History Main / CrutchCharacter

* In ''Literature/HarryPotterAndTheOrderOfThePhoenix'' Harry winds up being this from the perspective of the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Ron has crippling confidence issues interfering with his ability to play keeper, not helped by the Slytherins' bullying strategy of singing a sarcastic idolization song painting him as Slytherin's greatest weapon because he sucks so badly. Harry manages to save the first game of the year from Ron's poor performance by catching the Snitch, but when he's banned from Quidditch due to the events after the match, the team is scrambling to replace him, Fred and George while Ron needs to improve quickly. [[spoiler:In the end, Ron does come through, and Gryffindor wins the Cup without Harry,]] and would do so again in [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheHalfBloodPrince Book 6]].

* ''I Was Dismissed from the Hero's Party'': Aiga James is in a similar position to [[LightNovel/BanishedFromTheHerosParty Gideon Ragnason]], and explicitly has the Training Skill to help others get more powerful, though he eventually peaks. However, instead of being unceremoniously being kicked out for being useless like Gideon was, his party is instead grateful and gives him a Fief, which sets up the plot where he opts to train his Fief in the same manner. Overlaps with ObsoleteMentor since he also trained the resident BlackMagicianGirl as an apprentice.

* ''LightNovel/BanishedFromTheHerosParty'': The protagonist, Gideon Ragnason, has the "Blessing of the Guide", which was given to him at birth. It gives him a massive boost in levels in comparison to the rest of the Hero's party, the Hero fo which is not him but rather [[TheChosenOne his sister]]. Unfortunately, that's all it really does and once the rest finally do catch up to him, ''he's'' no longer able to keep up with ''them'' and is thus kicked out of the party by one of them when the story starts. This does come back to bite the party, however, as while Gideon wasn't exactly specialized in one thing, he was really great at survival skills, an ExcellentJudgeOfCharacter, and possessed other non-combat skills that others cannot do. Not to mention, he was the party's cook which made the party's lives more comfortable. A side story of the novel even reveals that if he had stayed with the party far longer, [[spoiler:he would have died due to being a MasterOfNone.]]

* Sidhe characters in ''[[7th Sea]]'' were a particularly hideous example, in both directions. They get a lot of powerful, practical benefits, including higher starting Traits (and free Legendary Trait in all five traits), 10 Reputation, a pile of free Advantages, and a free Sorcery, with the only major limitation being a few minor restrictions on the skillsets and Schools they could start the game with. However, Sidhe characters were also ''incapable of ever earning XP'', meaning they never saw any kind of progression. The end result was a character who would utterly overshadow the rest of the party early on, but would eventually fall behind as they never learned, grew, or improved.

** Quincy is this when compared to the other heroes. He's cheap enough to be purchased the first round in any game mode, and can hold off the early rounds single-handedly. However, he starts getting overwhelmed by around round 20 without support. His effectiveness suffers past the early game, but late game he does improve a bit.
** Sauda is a Tack Shooter on steroids. She can be purchased on the first round, can solo the first 30 or so rounds, longer if she's surrouned by tracks, has camo detection and her abilities can destroy lead bloons. Most Easy and some Intermediate maps have great placement locations for her, but in harder maps her lack of range becomes an issue, with split tracks and less looping tracks crippling her damage output.

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* ''[[VideoGame/GuardianHeroes Advance Guardian Heroes]]'' has an interesting version of this. Throughout the game, you're pitted against the main characters from the first game, and upon beating them they lend you their soul, offering a massive stat boost. However, said stat boosts get taken away frequently (whenever you fight one of the heroes, first you have to beat them, and then the souls you've collected so far are taken away and turned back into the characters they belong to, and then you have to fight them all over again all at once) and in the final boss fight they're permanently taken away one by one, so if you aren't still leveling up these boosted stats you'll be in for a world of hurt.
* In ''VideoGame/HyperdimensionNeptuniaUActionUnleashed'', Uni is a victim of this. Early game has players use Uni, find a spot on the map and start shooting at whatever comes at her way just by holding the Square button. Very useful early game and quite a bit in the mid game, but when pitting her against bosses, she barely can damage them. The FinalBoss makes her even worse at that as the preferred range of attacking the boss is actually near her.
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[[folder:MOBA]]
* ''VideoGame/HeroesOfTheStorm''
** Li-Ming starts the game able to kill almost any squishy hero with one sequence of abilities, thanks to her insane base damage. Additionally, her Critical Mass trait refreshes all of her cooldowns when she scores a takedown, potentially rolling over an entire backline with perfect aim. This is balanced by her damage scaling, which increases by 3% per level instead of the standard 4%. Where in the early game Li-Ming can blow people up, in the late her damage can't keep up with the enemy's increased health, so she needs her team to soften targets first.
** Kel'Thuzad is a weird mix between this and MagikarpPower. His abilities aren't that powerful and only scale at ''2%'', but his trait is a built-in quest that grants him 75% bonus spell power permanently once he's finished it. If KT finishes his quest early, he can unleash a combo that will one-shot even the tankiest heroes. By level 16 however, his damage starts to mellow out, eventually falling in line with other mages. If he doesn't finish his quest in a timely manner, KT suffers from CantCatchUp harder than any hero.
* ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'' has "bully" characters whose main attribute is an ability kit with great base power but poor item-based scaling, or an ability kit designed to be excellent for early game laning but fall off in power as the game goes on. Competent bully players will capitalize on their early game strength to prevent the enemy laner from becoming strong and outscaling them while increasing their advantage(minion kills, champion kill, tower kills, objectives, etc) in order to set up their team with a favorable game that can be more easily won.
** [[Characters/LeagueOfLegendsDarius Darius]] stands out for his monstrous power in the laning phase. The base damage of his abilities is enough to chunk through his opponent's life bar, and his ''[[DamageOverTime Hemorrhage]]'' passive, which inflicts a bleed effect, can even ensure kills should the latter be on their last legs after an extended fight. This power becomes a lot harder to use late in the game though, as while he's still incredibly threatening one-on-one, a coordinated team, with all of their crowd control, range, and defensive options, can stall the [[MightyGlacier slow, close-ranged Darius]], preventing him from getting any real damage in. He'll often have to rely on his teammates to create openings, either by locking down or pelting at the enemy from afar, so he can go in and score executions on the weakened foes.
** Pantheon is the Epitome of early game power. His greatest weakness in the early game is the mana costs of his abilities, which is mitigated by a starting item. In the early game he comes in with high burst and can easily punish his opponents for getting close to kill minions, and trades well. His passive empowers one of his abilities, allowing him to easily execute, lockdown, or block non-tower damage from in front of him. At level six, he can use his 'Grand Skyfall' ability to flank his opponents from anywhere, allowing him to secure advantages for himself and his team. As the game progresses, he has moderate scaling into the late game, but falls off heavily due to most of his power being flanking and dueling opponents rather than the team-centric grouping that happens in the later parts of the game. Oh, and the laner he was supposed to make useless and crush by now has scaled and brings more to their team than Pantheon does for his.
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** Azazel starts with flight, three black hearts (and can still gain red heart containers), and a short-ranged high damage [[BreathWeapon Brimstone laser]] instead of tears. He absolutely destroys early floors, but the key word is ''short-ranged''. He struggles against some of the BulletHell bosses later in the game since he has to practically hug enemies to deal any damage.

* ''LightNovel/AccelWorld'' has Haruyuki's Duel Avatar, Silver Crow. His ability to fly, something that no other Duel Avatar has ever possessed, gives him a great advantage in the territory battles, at least until his team runs into ranged attackers who are able to take down Haruyuki while he's flying. As such, Nega Nebulus is held back until Haruyuki can overcome this problem, as well as the hit to his already fragile self-confidence.

* Mamako of ''LightNovel/DoYouLoveYourMomAndHerTwoHitMultiTargetAttacks'' is the pure embodment of this trope. She always kills monsters before Masato can because of her drive to protect him, not noticing how this upsets him. Masato, Wise, and Medhi all get irritated about this because this prevents them from leveling up, but no matter how many times they ask her to let them kill some monsters, she cannot be convinced to stop. She just believes that she's protecting her son.

* ''Franchise/{{Splatoon}}'' has one in the form of a weapon. The Aerospray family of shooter weapons tends to get labeled this by the competitive scene. In Turf Wars, their insane fire rate and spread makes them great for inking turf, but people who tend to take one of these glorified airbrushes into ranked play are usually in for a rude wake-up call, where its short range and random spread shots make most people who play it little more than target practice for anyone who using more confrontational weapons.

* ''VideoGame/DisgaeaHourOfDarkness'' has Laharl himself. If you [[OneManParty use him and him alone]], he'll remain several levels above any enemies he faces in the game proper, allowing him to steamroller through all opposition with far less grinding than it would take to make any other character useful. Unfortunately, he is less capable than a Divine Majin, and while he can transmigrate, he can't change classes when doing so, so he's at a disadvantage when LevelGrinding for the bonus content (which over half of any serious player's playtime will be devoted to).

*** Gunter, a prepromote Great Knight with decent bases and atrocious growths who [[spoiler:leaves the party at the end of Chapter 3 when Hans throws him into a chasm to his apparent death. He survives and returns in the ''Conquest'' route, where he manages to become this ''twice''; the chapter he returns in is just you, him, and QuirkyBard Azura, and he will likely have to do a lot of the heavy lifting for that chapter (fortunately, his stats have improved in the interim). He also survives and returns on the ''Revelation'' route with the stats he had when he left, but he manages to still be this because your party right then consists of your Lord character, a healer, and Azura, and it's extremely unlikely that either of those three will match his base stats when he does return, so Gunter (alongside maybe your Lord) will be your heavy lifter for the early part of Revelation.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'' has one in the form of a weapon. The Aerospray family of shooter weapons tends to get labeled this by the competitive scene. In Turf Wars, their insane fire rate and spread makes them great for inking turf, but people who tend to take one of these glorified airbrushes into ranked play are usually in for a rude wake-up call, where its short range and random spread shots make most people who play it little more than target practice for anyone who using more confrontational weapons.

* ''VideoGame/{{Splatoon}}'' has one in the form of a weapon. The [[http://splatoonwiki.org/wiki/Aerospray_RG Aerospray]] [[http://splatoonwiki.org/wiki/Aerospray_MG family]] tends to get labeled this by the competitive scene. In Turf Wars, its insane fire rate and spread makes it great for inking turf, but people who tend to take it into ranked play are usually in for a rude wake-up call, where its short range and random spread shots make most people who play it glorified target practice for anyone who using more confrontational weapons. Combine this with subs that don't make up for the weapon's main weaknesses, and you get a weapon that often underperforms in Ranked Battles.

*** ''Road to Ruin'''s Eva, a Swordmaster who takes this trope UpToEleven with her 0% Strength growth. She starts with both a powerful Pian Dao... and the Training Sword, which never breaks, is weak, and can't critically hit, making it an excellent weapon for weakening enemies so your other characters can pick them off.

* Pepper in ''Future Tactics: The Uprising'' is the only character in the game to have a Line of Sight and a Ballistic attack, both of which have unlimited ammo, which makes her more useful than every other character ''combined'' despite being a 12 year old girl. [[spoiler:[[PlotLineDeath The game takes her away from you very abruptly in a cutscene.]]]]

* Similarly, ''WesternAnimation/ThePowerpuffGirls'' realize in one episode that the people of Townsville have become so reliant on them that they're even called in to help with mundane tasks. Thus when the MonsterOfTheWeek shows up, they sit back and force the townspeople to take care of it themselves while only offering advice.

** Pantheon is the Epitome of early game power. His greatest weakness in the early game is the mana costs of his abilities, which is mitigated by a starting item. In the early game he comes in with high burst and can easily punish his opponents for getting close to kill minions, and trades well. His passive empowers one of his abilities, allowing him to easily execute, lockdown, or block non-tower damage from in front of him. At level six, he can use his 'Grand Skyfall' ability to flank his opponents from anywhere, allowing him to secure advantages for himself and his team. As the game progresses, he has moderate scalings into the late game, but falls off heavily due to most of his power being flanking and dueling opponents rather than the team-centric grouping that happens in the later parts of the game. Oh, and the laner he was supposed to make useless and crush by now has scaled and brings more to their team than Pantheon does for his.

** The game's poster-boy Excalibur is the foremost example regarding Warframe, and is even specifically described for the purpose of initiating new players in his summary card. He has a very intuitive playstyle that encourages players to focus more on understanding the game's mechanics without spending too much time worrying about how to use the warframe. Unfortunately, this correlates with a number of his abilities quickly dropping off in their effectiveness once the game's difficulty level gradually scales past the orientation phase (which is generally regarded to be Fortuna for the sandbox nodes, or Jupiter/ Saturn for the objective maptiles). ''Slash-Dash'' is usually made *nearly* obsolete once the player learns how to bullet-jump (it can theoretically still be used to some effect for building combo counters by running through enemy groups funnelled along narrow corridors), and his ''Radial Javelin'' scales abysmally and since it has no utility value, it becomes almost completely irrelevant by the time enemies reach level 50. His Radial Blind is the only survival tool he has (apart from his innate mobility) without dealing direct damage.

** Frost is this for the 'Magic Tank' caste. ''Snow Globe'' is his mainstay whilst his other abilities are meant to provide additional crowd control options, though unfortunately this means that apart from guarding defence objectives, his lack of versatility means that he is eventually sidelined for options like Gara, Limbo or Khora, who all have a great amount of utility and variety packed into their capabilities.

** The game's poster-boy Excalibur is the foremost example regarding Warframe, and is even specifically described for the purpose of initiating new players in his summary card. He has a very intuitive playstyle that encourages players to focus more on understanding the game's mechanics without spending too much time worrying about how to use the warframe. Unfortunately, this correlates with a number of his abilities quickly dropping off in their effectiveness once the game's difficulty level gradually scales past the orientation phase (which is generally regarded to be Fortuna for the sandbox nodes, or Jupiter/ Saturn for the objective maptiles). 'Slash-Dash' is usually made *nearly* obsolete once the player learns how to bullet-jump (it can theoretically still be used to some effect for building combo counters by running through enemy groups funnelled along narrow corridors), and his 'Radial Javelin' scales abysmally and since it has no utility value, it becomes almost completely irrelevant by the time enemies reach level 50. His Radial Blind is the only survival tool he has (apart from his innate mobility) without dealing direct damage.

** Volt suffers from a similar issue as Oberon above; he has a great toolkit particularly suited for gunplay and crowd control with a party-buff element ('Speed' grants an AoE movement and attacking speed buff onto teammates; 'Electric Shield' creates a transparent double-door sized barrier that enhances projectile damage by firing through it). Both great abilities, but which are also soon outpaced by options later acquired in the game. Many Volt endgame players usually opt for one of two general builds between one that focuses on enhancing the potency and duration of 'Speed', or by turning him into a CC and nuking annihilator by simply min-maxing the strength and range of his fourth ability, 'Discharge'.

** ** Oberon is a downplayed example of this trope. As a as a support-oriented generalist 'caster' warframe, his abilities in almost each department he caters for will be overshadowed by specialists to each role, such as crowd control (Status Effect procs has the likes of Ember, Octavia, and Nyx. Area Denial has Frost, Gara, Mag, and Vauban, among others), healing and armour buffs (Harrow, Trinity, Equinox); even other generalists fare better than he does (Wisp, Nezha, Titania, to name a few). However, that he's outclassed doesn't necessarily mean he's a *bad* frame, so much as the fact that in Oberon's case a player has to be selective about what one or two aspects of his build they wish to optimise in order to make him more end-game viable as the difficulty escalates, and as the Eidolon-hunting meta and multiple Steel Path builds have proven, this is far from impossible to do.

** The game's poster-boy Excalibur is the foremost example regarding Warframe, and is even specifically described for the purpose of initiating new players in his summary card. He has a very intuitive playstyle that encourages players to focus more on understanding the game's mechanics without spending too much time worrying about how to use the warframe. Unfortunately, this correlates with a number of his abilities quickly dropping off in their effectiveness once the game's difficulty level gradually scales past the orientation phase (which is generally regarded to be Fortuna for the sandbox nodes, or Jupiter/ Saturn for the objective maptiles). 'Slash-Dash' is usually made obsolete once the player learns how to bullet-jump, and his 'Radial Javelin' scales abysmally and since it has no utility value, it becomes almost completely irrelevant by the time enemies reach level 50. His Radial Blind is the only survival tool he has (apart from his innate mobility) without dealing direct damage.

** Oberon is supposed to be a JackOfAllTrades, but he's outclassed in anything he does. ''Smite'' has bad damage and the radiation status proc it inflicts (which causes enemies to fire on their allies) is outclassed by Nyx's ''Mind Control''; ''Hallowed Ground'' is patently useless once you start moving around; ''Renewal''[='=]s healing is outclassed by Trinity's ''Blessing''; and Nyx's ''Chaos'' is better than Oberon's ''Reckoning'' for crowd control, while ''Reckoning''[='=]s damage doesn't scale well to higher-levelled content.

** Ember. ''Fireball'', ''Fire Blast'' and ''World on Fire'' are all straight-up damage skills which become useless rather quickly once enemies reach level 40; ''Accelerant'' somewhat alleviates this by stunning enemies and making them take more Fire damage from Ember.

* Endou Mamoru, the protagonist of ''Manga/InazumaEleven'' and its sequels, is very prone to this. Being the starting Goal Keeper of your team, he is capable of stopping almost every special shot early on, and will usually block or push normal shots throughout the game almost effortlessly (especially noticeable in the random battles occurring between matches). It's pretty much possible to win almost all of the games keeping him as the main goalie, but the big problems begin during the end-game bosses as well as the subsequent "Challenge Mode" competitions: not only he levels up immensely slowlier than his fellow team mates due to his initial strength, thus crippling his stats, his final special catches consume so much [[MagicPoints TP]] that you're forced to put him out of HIS VERY OWN TEAM.

* ''VideoGame/TearRingSaga'', due to having LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, has several examples all in one game:

* They have high initial stats and abilities good for the early game, but CantCatchUp compared to your other party members. This is often due to poor or potentially not existent stat growth, lack of stronger abilities, and/or lack higher-end [[ClassAndLevelSystem Class]] options/[[EvolutionPowerup Evolutions]].

* They have high initial stats and abilities good for the early game, but CantCatchUp compared to your other party members. This is often due to poor stat growth, lack of stronger abilities, and/or lack higher-end [[ClassAndLevelSystem Class]] options/[[EvolutionPowerup Evolutions]].