Sandbox / Exploitable Drawback

To do: Rename this into "Exploitable Disadvantage" before TLP'ing it.

Many powerful moves and items come with drawbacks. While some games would just tell you to suck it up or not use them, others give you a way to take advantage of the drawback, or at least make it more palatable.

It is frequently spelled out how you can exploit an Exploitable Drawback. For instance, if the attack Inferno has the effect "Deal 75 damage. You become Burned," there may also be one called Lash Out that reads "Deal 45 damage. If you are Burned, deal 45 damage again." However, it can be more subtle than this. For instance, if your character can shrug off a Burn and the game's Status Effects are mutually exclusive, the Burn can be exploited as protection from worse statuses.

Many drawback-exploiting effects are also useful against enemies that happen to trigger them. How much this plays into the evaluation may vary. Perhaps Lash Out on its own is too specific if you don't also have Inferno, or maybe Burns are so common that it's still worth it. Similarly, the high damage of Inferno may or may not be worth the Burn drawback if you don't have a way to take advantage of it. Moreover, the existence of Lash Out encourages a player to think twice about getting an Anti-Debuff item.

If an effect lets you exploit a drawback, players will often try to make Joke Items that do nothing but apply a drawback work with it. However, this tends not to work out well because the item is useless if you for whatever reason can't access the drawback exploiter (e.g. you didn't draw it in a card game), and... why would you play a card that says "discard three cards for no benefit" when you can play "discard three cards to summon a powerful monster"?

Compare Power at a Price and Not the Intended Use.

Examples

Board Games

• Dominion:
  • Coppers and Estates are usually Deck Cloggers, but a few cards try to make them less of junk cards: Coppersmith makes Coppers more valuable (though it was removed because it turned out to be a pretty weak card), Counting House lets you get back Coppers from the discard pile (also removed for being too weak), Baron lets you discard an Estate for $4 (for comparison, Gold is worth $3), and Inheritance is an expensive Event that lets you play Estates as actual Action cards.
  • Museum gives you 2 Victory Points for each differently named card you have, which gives you some incentive to keep one copy of a junk card.
  • Gardens give you 1 point per 10 cards. This can turn any situation where there are spare Buys spent on free Coppers very valuable, especially with numerous Gardens.
• Siege in A Few Acres Of Snow is bad, especially when you are on the receiving end, and especially when you are French. However, a siege means you are temporarily trimming down your deck, since military cards are locked in the siege. This means you can reduce your deck to the specific cards you need, often less than a single hand. Thus, the French can rapidly start fur-trading (their starting deck has a trader and 3 otherwise useless fur cards), while the British can effortlessly settle all their way to both Quebec and Fort Duquesne and fortify their positions (normally a daunting task).
• The B side of the starting tile in The Quest For El Dorado has a trashing site that requires spending a single Coin to reach or get out of it. Sure, you aren't buying just to hop over that tile... but this also means you are amassing Travellers in your discard pile while getting rid of everything else. With a decent draw, this can rid the deck of the starting cards except the Travellers in just two turns, while making buying new, powerful cards a breeze, easily allowing players to catch up with whatever others were doing.

Collectible Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering:
  • Many cards use discarding cards as a drawback, but it can be used to discard something you wanted to play from the graveyard.
  • Sacrificing a creature as a cost can be used to with a useful on-death trigger.

Video Games

• Downfall Slay The Spire:
  • The Hermit has a theme of turning drawbacks into advantages:
    • The starting Strikes and Defends usually amount to glorified Deck Cloggers that make it harder to draw the cards you actually want. However, the Hermit has a lot of cards that explicitly synergize with them.
    • Many of his cards debuff him as a drawback. However, the card Determination makes him gain strength every time he's debuffed for any reason.
    • Curses are usually Deck Cloggers with other detrimental effects, but the Hermit has cards that can exploit them — for instance, Shadow Cloak gives you 6 free block every time you draw a Curse. Also, his upgraded starter relic Clasped Locket lets you draw two extra cards the first time you draw a Curse every turn, effectively turning the Curse into card advantage.
    • Midnight is a block card that also adds a Curse to your hand. If it's in the middle of your hand at the end of your turn, it'll deal damage to everyone, which can eat up all of the block you were trying to get. However, if you don't need extra block, you can play Midnight and trigger the curse on purpose to damage enemies.
  • The Automaton has many cards that give you a Status card as a drawback, and some cards that reward having statuses: It's a Feature (which represents trying to pass off bugs as a features) grants 1 Strength and Dexterity every time you draw a Status (or Curse) card, and Ship It (which represents someone knowing a program is buggy and deciding to ship it anyway) is an attack that deals additional damage for all of your Status cards (including exhausted ones; it also counts Curses).
  • The Collector's Pyre mechanic is flavored as Power at a Price — to play a card, she has to burn another card. However, between the fact that you can burn unwanted cards (Deck Cloggers, weak basic cards, anything that doesn't work well against the current encounter...), that some cards reward you for burning them, and that two cards let you get back a Pyred card in a way that helps you play it, there are plenty of ways to turn it into an advantage.
  • The Bronze Idol relic turns Status cards into playable cards with mild positive effects, and can be used with various characters' self-statusing cards.
• Slay the Spire:
  • Many events use curses — Deck Cloggers that go in your deck permanently (most can be removed at a cost) — as a drawback. Two relics are designed to make taking them more palatable: the Darkstone Periapt gives you +6 max HP every time you take a curse, and the Du-Vu Doll gives you 1 Strength per Curse in your deck.
  • The Ironclad has a boss relic and several cards that give him Status cards as a drawback. He also has access to the card Fire Breathing, which deals damage to every enemy whenever you draw a Status (or Curse). There's also Evolve, which draws an extra card whenever you draw a Status card, which means they don't really clog your deck anymore.
  • The Ironclad has some cards that are Cast from Hit Points. These can be used to trigger the effect of Rupture (gain 1 Strength whenever you lose HP from a card effect) and Runic Cube (draw 1 card whenever you lose HP).
  • Many of the Silent's cards require you to discard, which reads like a drawback because it gives you fewer cards to play. However, it can be turned into a positive: two cards are Unplayable and actively give you a benefit when discarded, and a boss relic and a card reward you for discarding anything. Also, being able to discard unwanted stuff prevents hand clog if you're drawing a bunch of cards.
  • Snecko Eye lets you draw two extra cards per turn, at the cost of you starting each combat Confused — i.e. your card costs are randomized. This can screw you over, but it also gives you a lot of room to take powerful, energy-intensive cards, since their costs will be randomized anyway and have a high chance of becoming lower.