Magikarp Power

And then the Gyarados just eats him.^note Just kidding. Mr. Fish is more docile than most dogs.

"I swear to god, when I evolve, I'm going to kill you all."

— Magikarp, via Memetic Mutation

A character, ability, or piece of equipment that seems completely useless at first, but with repeated use and patience can be highly effective later. This can be an item/weapon you need to explicitly power up or even an entire low-level character who gets some really awesome techniques later.

The Trope Namer is Magikarp from Pokémon, a ubiquitous, dim-witted, carp-like Pokémon who only knows the move Splash, which, as the game gleefully informs you, "has no effect". It learns Tackle, the most basic attack in Pokémon, at level 15, and a lucky few have it as an innate skill, but its Attack stat is so low that it still does minimal damage. In short, it's pathetic... Until you painstakingly grind it up to level 20, at which point it evolves into Gyarados, a sea leviathan ready to wreak vengeance from on high with its own lethal abilities. Magikarp is based on an old Japanese legend about a carp which manages to swim up a waterfall and becomes a dragon through sheer perseverance.

Leaked Experience can be very helpful in getting this to the appropriate point without weakening the party or putting the Magikarp Power in danger. Rare Candy may also be a great help. Related to Level Grinding in that the player is forced to drag an entirely useless item or NPC around for level after level, until it becomes useful.

A similar but distinct trope is the Retro Upgrade, where instead of upgrading the Magikarp itself, you earn or upgrade something else which makes the Magikarp much more powerful.

Compare Gathering Steam which likewise starts out pathetic but gains in capability throughout a fight, Elite Tweak, Future Badass, Took a Level in Badass (this trope implemented for a character), Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards (for when wizards are treated as magikarp), Lethal Joke Character (a Joke Character with hidden potential), Evolving Weapon, Evolving Attack, Equipment Upgrade, Difficult, but Awesome (for when a character/faction is set up to make the player a magikarp), and Changing Gameplay Priorities. Contrast Breakable Weapons, What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?, A Taste of Power, and Crutch Character. Can sometimes be heard to ask, "Who's Laughing Now?". See With This Herring if the Magikarp is a part of your starting kit. In antagonists this typically results in a Snowballing Threat.

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Examples:

• Video Games

Anime & Manga

• Issei Hyoudou from High School D×D:
  • The most basic ability granted to his Sacred Gear is Boosted Gear, which doubles his power every ten seconds. It's explicitly stated that this effect is enough to let him trump God if he gets worked up enough. However, this depends on Issei staying alive in combat for that long, when he starts the series so talentless the first few doublings have barely any effect. He also has to train his body so that it can handle the boosts or else he will suffer from Heroic RRoD.
  • His Devil piece at least until he ends up becoming a King with his own peerage is the Pawn, which by itself doesn't grant him any special power but gives him the ability to temporarily become a Rook, Knight, Bishop or Queen, which gives him a wide range of options.
• The humans in Helck are generally considered a non-threat by demons with the exception of Heroes. However, after Human King has granted his soldiers the power of Resurrective Immortality, they've gotten stronger attack after attack on demon's borders and by the late half of the manga the Demon Empire is facing a real risk of full invasion.
• The title character of Kenichi: The Mightiest Disciple is repeatedly remarked to have little talent for martial arts, and only becomes strong as fast as he does because the insane yet amazingly skilled masters at Ryozanpaku train him to the precise limits of what his body can take and then speed up his recovery. He ends up showing a remarkable talent for the use of ki that allows him to enter the Masters' realm at an incredibly young age, but had to work hard to get to that point.
• In Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, Shirogane is this trope, much to his secret shame. He is impossibly bad at pretty much everything when he first tries it, but if he keeps trying he can go further in those skills than almost anyone. And it might be said that his gift is to try, as often as it takes, without getting bored or giving up. The crux of any training chapter involving him is not whether he will learn a skill (that's a foregone conclusion) but whether he will be able to persuade Fujiwara to teach him in the first place, after the physical pain that all the previous times caused her.
  • Hayasaka theorizes that Shirogane's effort may have results better than those of talented people, in the same way that handmade goods can be more valuable than mass-produced ones. Perceiving the effort and emotion that must have gone into such a result, when his starting point was so low, is inspirational in itself.
    Kaguya: Was there anything touching at all about that song?!
    Hayasaka: (crying Tender Tears) Don't you get it? ^note Kaguya had not seen just how awful Shirogane was at rapping before. What an amazingly mediocre rap. I can't imagine just how much practice it took to become this average. Just thinking about it makes me want to cry.
  • Kaguya is an inversion of the trope. She's an Instant Expert in almost everything, but her psyche is so fractured that when she does need to learn things, she gets easily discouraged or distracted by internal strife. Learning thus takes longer than it 'should', considering her prodigious intelligence, and Shirogane has outwitted her several times just because he's able to stay focused on a goal.
• Mako Mankanshoku from Kill la Kill is actually remarked on in-universe in this regard. She's completely weak and useless,^note a computer analysis' Stat-O-Vision gives her zeros in every category, but give her a Goku Uniform of the same type used by every club captain, and she's suddenly a master of combat.^note The computer analysis' Stat-O-Vision gives her 9999 in every stat except intelligence.
• The Adventurer class in KonoSuba. The class' main perk is Power Copying, which allows the Adventurer to learn any skill that is displayed and named in front of them. Most people just upgrade to a different class as soon as they can because learning worthwhile skills is usually dangerous. Kazuma, who is forced to remain in the class to offset his partners' Crippling Overspecialization, soon realizes that (a) with some inventive he can use the skills he learns to cause effects that no one considered and (b) any skill means any skill - which includes a Lich's Drain Touch or Megumin's Explosion, which he uses to kill the Demon King.
• Kuroko's Basketball: Ryota Kise is introduced as the weakest member of the Generation of Miracles, having only started playing basketball during his second year of middle school. However, his natural athleticism and ability to instantly learn techniques after seeing them once resulted in a rapid growth in his skills that far outpaced that of the other members. By the end of the series, Kise's acquired two particular abilities that when combined, make him the strongest player on the court: Perfect Copy, which allows him to use the techniques of the other members of the Generation of Miracles simultaneously, and the Zone, which lets him play at one-hundred-percent efficiency.
• This is the nature of One for All in My Hero Academia. It's a combination of a quirk-transfer quirk and a power-stockpiling quirk. It wasn't much originally, but the stockpiling aspect meant that it kept the strength of all previous wielders and greatly improved it. In Izuku Midoriya's hands, it's initially a power that allows him to unleash enough force to destroy basically anything in one hit, but breaks his arm in the process. As time goes on, Midoriya learns how to control the power, safely harnessing increasing amounts One For All's true power and eventually gains access to the previous users' Quirks. As a result, Midoriya goes from one of the weakest members of his class to the strongest.
• My Unique Skill Makes Me OP Even At Level 1: The Princess is afflicted with this. She has a Level Cap of 99, in a setting where 20 is considered territory for The Hero. However her drop stats, which have far more meaning in a world where literally everything from food to money is a loot drop, are abysmal, and her other stats are only middling. When Ryouta helps the Princess Level Grind to near her cap, her stats begin to rise. This causes Ryouta do realize that her growths are all concentrated near the top of her progression. She will become a Pretty Princess Powerhouse when she tops out.
• One Piece:
  • Two of the main characters, Nami and Usopp. In the early series, they were nothing more than normal humans, with Nami showing skill in using a bo staff and Usopp as a crackshot with a slingshot, but that was about it. As the series progressed, however, they each invented new ways of fighting (Nami using one of Usopp's inventions to manipulate the weather, and Usopp inventing new ways to attack the enemy from a distance and further improving his unbelievable aim), and are now as superhuman as the rest of their pirate crew, with Nami able to hold her own against some of the most dangerous pirates on the sea and Usopp being labelled as a god amongst men for his actions in the Dressrosa Arc. They're still the physically weakest of the main cast, but they've come a very long way from where they were through developing their unique skills and owning the niche they found within the crew.
  • Sanji, at least in comparison to his siblings. His siblings were born outright superhuman, doing things like jumping off balconies onto stone floors without any damage, whereas Sanji was an ordinary child. Over the years, Sanji fought increasingly powerful enemies while his family stayed in the North Blue. By their reunion roughly a decade later, Sanji is far stronger than his siblings and a considerable threat in the New World whereas they all get easily manhandled by Big Mom's children.
  • Devil Fruits, particularly the weird ones, can lend themselves to this kind of progression. They don't get stronger; their user just gets more creative and learns what they can actually do. Users can become extremely powerful as they go through the learning curve, even if they started low; Brook wasn't exactly a pushover, but his power remained seemingly useless until he figured out how much he could control his own soul and that of others, and Trafalgar Law couldn't cash in his Superpower Lottery ticket for a long time and remained weak until he could actually learn enough medical skills to put his Op-Op Fruit to good use and get some practice on top of that. Perahps the greatest example of this is Luffy himself. While his devil fruit is initially seen as a weaker paramecia power that's only really effective because its user is a clever fighter, it's later shown to be the most unpredictable of the rarer-than-Logia and overpowered Mythical Zoan Types, capable of giving the user the ability to weaponize Toon Physics in a world where exploiting that kind of logic essentially makes you a Reality Warper.
• In Only Sense Online, the protagonist Yun picks a lot of skills that are deemed as worthless by the community. The most prominent of this is the "Hawk Eyes" skill where it extends vision and grants night vision to the user; unfortunately, there are much better skills out there compared to this. However, thanks to an insight from his friend, Yun figures out that Hawk Eyes allows him to target anybody from a long range with ease. Furthermore, by leveling them up, it transforms into the "Sky Eyes" skill where he can perceive enemy attacks in Bullet Time.
• The Legendary Weapons from The Rising of the Shield Hero, especially the Legendary Shield. Initially, they are basic weapons that give basic boosts to their users. When upgraded (whether by adding materials, copying similar weapons or just training with them) they boost the wielders' abilities to demigod levels and give multiple abilities that allow them to become more powerful.
  • Naofumi Iwatani was looked down upon due to the other Heroes having Legendary Weapons that naturally deal damage to their opponents, while Naofumi could only do physical punches and kicks since the Legendary Shield prevented him from actually using any other type of weapon. To offset his abysmal attack rating, Naofumi had an extremely high defense rating; having him rely upon working alongside the party members he gathers to help level them up to fight beside him in battle. Conversely, the other Three Heroes only treat their party members either as glorified cheerleaders, burdens to their own leveling process, or keep them beneath their leader in terms of power.
• In So I'm a Spider, So What? most basic skills start off weak and underwhelming but are very powerful at level 10. The most infamous example in-universe is "Appraisal" which at level 1 only rewards basic info like "wall" or "deer" while causing a massive headache with each use. Most people decide not to learn it as a result despite it being able to supply massively valuable information at higher levels.
  • Taratects are incredibly weak right after hatching, having only an F-ranking. With time they can potentially evolve in the S-rank Arch Taratect, to say nothing of the legendary Queen Taratects.
  • It's revealed that Kumoko stumbled into a Magikarp Power path by accident. Upon choosing her evolution, she went into the Zoa Ele family of spiders, which has a skill that corrodes and destroys anything it touches. However, the Zoa Ele lacks the Required Secondary Powers to resist corrosion, so any attempt to use that attack will kill the spider in the process. It's only through a lucky chance (Kumoko ate a few creatures with low-level corrosion skills and inadvertently built up a resistance) that Kumoko only loses a few legs whenever she uses the move. Sticking further with the line causes the evolution into Ede Saine, which can use Evil Eye skills... but again, the Ede Saine has no native resistance to its Evil Eye, which means that firing off Evil Eye attacks will render it blind (it may be a spider, but that's still only eight shots max). Essentially, the evolutionary line is designed to die... but stick with Ede Saine, and the final evolution kicks in. The Zana Horowa spider, as it turns out, gains the skill Immortality. It's explicitly noted that Zoa Ele die so fast that Kumoko was the first creature ever to become a Zana Horowa.
• Kanchomé of Zatch Bell! has a combination of Heart Is an Awesome Power and Magikarp Power. His first three spells, which are shapeshifting without any increase in power, shrinking, and illusionary growing, are nearly useless for normal combat, but he still manages to win several battles or help others win battles by using them to trick opponents. His first powerful spell allows him to make super strong copies of himself. His next spell creates the illusion that the opponent's spell has failed in order to trick them into cancelling it. His next spell after that creates the illusion of copying the opponent's spell, but is able to inflict real injuries if they are fooled. His ultimate spell allows him to trap an opponent in an illusion world that is impossible to escape from even if they know it is an illusion. So, he starts as out as one of the weakest Mamodos, but by the end of the series he is one of the strongest.

Board Games

• In chess, the ubiquitous and slow-moving pawn can be promoted to a stronger piece (usually the queen) if allowed to move all the way to the other end of the board.
• There are numerous examples in the shogi (Japanese chess) family:
  • In tenjiku shogi, there's the drunken elephant, which can promote into, essentially, a second king, allowing you to survive your first king's death.
  • There's also the water buffalo, which promotes into a fire demon, which is insanely useful because of its burn ability that allows it to capture a ton of enemy pieces in one move.
  • The deva in tai shogi, which can only move one space in certain directions, promotes into the teaching king; this piece, depending on how you interpret the rules, can move as a free king (a chess queen) and has the power to move three times in a row, akin to a better version of lion power.

Comic Books

• The Incredible Hulk: In human form, Bruce Banner's just a nerdy human scientist with no obvious special abilities and a near phobia of losing his temper... and with good reason.

Fan Works

• As always, the Gamer can be considered as this in Co-op Mode — and to a lesser extent, to his teammates as well. Consider how in the initial parts of the story, James almost killed himself trying to escape a locker if it weren't for Taylor catching him in time. Several chapters later, James is sturdy enough to take blows from Lung and return them in favor.
• Of all things, deconstructed in Pokémon Reset Bloodlines. The main story mentions a criminal named 20 Gyarados Bill briefly to explain the Pokemon Team Size limit. A side story later shows Bill having been treated poorly in his life, up to being given a Magikarp as a mocking gift. He promptly collected 20 of them, evolved them, and razed entire cities to get back at all who ever mocked him. Magikarp Power after all isn't exclusive to pure and virtuous heroes.
• Lampshaded in Game and Bleach with Ichigo's first weapon: an Asauchi. When he first gets it, the weapon only does one point of damage plus his dexterity. Despite its crappy stats, Ichigo immediately pegs it as the weapon that probably has no Level Cap. Sure enough, once Ichigo starts using it enough, the Asauchi deals thousands of points of damage per hit.
• In Nutricula Izuku's Quirk is a Death-Activated Superpower which revives him then gives him a new power based on how he died, gradually turning him from a seemingly Quirkless child to a hero with Combo Platter Powers.
• Izuku's Quirk in Metallurgy was originally a grapefruit sized orb of liquid metal that he had no control over. The orb grew larger over the years (currently the size of a beach ball) and Izuku spent over a decade training until he turned it into a Swiss-Army Superpower that sees him as one of the strongest and most versatile students in his year.
• Risk It All: Due to the way his power works, Ren wonders if he could make himself as strong as Superman one day as he keeps acquiring new abilities and upping his stats. But in the present, he's only about as strong as reasonably fit teenager and is very much lacking Nigh-Invulnerability. In addition, several of his powers are useless in direct combat, such as Multilingual and Driving.
  Ren: Currently, I was below average in every physical stat, but how high could I raise them? Did I top out at ten times stronger than a normal human? A hundred? A thousand? Did I have a limit at all? Could I be as strong as Superman? I didn't know, and I couldn't know until I hit some kind of stat cap, if I ever did. All of which was fantastic, but it didn't help me with my current situation. It didn't matter if I could be as strong as Superman in the future if I died today for being a weakling. Potential didn't matter unless it was realized.
• The Slow Path: Taylor's power initially allows her to send tendrils of energy into the ground to create very minor effects in the area around her, such as making the ground mildly slippery. She later learns that they aren't tendrils but roots. In order for her power to have any real ability, she has to stay in a single area near motionless for a week to maximize her potential and her power will only work for that area. But by spending four years living homeless in Brockton Bay and moving to a new area every week, she ends up with full control of basically the entire city along with knowledge of everything happening within it. Once her work is complete, she attacks every gang in the city at once using the city itself.
• Voyages of the Wild Sea Horse: Invoked and defied in chapter 20. Nabiki notes that if she wants to use a Devil Fruit to boost herself to the level she can actually protect herself in a fight on the Grand Line, the last thing she needs is to eat one which will require her to spend a prolonged period of time mastering the potential uses of an esoteric power to exploit it fully. She commits to eating either a Logia Fruit or a Zoan Fruit (especially the more powerful Ancient Zoan and Mythic Zoan sub-types), due to their relatively Boring, but Practical nature compared to the more widespread Paramecias.

Film — Live-Action

• Magikarp itself appears in Pokémon Detective Pikachu, with the titular Pikachu deliberately trying to invoke the trope by tormenting the Magikarp and trying to get it to evolve so it can deal with a rampaging Charizard. Of course, when it finally does evolve, it immediately targets Pikachu.

Literature

• All The Skills - A Deckbuilding LitRPG: Arthur's "Master of Skills" card doesn't give him any upfront benefits at all, and his first use of it merely makes him a little better at peeling potatoes. However, what it gives him is an Experience Booster for almost every activity he engages in, along with stat bonuses as he gains particular sets of skills, so unlike most cards, it has tremendous growth potential. Fast forward a few years, and he is an apparent Child Prodigy, rising from a being a destitute orphan to a star of the Wolf Moon hive. And if he happens to have gained a few more cards along the way through skills in thievery and acting, well, that doesn't need to be public knowledge...
• Beware of Chicken references the original legend when "Washy" the carp climbs a waterfall and gains the ability to shapeshift into a dragon.
• Book of the Dead: A low-level necromancer can't do much except create skeletons and zombies — a laborious and tiring process of assessing the body, repairing or thoroughly removing the flesh, then in the case of skeletons, spending hours weaving magick threads into makeshift connective tissue, followed by a Raise Dead spell that takes minutes to cast and will drain a young necromancer of magick almost completely. And the resulting minions are slower, clumsier, and less intelligent than living beings, as well as constantly draining more magick to maintain themselves, with their only real advantages being their fearlessness and tirelessness. However, as the class advances, the number of minions they can support grows quickly, along with their ability to craft each minion to be efficient and responsive, and they start gaining access to more advanced undead as well. At high levels, necromancers can command undead armies of thousands, large enough to raze cities and defy kingdoms.
• Chrysalis (RinoZ): Insect monsters in general tend to have this potential, starting with masses of very weak drones, then with higher-tier evolutions being quite powerful — but it largely goes unrealised, focusing instead on Zerg Rush tactics. The Colony, however, has a strong emphasis on helping all its members to gain experience and levels. They don't even allow new ants to leave the nursery without forming a core and evolving twice. As a result, when ants start reaching tier six en masse, Granin notes that they're getting unusually good evolution options, because the System expects tier six ants to be extremely rare.
  Granin: We have a monster type achieving heights that the Dungeon considers rare, and thus rewards, as well as them having weak starting positions, which accelerates the quality of their evolutions. Across every caste, their options have been good. It's almost unheard of.
• Dungeon Crawler Carl: Choosing the "Primal" race incurs a -1 penalty to all stats, with no immediate benefits. However, it raises the level cap for all skills from 15 to 20 — which takes a lot of Level Grinding to actually utilise, but is the difference between "powerful character" and "ridiculously broken". A level 15 Shield spell will stop an artillery shell or two. A level 20 Backstab skill could use a paperclip to One-Hit Kill a Physical God.
• Release That Witch: Many magic powers with limited applications end up being quite powerful as they evolve. For instance, Maggie's ability to turn into birds ends up making her quite deadly once it evolves and gives her the ability to turn into massive deadly bird monsters as well.
• Solo Leveling: Main character Sung Jin-woo is known as "The World's Weakest Hunter". When he becomes a Player... he's still the weakest hunter. But he also becomes the only hunter able to improve his power. Via truly hard work and sheer tenacity, he becomes a One-Man Army - and that's before he becomes the Shadow Monarch, allowing him to extract the souls of dead monsters and people and use them as an army.
• There Is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns: Many of the options available for Delta to construct, like the Mushroom Grove, claim to be purely decorative, but as she comes to learn, they will frequently become potent tools as further upgrades are unlocked. For example, eating potent Gutrot mushrooms causes the Mushroom Grove to produce mushrooms with actual effects, not just for cosmetic purposes, including unlocking research and development to produce new strains. The resulting customised and manufactured mushrooms form a key part of her combat strategy on the third floor.
• The Vazula Chronicles: At the beginning of A Kingdom Submerged, Heath believes himself to be a Muggle Born of Mages. His only unusual ability is good eyesight. Over the course of the series, he discovers that he has a number of powers related to seeing or knowing things. He has farsight, the dragon ability to spy on familiar places or people from afar. He can also detect people's emotions and mental traits and, eventually, see through concealment charms that are impervious even to dragons. By the end of the series, after Heath has been through much training and practice, the dragon Rekavidur tells him that he has some of the most powerful magic Reka has ever seen in a human.
• Warformed Stormweaver: All of Rey's stats start at the literal lowest they can go, no improvement over the human baseline... except for Growth, which starts at S. Growth is the hardest stat to raise and the most important; even a low A-rank in any stat at CAD assignment is extremely rare, and S-rank has never happened in the entire history of CADs. Everyone who finds out about it warns him to be very, very careful about who he tells, and the basic book description says that he will one day become a god.

Mythology & Religion

• The Trope Namer is inspired by a legend that a carp that manages to go up a certain waterfall (which naturally would require a huge amount of determination) will be transformed into a dragon.

Roleplay

• In a way, this is the entire premise of Nothing Is Sacred. The Sacred Beasts have awoken early and its Stella's job to empower her beast first so that it can help avert the coming calamities that threaten to end the world. Since the Beasts haven't been empowered by the spirits of others, though, they are all but powerless at the start of the quest and only become slightly more powerful when given sufficient offerings. At the beginning, Hamon was entirely unplayable as its card had no stats or abilities, but it became a 2500 attack monster after the first offering, gained the ability to inflict burn damage after the second offering, and continued to grow in strength from there.

Tabletop Games

• In Blood Bowl, Chaos and Lizardmen teams in particular depend on this. Instead of blitzers, they start with expensive 'musclemen' units (Saurus and Chaos Warriors) who have high natural stats but no skills (especially the all-important Block), which make them weaker than other factions' blitzers (and Dwarf linemen). Once those musclemen gain one-two levels and gain access to Block and Mighty Blow, they become terrors on the field (especially if your Chaos Warriors pick up a few mutations on the side).
  • Chaos Pact and Underworld are two teams who depend entirely on this. Their starting players are sub-par and they suffer from expensive rerolls and high player turnover. However, their cheap players and insanely varied skill and mutation access (both have normal access to every skill in the game across their players, with Underworld having a better spread across players while Pact has incredible Marauders) means that a team of level 3+ underworld players are a Jack of All Stats team to be feared.
• In the Chaotic TCG, Normal Stelgar has a good 65 on all stats and the typical underworld elements, fire and air, and it gains more in every stat except energy every time it does attack damage. However, grow its power stat too much, and Stelgar destroys itself. On the other hand, play Stelgar in a minion deck and it changes to gaining mugic counters every time it wins a battle, which, unlike the power stat, can be used up in a productive way, so it becomes a viable muge. Stelgar's second card, Stelgar, Vicious Mutation starts with the water element, which is unusual for Underworlders, and 20 in every stat. However it gains 10 in everything at the end of each turn. Protect Stelgar long enough and it will grow into a massive creature with over 100 in every stat. Then equip some element gaining battlegear on to it. Now you've got a complete monster.
• Critical Role: Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting: The Runechild sub-class has all of its features heavily tied to Sorcery Points, which makes them able to use their signature abilities only a couple of times per day at early levels when they only have a couple of sorcery points. Even then, they can only reduce damage done to them by 1d6 at the cost of not being able to use spells like Shield or Counterspell for a round, when those spells can potentially reduce all damage done to the Runechild. Yet, by the time they reach 18th level, not only do Runechildren have a massive pool of points to power their abilities with, they also gain the ability to halve all damage they take from spells, heal themselves every time they use magic, and most powerful of all, raise their spell save DC to 21 in a game where the normal maximum is a 19.
• This was so prevalent in Dungeons & Dragons that it got its own trope: Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards. At low levels, a Wizard quickly runs out of spells (and thus, effectiveness) while a Fighter can deal consistent damage all day long. However, if you keep at it then the Wizard gains enough spells to hold their own, and access to a vast variety of offensive and utility spells that drastically increases their power and versatility. Then in the mid-game they start learning "save or die" spells. By the end-game, Wizards are on-par with Physical Gods.
  • Fourth edition made Wizards more balanced, with them more useful at level 1 and less broken at high levels. There is still the uber-broken Orb of Imposition optional class feature, however, which still exhibits this property.
  • Healers (the Miniatures Handbook class, not the character type) are generally considered to be useless - until 17th level, when they get Gate, one of the most powerful spells in the game. However, many other casting classes get Gate by that level, which leads to the Healer going from "Not as good as a Cleric" to "Still not as good as a Cleric". The infamous Truenamer class also gets Gate at level 20, but the class was so badly-written that it takes a dedicated Munchkin to even keep it alive until level 20.
  • The Samurai class from Complete Warrior is an unintentional example. Its strongest feature is the Samurai code of conduct, which makes you lose all your abilities if you break it ... because the class is so weak that losing it actually makes you more powerful! Specifically, breaking this code of conduct when higher than level 11 allows you to switch 10 class levels to the far-superior Ronin class. To a lesser extent, the class's best intentional features are considered to be Mass Staredown and Improved Staredown, which come online at 10 and 14 and allow it to force enemies to flee en masse. Up to that point, though, you're basically a very small step above the Warrior.
  • The Bard in First Edition required that you dual-class three times, and given how complicated dual-classing was then (each dual-classing would restart you at first-level), this was no mean feat. However, upon taking your first level, you then gained all your old fighter skills, all your old thief skills, druid casting, music that boosted allies and automatically charmed enemies, lore powers, and magic item-based powers. And you've got 23 levels to go...
    • The Fochlucan Lyrist, a prestige class in 3.5, was an attempt to update the original Bard's Magikarp Power. The easiest way to join was to take four levels in Bard, four levels in Druid, and two in Rogue, a horribly disorganized build. However, the Fochlucan Lyrist advanced arcane casting, divine casting, and bardic music, and received six skill points and a warrior's Base Attack. Unfortunately, the build it worked off of was so hideously weak that even such a powerful class could do little more than damage control; at full advancement, the Lyrist's main components would both be six levels behind.
  • In 3.5 Edition, Turn Undead became this. It nominally allows Cleric and Paladins to drive off undead enemies. The trouble is, it only works against Undead, the rules are convoluted, and making undead run away is rarely useful. Paladins also suffer from the fact that turn as if they were a Cleric of significantly lower level. Oh, and all the really threatening undead have turn resistance. Acknowledging that this iconic ability was both situational and not particularly effective when it worked, the "Divine" Feat class was added. All of these Feats require turn attempts to use, and some of them are very powerful. Divine Metamagic allows a Cleric to apply extra effects to their spells; this would normally require casting the spell in a precious higher level slot (up to 4 levels higher, in some cases), but the Feat lets them spend that many turn attempts plus one instead. This became such a Game-Breaker when paired with Extend Spell (your buffs last longer, up to 24 hours) and Quicken spell (cast 1 extra spell per turn as a free action) that most Cleric optimization threads recommend purchasing Night Sticks, a magic item whose only purpose is to grant more turn attempts.
  • The shadowcaster of Tome of Magic seems designed for this.^note Though Word of God — the class' designer — is that it was actually just not properly playtested. Considering one of the other classes in the book was the truenamer, the shadowcaster got off lightly. At low levels, you're an Apprentice shadowcaster, with the inflexibility and low spells per day of a wizard combined with the limited pool of spells of a sorcerer - you learn one Mystery per level, and can cast each one only once per day, essentially giving you six castings per day at 6th level. However, when you reach 7th level, you become an Initiate shadowcaster, causing all the Mysteries you learned as an Apprentice to upgrade, doubling in uses per day and becoming more versatile spell-like abilities, jumping you from six castings to thirteen castings. Take it all the way to 13th, and you become a Master Shadowcaster, causing the same thing to happen to all the Mysteries as an Initiate... and moreover, increasing the power of your Apprentice mysteries to be three-use-per-day supernatural abilities. Now the shadowcaster has an impressive thirty-one castings per day, ensuring that they'll almost never run out of their Mysteries... and it's around this point that many shadowcasters realize that their Mysteries are actually pretty dang powerful. Some guides point out the Caul of Shadows fundamental (cantrip-equivalent) as this — it grants a decent buff to AC, but its short duration and only being usable three times a day keeps a lot of potential from it... but at level 14, fundamentals become usable at will, allowing Shadowcasters to keep it up more-or-less constantly.
  • A lot of "theurge"-type prestige classes in 3.5 are like this. To elaborate; the very nature of such prestige classes mean while you're progressing two kinds of magic, you're behind on both compared to a single-classed caster. The part where this trope kicks in is that spells only go up to 9th-level, so at a sufficiently high level you get 9ths in both and therefore basically two casters for the price of one.
  • From the same inspiration as the trope namer, lung dragons start life as a yu lung, or carp dragon. These creatures are dimwitted and docile, have no significant offensive abilities, and basically just look like a fish with a lizard face, spending most of their time as bottom-dwelling scavengers that avoid anything bigger than them. However, if they live to a certain age, they immediately metamorphose into a lung dragon of varying type—and lungs are just as strong as you'd expect a dragon to be, with all manner of magic, superlative strength, and far greater intelligence.
• Compared to the other splats from Old World of Darkness, player characters of Mage: The Ascension fully ascribe to the doctrine of Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards. While disciplines, gifts or even just starting statistics of the other splats can be more than enough to make the fresh character be more than combat capable, mages are just humans without their spheres, which take significant investment to raise, as well as raise their arete. But once they do...
• Magic: The Gathering has a number of cards that function like this, starting out average or even worse than average in some cases but becoming very powerful when some condition is met:
  • The Kamigawa block had a number of "flip cards" which are fairly weak, relatively useless creatures when first summoned, but can be "flipped" (rotated 180 degrees) when certain conditions are met, generally becoming a powerful legendary creature. The conditions required to flip these cards are sometimes quite easy. Student of Elements, for example, becomes Tobita, Master of Winds as soon as it gains flying, a task fairly easily accomplished with blue spells. Others are considerably more difficult to flip, but the results are worth it. For instance, Bushi Tenderfoot must first contribute to the death of another creature to flip, but as a puny 1/1 it isn't likely to kill much of anything without help, and will surely die if sent into combat without some sort of outside boost or protection. However, if you do manage this feat, that puny Tenderfoot becomes the immensely powerful Kenzo the Hardhearted, who is capable of dishing out a whopping 10 damage to an enemy creature in combat.^note To put it into perspective: a normal non-magical human with a sword hits for 1. A grizzly bear hits for 2. A hill giant hits for 3. Most dragons hit for 5 and up. So a creature dealing 10 damage by itself is like two dragons mauling something at once.
  • The Eldrazi set has brought along creatures that gain 'Level Counters' when ever you pay to do so. Their stats increase takes a while and it takes up resources that could be put toward other uses instead, but some of them get REALLY good powers at max level. For example, take Lord of Shatterskull Pass. Leveling it to max requires spending mana on it for 6 turns, and the levels between level 1 (which grants +3/+3) and level 6 don't add anything.
  • The Innistrad set introduces double-faced cards and the transform mechanic. Most of them are werewolves but one in particular, Ludevic's Test Subject, is an egg. It has zero attack power, and is in fact completely unable to attack. However, once you use its ability to give it five "hatch" counters, it becomes Ludevic's Abomination, a 13/13 creature with trample, which is much better for attacking.
  • The Theros block adds the Heroic mechanic. Heroic creatures gain a special effect when you target them with a spell, usually placing +1/+1 counters on them. It is quite easy to turn a 1/2 Favored Hoplite into a Juggernaut that simply doesn't take damage and can bulldoze through enemy defenses.
  • The Serra Ascendant starts out as a 1/1 with lifelink. If you manage to get your life total >= 30 (you start with 20) and keep it that high, the Serra Ascendant becomes a 6/6 creature with flying and lifelink. Naturally, Serra Ascendant is a solid addition to any deck that specializes in life gain.
  • Jace's Phantasm is normally a puny 1/1 flyer. It becomes a respectable 5/5 flyer (making it as powerful as the average dragon) if an opponent has ten or more cards in his or her graveyard. Conveniently, a lot of blue cards (especially those related to Jace Beleren like the Phantasm) force players to discard cards.
  • Tuktuk the Explorer starts out as a measly 1/1 with haste that costs three mana to summon. If he dies, he is replaced by a legendary 5/5 goblin golem artifact creature called "Tuktuk the Returned". Since the opponent probably isn't going to be in any hurry to kill Tuktuk for you, you'll need to find a way to hasten his demise yourself.
  • Primordial Hydra starts out relatively weak, with power and toughness equal to the X value when summoning it, which could conceivably be as low as 1. Every turn, though, it doubles its power and toughness, which, through the power of exponents, can make it unstoppable in, at most, 5 turns, and even less if extra mana is used when summoning it.
  • In a metagame sense, this applies to numerous decks. Multi-color decks have extremely slow early games since most of the lands they rely on for their mana base enter tapped. Then, when they have those lands out, they start casting multi-colored spells, which are usually more powerful than equivalently costed monocolor spells as a balancing effect for their requiring multiple colors of mana. Delve decks, which have underwhelming early games since delve cards are very expensive to hardcast, but once they've spent the early game filling their graveyard, they can start exiling those cards to pay the colorless part of delve spells' costs, letting them cast multiple otherwise expensive spells in a turn.
• Mordheim: Youngbloods are adventure-seeking lads who travel to Mordheim to seek fame and fortune, though most of them find only death in the damned city as they gravely overestimate their enthusiasm and underestimate the horrors they face. They are the cheapest heroes available to the Human mercenaries warband, and they are the weakest initially. They also have the highest stat growth. A Youngblood who walks and endures the path of trials can easily grow to surpass the mighty Champions and even their own Captains and actually become the heroes they aspire to be.
• Sentinels of the Multiverse:
  • Some heroes, such as Argent Adept, Akash'Thriya, Absolute Zero, and Benchmark, have an extremely long build-up but enormous power when they get close to the ceiling. Benchmark, for example, takes at least nine plays just to get all his gear out, to say nothing of his Software Ongoings, but when he gets going he can deal a ton of damage reliably every turn. These heroes tend to do well when paired with a character like Omnitron-X, Freedom Five Bunker, or Freedom Five Legacy, who will allow them to play cards out of sequence.
  • Bugbear in team mode is always a threat, but the more incapacitations happen, the more damage he deals.
  • In the OblivAeon mode, Wager Master's challenge gives you a mediocre reward that provides a small amount of healing every turn. But: if you don't have anyone to heal — not necessarily an easy challenge in an apocalyptic damage-fest — it can instantly complete any other Challenge in the game and save you a ton of time, cards and/or other inconveniences.
• Da Orks from Warhammer 40,000 are a 'n-ooniverse example! 'Ur av'rage Grot is puny and no match for 'nyone 'cept maybe one o' dem puny 'umie Guardsmen, but give 'im a few years an' he'll be a full-fledged Boy 'oo can crump a panzee 'umie easy and be a good enuff threat to a Space Marine! Give 'em even more time an' he'll grow up to be a tough Nob, an' Space Marines may be dead-'ard, but even dey leg it from dose boyz! Wot Iz tryin' ta say iz, even da runtiest of Orks can grow up to be sumfink real big and 'ard! An' oo knows, maybe someday dat lad may even become a real big Waghboss, big and mean enuff to lead 'iz own boyz! WAAAAAAGH!!! ^{Translated to Human} Orks get Stronger with Age and constant battling, and start out rather weak, comparable only with a Guardsman, one of the setting's reddest shirts to exist. If he manages to live through a few years of abuse from bigger orks, he gets a lot stronger, able to kill through axe and gun, and will only get stronger from there if he manages to survive past that, which isn't that easy as the ork will most certainly put his new acquired strength to use on targets both right and wrong. A Nob, one of the older orks, can even put the pain on the local Super Soldiers, and if the ork has fought for it hard enough, with enough opponents, he may end up a warboss, giant green death machines that will crush anything that comes close, leading an army of everything already mentioned in this paragraph. To recap, this would only count as Stronger with Age if it weren't for the fact an ork has to work real hard, and fight a whole lot, to make it in life.

Web Animation

• In Epithet Erased, pretty much every Epithet can be this. Every Epithet starts out incredibly weak at level 1, and levels up the more it's used. However, the maximum potential of an Epithet is dependent on the user's own stats, particularly their Creativity stat - the higher their Creativity, the more potential they have to think of new, interesting, and powerful ways to use their Epithet. Giovanni Potage is a great example of this - his Epithet is Soup, which on the surface level sounds like a useless power, but thanks to Giovanni's extremely high Creativity stat, he constantly comes up with new powers and abilities that let him hold his own in almost any battle.
  • Giovanni has an ability that's also an example of this. His normal attack is just an average power physical attack. However, because of his Critical 13 passive ability, he unleashes a super attack on every 13th hit.

Webcomics

• Drift in Alien Dice was very small and generally considered useless by Lexx at level one, but when he finally leveled up he grew bigger than even Epsy (though it seems that most of his mass is fluff).
• As seen in the title image, Manly Guys Doing Manly Things's Mr. Fish, now a Gyarados, kicks a metric ton of ass as a Magikarp. If only because his trainer Jared used him as a bludgeon to win battles. Mr. Fish is actually larger and more muscular than the average Gyrados as well, leading pokemon researchers to inquire Jared about his secret training technique.
• This is Ashley's situation in El Goonish Shive. As of the un-change, her magic levels are no higher than those of the average Muggle, which means it will take a lot of time and effort for her to Awaken. But as a wizard, once she does Awaken she will be able to learn other's spells in addition to those she is granted by the Will of Magic, giving her a much higher potential power level than most of the cast.
• In The Gamer, Han Jee-han gets a Sudden Game Interface, and he begins with the same power level as a normal high school teenager. As he manages to learn how to create dungeons for training, and coming up with new powers through his imagination or with help from his friends and allies, he eventually becomes such a powerhouse that he becomes a full-fledged faction all by himself.
• In A Girl and Her Fed, the Pocket President program was thought to be a failed attempt at untraceable, unblockable communications between federal agents. Chips that were repurposed into free-will suppressing Restraining Bolts. When the ghost of Ben Franklin manages to give The Fed full control of his chip, he finds out not only can he communicate with any other agent from the program, he can communicate with any computer system on Earth, among other things. We later found that the chips were intentionally nerfed and the restraining elements added, to keep that kind of power away from the Agents.
• In Homestuck:
  • The Page class is pretty weak at first, but it's stated that it becomes Game Breakingly-powerful at high levels, though Vriska claims that Pages' own Weak-Willed natures prevent them from fulfilling their potential on their own.
  • Tavros's FLARP class, Boy-Skylark, is also described by Aradia as having no really useful combat techniques until high level.

Web Original

• How to Hero's entry on "Lame Superpowers" discusses this.

Western Animation

• In the Johnny Test episode "Johnny'Mon", Johnny, Dukey, and his sisters get trapped in a Pokémon expy, and the only "Tiny'Mon" they're able to "snatch" was a Joke Character named Cuddlebuns that was supposedly impossible to train. However it was shown that through The Power of Friendship it could evolve into the Legendary Tiny'Mon Screechereen. This is repeated in a sequel to this episode that has Johnny trapped in the Tiny'Mon world again and forced to use his father and Dukie as his Tiny'Mon. The battle seems hopeless until he transfers Screechereen's experience points to Dukie and Dad, causing them to evolve into powerful forms.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
  • This show's incarnation of Lord Tirek portrays him in this way. As a result of over a thousand years of imprisonment, Tirek starts out emaciated and weak, forced to sulk in dark alleyways and Mana Drain any straggling unicorns. Over the course of two episodes, however, he drains enough magic to become a Nigh Invulnerable Physical God (in addition to gaining a massive, muscular form and a deep, booming voice). Tirek had to trick Discord into helping him by pretending to be a friend and kindred spirit, right up until the point where Tirek was strong enough to drain him.
  • Spike from the same show is in the same boat, with some episodes treating him as The Load and the poor guy struggling with feelings of uselessness in the face of his more-powerful friends. Catch is, Spike is a baby dragon, so the show is pretty clear that his point of being useless is pretty temporary, as the few adult dragons shown have been incredibly powerful. This is shown when his fire breath has gradually become stronger as the series has gone on, going from relatively minor to being able to destroy a gigantic falling mass of ice by himself. After molting, he gains wings and his firebreath becomes strong enough to drive off a Roc.
  • Similar deal for Twilight Sparkle of the same show, who was apparently somewhat of an Inept Mage in her childhood (or at least very far from her current power level). A Sonic Rainboom unlocks in her a talent for learning any and all magic and a magical potential beyond any pony. When we meet her first, she is already pretty close to being The Archmage.

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