History Main / UselessSuperpowers

** 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.

* 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.

* In the DragonBall movie 'Bardock: Father of Goku', the titular character is granted precognitive powers by the last of a race he was slaughtering. You'd think being able to see the future would be useful, but in this case, the power comes in the forms of random, uncontrolled visions of the future, which mostly consist of his youngest son's life on Earth and Freeza wiping out the saiyan planet and all of its people. Which was the point. The alien gave Bardock the visions as a form of vengeance, hoping to punish the saiyan with dreams of a future that can't be stopped. The only consolation is the knowledge that his son will be the one to defeat Freeza.

* 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 PersonOfMassDestruction to mere CombatCommentator.

* Throughout Season Seven of ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', 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.

** 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). Which is even more bizarre since he has a PsychicLink to the TARDIS (it's what allows the TARDIS to act as a [[TranslatorMicrobes universal translator]] for the Doctor and his companions), but cannot apparently operate the TARDIS through it (maybe the Time Lords never got around to adding that feature).

** 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.

** Frequently an issue with Deanna Troi on ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration''. As [[{{Telepathy}} empathic/telepathic]] powers can serve as either a PlotDevice or a StoryBreakerPower, writers often had to struggle with the use of her character. Sometimes her powers were extremely useful, other times they were useless. It did not help that [[DependingOnTheWriter writers were very inconsistent]] as to the exact extent of her abilities. In some cases she was shown as being able to sense people on a planet's surface while she herself was on the Enterprise in orbit, or even just sense psychic ''impressions'' left behind by strong emotions experienced in the past. At other times she would completely miss things happening right in front of her. Sometimes handwaved as MindOverManners.

** 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).

* Lucretia from Literature/{{Bystander}} has won the SuperpowerLottery. However, books and street signs don't take into account thermal vision, and its only because her temperature sight only activates in areas of significant fluctuation (like outside) that she can read at all. Likewise, her ability to see electricity makes computers, cell phones and [=TVs=] more or less useless for her. Finally, she has [[WeaksauceWeakness such a pathetic level of fighting skill]] that normal people had only a little difficulty handling her despite her strength and actual trained soldiers easily take her down. It's no wonder that she puts most of her faith in her skills as a [[GuileHero street rat]] and [[ManipulativeBastard manipulator]]. Even then, her sloppily executed BatmanGambit is what causes things to spin out of control plot-wise.

* In the [[AnimatedAdaptation animated]] version of ''WesternAnimation/{{Beetlejuice}}'', the title character can do pretty much whatever he wants once Lydia calls him into the living world. However all of his spells backfire or have ridiculous drawbacks, or he [[LiteralGenie literally interprets a wish]] or [[YouJustHadToSayIt underestimates the penalties involved.]]
** 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.

*** Yuyuko's secondary power, to control ghosts, is the opposite. Since every single thing in the Netherworld is a ghost or phantom or some sort, she has absolute control over the entirety of the Netherworld. Gensokyo itself has no shortage of spirits either, making it effective there too.

** By [[Literature/HarryPotterAndThePrisonerOfAzkaban 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 [[Literature/HarryPotterAndTheGobletOfFire 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.

Common in series like ''Series/{{Bewitched}}'', where the characters are given almost unlimited powers at the beginning, and the writers have to come up with more and more [[WeaksauceWeakness arcane limitations]] to create a new conflict each week.

*** 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.
*** And Harry doesn't even do any magic at the Burrow until he turns seventeen and is legally allowed to, so nothing really changes.

* In the Whateley Universe, Tennyo tends to suffer from this. While her powers are ridiculously helpful at killing things dead, she has a BIT of a problem with the whole 'holding back' deal. Also, Nikki, a powerful sorceress, tends to have trouble with sneezing in the middle of incantations, prompting surprisingly useful mayhem!

* Richard of the ''Literature/TheSwordOfTruth'' 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. Richard's powers are often noted to be inversely proportional to the number of pages are left.

* LarryNiven averted this by ending his KnownSpace 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]]...

* Richard of the ''SwordOfTruth'' 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. Richard's powers are often noted to be inversely proportional to the number of pages are left.

** 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).

* Another is in ''OutOfThisWorld'', where Evie's almost unbounded "Gleeping" power manages to fail at crucial plot points in pretty much every episode.

* Richard of the ''SwordOfTruth'' 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 inversely proportional to the number of pages are left.

* [[DragonBallAbridged Bardock: Useless-ass psychic powers!]]

-->--[[ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee's]] review on ''{{Scribblenauts}}''

* Used constantly on ''TheFairlyOddParents''. This series mostly avoids the problems ''Series/{{Bewitched}}'' had, however, by [[MagicAIsMagicA explaining the rules the fairies work by at the beginning and then sticking to them]]. And yet, despite the exaggeratedly large size of the rule book, it only contains about 20 or so rules, with a new one popping up whenever the plot calls for it.
** Then again, half the time they simply give Timmy the IdiotBall, 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 IdiotBall is named Cosmo.
*** To be fair, EVERYBODY in Fairly Oddparents is an idiot, to one degree or another- it's ''that'' kind of comedy. Timmy is actually one of the less dumb characters in the show.
*** '"I wish I could change Da Rules." "I wish I had thought this out a little better, or had more foresight in the future."
**** "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 ''WesternAnimation/{{Ben 10}}'' only manages to sidestep that category by showing fairly early on that the hero is absolutely ''clueless'' about how his ImportedAlienPhlebotinum works.

* ''HarryPotter'''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.

** I think you'll find that Richard's powers are directly related to how many pages are left.