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"The madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets! So Hulk will get madder and madder at you, Ravage — and Hulk will get stronger and stronger, and then Hulk will smash you to bits! IT'S CALLED STRAGEDY!" [sic]
The Incredible Hulk explaining why fighting a prolonged battle with him is a bad idea.

This character, faction, weapon, or otherwise isn't able to give everything they have from the word Go!, and needs to be worked up into a state where they're capable of doing their jobs beyond anything sub-par - if they're even capable of doing it at all before reaching said state.

This is not a case of voluntarily limiting oneself to avoid damage to oneself or one's surroundings — for whatever employs this trope, bringing their full might to bear from the get-go is just outright impossible. If you find this trope on an enemy, it will often have a distinctive sound accompanying it to serve as a non-verbal warning.

The reason for this varies, but Competitive Balance usually ensures that while anyone saddled with this downside takes their time to get going, once they do get going they are a force to be reckoned with. Sometimes this trope is binary, where something or someone has either gathered steam or not, sometimes it has multiple stages, and sometimes it is gradual and may not have any upper limit - in the latter case, expect them to eventually become just as much of (if not more than) a Juggernaut as a literal speeding locomotive usually implies - though if they can't handle their ever-increasing buildup they might eventually succumb to Over Heating and/or Explosive Overclocking.

Compare Magikarp Power which gives everything it has all the time; it's just that 'everything it has' starts out pathetic before repeated training, upgrades, or the like make it a force to be reckoned with. Compare Limit Break and Charged Attack which are powerful attacks or techniques which are only available after specific conditions are met and become unavailable again after having been used, and also compare the Critical Status Buff, where the strength comes from being wounded rather than naturally over the course of a battle - allowing them to start at their peak if they enter battle wounded.
Contrast Pent-Up Power Peril, which is the result of naturally-building power needing an outlet every so often.
Usually has no relation to High-Pressure Emotion, but examples do exist where the act of gathering steam is correlated to an emotion.

The trope is ubiquitous in Real Life through inertia — nothing is able to perform at its best from the word 'go' unless it has been prepared in advance, and overcoming this trope quickly is essential in many fields. The trope name comes from actual steam engines, which when being used to move anything particularly heavy can require anywhere from several minutes to over an hour to build up sufficient steam pressure.note  Super-Trope to Increasingly Lethal Enemy and Sub-Trope to Situational Damage Attack.


Examples:

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    Anime & Manga 
  • Bleach:
    • Ikkaku's Empathic Weapon Houzukimaru's Bankai slowly increases in spiritual power after it's unleashed in combat because, in his words, it's "lazy" and takes time to wake up all the way.
    • Kira's Wabisuke doubles the weight of the object or body part it hits, so he needs to hit the enemy's weapon or body part several times until they succumb to the weight.
  • Chainsaw Man Part 2: As the Control Devil and Horseman of Conquest, Nayuta is one of the strongest beings The 'Verse, capable of theoretically negating most conflicts by instantly dominating the opposition, and amassing an army of Slave Mooks and forced contracts to grant herself even more power.
  • Haze Shenron in Dragon Ball GT appears to be a straight example, with Goku and Pan having an increasingly difficult time fighting him as the battle goes on. He is actually an inverted example, emitting a colorless, odorless toxic gas that slowly weakens anyone who breathes it in, slow enough that Goku and Pan don't notice it until Goku finds himself unable to fly and realizes the true nature of Haze's powers.
  • Dragon Ball Super:
    • Auta Magetta is a bipedal living metal volcano whose magma heart grows hotter as fighting progresses. As his attacks draw on this heat for their effect, they grow more and more potent depending on how long he has been fighting.
    • Ganos is a straighter example. Depending on the translation this is either due to him being a youth who is still growing or an aspect of his powered up form, but either way he gains raw strength continuously. The speed at which he improves is based on the strength of the fighters around him (regardless of if they're friend or foe). When he's placed in the Tournament of Power, surrounding himself with the strongest combatants in every universe, his power increases so rapidly that Master Roshi can sense it climbing every second. There is also no known limit to how strong Ganos can be, which is why Roshi chooses to eliminate Ganos as quickly as possible, knowing Goku and Vegeta, who enjoy fights against strong opponents, will attempt to drag out fighting Ganos until he's stronger than the both of them combined.
    • In the manga, Gohan as well. Over the course of the Tournament of Power, he's able to raise his power from wherever it was at the beginning—which is lower than the anime, as Piccolo only restored Gohan's combat instincts during their training, without affecting his power at all—to being on par with Kefla by the time they score a mutual knockout. Goku needed Ultra Instinct to stop Kefla in the anime, and the manga version of Kale is implied to be more powerful than the anime one. Oh, and Gohan stayed in his base form throughout this fight, as well.
  • Fairy Tail: Kyôka's Strength Enhancement Curse can be used on herself to temporarily boost her powers. When she goes Etherious Form, however, she not only gains a general power boost, but her Curse is enhanced to the point she can gradually boost her already considerable power ad infinitum. The only reason this doesn't become a problem is because by the time she uses it she's already fused herself to Face's activation lacrima to speed up the countdown so she doesn't have long to live anyways, instead having her serve as a Threshold Guardian the heroes can't avoid fighting.
  • This is Issei from High School D×D in a nutshell. Boosted Gear doubles his power every ten seconds without limit. However, he has a dismal amount of Devil-power to start with and takes at least a few doublings before he gets going. He eventually learns to reduce the cooldown time with anger or focus, which makes him snowball even faster.
  • JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
    • Stardust Crusaders: The power of DIO's The World is to stop time for 5 seconds. The initial main deficiency was that the time stop's duration is short, but as his synchronization with Jonathan's body improved, the amount of time The World could stop steadily increased, to the point it's outright stated by DIO himself that The World would eventually be able to keep time frozen for as long as he desired. This is proven once DIO drinks Joseph's blood to speed up the integration, with The World immediately getting a jump in time-stop duration that increases with every usage of it from that point onwards.
    • Stone Ocean: During the final battle, Pucci succeeds in obtaining Made In Heaven and begins to accelerate the flow of time. In the midst of the battle, the heroes realize that the effect of accelerating time is increasing faster and faster, eventually reaching the point where the entire universe is substantively recreated.
  • Jujutsu Kaisen: Naoya's Super-Speed has a set limit when first activating Projection Sorcery, but can increase exponentially with prolonged use. This also increases the strength of his attacks accordingly.
  • Kengan Ashura:
    • Setsuna Kiryu possesses a Dangerous Forbidden Technique he cannot consciously activate, that increases his speed and strength as he takes damage. This, in addition to his tendency to learn and improve as he fights, means that the longer a fight goes on, the more powerful he becomes.
    • Liu Dongcheng can't fight to the best of his ability without taking some bad hits first, on top of his temper occasionally controlling him instead of inspiring him. His co-workers describe him as clockwork; He can fall apart or break easily but when all his gears are meshing together and turning, he's in a higher dimension and borderline unbeatable.
  • In the Lyrical Nanoha franchise, this is how Nanoha's Starlight Breaker works: it's powered by the ambient magic in the air around her, left lingering after previous attacks. The longer a fight goes on, and the more attacks are thrown by both sides, the more powerful Starlight Breaker will be once Nanoha finally uses it.
  • My Hero Academia: "Stockpile" Quirks are a type of Quirk that must first accumulate some kind of resource before they can be used. Typically the resource is burned away when used and has to be replenished; the hero Fat Gum, for example, can burn his fat for sudden bursts of strength. The Quirk One For All, however, has the advantage of not depleting when used. One For All is also a Quirk that can be passed onto someone else and each time its passed on it gets stronger. Since the original user was a First generation Quirk user, One For All has been accumulating power for at least a century, to the point that in the modern day setting of the series, the Super-Strength and Super-Speed power granted by it outclasses all other similar powers and is so strong that when Izuku Midoriya first gains the power, he always breaks his arms or legs every time he uses it, until he eventually starts to slowly get the hang of the power. It's worth noting that Neito Monoma, who has the power to copy other Quirks, is incapable of using any Quirk that relies on stockpiling, as his copy doesn't last long enough for him to accumulate the required resources. As a result, when he tries to copy One For All from Midoriya during the Joint Training arc, nothing happens.
  • Pokémon: The Original Series: When first caught, Ash's Cyndaquil had a problem that required him to build up heat before he could use his fire attacks, thus forcing him to dodge the enemy at first. He eventually overcomes this through training in the episode "Hot Matches".
  • Star Commander Uranus from Psyren uses the PSI power Deep Freeze, which allows him to cover himself in ice and encase his enemies in ice using his touch or bullets. However, as his opponents find out, the longer they fight him, the colder the area surrounding him gets, and so his opponents will inevitably grow weaker, while his power over ice increase even more.
  • Derrierie's special ability "Combo Star" in The Seven Deadly Sins allows her to increase the power of her hits by 2,000 pounds (or 100 tons) with every consecutive blows she deals on her target without interruption. Only a few people can survive over 50-hit combos from her.

    Comic Books 
  • The Incredible Hulk. Bruce Banner is an ordinary human and needs to be pissed off to even trigger his transformation into the Incredible Hulk, but even once he has transformed, The Hulk is unable to bring his full strength to bear right away, as it is directly correlated to his anger. The angrier he gets, the stronger he gets, and thus with every injury he takes, he gathers more and more steam. This is rarely portrayed as a weakness for the Hulk; instead it's seen as one of his strengths, since there's apparently no upper limit to how angry and thus how strong he can getnote . On the contrary, the lack of this trait is the biggest weakness of one of his other personalities, the Professor, and his nemesis, the Abomination.
  • Superman plays with this in certain continuities (such as the DC Animated Universe) as it actually seems that he starts out relatively weak and unlocks his power as the fight goes on. When explored, this is usually explained as having placed mental blocks, unconsciously, on his power to control himself after getting scared of his own strength, each block subconsciously unlocking as the need becomes clear. This trope is thus part of the reason you'll see Superman being tossed around a lot in the opening stages of a fight, even against inferior foes. note 
  • Max Damage in Irredeemable gradually gains power the longer he remains awake. When he wakes up, he has the power of a normal person, but after three all-nighters, he has the strength to go toe-to-toe with someone who can destroy countries in the blink of an eye. Of course, he tries to avoid staying awake for that long, as his sleepiness would severely inhibit his judgment and reflexes.

    Fan Works 
  • In Pro Hero Metal Bat, Izuku is implied to gain strength as he acquires injuries. This is just another thing that sets his power apart from a Quirk, because while Quirks are like muscles that become weakened and exhausted over time, he only gets stronger and faster the longer a fight lasts.

    Literature 
  • Beware of Chicken: The Dueling Peaks Tournament displays a literal example when Li Xianghua enters battle wearing a boiler full of qi-infused water, and starts it up when she's hard-pressed to get a boost. Her opponent remembers the figurative term just as she gets going.
  • In Fate/strange Fake, Saber's Godspeed skill increases his Agility the longer a battle goes on. From an already respectable B rank, it can go up to EX rank if he keeps fighting long enough.
  • In The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign, a summoner can raise the power of their Material (summoned creature) over time. Additionally, Materials are divided into three classes (Regulation-Class, Divine-Class, Unexplored-Class), each significantly more powerful than the previous. Summoning 100 Regulation-Class allows Divine-Class to be summoned, and summoning 50 Divine-Class allows Unexplored-Class to be summoned.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Whereas most fighters in Kamen Rider Build gets stronger via upgrades and training in-between fights, Ryuga Banjo can get stronger mid-fight so long as he remains in Rider form and is properly motivated, allowing him to overpower opponents that are stronger than him at the start of the fight given the fight goes long enough.

    Tabletop Games 
  • In many Collectible Card Games, a resource is only accumulative at a fixed rate.
    • Magic: The Gathering uses mana, which is generated by Land. Under normal circumstances you are only allowed to play a single Land card per turn, and your most powerful spells might even take multiple types of mana to perform.
    • The Pokémon Trading Card Game limits you to playing one energy card per Pokemon per turn under normal circumstances, and although you can evolve your Pokemon without energy, their evolved forms usually require more than the unevolved form to attack, trading increased time to gather steam for greater power.
      • Related examples are Pokémon with attacks that get stronger the more Energy is placed on them. Notable examples include Exeggutor from Jungle, whose Big Eggsplosion deals damage based on the number of heads flipped in coin tosses with the number of coin tosses equal to the number of Energy on Exeggutor, and Ho-oh ex from EX Unseen Forces, whose Rainbow Burn does more damage the more types of Basic Energy are on it, and there are 9 types of Basic Energy.
  • Champions. The Extra Time power limitation causes a power to take longer to activate. The longer the delay, the more the power's cost is decreased.
  • Shadowrun supplement Street Samurai Catalog. The Vindicator minigun takes one combat turn for its barrels to get up to speed before it can fire.
  • Pathfinder warpriests are built for this due to their Fervor, Sacred Weapon, and Sacred Armor abilities which allow them to buff themselves as swift actions, meaning every turn they can grow stronger without sacrificing any attacks or maneuverability. Eventually they will run out of (or choose to conserve) buffs, reaching their limit, and in exceptionally long fights the buffs may start expiring.

    Video Games 
  • ANNO: Mutationem: In the last fight, Sigrid spends time focusing on the full extent of her ability while Ann is defending her until she builds enough power to weaken C and expel his One-Winged Angel form from his body.
  • Bonfire has several examples:
    • Zivko (and enemy mages) needs to generate charges to use his abilities with maximum effectiveness. Uncharged, his abilities are weak, but they can become some of the strongest in the game with multiple charges.
    • Werekoshaks generate a "Rage" effect each time they attack, which increases their Speed and Attack. These stack, so they can quickly create a feedback loop by allowing the werekoshak to attack more often, generating even more Rage effects.
    • "Chained" enemies gain enormous stat boosts compared to their regular counterparts, but start the battle with three turns of an immobilization effect. Once the effect expires they'll be a lot of trouble, but if you're quick you can take them out early.
  • Borderlands 2 features two different takes on "stacking" mechanics with its DLC characters:
    • Gaige's Ordered Chaos skill tree focuses on Anarchy, which you gain by either killing an opponent or emptying your gun's magazine in combat. Each stack of Anarchy increases damage but decreases accuracy (which can be mitigated with her Close Enough skill), so that eventually every shot will be flying wild across the area but the ones that land will hit like a Mack truck.
    • Krieg's Bloodlust skill tree focuses on building up stacks of Bloodlust by damaging opponents, which confer various bonuses the more you have but decay quickly once you stop damaging opponents, incentivizing a Bloodlust-focused Psycho not only to build pressure but to keep the pressure on as well.
  • Bounty of One:
    • Serra's unique item Bowgun allows her to gradually increase her attack rate up to 2x over a period of 10 seconds as long as she stands still. The bonus quickly drops when she is moving.
    • The Machine Learning item grants a stack to the character for every 30 enemies killed, each stack giving +1% critical chance that can even stack above 100%. The catch is that taking any damage (even from Reckless Rush, and even if it was blocked by Plot Armor) will make you lose half your stacks.
    • The True Survivor item has a base cooldown of 120 seconds, after which it grants you a permanent +10% fire rate which can stack three times — but if you take any damage (from enemies or self-damage, blocked or otherwise) the cooldown resets.
    • The Bloodlust Idol item allows a character to get a permanent +3 base damage per health pickup obtained, and it can stack indefinitely. The catch is that they no longer heal from picking up health.
  • City of Villains: The Brute archetype has the passive ability "Fury" which grows as the player deals damage as well as when they take damage (attacks that miss the Brute count as well to keep things fair for defense-based builds) and as the Fury meter builds the player gains a boost to their damage output. Since the meter decays when not in battle a brute player is encouraged to keep moving from foe to foe as quickly as possible.
  • The Command & Conquer series has Vulcan technology used by Yuri's Faction and Chinese Gatling guns (both the turrets and the tank). Both of them have excellent damage to all unit types, fire fast and can target both ground and air units, but need to spin up before reaching maximum firing rate to compensate.
  • Cookie Run: Kingdom: Purple Yam Cookie's Magic Candy skill gives him stacks of Berserker's Furynote  over the first 60 seconds of a battle, making him subpar in Guild Battle (where battles are limited to 60 seconds, preventing Purple Yam from ever performing at his best), okay in Kingdom Arena and World Exploration (which have time limits of two to three minutes), and amazing in Cookie Alliance (which is a veritable Marathon Level of 60 consecutive enemy waves with no time limit).
  • Crescent Prism: The boss of Chapter 1X, Rail Ravager, gets 10% stronger every turn due to receiving the moon's light. Nova can invert the moon's phase to reset the boss's power, but the battle is scripted to start in waxing moon, which means the boss's mechanic cannot be disabled with a new moon.
  • Crusader Kings 2:
    • Adventurers need a year to gather armies and ships, after they stated their conquest goals. Only afterwards can they launch the attack, so a smart ruler will try to assassinate them before they can do so.
    • Similarly to adventurers, Viking invaders can state a conquest goal. Afterwards, soldiers and Viking heroes will join their cause over the next two years. They can attack at any time they want, but since their main targets are powerful Christian and Muslim kingdoms, they should better wait the full two years.
    • The army size of nomads is dependent on their clan's population, which in turn is depending on the size of their territory. So a clan that just conquered a large kingdom will have to wait a couple of years so their population can grow so they can make use of their new land.
    • In some way this applies to all conquests in the game. Getting a full duchy through a holy war is nice, but it will be utterly useless for the first few years, as the peasants will simply refuse to pay taxes or train as soldiers.
  • Dawn of War: In the first game, there are several upgrades that exist solely to slow the player down, meant to represent Non-Entity General slowly escalating their engagement in response to other Non Entity Generals doing the same.
    • Orks use a unique third resource that counts how many orks are present and requires a certain amount of orks present to build the more powerful units. This is meant to reflect the In-Universe growth of the Ork Ecosystem to the point it can support the more powerful Ork units - though Gork and Mork knows why it is needed for looted tanks.
    • The Necrons' Greater Summoning Core is a building that produces and researches nothing, but is needed to get their final units.
    • The Eldar, likewise, need to research upgrades which do absolutely nothing before they are able to field their more powerful units, aptly named 'Mobilization For War' and 'Annihilate the Enemy'.
  • Dead by Daylight: Michael Myers begins a match with low movement speed. Keeping an eye on survivors and stalking them allows him to level up to Evil Within 2, buffing his speed and lunge range. Filling the meter to Evil Within 3 gives him sixty seconds of double damage, knocking healthy survivors to the ground in one hit.
    • Certain killer perks have this effect, as well. Freddy Krueger's "Fire Up" boosts the killer's action speeds as the survivors fix generators. Fully upgraded, the Hag's "Devour Hope" grants double damage after three survivors have been rescued off the hooks, and lets the killer execute downed survivors after five rescues. Every time a survivor gets put on a hook, "Huntress' Lullaby" further decreases the advance warning survivors get before a quicktime event, making them more likely to fail and set back their progress.
  • Devil May Cry 4: Nero's sword has the "Exceed" system which combines this trope with Charged Attack; he "revs" the sword's handle which charges up heat energy into the sword; there are 3 units of it in the Exceed meter. If the meter is filled, each of his sword's normal combo strikes will become stronger as they consume one unit per strike, and his special moves with the sword consumes all of the meter. The unique part is how the meter is gained: he can normally rev it (just like how Gatling guns spin up first) to fill the meter, but to fill each unit, the "rev" button must be pressed 3-4 times; it becomes tedious quickly to always rev it before you attack. But, he can also rev it during his sword strikes - called Ex-Act - and doing so will automatically give him one full unit that is then spent on his next attack, making it immediately powerful; this can be done in normal sword combo attacks as well as special sword attacks, although doing it continuously can be difficult, as powered-up versions of his normal attacks are much faster and thus harder to properly time. Even better, if he revs it during a specific frame of each sword strikes - called Max-Act - he will instantly gain 3 units (i.e full meter) with each swing.
  • Dicey Dungeons has the "Hall of Mirrors" spell, notably used by the Wizard and the Witch, gives +1 dice for the rest of the fight. Having an extra dice means more chances to use attacks — including using Hall of Mirrors again. The Wizard, who starts with just a single dice, can quickly go from an annoyance to a terror once he rolls that first 6, while the Witch can, with some work, get enough bonus dice to fill the entire screen and defeat the enemy by just throwing the things at them.
  • Disgaea has several passives that work as this:
    • Valvatorez from Disgaea 4 has "Bloody Battle", which gives him an Attack Power buff per enemy he kills. Later games give him "Absorption", increasing his stats by a percentage of the defeated opponent(s). The Kunoichi has an interesting variation in "Nirrti", granting a stat buff whenever the user dodges an attack, and the Lady Samurai's unique skill "Beni Shidare / Summer Rain Slash" grows in power the more times it kills an opponent.
    • Disgaea D2 gives Adell a new passive, granting him an Attack and Defense power boost whenever he deals or takes attacks. Said passive would later be found through the Dark Knight class in Disgaea 5 as "Fighting Spirit".
    • Killia from Disgaea 5 has "War Demon", giving him a 2% stat boost whenever he deals or takes an attack, gradually letting him overpower his enemy. The Skeletal Rider class has "Combat High", granting an Attack power buff per defeated opponent, as does Majorita's "Queen of Coffins" innate passive. The Bear's "Rage Charge" grants Attack Power per attack received, as does the Slime's "Impact Charge", though the latter only activates on non-elemental attacks received.
    • Disgaea 6: Defiance of Destiny: The Dragon's "Rising Dragon" passive grants Attack Power per attack received, whereas the Pincer Shell's "Shellacker" raises Defense Power per attack taken.
  • Elsword contains "buff stacking" passive skills for certain character classes which makes the character stronger the more they hit enemies.
    • As a Sheath Knight, Elsword's Cruel Slayer passive gives him additional damage buff that occurs and stacks per 5 hits he does in a normal combo and active skills. The additional damage he can gain is (depending on the passive skill's level) 2% to 10% of his physical attack power, and it can be stacked 5 times. If he spent 10 seconds without adding to the stack (i.e not hitting 5 times), the buff will be gone and he'd need to build it up again.
    • Crimson Rose's Awakening Will passive can activate a special buff that occurs if she uses skills related to chain attacks. Each hit of chain attacks will cumulatively buff her physical attack power and attack speed, up to 25 stacks. The buff stacks will lose by 5 every 3 seconds she isn't attacking with any chain attack, however.
  • The titular antagonist of The Eternal Cylinder is able to crush literally anything it rolls into, but it starts rolling very slowly, to the point the player's Trebhum can outwalk it. The longer it goes on rolling uninterrupted, though, the faster it becomes. Exploits done in the beta reveal that, at top speed, it can cover distances players would take hours to cover in roughly fifteen minutes.
  • In Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, miniguns need a second or two of spinning up before they start firing.
  • In Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, the Duelist class learns a passive skill, Blood Mark, which gives them a stacking damage bonus for attacking the same target each turn. The bonus resets if they switch targets. In a broader sense, all characters start a battle with zero MP and need to accumulate it over time, preventing them from unleashing their most powerful spells and skills right away.
  • Forever Home has certain magic and Prism techs that require rounds to 'warm up' before they can be used.
  • FTL: Faster Than Light has a number of weapons which combines this trope with Charged Attacknote . All of them having 'chain' somewhere in their name. The most notable example is the Chain Vulcan, a rotary-barrel laser gun. It starts out with an 11 second charge time per shot, with each shot lowering the charge time by two seconds. After five uninterrupted shots, totalling 35 seconds, it reaches its final state where it spews out lasers each second - single-handedly overtaxing even the best shielded and most maneuverable ships quickly. It's Awesome, but Impractical in that most fights are usually over by that point, and any damage to the weapon will negate your progress and require you to spin it up again.
  • GemCraft: Chasing Shadows has the Bloodbound gem, which gains a multiplier to its damage every time it reaches a certain number of hits, and the Poolbound gem, which gains a multiplier to its damage every time your mana pool levels up. Both gems start out as strong as any other gem and rapidly grow stronger over time, but the Bloodbound gem tends to keep gathering steam for longer, and can also be equipped with the Beam spell (which deals a lot of hits very rapidly) to drastically increase the rate at which it gathers steam.
  • In Genji, after completing the trials of Shukenten, Yoshitsune and Benkei receive a divine weapon meant to be an Infinity -1 Sword. Yoshitsune gets the "Light Ring" swords, dual pearl-white katanas with the handle resembling a Dokko (a Buddhist prayer tool) with average attack. However, with each strike the swords glows brighter and brighter, dealing more and more damage.
  • In Grey Goo (2015), the human faction has access to the Lancer unit which fires a continuous laser beam, growing in power as it draws from more and more auxiliary batteries. This makes it incredibly potent against structures, and because the humans, as the game's Higher-Tech Species, have access to a six-unit teleporter, six lancers can show up in an undefended base instantaneously and turn it into a heap of molten slag before a defense can be mounted.
  • Hades: Thanatos' keepsake, the Pierced Butterfly, grants Zagreus an initial 1% permanent boost to attack (up to 2% should you reach the highest level) should he finish a chamber without taking damage. If you make it far enough without taking hits, the damage boost becomes significant, as it is a percentage modifier.
  • Hearthstone:
    • Mana accumulates at one crystal per turn until a maximum of 10 is reached. Druids have ways to accumulate this faster through the use of specific cards.
    • Emperor Tharuissian is a card which reduces the cost to play any cards in your hand by 1 each turn he is in play, effectively reducing the time needed to gather enough steam to play those cards.
  • Zul'jin of Heroes of the Storm is a downplayed example. While he is no slouch in combat normally, he has a popular early talent which increases his attack speed by 6% every time he kills an enemy, stacking up to five times for a short duration and refreshed with every attack he makes, making him at home in prolonged engagements. Kill him quickly before he has a chance to kill anything and he won't be capable of even gathering steam before he dies. Just be careful of his Taz'Dingo! Heroic, which is dangerous for an altogether different reason.
    • A more fitting example Zul'jin has of this trope is his built-in You Want Axe quest, which slightly increases his attack power every time he hits an enemy hero with a basic attack, as well as increase his attack range and allows his Twin Cleave ability to recast itself after a certain amount of auto attacks. This attack bonus also scales almost infinitelynote .
    • Similarly to the aforementioned attack speed talent, one of Tyrande's late game talents allows her to increase her attack power by attacking enemy heroes, and a Storm Talent lets her reduce the power of enemies hit by her auto attacks. If a fight with her goes too long, the enemy's damage will be almost halved while Tyrande will be hitting hard enough to One-Hit Kill any hero regardless of health.
  • League of Legends:
    • Nasus is like this by design. One of his skill, Siphoning Strike, gains a permanent increase in damage when he kills something with it. This is his main source of damage, and while the rest of his kit is marginally useful, their damage and his stats doesn't scale as well. Nasus is very dependent on spending the first 10-20 minutes "AFK farming" creeps to power up Siphoning Strike so late-game he can deal massive damage while being very tanky, otherwise he Can't Catch Up even if he got an early gold lead.
    • Veigar is a lesser example, as while his innate skill gives him a permanent AP boost from killing creeps with Baleful Strike, he also gets it from hitting or killing enemy champions and AP can be acquired from items.
  • Legends of Runeterra:
    • Across the game's expansions Shadow Isles have accumulated three different creatures that follow this archetype. All of them typically synergizing with the Isles' cards about killing and re-summoning dead units. Mistwraiths are the first ones, granting extra power to all other mistwraiths you have or will have. Encroaching Mists are ephemeral tokens that are summoned by Viego and his followers, with each one summoned making all others bigger as well growing Viego's own stats and boosting his level-up condition. Profilerating Darkwraith features one of the game's most extreme growth speeds - while others give a +2/+0 or +1/+1 per summon, darkwraiths double the stats of all copies of them in your deck, exponentially scaling to hundreds and thousands of stats. The power comes with a downside as all darkwraiths only duplicate the stats in your deck, so every one you summon directly to the field will be tiny and only serve as fuel for the ones to come.
    • In Shurima, the Ascended champions have a timed out win condition in the form of the Sun Disk, a landmark that takes a long time to trigger but allows them to achieve a unique additional level-up form with great powers. By himself, Nasus growth in power with every unit you have killed this game, be it friend or foe. His Siphoning Strike is also present, granting additional stats to all your champions if you kill something with it.
    • The Deep archetype focuses on playing small units and spells to throw out cards from your deck, until you have only 15 left after which all of your Sea Monsters become significantly bigger. Nautilus also levels up, becoming one of the biggest units in the game and making your Sea Monsters cheaper. Other part of the team, Maokai, is more about bringing a sudden end to the opponent by decking him out once he levels up.
    • The Darkness archetype is composed of pairing Senna and Veigar. Senna's side focuses more on creating Darkness cards and making them easier to use, while Veigar makes them deal more damage so they can be used to take out enemy units more effectively. And eventually once he levels up, Veigar allows you to aim the Darkness directly at the opponent's Nexus to win the game.
    • The Poros, especially once their King has arrived. Poro Snaxx were in the game from the start, allowing you to make your all of your small poros gradually bigger. Couple years later, Poro King brings more snaxx to the table, including advanced varieties, in order to grow his army ever bigger.
    • The Fated archetype has units that gain a permanent stat buff when you cast spells on them, with the idea that you use temporary spells or reusable equipments to keep your units alive and growing stronger.
    • Kayle grows in power with every buffed-up unit that you attack with throughout the match, gradually gaining extra keywords to herself as her attack growth. At her zenith she all but guarantees lethal strike to the Nexus unless stopped with a removal spell.
  • In Midnight Suns, this is Deadpool's playstyle: KO'ing enemies with Deadpool's skillsnote  gives him stacks of "En Fuego". The more stacks of "En Fuego" Deadpool accrues, the more potent his abilities become. Taking damage removes a stack of "En Fuego", however, so making the most of Deadpool entails making sure enemies can't hurt him.
  • The Long Sword weapon class from Monster Hunter works this way. While the base damage isn't terrible, once you fill the weapon's gauge, you can use it's strongest attack combo. Successfully landing it causes your sword to glow and gain a powerboost for the rest of the hunt. And there are multiple stages (red, orange, yellow, and finally white). Just working up to white normally kills the monster you're hunting. Actually getting it there means the battle is pretty much over.
  • The Revenant in Nexus Clash has a Blood Frenzy that adds massive stacking bonuses for each subsequent kill in battle, at the price of making them even more of a Glass Cannon in a way that also stacks. It's possible for a fully-charged Revenant to be a violent buzzsaw of utter destruction capable of wiping out entire strongholds, but who can get killed in a few shots if anyone can actually score a hit on them.
  • Symmetra of Overwatch has a Photon Projector as her primary weapon. While it is able to do a Charged Attack, its primary mode of fire is a weak photon beam which intensifies as the connection is maintained, doubling the damage twice in discrete jumps if maintained for long enough.
  • In Patapon, your patapons will need some good rhythms to dance themselves into a frenzy, the amount of which depends on how on point they are. But once they are in fever they get much higher attack, reach, and/or other useful abilities depending on the class and on the dance.
  • In Plants vs. Zombies: Heroes, the Plant and Zombie players get one extra sun/brains per turn with no cap limit. There also exist Plant and Zombie Teammates that buff themselves or other units every turn or when a card is drawn (which happens at the start of each turn) — Team Mascot gives all Sports Zombies including itself +1/+1 each turn, Doubled Mint's stats double each turn, Bananasaurus Rex and Tricarrotops get +1/+1 when a card is drawn, Stompadon gives cards in the Zombie player's hand +1/+1 when a card is drawn, etc.
  • Pokémon:
    • The attacks Rollout and Ice Ball will, once selected, be used for 5 consecutive turns non-stop. The first hit will deal laughable damage, but each hit will double in power (as long as it doesn't miss).
    • Similarly there is Fury Cutter, an attack that doubles in damage with each consecutive use, but this time you have to choose each hit instead of being automatic.
    • The Rage move works differently in different generations, but the core idea remains the same: the Pokémon continuously uses an initially weak attack that gets stronger every time it gets hurt.
    • Regigigas, the progenitor of Hoenn's golem trio, is an Olympus Mon with stats on par with the Elemental Embodiment of the oceans and the core's magma, both of which wreak havoc on the weather by merely being awake. Regigigas has been stated in legends to be capable of moving entire continents, but when it is encountered it has slumbered for so long that it takes a while to shake off the rust and moss growing on it, which is reflected in its ability 'Slow Start'. For the first five turns of combat its attack and speed stats are cut in half, which puts it straight into Awesome, but Impractical for battling wild Pokémon because most fights are over by then. Of course, capturing it is likely to take more than five turns, and its defensive stats being unaffected means that a well-informed player can use him as a wall until the steam is gathered.
    • Also falling into this trope are Abilities such as Speed Boost, which causes the user's Speed to increase at the end of each turn, and Moody, which causes one random stat to decrease slightly but another random stat to increase sharply. To a lesser extent are Abilities like Moxie, Soul-Heart, and Beast Boost, which grant stat boosts each time they deal a knockout. Pokémon with these Abilities can quickly become unmanageable if left alone for too long.
    • Stat-boosting moves like Sharpen can qualify, too. The most popular ones are usually those that increase stats by two stages in one turn, such as Swords Dance and Nasty Plot, allowing the user to start dealing massive damage early. Some stat-boosting moves also deal damage, such as Power-Up Punch and Torch Song, allowing the user to crank up their power while at the same time whittling opponent's HP until their attacks become lethal.
    • This is a core gameplay mechanic of Pokémon Masters: after using a certain number of moves, you can unleash a "sync move" that not only deals significant damage, but also grants you a "sync buff" that boosts your damage for the rest of the fight. Sync buffs stack, so as long as you're able to keep firing off sync moves without getting knocked out yourself, you can go from barely being able to scratch your opponent to dealing massive chunks of damage with each hit.
  • Primal Carnage:
    • The Scientist's poison dart rifle is a gimmick weapon which only does mediocre damage at first compared to the other two sniper rifles, but each subsequent hit in rapid succession on the same target does more damage than the last, until it becomes a guaranteed fatal shot on the eighth dart. Getting eight shots in rapid succession is easier said than done, however...
    • The Bruisers have a more conventional version of this trope; all three Bruisers are able to attack simply by running into human, and this attack does the maximum damage when the dinosaur is at full speed. For the Ceratosaurus and Carnotaurus the ram at full strength is enough to kill all humans, except the Pyromaniac, in two hits.
  • The Razor Claws in Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction are a pair of energy blades that increase in power and gradually turn red every time Ratchet hits an enemy with them. However, they will reset when Ratchet takes damage.
  • Bandit's Desparado attack in Risk of Rain 2 gains a stack of damage every time it kills an enemy. At the beginning of a stage, it's barely strong enough to one-shot Wisps and other weak enemies, but with enough stacks, it can one- or two-shot bosses (especially combined with some Crowbars and Bandit's Backstab passive).
  • Slay the Spire: This is ubiquitous among enemies and players, with enemies gaining strength and new abilities through the fight while the player plays powers that give permanent bonuses, but there are some especially clear examples.
    • The Ironclad has Rampage, an attack which increases its damage each time it's used in a combat, and Demon Form, a power which gives him more strength, which increases damage, every turn.
    • The Defect has Creative AI, a power which adds a new power card to its hand every turn, and Claw, a weak free attack that increases the damage of all Claw cards.
    • The Watcher has Deva Form, which grants her increasing amounts of energy every turn.
    • The Silent, by contrast, can still grow stronger through use of powers and certain trinkets, but has no cards that apply a personal, recurring bonus like the others, and has more cards that grow weaker as the fight proceeds.
  • Sonic Frontiers: Cyber Space 4-G from The Final Horizon has a special gimmick where Sonic's Boost Gauge is replaced by a Rev Gauge. In this level, Sonic's Boost starts a fair bit slower than normal, but as he Boosts the Rev Gauge increases. When the Rev Gauge fills up completely, Sonic gains a speed increase, which is indicated by the giant speedometer at the right side of the screen. This stacks up to three times, with the speedometer maxing out at "TOP" speed. If Sonic stops Boosting, the Rev Gauge will empty and he will lose his speed boost, forcing him to regain it.
  • Starcraft II's Void Rays in the single player campaign do more damage the longer they stay on a single target by having their Converging-Stream Weapon use only one, then two, then all three beams (their damage increasing with each one).
  • Stardew Valley
    • Plants that grow multiple crops without the need to replant them are this. Like every plant they need to grow to their full size first. But then they regrow their crops every couple of days, until they die at the end of their season (unless planted in a greenhouse, which makes them regrow forever, or if they are fruit trees that only become inactive out of season).
    • Fruit trees produce crops with increasing quality the older the tree is. Bringing one up to iridium quality requires three in-game years.
    • When a new animal is born, or bought from Marnie, it first needs to grow up before it can produce its goods.
  • In the Super Robot Wars games, this is imposed by the "Morale" gauge: each pilot has a Morale meter that starts low and increases as they attack, dodge, and defeat enemies. Most pilots cannot use their most flashy and powerful attacks/abilities until their Morale passes a minimum threshold, though the exact mechanics usually depend on the character's origin series, and whether they are a Super Robot or Real Robot pilot (e.g. characters from Gundam SEED and Destiny trigger their SEED activation once they reach their Morale threshold.)
  • Team Fortress 2:
    • The Heavy has a variety of miniguns as options for his primary weapon. All of them have a need to be spun up before being able to fire at all. And catching a Heavy without his minigun spun up is usually a (relatively) easy opponent.
    • The Engineer is the weakest class in the game at face value, having low health, base speed, and unimpressive weapons in his default loadout. However, if given enough time to build and upgrade his sentry gun, dispenser, and teleporters, he becomes the biggest threat on the battlefield and a cornerstone for his team, often requiring several enemies working together to bring him down.
  • Rhoulder from Temtem can have the Tardy Rush trait, which doubles its speed and slightly increases its attack after three turns.
  • In the Titanfall 2 multiplayer, most Titans' core ability (a super-powerful ability that charges as you use the Titan) is some sort of heavily-damaging attack, such as a giant laser or temporarily-electrified sword. The Monarch-class Titan instead gets an Upgrade Core, granting it different boosts for the rest of its lifespan. The highest-level upgrade offers such treats as increased health and no weakpoints, a faster-firing and more damaging main gun, or more powerful rockets that home in on enemy titans.
  • Warframe:
    • Saryn's spores are like this. The more enemies they afflict, the more damage they do, until they can kill every enemy on screen in seconds. In fact, this is their biggest weakness, as once Saryn runs out of enemies her spores quickly decay and she's back to square one.
    • Nidus is similar, but slower and longer-lasting. Every time he hits an enemy with Virulence, he gets one-sixth of a Mutation stack. For every stack of Mutation, Virulence's damage increases, as does his health regeneration. By gathering large numbers of enemies together and hitting them all at once, he can build Mutagen very quickly and become The Juggernaut. His Mutation stacks don't decay unless he dies, wanders into an Anti-Magic field, or spends them on powerful abilities, making him great for long missions.
    • Following her rework Garuda's trait boosts her damage temporarily every time she kills something, incentivizing her to keep hitting new opponents.
    • Melee weapons and Sniper Rifles grow in damage during a mission as long as they can keep damaging the enemy. In the case of Sniper Rifles, missing a shot will cause the combo to immediately decay by one count, and both will lose steam over time. There are mods for both that can extend the combo duration, which is essential to longer missions.
    • One of the arcanes found in the Zariman (Molt Augmented) boosts ability strength permanently with every single kill the equipped frame achieves.
  • Many bosses in World of Warcraft gradually get stronger over the course of the fight, as a form of soft enrage, while others gain strength more rapidly during the final phase. For example, Majordomo Staghelm in the Firelands performs his strongest abilities after his Energy gauge fills up, and gets a stack of Adrenaline that lets him gain Energy more quickly. Switching between cat and scorpion forms, which is triggered by players stacking up or spreading out, results in him losing all his Adrenaline stacks but gaining a stack of Fury, which increases his damage. The key to winning is to force transformations only when he's attacking too quickly for the healers to keep up, and kill him before the Fury buff stacks too high.

    Web Comics 
  • Two characters in Grrl Power have this as part of their powerset :
    • Vehemence, the story's first supervillain, can use vehemic energy, or the power of violence to boost himself up. He actually "levels up" and gain more powers. Dabbler notes that demons who can use this power can change the course of entire wars.
      Vehemence: Violence, one of the most pure, primal forces. Attack me? Makes me stronger. Attack 3 dozen scrubs I rounded up? Makes me stronger. I attack you? Still makes me stronger.
    • Ren, one of Archon's recruits, has super adrenaline
      Ren: You know when you knock a glass off a counter and it feels like it takes five seconds to hit the floor, or you hear stories about a mom lifting a car off her kid? I start out at ten times that and it goes up from there.
      • Naturally, much later on both of them fight each other, albeit as part of a training exercise.

    Web Original 
  • Worm:
    • Lung is a parahuman who on top of his pyrokinesis and Healing Factor, mutates as a battle goes forward, growing larger, gaining scales, and even growing wings as long the battle continues and there's people watching, as well as an increased proficiency with his pyrokinesis and healing. Word of God is that he has no true upper limit, and at the highest level witnessed in the story, he manages to beat back Leviathan, one of the Endbringers, when he flooded Kyushu, only stopping when he notices pretty much everyone else is dead and therefore can't witness the fight.
    • The Simurgh, an Endbringer, has an element of this to her abilities. She possesses the ability to see the future and the past of anyone within the general vicinity, as well as emotional and mental manipulation abilities. However, it takes a bit of time for her powers to work effectively on any given individual. The capes have instituted a strategy of never allowing anyone to be near the Simurgh for more than five minutes at a time (and anyone who does is killed, written off as being under her permanent control for all intents and purposes).

    Western Animation 
  • Amphibia: In "Grime's Pupil", upon seeing Sprig agilely fighting the hybeenas, Grime works out that he needs to use this technique to stand a change against a Toad combatant, using his agility to move around them faster and faster until his attacks have some real weight to them. Similarly, Grime also coaches him on how to summon his anger to gain greater strength in a pinch, allowing him to briefly break out of Beatrix's bear hug and deliver a wicked point-blank headbutt.
  • Wakfu: Because of his powers, the more someone land attacks on Rubilax, the stronger he becomes, and in the long run he's able to overwhelm his tired opponents.

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