Dragon Ball features several examples to show that, sometimes, power and coolness factor aren't everything.
- One of the earliest examples in the franchise is the Oozaru, or Great Ape form exclusive to the Saiyan race. On the positive side, Saiyans get a 10x power boost in this form and can decimate entire planets in a single night. However, the negatives far outweigh these upsides; it requires a full moon to activate, and the transformation itself causes most Saiyans to become mindless, savage beasts that won't stop until everything in their path is destroyed. On top of that, its tail is just as much of a weak spot as ever, even becoming a far bigger target, and either cutting off the tail or blowing up the moon will halt the transformation. For that reason, the Great Ape is only used as an extreme tactic for when normal invasions won't suffice. Goku's own use of the form as a child was only ever useful for getting him out of being trapped, and upon basically unlocking the Great Ape's power boost as his base power level through the Ultra Divine Water, Kami had his tail permanently removed in exchange for bringing the moon back. Later on, Saiyan Elites like Vegeta make better use of the form by A) being able to create a Power Ball that acts as a good substitute for the moon, and B) being able to actually control the form. The part about his tail still applies, however.
- The famous Kamehameha initially started out as this. While it went on to become Goku's Signature Move, it took a lot of trial and error to get there. His lack of experience made firing the beam more tiring than his grandpa's Rock-Scissors-Paper style, and even when Master Roshi used it, it tired him out after a few beams. After Goku properly mastered it however, it became a much better and more properly utilized move from then on.
- Goku's first improvised move, the Tornado, is a spinning attack he came up with during his fight against Nam. It was meant to bring the wandering villager to the edge of the tournament arena so he could win via Ring Out. However, not only is this the move's only purpose, but it left Goku dizzy before he could even finish the job. He never used it again ever since.
- The Mafūba/Evil Containment Wave falls square into this trope. It's a Dangerous Forbidden Technique that was used to seal Demon King Piccolo in the past, and it's later brought back in Dragon Ball Super where it's used against much stronger characters like Zamasu, Dercori and even Vegeta by pure accident. However, it's a clunky attack that not only kills the user if their ki is too weak, but it can easily be broken or botched outright. Roshi's attempt at resealing King Piccolo failed because he barely missed the container, and Kami's attempt to do the same to Piccolo Jr. was reversed, causing Kami to get hit by his own attack. Super also reveals that you need to prepare an amulet to keep the seal from breaking, and if it's forgotten or the wrong tag is brought into the fight, it won't work. About the only real upsides to this are that it seems to work on anyone regardless of how powerful they are, and that any ordinary item can be used as the container, from a large rice cooker to a small bottle.
- Adding onto this is the attack's portrayal in Dragon Ball Evolution. This version of the move requires an entire ceremony to prepare a vessel to seal the opponent in, and Roshi's attempt at sealing Piccolo goes about as well as it did in the manga; in fact, Piccolo is able to knock away the jar before Roshi can finish the move.
- Goku's massively powerful Genkidama/Spirit Bomb attack, an attack which draws energy from all nearby life-forms; it's so ponderous it takes several episodes to fully charge (though this is partially the fault of real-life episode padding) and leaves him wide open to attack, with the added risk of wasting all that energy if he loses concentration. And after all that, it only finishes off a single opponent in the manga's run; Vegeta survived it, Frieza tanked it, and the character it did kill, Kid Buu, was able to push it back before Goku got his strength back through Porunga. Even outside of the original canon, its track record is hit-or-miss; Jiren in Dragon Ball Super outright deflected the Spirit Bomb, and its only victories are against movie villains (Dr. Wheelo, Turles and Lord Slug) and Omega Shenron from Dragon Ball GT.
- A version of the technique that we never see in canon is Cell's Spirit Bomb. According to him, when he learned Instant Transmission after blowing himself up due to his close proximity to Goku, he also learned how to use the Spirit Bomb through the same method, but never uses it in battle. At first, it seems even more impractical due to the Spirit Bomb allowing Only the Pure of Heart to wield it, with any impure user possibly getting killed and a pure opponent being able to No-Sell it. Not only is Cell an unrepentant villain (with Frieza's DNA, no less), but his opponent is Gohan who, great insanity or no, was previously able to deflect the Spirit Bomb while fighting Vegeta. However, video game tie-ins such as Dragon Ball Z: Budokai and Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 show him being able to use the technique as intended, meaning he could theoretically exploit Pure Is Not Good to alter the Spirit Bomb for his own use. It's more likely that he already realized the Spirit Bomb's general downsides, and thus simply decided not to risk it.
- Another King Kai technique, the Kaio-ken, multiplies the user's power several times for a short period, but places a severe strain on the body afterwards (to the point where Yajirobe giving Goku a congratulatory slap on the back afterwards caused him intense pain). It's not surprising that he stopped using it after the battle with Frieza, at which point he had the more reliable Super Saiyan form. Interestingly, Kaio-ken is useful and not that bad... at lower levels. King Kai specifically tells Goku not to go above Kaio-ken x2. However, his battle against Vegeta forced him to crank it higher and his subsequent fight with Frieza even further, thus the severe strain. The technique was so impractical and difficult to pull off that King Kai himself couldn't manage to do it properly despite having created it, and didn't bother trying to teach it to the other Z-Fighters after watching Goku almost kill himself with it.
- Speaking of the impractical, we have the Super Kaio-ken, the combination of Super Saiyan and Kaio-ken. Which was initially seen only once during Goku's filler arc battle against Pikkon. This technique sounds very awesome, but it is so dangerously impractical that it results in instant death, and as a result Goku could only use it in Other World since he was already dead at that point. However, in Dragon Ball Super Goku was able to use Super Saiyan Blue Kaio-ken, as his Super Saiyan Blue form didn't have the same limits as the base form.
- Similar to the Spirit Bomb, Vegeta's Final Flash is this at its most powerful. Vegeta has to spend a while charging it to get it to full power and the enemy has to wait for it. Vegeta uses it against Cell, who he taunts to take it to the face. It very nearly kills Cell, who had to dodge at the last second to not be completely annihilated, instead it "only" vaporized half of his torso, though he quickly regenerates that. Later in Super, he similarly taunts Jiren to tank it, and Jiren has to block at the last second, but sustains more damage than he had yet received in the tournament, being knocked to the ground, and far more damage than Goku's Spirit Bomb had done to him.
- Krillin's Kienzan/Destructo Disc is one of the deadliest techniques ever created in all of Dragon Ball as it was confirmed by Word of God that it can cut through anything. Anything. It's essentially a One-Hit Kill, but it has one fatal and significant flaw... Krillin can't control it once he throws it.note Also, Toriyama negated his own Word of God when a canonically ambiguous mook was able to catch it and throw it back, and again much later when a much more powerful Krillin tried it on Cell, who could ignore it entirely. The Destructo Disc's flaw is highlighted when compared to Frieza's Death Saucer attack, which not only creates two discs, but also allows the user to mentally control them to home after their target. This attack does wind up backfiring on Frieza far, far worse than Krillin's inferior version ever did, but only due to his own lack of attention.
- Piccolo's Makankosappo/Special Beam Cannon, at least at the beginning of the series when it takes an inordinately long time to charge. It's because when he uses it, he's in the middle of not having an arm. According to Piccolo, having both of his arms would've let him charge faster, which he proves against Nappa. Sadly, the Saiyan sees it coming and dodges. He also uses it against Frost in the Tournament of Power, making up for its charge time by holding him in place with his extendable arm, which only didn't work because Frost cheated his way out.
- The iconic Scouters are small digital computers that can locate things from far away and calculate power levels, but they are easily broken, can be flat-out blown up by trying to read a strong enough aura, can be easily fooled by those able to hide their true strength, and can't take an opponent's skills, speed, or experience into consideration. The scouters' entire purpose was to show that the characters' full capabilities can't simply be measured by a machine, and several characters that use them get big heads upon reading their initial power level. For this reason, ki-sensing is seen as the better option. It is somewhat ironic however that the scouter makes for such a good interstellar communicator and makeshift Dragon Radar that it is responsible for revealing the existence of the Dragon Balls to both Vegeta and Frieza and thus both kicking off and continuing their respective arcs. If they had just stuck to using it as a tool outside of battle instead of in it then the scouter would have a far better reputation.
- Another prime example are the Power Stressed forms, which greatly bulk up the user and increase power and speed but drain stamina, as first shown by Roshi during the 21st World Tournament using his MAX Power form and a Kamehameha to destroy the Moon but completely exhausting his strength in the process, and then, much more dramatically, by Frieza on Namek using a similar power-up to match Super Saiyan Goku but quickly weakening into helplessness. Even worse in Frieza's case because he needs to go through a lengthy power-up sequence in-universe just to release that form, which was only possible on Namek because Goku wanted to fight Frieza at his strongest to humiliate him, while Future Trunks doesn't let him get that chance.
- Exaggerated with the Super Saiyan Third Grade, an "advanced" Super Saiyan form created during the Cell Saga, that increase the bulk, and thus the available power and the energy and stamina consumption, even more than normal Power Stressed forms, with the bulk being so much it actually reduces speed which makes it useless since all the power in the world does you no good if you can't hit your opponent. Goku and Vegeta figured that these forms were useless on their own,note but the less savvy Trunks found out the hard way when fighting Cell, who promptly mocks him by using the form himself for a few seconds. Way later on in Dragon Ball Super, Caulifla tries to use Super Saiyan Third Grade on Goku, with just as poor results.
- Super Saiyan 3 itself also counts. It's the most powerful Saiyan transformation seen in DBZ, but consumes an enormous amount of energy, which has a number of drawbacks attached to it. For example, Gotenks using SS3 shortens his normal Fusion Dance time limit from 30 minutes to 5, while Goku using the form as a delaying tactic against Fat Buu reduces the amount of time he has left during his once-in-an-afterlife visit to the mortal world. Later on, after Goku is brought back to life, he finds out that Super Saiyan 3 puts an incredible strain on the body that causes him to tire out quickly during the fight with Kid Buu. Goku later on manages to minimize these drawbacks, but by the time he does, Super Saiyan 3 has become So Last Season.
- Super Saiyan 3's drawbacks are even further highlighted in Dragon Ball GT. Due to Goku having been turned into a child via Ultimate Shenron, the already strenuous power-up is even more impractical than ever. He initially struggles to maintain the form against Baby Vegeta, only being able to hold it for a few seconds, and even after its duration increased thanks to his tail having grown back, it still fails to put a dent in the Tuffle-possessed Saiyan Prince before its usual stamina issues kicked in. Once Goku unlocks Super Saiyan 4, 3 is left by the sidelines for the rest of the anime's initial run.
- As of Dragon Ball Super, Akira Toriyama has declared that both Super Saiyan 2 and 3 fall under this trope, draining stamina at an increased rate while not offering enough of a power increase to justify it, plus Super Saiyan 2 causing an extreme increase of aggression and sadism. As a result, Goku and Vegeta have mostly abandoned these forms, using them only on rare occasions and instead focusing on increasing their power in their normal states and the original Super Saiyan transformation. When stakes get high, Goku and Vegeta use Super Saiyan Blue instead, which is far more powerful than Super Saiyan 2 and 3 but with none of the flaws. Goku also has the added bonus of combining the Kaio-ken technique with Super Saiyan Blue, which was virtually impossible with his other Super Saiyan forms.
- Now we have Super Saiyan God, a form that requires five good-hearted Saiyans donating energy to a sixth and has such a high power drain, Goku barely has time to use the thing. The next movie introduces Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan, or Super Saiyan Blue, which is essentially an improved and more efficient version without all the drawbacks. The Super Saiyan God seen in Dragon Ball Super lessens the Impractical by giving it an extended duration and making it more of a challenge for Beerus, and further lessens it in the Universal Survival Arc by making it a less strenuous power-up, allowing Goku to have an edge in battle while not draining himself as fast as Blue.
- Thanks to Super Saiyan God's buffs, Super Saiyan Blue was slowly retooled into the less practical of the two forms. With God's time limit no longer being an issue, Blue's flaws become all the more apparent, draining ki far more quickly than God ever did even if it is more powerful. The manga works around this by having Vegeta demonstrate the tactic of fighting as God, and only going Blue for a short time when he needs to deliver a powerful punch, which can be done over and over again.
- Speaking of Resurrection F, Frieza's new Golden form also qualifies. While it gives him speed and power surpassing the improved Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan/Super Saiyan Blue while holding back to torture Goku as slowly as possible, he practically bleeds stamina, meaning that he can only maintain it for a couple of minutes at full strength before it starts weakening, after which it quickly peters out and leaves him completely gassed out afterwards. This is entirely Frieza's fault; as Vegeta surmises, once he achieved the form he immediately rushed to Earth to take his revenge, rather than undergoing any further training in order to address the flaw. Dragon Ball Super makes it less impractical as Frieza can control his power in the form, allowing him to last a while longer than in the film while holding back (although he still kicks Goku's ass, and he is still burning Ki at an accelerated rate), but conversely, he burns out after only a minute of using his full power. In Dragon Ball Super's Universal Survival arc, we find out that Frieza spent his time back in Hell fixing that problem, making him so much stronger.
- Most of the techniques Gotenks comes up with are flashy, but ineffective. His Signature Move, the Super Ghost Kamikaze Attack, initially appears to be very powerful and effective, creating sentient manifestations of his ki that explode with incredible force and with little provocation. Notably, no other technique like this has ever been seen in the entire series. When Buu uses it against Vegito; however, even demonstrating another layer to it by having the ghosts unleash ki attacks of their own, Vegito demonstrates the attack's Fatal Flaw by detonating the ghosts from a safe distance using regular Ki Blasts, showing that anything can prematurely stop them before they do anything. And that's saying nothing of the difficulties Gotenks himself has with the technique such as the ghosts being incredibly dim-witted to the point two of them accidentally blew themselves up by doing a high-five. Vegito then mocks Buu for thinking that an attack created by two kids could actually defeat him.
- Really, Gotenks' very existence is a case of this. He's undoubtedly one of the most powerful characters in the series, being one of two characters to reach Super Saiyan 3 outside of video games. However, he's far too arrogant and childish to be very dependable, owing to his Trunks and Goten halves, respectively. He could have defeated Buu in the Hyperbolic Time Chamber, but he was more concerned with showing off and looking cool; his attempt at making Piccolo think he was losing caused him to destroy the Hyperbolic Time Chamber's exit out of desperation to keep Super Buu from killing everyone, which didn't work anyway since Buu could just scream his way out. By the time he got serious, Buu had already killed almost everyone and he wasted too much time at Super Saiyan 3 to finally finish him off. His track record doesn't get any better in Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods and Dragon Ball Super, where he gets effortlessly trounced by Beerus and Copy-Vegeta, and even though he defeated Tagoma in the latter's Resurrection 'F' adaptation, he fused too early to really contribute to the rest of the fight. It's precisely for this reason that Trunks and Goten are Demoted to Extra, as well as why he's left out of the Tournament of Power in favor of Master Roshi.
- Gogeta, the fusion of Goku and Vegeta, can also verge into this at times, depending on what level of power they're using. At base Super Saiyan, they tend to take things rather seriously. The higher the tier of Super Mode they use, the more of a Smug Super they become. In the non-canon Dragon Ball GT, Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta ends up taking his battles even less seriously than Gotenks. Sure, they're insanely powerful but the Fusion strain also applies to them, meaning that the Fusion can only last for five minutes while using Super Saiyan 4. Vegito also falls into this in Dragon Ball Super since the Potara earrings have been retconned into being an Hour of Power deal for mortals like the Fusion Dance. Even though Super Saiyan Blue Vegito is even stronger than Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta and takes his battles mildly more seriously when the threat level is high, the Potara earrings also end up having the same drain problems the fusion dance has. This is very much a downplayed example though; even with all these limits, Vegito still manages to cause a good deal of damage against the villain of that arc thanks to being just that dang powerful!
- The original Fusion Dance itself: it grants an awesome lot of power, but has a 30 minutes time limit at most before ending, needs a 1 hour pause between uses, needs a dance that an enemy can interrupt (as Super Buu demonstrated out of sheer impatience), and is embarrassingly ridiculous. Also, if the dance is not executed perfectly, the resulting fusion can end too fat and out of shape to fight or incredibly ghoulish and weak.
- Super Buu's form after absorbing Gotenks and Piccolo also counts. While it's enough to give a freshly powered up Gohan trouble, it has the same 30-minute time limit that the fusion itself has, and reverts Buu to a weaker state upon running out. It's for this reason that he decides to go for Gohan, resulting in his strongest form yet without the time limit.
- The original Fusion Dance itself: it grants an awesome lot of power, but has a 30 minutes time limit at most before ending, needs a 1 hour pause between uses, needs a dance that an enemy can interrupt (as Super Buu demonstrated out of sheer impatience), and is embarrassingly ridiculous. Also, if the dance is not executed perfectly, the resulting fusion can end too fat and out of shape to fight or incredibly ghoulish and weak.
- Guldo of the Ginyu Force is able to freeze time for as long as he holds his breath... but he can't hold his breath for very long, and doing so uses up a lot of his energy. As shown when he uses it against Gohan and Krillin three times in a row, he ends up so drained that he can't even fire basic Ki Blasts. He's also so clumsy and cowardly that he wastes much of the time he does gain either panicking or tripping on terrain.
- The Ginyu Force's poses and setups for their attacks. Lampshaded by Goku who points out they take too long and leave themselves wide open.
- Dragon Ball Super gives us the Super Saiyan Blue Kaio-ken, the fusion of Super Saiyan Blue and the Kaio-ken. It's a technique powerful enough to battle the deadly assassin Hit, who is one of the strongest warriors in Universe 6, and gives Beerus major pause. However, the technique is totally incomplete - the skill only lasts a few minutes (on-screen, it's shown to be only two minutes), has a 90% failure rate and, if performed wrong, could kill Goku. Not to mention, it has an extended charging time. This is why he considers it his ultimate trump card. A few episodes after its introduction, we find out that using it in this way causes "delayed onset ki disorder", which throws off his whole ki potential without proper rest. However, by the Universal Survival arc, Goku perfected the Super Saiyan Blue Kaio-ken and eliminated its drawbacks. But by that point, Super Saiyan Blue was beginning to get worfed, resulting in...
- Goku's new Ultra Instinct form achieved in the Tournament of Power. It is substantially stronger than Super Saiyan Blue Kaio-ken and has near immeasurable power beyond the Gods. However, it has some crippling limitations. For starters, Goku can't even reliably access the form freely (he even comments that he achieved it by total accident) as it is a Defence Mechanism Superpower that requires the removal of all mental and physical control and only appears in times of desperation. He also cannot control Ultra Instinct once he achieves it, as it will involuntarily burn out on him and the resulting burnout leaves him in tremendous pain. While Ultra Instinct is substantially more powerful than Super Saiyan Blue, Blue remains Goku's most reliable go-to transformation.
- Following the Galactic Patrol Prisoner Saga, Goku has attained a degree of control over Ultra Instinct, to the extent that he can activate and deactivate the transformation at will... However, Whis informs him that Ultra Instinct still firmly falls within this territory for Goku. He explains that while the transformation is indeed powerful, the drawbacks are quite severe, mostly that the transformed state causes Goku to bleed stamina like crazy. He further explains that Angels such as himself are always in the Ultra Instinct state and don't need to transform in order to utilize the power and that Goku will need to learn the same if he wishes to truly avert this trope. In the following arc we see Ultra Instinct's weakness further: as the user bleeds more stamina, Ultra Instinct's precision in attacking and dodging drops, eventually causing Goku to fall to Granolah.
- In the Granolah The Survivor Saga, Vegeta receives his power-up answer to Ultra Instinct: Ultra Ego. This form gives him the powers of a God of Destruction and has limitless power, and the bonus of the user getting stronger when more damage is taken. Vegeta brutally beats down Granolah when the latter gave Ultra Instinct Goku problems, but Ultra Ego has a caveat: It makes the users' ego and battle lust swell up to insane levels, hence the name Ultra Ego, causing them to lose track of the fight, taking hits instead of dodging and resulting in them taking more unnecessary damage. Vegeta is so caught up in his new power and abusing Ultra Ego's buffs more that he doesn't even take notice of the incredible damage his body is taking. He nearly breaks down before he can even use its power!
- During Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero, Piccolo reveals his Size Shifting technique is more of a bluff than anything, and doesn't increase his power at all. Back in Dragon Ball, it was a legitimately difficult form for a normal-sized opponent to overcome, but the mountain-busting attacks that eventually became the norm for the cast rendered the ability to grow to the size of a building pointless. Piccolo actually forgot he even had this form, only busting it out to fight the equally giant Cell Max on even grounds.
- The Dragon Balls themselves are this trope. Seven balls that when brought together can summon a magic dragon to grant nearly any wish at all? Awesome! The fact that they scatter across the world each time they're used, that they can only be used annually, and that it usually takes generations to gather them all without a Dragon Radar? ...not as much. On top of that, the Dragon Balls are unable to grant the same wish twice, meaning anyone that dies a second time is Killed Off for Real (at least until the Namekian Dragon Balls come into the picture). They're made even more impractical in Dragon Ball GT, where it's revealed that the Dragon Balls are only meant to be used every hundred years, and overusing them over the course of the series causes their negative energy to eventually corrupt Shenron and split him into the seven Shadow Dragons, who then proceed to wreak havoc on Earth. At the end of GT, Shenron decides that the Dragon Balls are more trouble than they're worth and leaves for Other World with the set in tow.
- The Namekian Dragon Balls manage to make an already impractical in-story cheat code even more impractical simply by being too big to fit in one's pocket. Namekian Dragon Balls are roughly the size of dodgeballs, as opposed to the baseball-sized ones on Earth. And while the Namekian Dragon Balls can grant the same wish more than once, as well as granting three instead of one, those wishes would need to be slightly smaller ones (for instance, they can only revive one person at a time instead of multiple people, though the events of Frieza's invasion led to the Dragon Balls' power to be enhanced so Porunga can resurrect multiple people instead of one per wish).
- The situation is much more severe with the Black Star Dragon Balls in Dragon Ball GT, which scatter across the entire galaxy and will destroy the planet they were last used on should they not be collected and brought back to said planet within a year's time (which did happen thanks to Baby's interference). The upside? Ultimate Shenron, the Black Star Dragon Balls' dragon, is more powerful than the Earth and Namekian Eternal Dragons and thus has a far greater amount of wishes that he can grant, with its known wishes being to de-age Goku and restore a long-destroyed Planet Vegeta.
- The Super Dragon Balls are easily the most powerful, with Super Shenron being an omnipotent god capable of restoring entire universes that have been erased from existence. The problem? These Dragon Balls are the largest yet, being the size of entire planets. Unless a character has a device or the power to move these giant balls, they might as well not even bother.
