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{{trope}}
The characters normally have access to powerful abilities, which could greatly help them in their current situation, but are currently unable to use them for one reason or another.
Common in series like ''[[
Often involves a [[Fantastic Aesop]] about how [[Mundane Utility|using powers]] to [[Hard Work Hardly Works|avoid hard work]] is Bad[[
A form of [[Holding Back the Phlebotinum]]. Compare [[Coconut Superpowers]]. For [[Stock Super Powers|superpowers]] that are actually useless in and of themeselves see [[What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?]] or [[Blessed
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* At the start of ''[[
* Miroku from ''[[Inuyasha]]'' is cursed with a black hole in the palm of his hand. While it will one day consume him, and even if he has children the curse will only be passed on to them, it can also suck in anything into an inescapable abyss. So what keeps this from being a story-breaking power? Nearly every enemy after his introduction has the ability to produce poisonous miasma, which ''does'' affect Miroku if he sucks it inside his hand. It doesn't take long for him to go from a super-powerful [[Person of Mass Destruction]] to mere [[Combat Commentator]].
** Although on several occasions when there truly is no other choice, Miroku will go ahead and use it and deal with being poisoned. The Wind Tunnel also grows as he uses it, and can be caused to grow more quickly by damage to his hand. Mostly the presence of poison is to prevent him from always using it rather than having the titular character be useful.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* The [[Silver Age]] version of [[
* ''[[Green Lantern]]'' stories from the same era. The fully-unleashed power of a Green Lantern is such that for a time even the yellow weakness wasn't enough: there had to be "invisible yellow" or "infra-yellow" or a "yellow compound" around when GL needed to attack enemies or manipulate objects that were so completely non-yellow. A little [[Techno Babble]] to make a green-clad bad guy count as yellow meant you didn't even need [[The Big Bang Theory|a #2 pencil]] to seriously ruin Hal's day.
== [[Literature]] ==
* Witchcraft and wizardry on the [[Discworld]]. Magic itself is not that difficult: learning when it's a good idea to use it is, because wizards' magic either causes [[Person of Mass Destruction|massive wanton property damage]], attracts the attention of [[Eldritch Abomination|Ghastly Things from the Dungeon Dimensions]], or both. Meanwhile, overuse of witchcraft's more showy elements [[With Great Power Comes Great Insanity|leads to cackling, gingerbread cottages and seriously dirty fingernails.]]
** In ''[[
** It's been outright stated that most of the education in Wizard Universities is learning how ''not'' to use magic.
*** Of course it may not be much of a problem, since it's also been stated that, dangerous magics aside, wizard universities work just like regular universities: They understand the futility of trying to actually teach young people anything, so they just put them near a lot of books in the hopes that things will pass from one to the other, while the young people themselves put themselves near bars, pubs, and taverns for exactly the same reason.
*** ''[[The Last Continent]]'' further clarifies that the University is less about education and more about giving the wizards a framework where their natural viciousness and ambition can be focused into academic feuds and gaining titles instead of magical warfare.
**** Though it could also be a case of [[Power Incontinence]], as it is often very difficult for a wizard to ''refrain'' from using magic.
** Of course, in ''[[Sourcery]]'', Pratchett shows just what happens when wizards use magic freely and have an abundance of power available to them. The results are... not pretty. It's strongly implied that the historical wars between wizards were ''even worse''. Not surprising that ''not'' using magic has become more important than the magic itself.
** At least one Discworld book points out that in nine out of ten situations there's just ''no point'' to using magic. Doing anything by magic takes the same amount of effort as doing it by not-magic. So you could create a loaf of bread out of sheer nothingness, but it'll just disappear again in a few seconds on the energy reserves of the average wizard. Better to just bake your own damn bread.
*** Additionally, Mustrum Ridcully once observed that there's not usually much point in conjuring up fireballs if monsters show up, since anything that isn't fazed by being whacked with six feet of solid oak staff is probably immune to magic as well.
** In a minor, non-spellcasting example, in ''[[Hogfather]]'' the UU wizards realize that every imaginary creature they mention that ''might'' be responsible for a mundane process (e.g. the Hair Loss Fairy) is popping into existence. The Dean immediately tries to exploit this new phenomenon by invoking the Give The Dean A Huge Bag Of Money Goblin; this fails, because he doesn't normally receive large bags of money for no visible reason, but it was presumably worth a try.
* [[Larry Niven]] averted this by ending his [[Known Space]] series after Ringworld, because he had introduced too much [[Phlebotinum]], like {{spoiler|the Teela Brown gene}}, to continue writing without invoking increasingly circuitous barriers to the use of said Phlebotinum. Of course, then he went and [[Sequelitis|made Ringworld Engineers, and Ringworld Throne, and]]...
* ''[[Harry Potter]]'''s Restriction on Underage Wizardry prevents the main cast from using magic outside of the school. Even without that, one has to contend with Potterverse magic being pretty much worthless because all of the major antagonists can also use magic with equal or greater skill.
** By book 3 he starts to evade these problems. He inflates his aunt like a balloon (she gets better and has her memory wiped by a third party) and is excused because everyone is just glad he's safe after he ran away, and then goes to a wizarding friend's house where he can cast supervised magic. In book 4, his abusive guardians are afraid of his godfather coming to get revenge on them, so they leave him alone from then on, and later in the series he often goes to wizarding friends' houses. The author got bored of the restrictions.
*** He's not allowed to cast supervised magic at Ron's house so much as the ministry doesn't know if he does - wizarding parents are expected to monitor their children, because the presence of magic in the house already makes it impossible to know if an adult or child cast it. It's only really obvious who did it if the only adults in the house are muggles.
* In the later ''[[Callahan's Crosstime Saloon
* Richard of the ''[[Sword of Truth]]'' series is said to have more magical ability than anyone else living, but he has to be emotionally charged to do jack. Occasionally he'll destroy an entire regiment with nothing more than a thought, but otherwise can't light a candle without flint.
** I think you'll find that Richard's powers are directly related to how many pages are left.
* In L.E Modesitt's ''Saga of Recluce'', mages have the power to reshape land, permanently alter weather, and wreak unholy destruction on those around them. However, the more powerful the magic, the greater the price. Using Order magic to cause death always results in a backlash against the mage, typically blindness. Improving the weather in one place can cause major and catastrophic climate shifts (in one book, changing one land from desert into productive land by moving weather systems creates a much larger desert elsewhere). Using Chaos magic prematurely ages the user, and turns one into walking
** It also appears to cause some substantial changes to the characters of the users. Habitual users of Chaos magic become chaotic themselves, power-hungry, backstabbing, untrustworthy, unstable, and conflict-prone. Order users can become passive, hidebound, rules-obsessed, excessively conservative, even reactionary.
** Even invisibility is nearly useless as a power. It's done in a very realistic manner, by bending the light around the mage; but this means that the mage has no light to see by, and is stuck in pitch darkness the entire time he's invisible. And, of course, he can still be ''heard'' just fine.
* Lucretia from [[Bystander (
** Interestingly, because of the way the book was designed, it is a pleasure to read, and a good proof that [[Tropes Are Not Bad]].
== [[Live
* A prime example of this is in the various ''[[Star Trek]]'' series, where their
** Or simply forgetting how many transporters are supposed to be on the ship.
** Or that if the ship's transporters are down, the shuttlecrafts' aren't.
** Or, for whatever reason, no one can contact the ship.
* Another is in ''[[Out of This World]]'', where Evie's almost unbounded "Gleeping" power manages to fail at crucial plot points in pretty much every episode.
* ''[[Sabrina the Teenage Witch (TV series)|Sabrina the Teenage Witch]]'' falls in the same category as ''[[
* In ''[[Doctor Who]]'', the Doctor's sonic screwdriver - normally an all-purpose lockpick - is unable to affect anything that's been secured with a "deadlock seal", which seems to pop up arbitrarily in all places and historical eras (though when it shows up on modern Earth it's always of alien origin).
** It doesn't work on wood, either. (No electronics or moving parts.)
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**** He's working on that one.
** Not to mention all the episodes where the main conflict could be ''easily'' solved if he had access to the TARDIS ... too bad he accidentally sealed it in a vault / had it stolen / got lost / fell down a shaft about ten seconds into the show (and five seconds after stepping out of it).
* The ''[[
** Hell, they're lucky if that's ''all'' that happens. Remember the time they tried to use magic to cure Piper of a fatal disease? The disease ''gained its own body'', became ''sentient'', and started ''killing people''. I guess the Elders take that personal gain rule REALLY freakin' seriously.
** This was made apparent to new character Paige; when she cast a 'Karma/reap what you sow' spell on a fellow employee, it backfired and gave her ''enormous breasts''.
*** You say that like it's a ''bad'' thing...
**** They were so big she had to break spherical holes into the windshield just to get in her car.
** Plus there was time after time a demon would be immune to their powers and require specific conditions to be vanquished. Considering that Piper got the power to blow things up, it was kind of necessary to maintain dramatic tension. An episode's major antagonist would seldom survive ''simply being gestured at by Piper,'' and the few who could handle that were still ''totally'' fragged if the sisters brought out the big guns and... said "The power of three will set us free" three times.
* By the end of the first season of ''[[Heroes (TV series)|Heroes]]'', Peter Petrelli, who could copy any superpower he saw, gained almost godlike status. In season 2, he can't use his superpowers because he has amnesia and can't remember most of them. In season 3, {{spoiler|he is trapped inside another body and can't access his powers. This ends when he has his powers taken away, and gets a new one, which is a largely toned down version of the power he originally had}}.
** Don't forget Ando, whose new super power is to augment other powers, essentially making him a super sidekick. {{spoiler|Until, that is, he learned that he could also use it to [[Kamehame Hadoken|Hadoken]] his enemies.}}
* Throughout Season Seven of ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', Willow is reluctant to make full use of her immense magical powers for fear of turning evil like she did in Season Six. Her fear was so great that in the series finale, when she did a powerful spell {{spoiler|to activate all the Potential Slayers in the world}}, she had her girlfriend with her in case she went completely evil and had to be killed.
** Averted in the Season 8 comics. By now, Willow has become confident enough to make full use of her powers even though she still gets the [[Black Eyes of Evil]] when she goes all out.
* In [[Misfits]], Alisha makes fun of a boy whose power is the ability to control... Milk! A bit rich considering her own power is the ability to make people rape her.
** Curtis has the ability of turning back time, but [[How Do I Shot Web?|doesn't know how to trigger it.]] It's eventually accepted that Curtis can only turn back time when he feels directly guilty about something, but that doesn't stop everyone else from telling him to turn back time whenever something bad happens (and having him respond, [[Catch Phrase|"It doesn't work like that!"]]).
** Nathan is immortal, but his healing factor only kicks in when he actually ''dies''.
* In ''[[
* In ''Tracker'', there's an episode where Cole is hit with an energy weapon that screws up his polarities and renders him unable to use his Cirronian powers.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* All characters in
== [[Radio]] ==
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== [[Video Games]] ==
* It is never explained why ''[[Mega Man (
** There is a bit of a [[Hand Wave]] established in [[All There in the Manual|the supporting documentation issued by Capcom]]. In fact, there are ''two'': either Mega Man has to travel through the various areas to stop the robots that are causing havoc (the Mooks), ''or'' the boss's room is protected against teleportation. Both are plausible.
** [[Fridge Logic]] applies on the first one, particularly with ''[[
** And on that note, ''[[
** There are two other possibilities: the teleport system is fixed or that Mega Man has no idea where specifically the main boss has secured himself thus that appearing in a random place is unavoidable (it only looks like a linear level to us players).
* ''[[Touhou Project]]'', and it's limitless [[Superpower Lottery|broken superpowers]] occasionally creates powers that simply never really get used.
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** Keine's superpower is theoretically unstoppable - she can consume history, and rewrite it at her whim, theoretically making her capable of consuming a person's ever being born. In-game, it seems she can't even make characters forget that the human village existed, much to her chagrin, and, due to its lack of flashiness, is generally ignored in fanon, for her much more visceral, but far less dignified head-butting of opponents.
** Rumia is given a far more humiliating reason for her power's uselessness - her "darkness" superpower was meant to sound scary, but is actually completely useless, because it's also her own [[Weaksauce Weakness]] - using her power blinds her, and she is canonically recorded to fly into trees whenever she uses it.
** Yuyuko Saigyouji has the power to kill humans. Of course, she is trapped in the underworld, where everyone is already dead. When she does encounter the living, they are [[One-Hit-Point Wonder]] humans that are easily dispatched by the same bullets everyone can use without special powers. [[
*** There's more to it than just that. Anything that enters the Netherworld is counted as dead for the duration of their stay, hence Yuyuko's own home is a [[Restraining Bolt]] on her power.
*** Also, Yuyuko actually doesn't like her power very much (the reason she's a ghost in the first place is that she committed suicide due to the fear of her own power), so she uses it very sparingly.
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* In [[
== [[Web Original]] ==
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== [[Western Animation]] ==
* Used constantly on ''[[The Fairly
** Then again, half the time they simply give Timmy the [[Idiot Ball]], and in many episodes he probably could've found a way around a restriction if he really thought it out.
*** In this specific example, the [[Idiot Ball]] is named Cosmo.
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**** "Oh, look, that's the first of Da Rules!." for #1, and for #2...Things get a thousand-times worse. "You thought it over, and came up with an even BETTER idea!"
**** Timmy actually tries this in the second video game. The results are... worse than expected.
* And ''[[
* In the second season finale of ''[[Justice League Unlimited]]'', Martian Manhunter wants to teleport all available Leaguers to battle the Luthor-Brainiac combination, but it is damaged. He comments that [[Lampshade Hanging|it's damaged so often, he wonders why they even bother with it anyway]].
** Heck, the Martian Manhunter is the biggest example of this, even moreso than Superman. He uses his shapeshifting three or four times in the entire show's run. He uses his mind reading powers to cry out in pain at how powerful the [[Monster of the Week]] is. His density shifting powers are rarely used to their full extent (He'll stare at oncoming projectiles rather than, well, become intangible and let them pass through him harmlessly) and only once did he bother to actually shift his density to become super hard and heavy in the entire show.
** This is applied a lot in [[Justice League]], given that if the Flash, Superman, and Martian Manhunter were allowed to apply their powers to their full extents, each one would probably be able to get more done alone than the entire unlimited league.
* In the [[Animated Adaptation|animated]] version of ''[[Beetlejuice (
** Example: Lydia is busy baking cookies for the Girl Scouts Cookie Sale. Beetlejuice gets bored and instantly conjures some cookies from the underworld. Lydia doesn't trust them, but she's woefully undersupplied so she sells them. The last line of the recipe? "Do not dunk." When Beetlejuice finally decides to test what happens, the cookie grows lifesized and goes on a rampage. So do all the other cookies he sold. Oops.
* There's an episode of ''[[
* ''[[Homestar Runner]]'' has an example of this when pointed out by Strong Bad in this e-mail [
{{quote|
* On ''[[The Magic School Bus]]'', said "magic" was frequently unreliable and the bus was prone to [[Phlebotinum Breakdown
** Not quite. Most of the time, all problems were made on purpose so that the kids could solve the problems by themselves and learn. It's the Frizzle's catch phrase.
* [[The Powerpuff Girls]] episode "Nuthin' Special" has Buttercup looking for a special power (like Blossom's ice breath and Bubbles' Spanish language), but every time she demonstrates one, her sisters duplicate it. Out of contempt, she sticks her tongue out at them, curling it in the process. To Buttercup's surprise and delight, Blossom and Bubbles cannot duplicate it. The narrator even lampshades how pointless it is.
{{reflist}}
[[Category:
[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]
[[Category:This Index Is Useless]]
[[Category:Magic and Powers]]
[[Category:
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