History Main / PowerfulButInaccurate

* Aerial bombing. Gather enough bombers, and you could flatten just about anything with impunity - if you could hit it. WWII bombing was sufficiently inaccurate to miss ''cities'', and as late as Vietnam it took an entire carrier air wing (80+ aircraft lugging bombs and rockets) just to take out a bridge... maybe. Guided bombs have now thoroughly [[AvertedTrope averted]] this. An old joke is, "Airforce bombs are very accurate: [[OverlyNarrowSuperlative they are absolutely guaranteed to hit the ground]]."

-> ''"The Gauss Rifle can kill an enemy before he even knows he's dead, landing a hit however may prove difficult."''

* The Six Stars arms manufacturer in ''VideoGame/XenobladeChroniclesX'' produces weapons with high offensive stats but poor accuracy, operating under the principle that the user's skill should be able to compensate.

** ''Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold''[='=]s third major boss, Scylla, has Cry Soul, an attack that deals several blows that are powerful enough to one-shot all but the tankiest party members but so terribly inaccurate that usually none of them will actually hit. Unfortunately, she also possesses skills that inflict [[StandardStatusEffects sleep and paralysis]], and summons [[FlunkyBoss flunkies]] that attempt to bind your characters' legs -- all of which prevent dodging attacks...

* In an aversion of ArbitraryGunPower, automatic weapons in ''VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas'' do near the same amount of damage as slower-firing weapons using the same ammunition. Instead, the downside is that they are ''wildly'' inaccurate, and since the game doesn't have recoil, firing in short bursts won't help that.

* Aerial bombing. Gather enough bombers, and you could flatten just about anything with impunity - if you could hit it. WWII bombing was sufficiently inaccurate to miss ''cities'', and as late as Vietnam it took an entire carrier air wing (80+ aircraft lugging bombs and rockets) just to take out a bridge... maybe. Guided bombs have now thoroughly [[AvertedTrope averted]] this.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' features a modified version of the ''Dungeons and Dragons'' Power Attack feat. The bonus and penalty cannot be modified by the player, nerfing the feat heavily.

Do not confuse with PowerfulButIncomptent.

** Zap Cannon and Dynamic Punch have 100 base power and, barring immunity, guarantee a status ailment (Paralysis for Zap Cannon, Confusion for Dynamic Punch) if they connect...which is only about half of the time.

* {{BFG}}s like the Desert Eagle [=.50AE=]. Even if shot two-handed, the recoil with yank the entire gun upward before the bullet has left the barrel.

* ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'':
[[DunceCap The Wiz]] gives you a double shot at no damage or speed penalty, but makes them fire diagonally outwards.

* In ''[[Videogame/MechWarrior MechWarrior Living Legends]]'', Heavy Lasers aren't inherently accurate, being a HitScan pinpoint-precise death ray. However, they have such a long burn time that the slightest bit of [[CameraAbuse cockpit shake]] or the enemy simply turning away can cause the laser to splatter their damage across [[SubsystemDamage multiple components]]. Medium Range Missiles fit it to a tee, however; launching no less than 10 barely guided rockets that deal massive damage through massive salvos where its uncommon for more than half to actually hit a moving target.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/inaccurate.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:[[Webcomic/EightBitTheater It ends up causing mass extinction on the next ''planet''.]]]]

* ''VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown'' and ''VideoGame/XCOM2'' have the Heavy/Grenadier classes, who carry squad support weapons that can deal a heinous amount of damage, but who also have the worst Aim progression among soldiers that are already memetically famous for their ATeamFiring. As such, they benefit from combined arms tactics like having a squadmate use a grenade to destroy an enemy's cover, or you can just use the classes' secondary weapons, a rocket launcher and grenade launcher, respectively.

* ''VideoGame/{{Persona 5}}'': The Lucky Punch and Miracle Punch skills have an increased chance to inflict a damaging CriticalHit, but also have a much higher chance of missing completely, and relatively low base damage.

* One of the prime examples in ''VideoGame/LeagueOfLegends'' is Veigar's W skill, "Dark Matter". It hits REALLY hard and often (each 50 points of AP he gets with passive will reduce its cooldown). The problem lies in the rest of Veigar's kit, which doesn't offer crowd control outside his E, "Event Horizon".

* In ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'', this is the main drawback of Ordnance weapons in most editions. Unlike a lascannon heavy weapon, which is fired at a single soldier or vehicle, an Ordnance weapon like a Basilisk's "Earthshaker" artillery shell uses a six-inch-wide circular template (affectionately called the "pie plate") to resolve which models are affected, potentially letting it remove entire infantry squads or squadrons of light vehicles in a single shot. The downside is that while a lascannon will just hit or miss based on the result of a six-sided dice, giving an Imperial player even odds or better of hitting the target, an Ordnance weapon's template is placed by the shooting player where they'd ''like'' the shot to land, then they roll a special Scatter dice and two six-sided dice to see where the shot ''actually'' lands. If you're lucky you can roll a "hit" result and land dead on-target, if you're unlucky that Earthshaker shell scatters 12 inches to splat one of your own units.

* ''Videogame/WorldOfTanks'': Plentiful, but in general anything that gets {{Fan Nickname}}d a derpgun or trollcannon qualifies. The original derpgun, and the epitome of this trope in that particular game, is the KV-2, which has a heavy howitzer that has severe trouble hitting anything, but will often OneHitKill anything in its tier, and a few above it. However, it's low accuracy rating is somewhat misleading given that it fires high-explosive shells. Unlike an armor-piercing shell that does nothing if it fails to penetrate a target's armor, a high-explosive shell always does damage if it hits, with variance based on how thick the armor of the location it tagged is. The KV-2's massive 152mm gun has so much power in its shells that it will inflict massive damage even if it strikes a relatively well-armored opponent of its tier.

* ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands 2}}'' features Gaige the Mechromancer, whose Ordered Chaos skill tree is designed around this trope. The mandatory first-tier skill Anarchy accumulates stacks every time she kills an enemy or empties her magazine, increasing her gun damage by 1.75% per stack at the cost of an equal amount of accuracy. The initial cap is 150 stacks, for a 262.5% modifier, but the skill Preshrunk Cyberpunk can increase the cap to 400 (a 700% modifier) naturally or 600 (a staggering 1050% modifier) with the help of a Slayer of Terramorphous class mod. Needless to say, you won't be hitting your target very often by that point, but when you do, they'll feel it. You can offset the accuracy loss with the skill Close Enough, which gives bullets that hit solid terrain a chance to ricochet and hit an enemy for half damage, and The Nth Degree, which lets every few bullets that actually hit an enemy bounce towards another target.

* Many shooters with limited arsenals tend to balance weapons of the same tier like this. For example, in ''VideoGame/PaydayTheHeist'' and ''VideoGame/Left4Dead2'', the AK-47 is the high-damage/low-accuracy rifle and the Mac-10 is the high-damage/low-accuracy SMG, with their replacement options being all 'low-damage/high-accuracy' weapons.

* This is essentially the modus operandi of Hoverbomb Gun in ''Videogame/RatchetAndClankGoingCommando''. It is the strongest weapon not named [[InfinityPlusOneSword R.Y.N.O.II or Zodiac]] and in fact you can steer the mine remotely while it is floating and technically has infinite range. However, unlike for Visibomb Gun or Spiderbomb Glove, you stay in Ratchet's third-person view, so good luck actually hitting anything when DepthDeception is a serious problem unless you're using it at point-blank range.

* There are a couple items in ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac'' that work like this. Of note are Tiny Planet, which gives your tears incredible range but causes them to orbit around you instead of firing straight; and [[DunceCap The Wiz]], which gives you a double shot at no damage or speed penalty, but makes them fire diagonally outwards.

* ''WebComic/EightBitTheater'', [[HeroicComedicSociopath Black Mage's]] Hadoken is like this. Early in the series, he shoots it at an ogre and destroys the entire Giant's Forest. Later he uses it to DungeonBypass the [[DeathCourse Four Hundred Bearded Trials of Strength]]. Every other time he uses it, he misses. At his worst, he managed to miss an entire volcano.

* Many missile systems, both historical and modern, suffer from this; unintentional civilian casualties are common in times of war and often spun as "acceptable losses" or "collateral damage". One of the more infamous examples from modern times was the R-300 Scud-B used in many wars throughout UsefulNotes/TheMiddleEast.
** Prime example: the V-1. It was probably the first cruise missile used in warfare, and it was generally used by the Nazis to bomb cities because it was unable to hit anything smaller. The circle around its designated target in which it actually landed, in case it wasn't shot down by interceptors or anti-aircraft guns first, was reduced from 19 to seven miles in diameter by the end of the war.
** The V-2 was even more powerful and much harder to shoot down back then. But its seven-mile target circle didn't qualify as "accurate" either.

* Naval artillery is this trope UpToEleven and could well be the TropeCodifier. A single battleship shell could destroy ''any'' type of opponent, but naval artillery was notoriously inaccurate because both the shooting vessel and the target are moving and it may take up to one minute for the shell to fly from the gun to the target. In WWII it was estimated that only 3% of all main battery shells hit the target. However, this trope was somewhat negated later in the war, and afterward, by advances in radar-controlled targeting systems.

* Naval artillery is this trope UpToEleven and could well be the TropeCodifier. A single battleship shell could destroy ''any'' type of opponent, but naval artillery was (and is still) notoriously inaccurate because both the shooting vessel and the target are moving and it may take up to one minute for the shell to fly from the gun to the target. In WWII it was estimated that only 3% of all main battery shells hit the target.

* This is essentially the modus operandi of Hoverbomb Gun in ''Videogame/RatchetAndClankGoingCommando''. It is the strongest weapon not named [[InfinityPlusOneSword R.Y.N.O.II or Zodiac]] and in fact you can steer the mine remotely while it is floating and technically has infinite range. However, unlike Visibomb Gun or Spiderbomb Glove, you stay in Ratchet's third-person view, so good luck actually hitting anything when DepthDeception is a serious problem unless you're using it at point-blank range.

** The Laser move at maximum level can score a huge 80 untyped damage over 4 seconds if it hits, but it has a rather noticeable miss chance.

* ''VideoGame/ArmoryAndMachine2''
** The Laser move at maximum level can score 80 untyped damage over 4 seconds if it hits, but it has a rather low hit rate.