interesting fight, as the player experiments with a wider variety of spells, sees how long the various status effects last, and tries to come up with a winning strategy. One interesting twist is for the boss to be affected like everyone else at first, then develop a resistance to it, meaning you have to choose the right moment to use the spell.

A staple of [[RolePlayingGame RPGs]], the Useless Useful Spell is an attack or skill that your characters can learn but you end up never using. They tend to have impressive names like "Instant Death", "Poison", "Confusion", "Paralyze", "Silence", and "Petrify". And they may induce some interesting StandardStatusEffects or have a gimmick like a PercentDamageAttack. But they tend not to be useful at all, for a variety of reasons:

** One interesting thing that 5th Edition did was add the Ritual tag to some spells, specifically ones that lacked combat utility. In older editions, spells like Identify or Leomond's Tiny Hut were things you'd typically only bother with by way of magic wands or spell scrolls. Ritual spells can be cast without using a spell slot... it just takes at least ten minutes to do it. And since each round of combat in ''D&D'' is said to take six seconds, there's no way you're taking a hundred turns to cast that spell.
** True Strike became this in 5th Edition. The spell gives you Advantage on an attack roll, which is hugely powerful, but the spell takes an action to cast, requires you to target a creature that's within 30 feet of you, and doesn't grant advantage until you make an attack roll on your next turn. As such, it's entirely too slow to be something that can be relied upon, and if you target a creature that moves out of your line of sight or gets killed before your next turn the effect is wasted. But the single worst part is that using it has half the potential damage output than if you used those two rounds to simply attack twice. It's universally considered to be the single worst spell in the game.

A staple of [[RolePlayingGame RPGs]], your characters can learn attacks or skills such as [[StandardStatusEffects Instant Death, Poison, Confusion, Paralyze, Silence, and Petrify]], or {{Percent Damage Attack}}s that at first glance seem incredibly useful. However, in reality these spells are anything ''but'' useful, for any, and often ''several'', of the following reasons:

# Any enemy you would want to use these spells on is [[ContractualBossImmunity immune to their effects]]. If they weren't, the Useless Useful Spell would [[GameBreaker make things far too easy]].
# Common enemies that the spells ''are'' effective against can easily be disposed of by use of normal attacks, which means there's no sense in wasting time and magic power on fancy maneuvers. Why waste 36MP to cast Instant Death on the local harmless UndergroundMonkey when you could kill it with a single normal attack?
# The spell is thoroughly luck-based for its payoff because of a very low success or hit rate. It doesn't matter how useful it is if it can't reliably work.
# The casting takes an unreasonable amount of time. This means that enemies are always able to dodge or block your spell, or take advantage of your vulnerable state before it's ready. Allies may even be able to resolve the situation without you in the time it takes to cast.
# The spell's effect is [[HighlySpecificCounterplay very situational]]. Sure, protection from curses sounds great, but is it really worth the trouble when almost nothing uses curses? Or the anti-ice spell that only works if the enemy is a left-handed wizard named "Tim"?
** Similarly, the spell specifically counters another Useless Useful Spell, and otherwise lacks another use. Said countered-spell is possibly only considered Useless Useful because of the counter to begin with - the counter is hard enough that its accessibility makes said countered-spell foolish to even attempt when it can be struck down without any meaningful investment.
# The spell's effects can be replicated by gear or party members, making the spell redundant at best. No sense conjuring magical armor when regular armor does the same thing better.
# The ability is theoretically valuable, but is only available to a character that doesn't benefit from it. A spell to increase the user's physical attack damage doesn't do a SquishyWizard much good.

As game design has evolved, more recent games have been averting this with spells which would traditionally fall under this trope through several means. One method is including including EliteMooks that are vulnerable to the effects of the more powerful abilities; enemies significantly tougher than the typical mook, tough enough that they'll give you a hard time in a conventional fight, yet weaker than the harder bosses. Being able to chain stun a ClimaxBoss might cheapen the fight to the point of meaninglessness; using the resources to chain stun an EliteMook, however, still leaves the player having to deal with all of the mechanics of the more powerful bosses. Another method is having these abilities have lesser, but still useful, effects on bosses they would otherwise hard counter; poison immunity against a boss which relies on inflicting a highly potent poison, for example, may wear off at an accelerated rate, or may cause the poison to do less damage, while still offering more protection than no immunity at all. Yet another method is by limiting how often these abilities can be applied to the boss; a boss may, for example, build up resistance (temporarily or permanently) to a status effect as it is repeatedly applied, leaving one to either try to finish the fight as quickly as possible, or apply the status effect at the best possible opportunity (such as stunning before a HerdHittingAttack [[TotalPartyKill wipes your team out.]])

# It specifically counters another Useless Useful Spell, and otherwise lacks power/utility.

* ''TabletopGame/YuGiOh'', in its diverse card pool, definitely has some duds.
** Several cards are specifically designed to counter a very powerful card, and potentially reverse its effect on the opponent. Gryphon Wing counters Harpie's Feather Duster, Anti-Raigeki counters Raigeki, Call of the Dead counters Monster Reborn, etc. However, those powerful cards are either Limited or banned, and these specific counter cards are [[CripplingOverspecialization absolutely useless in any other situation]]. It's often simpler to negate powerful plays with more general-purpose effect negations.
*** There are three cards that rely on the use of Pot of Greed: Spirit of the Pot of Greed, Avatar of the Pot of Greed and Jar Robber. The first two increase the draw of the Pot from two to three and the other negates the opponent's use of it and lets you draw one card... thing is, Pot of Greed is banned, so they're actually totally useless.
** Final Destiny has a devastating "destroy all cards on the field" effect... but it requires you to discard five cards to use it. A six-card hand (counting Final Destiny itself) in a well-built Deck would probably contain two or three options to take out your opponent's field anyway, and those options wouldn't require you to cripple yourself. Not to mention that if you draw it late in the game, you're likely to have spent most of your hand at that point, making it completely useless.
** Super Polymerization was this for a while, despite being a central card in the series. Unlike regular Polymerization, it cost a card from your hand and couldn't fuse cards in the hand (which makes trying to Fusion Summon with it very slow). Its first advantages (can't be negated and a Quick-Play) were okay, but its main attraction (can use opponent's cards in the Fusion) was less so. Simply put, it was highly unlikely that your opponent would have the right Monster on the field for you to fuse, unless you were trying to Summon a card with very vague requirements. As a result, Super Polymerization ended up being a much costlier, much slower version of Polymerization (which wasn't a very good card in the first place)... [[TookALevelInBadass until Fusion monsters with very flexible material requirements, like the Attribute Heroes and Shaddolls, came out, resulting in the card becoming limited.]]
** Infinite Cards and Hieroglyph Lithograph remove the hand size limit, altering a fundamental rule of the game. However, if you have more than six cards in your hand, the thing you should be doing is playing as many as you can, not letting them sit in your hand and take up space... and you certainly shouldn't be playing a card designed to make them ''continue'' to sit in your hand and take up space. A handful of cards get advantages for having a lot of cards in the hand, but most of them are awful, and the few that aren't (most famously Slifer) would be considered overkill with six cards in the hand, much less seven.
** InstantWinCondition cards often enter this territory, with a special mention being reserved for Final Countdown. It wins you the Duel in 20 turns, which is obviously quite powerful, but to use the card essentially requires that you dedicate your entire deck to drawing Final Countdown and then stalling for those turns. Not only does this give your opponent plenty of time to build up resources and stomp your face the moment you run out of defenses, but the overall strategy is incredibly boring to use.
** In recent years, thanks to so much generic support for every monster type, card type and the infamous Link Summoning, pretty much every card in the game has ''some'' sort of use. It may not be the best tool for the job, but it can do it you try hard enough.
*** Examples include [[JokeCharacter Shapesnatch or Morinphen]], two notoriously terrible normal monsters in the TCG and OCG respectivly. The former is a Normal Level 5 Machine, one of the best type and level combos in the game. Cyber Dragon Nova and First of the Dragons can easily be made with him. Not to mention the pendulum normals which make such plays more viable.
*** Then there are cards like [[TheScrappy Larvae Moth.]] There's no beating around the bush or secret strategy here. He's just useless in every way.
** As the metagame changes and different decks with differing weaknesses gain popularity, formerly useless cards can break out of this trope, becoming an AchillesHeel or a powerful support to whatever's popular. For instance, Summoner's Art, a Spell which only searched the deck for high-level Normal Monsters which very few people would play, became an instant hit once Qliphorts broke into the scene, as that Spell could search for their very important Qliphort Scout.

** And speaking of plainswalk, consider [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=3016 Aysen Highway,]] which gives all white creatures plainswalk. The problem? Well, first, it costs ''six mana'', which is just absurdly high, on par with the strongest creatures in its set. The second is that plainswalk is only useful, by its nature, if your opponent has a Plains out. The third is that it affects both sides, and if you're using a lot of white creatures, ''you'' probably have a Plains out, too - and if your opponent has a Plains out, they're probably using white creatures themselves. Basically, you splurge all your mana on a situational ability - and in the one situation where it would be handy, your opponent gets it, too.

* ''[[TabletopGame/StarWarsD20 Star Wars Saga Edition]]'' had a few feats that at best had a bit of use at lower levels but were garbage at higher ones. Toughness increased your hit points by your level, but could only be taken by Soldiers who tended to have massive amounts of health anyway[[note]]A level 20 Soldier could have as much as 320 health without prestige classes[[/note]]. Force Boon gave you three extra Force Points each level, but meditation could restore Force Points anyway and higher levels gave plenty as is. Any Armor Proficencies a character didn't start with were pointless due to the fact ArmorIsUseless without certain class-specific talents. Linguist gave additional languages based on your intellect modifier but characters already knew additional languages based on their intellect modifier and most could get by with Basic, Huttese, and Bocce which were by far the most common.

* There exists a variant of RockPaperScissors where one may cast two other moves in addition to the three standards. The first, "Fire", beats Rock, Paper, and Scissors, but may only be cast once in a person's entire lifetime. (Presumably, players of this variant use the honors system.) The second, "Water", can be used an unlimited number of times, but loses to everything...except Fire, against which it is an automatic victory. The conditions for using Fire however are so ludicrous that nobody would ever have reason to use it, which makes its counter equally useless. Thus, in practice, the game is identical to standard Rock, Paper, Scissors.

** Healing spells in Third Edition and its spin-offs. Most of the spells available heal too little HP and come with too many built-in downsides to be worth using in combat; it's more efficient for all but the most dedicated healers to focus on just killing the enemies before they kill you. Outside combat, the wide availability of magic items, hit dice, and ways to recover health by resting means that it's usually more practical to just wait until combat's over before recovering health.
*** A large part of why healing and damage spells are so much weaker in 3rd edition is that while they heal or deal approximately the same amount of damage as their AD&D equivalents, characters and monsters have far more health, especially at high levels. For example, the powerful demons called Balors only have ~58HP in 2nd edition. In 3.5, they have 290! Fireball caps out at 10d6 damage (avg 35) in both editions, but that barely scratches 3.5 monsters who would be half-dead in AD&D.

** Depending on the leniency of the DM, many ''healing spells'' can become this, in that killing one or more enemies is usually more efficient than keeping an ally in good health, especially if using the "long rest gives a full-heal" rule. Some parties let the party tank die, have the next caster use Healing Word (a ranged healing spell that only costs a bonus action) to bump the tank back into consciousness, and keep fighting.

** [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=201268 Sorrow's Path]] is too complicated and ''far'' too expensive. Being able to swap your opponent's blocking creatures is merely okay. Having to pay 2 life and suffer 2 damage to every creature you control is like saving money on glasses by [[EyeScream stabbing yourself in both eyes.]]

# The ability is theoretically valuable, but is only available to a character that doesn't benefit from it. A spell to increase the user's physical attack damage doesn’t do a SquishyWizard much good.

* In some ways the blast weapons of ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' is starting to turn this way. Most blast weapons are quite powerful, especially heavy ordnance weapons, but due to the new way of resolving Blast weapons, you'd be pretty lucky if the shot land anywhere near your intended target (it's entirely possible that the shot will make a "return to sender" move, and there's a good chance of it happening too!). While a Space Marine can be very accurate with his aim-based Krak Missile, he is a worse shot than a drunk stormtrooper when it comes to firing the explosive Frag variant. Both missiles are fired from the same weapon.

** True Strike became this in 5th Edition. The spell gives you Advantage on an attack roll, which is hugely powerful, but the spell takes an action to cast, requires you to target a creature that's within 30 feet of you, and doesn't grant advantage until you make an attack roll on your next turn. As such, it's entirely too slow to be something that can be relied upon, and if you target a creature that moves out of your line of sight or gets killed before your next turn the effect is wasted. In general it's considered to be a complete waste of a cantrip.

# The spell's effect is very situational. Sure, protection from curses sounds great, but is it really worth the trouble when almost nothing uses curses? Or the anti-ice spell that only works if the enemy is a left-handed wizard named "Tim"?

# The spell has a very low success/hit rate, or the casting takes a lot of time. This means that enemies are always able to dodge or block your spell, or your allies will have probably killed whatever it was you were casting the spell on by the time it's ready.

** Detect Undead isn't that useful compared to DetectEvil, since that can do everything Detect Undead could do, but better. Detect Evil is the same spell level, lasts ten times as long, and usually picks up every undead creature anyways because the undead are almost always Evil-aligned. The only saving grace Detect Undead has is that it appears on the wizard's spell list and might potentially find Good-aligned undead, but Detect Undead is so situational compared to Detect Evil that it's usually not worth wasting a spell slot. 5th Edition made Detect Undead even more useless by changing Detect Evil to Detect Evil ''and Good'', meaning even Detect Undead's one saving grace is now gone.