Nothing is free. With these Magic and Powers tropes, the powers involved come with strings attached. For the concept as a whole, see Power at a Price.
- Addiction-Powered: If the power alone doesn't cost you, using it in conjunction with all the downsides addiction usually brings will.
- Addictive Magic: Withdrawal is likely the least of your problems with this one. Overdosing and collateral fallout is what you need to worry about.
- Aesoptinum: The number of caveats and exemption clauses messing with laser-guided Aesops involves cannot be understated.
- Age Without Youth: You can't die, but you continue to age until there is little left.
- Ambition Is Evil: Trying to climb the social ladder tends to knock everyone else down a rung; therefore, it is evil and shouldn't be done.
- Armor and Magic Don't Mix: Mages can't wear armor.
- Armored But Frail: High defense, but low health.
- Artifact of Attraction: You'll be compelled to kill for it and be killed over it.
- Artifact Domination: Use it at the risk of your own free will.
- Artifact of Death: Use it at risk of death.
- Artifact of Doom: Use it at risk of becoming evil.
- Assimilation Backfire: Be careful what you absorb or take over, or you could get hurt.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Power with requirements or drawbacks so high you're better off with less powerful but reliable methods.
- Beneficial Disease: When a disease grants you superpowers or immunity.
- The Berserker: You fight like a man possessed, feeling neither pain nor fear, but any sense of tactics goes out of the window with them, and woe betide any that stand in your way, be they Friend or Foe?.
- Black Magic: Very powerful magic, at a moral and material price.
- Blessed with Suck: You'll think it's worth it, but it isn't.
- Blind Seer: You may be a seer, but you have no physical sight. On the other hand, your other senses will be forged in the fire.
- Blood Magic: To get oomph, somebody or some creature is going to have an ouchy day.
- Blood Iron: Same as above, but you get a weapon
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: How much in Real Life dollars are you willing to pay for a Top Tier deck in a CCG, or for enhanced equipment in an MMO?
- Broken Ace: Your great skill, powers, and social standing come at the expense of a crap social life and personal issues.
- Can't Stay Normal: You just want to be normal? Too bad.
- Cast from Calories: You'll have to eat a lot of big meals to keep using spells.
- Cast from Experience Points: Magic fueled by permanently weakening yourself (i.e., sacrificing XP or stat points).
- Cast from Hit Points: Magic fueled by sacrificing your current health (i.e., causing your body damage).
- Cast from Lifespan: Magic which shortens the user's lifespan.
- Cast from Money: These powerful powers requires in-game money to work.
- Cast from Sanity: Magic fueled by weakening the user's mental health, whether temporarily or permanently.
- Cast from Stamina: You need to be physically fit to use many spells at a time.
- Clingy Macguffin: Throw it away, and it will come back.
- Clipped-Wing Angel: Eventually, the "new form" turns out to be a bust.
- Clone Degeneration: You can clone a person, but the clone won't be as good as the original.
- Close-Range Combatant: You can handle things up close, but you're useless at a distance.
- Comeback Mechanic: Being ahead of the other players means you make the other players stronger.
- Conditional Powers: When the power comes with something you must (or must not) do.
- The Corruption: Uncanny powers are just a symptom of a malignant infection.
- Cranial Plate Ability: When a character acquires new abilities thanks to a steel piece implanted (accidentally or via surgery) in their head.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Really, really good at one thing; really, really bad at everything else.
- Cursed Item: That sword may be powerful but you might want to be careful about the side effects.
- Cursed with Awesome: A power that is paid forward. You'll think it isn't worth it, but it is.
- Curse That Cures: A sick or injured character is cured as a side effect of a Curse.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Upgrading your hardware downgrades your humanity.
- Dangerous Forbidden Technique: A powerful ability with a terrible cost.
- The Dark Arts: Skills deemed forbidden for any of a number of reasons. Usually good ones.
- The Dark Side: Easy power at the expense of morality.
- Deadly Upgrade: Eventually your new form will kill you.
- Deal with the Devil: Never obtain magic from malevolent/mysterious entities or The Trickster.
- Deus Exit Machina: You are written out of any story that you could anticlimactically solve.
- Difficult, but Awesome: The payoff is spectacular, but actually accomplishing it takes some wrangling.
- Dirty Mind-Reading: You can read minds, but you're Squicked out by what you see.
- Disability Immunity: Rather than granting you powers to compensate, you are protected from something that would harm more able individuals.
- Disability Superpower: Power at the price of one or more faculties.
- Diverting Power: Boosting one system by depowering another.
- Does Not Know His Own Strength: When you can't judge how much power you're using.
- Double-Edged Buff: A status effect that provides both a positive and negative effect to the target.
- Drunk on the Dark Side: Superpowers are addictive.
- Drunk with Power: Similar to the above, just with power derived from authority.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Every ability is strong against one type and weak against another, usually in a cycle or in foil pairs.
- Empathic Healer: Your Healing Hands take the pain from another and inflict it on yourself.
- Empty Levels: When the power actually makes your character weaker or increases the difficulty disproportionately.
- Equivalent Exchange: If you want great power, prepare to make a great sacrifice. Nothing is free, you know.
- Everything but the Girl: You can do anything except win over your One True Love.
- Evil Is Not a Toy: Powerful, yes. On your side? No.
- Explosive Overclocking: Pushing the Phlebotinum beyond its safety limits can be hazardous.
- Eye of Newt: Magic requires magical components.
- Fantastic Fragility: Building in weaknesses to boost power.
- Fragile Flyer: Sacrificing sturdiness for flight.
- Fragile Speedster: Sacrificing defense for mobility.
- Fuel Meter of Power: Superpowers are a finite resource. Don't use them all up.
- Gathering Steam: You pack a punch... once you get going that is.
- Glass Cannon: You can dish it out, but can't take it.
- A God Am I: Power will make you think that you're invincible. Regardless of whether or not it's true, you're gonna have a lot of enemies.
- God Job: The power of a god comes with correspondingly large duties.
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: The powers of a god require worship to maintain.
- Healing Magic Is the Hardest: Using magic to heal serious injuries is considerably more difficult or costly than other forms of magic.
- Heart Is an Awesome Power: Weak in itself; amazing in its applications, but only if you have the imagination.
- Heroic Fatigue: The strain of using your power to help others wears you down physically and emotionally.
- Hulking Out: Anger allows you to attain immense strength, but now anger also controls you.
- I'm Having Soul Pains: Too painful to use this power for long.
- Immunity Disability: Because sometimes being immune to something may be a detriment instead.
- Insert Payment to Use: It'll let you use it, but you have to pay with lifeforce, money, or some other form of currency.
- Invisible Streaker: You have invisibility, but the power does not affect your clothes, requiring you to strip naked to avoid being seen.
- Invisibility with Drawbacks: Turning invisible comes with problems, such as becoming blind, or limitations, such as becoming visible upon attacking.
- Involuntary Shapeshifter: You can assume different forms, but you cannot always control when you assume them.
- Intangible Price: Does a treasured childhood memory sound like a fair price?
- Keystone Army: Your power depends entirely on this particular trinket. Guard it round the clock or say goodbye.
- Level Scaling: Power that comes at a price of increased difficulty.
- Limited-Use Magical Device: You can use the spell, until the item's power runs out.
- Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Wizards take longer to gain power, but gain more power in the end.
- Living Battery: The living power supply pays the cost.
- Logical Weakness: A weakness because of a power that actually makes logical sense.
- Lonely at the Top: The more powerful you are, the more isolated and lonelier you'll be.
- Long-Range Fighter: Great at dealing with things from a distance, useless up close.
- Lovecraftian Superpower: Your power does bad things to reality.
- Love Sacrificed for Power: Your power requires the Human Sacrifice of someone precious to you.
- Mad Oracle: You can see the future but can't relate to the present.
- Magically Inept Fighter: Strong in physical combat but has weak magic, if any at all.
- Magic Is a Monster Magnet: Using magic draws the wrong sort of attention.
- Magic Knight: A fighter who can cast, but usually isn't as good at melee as a pure warrior or as good at magic as a pure wizard.
- Magic Must Defeat Magic: Magic makes you invincible. It also makes your enemies invincible.
- Magikarp Power: This character or ability can be very useful... if you bother to grind for it.
- Master of None: Not bad at any one thing, but not really good at anything either.
- The Medic: You can use magic or items defensively (healing, Spells) but often at the expense of damage output, and your vital role on the team makes you likely to be targeted early.
- Mighty Glacier: Sacrifices mobility for strength.
- A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: You can read minds, but it's very disturbing.
- Money Is Experience Points: Want to get those upgrades and abilities? Better spend in-game money to earn them.
- Multiform Balance: When each of your forms has a power set suited for particular tactics and situations.
- Oathbound Power: You can only use the power as long as you adhere to a specific creed.
- One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce: A character whose power doesn't have a price, in a world where everyone else's powers do.
- One-Winged Angel: Physical power at the cost of your physical form.
- Only Flesh Is Safe: Offensive powers don't affect living organic matter.
- Pain & Gain: You get stronger as you receive damage.
- The Paladin: Good in a battle (especially against The Undead) and has plenty of White Magic power, but lacks offensive magic skills and is often constrained by a code.
- Pent-Up Power Peril: When your power builds up inside you and you have to release it regularly, lest it harm you.
- Phlebotinum Overdose: When Applied Phlebotinum is something you can eat or drink, taking too much will be very bad for your health.
- Physical Attribute Swap: To get a particular physical trait, you need to receive it or steal it from someone else.
- Popularity Cycle: The price of being popular is that you'll inevitably lose it at some point.
- Power at a Price: The general concept of power coming at a price. Supertrope to the other tropes on this list.
- Power Born of Madness: Madness causes power.
- Power Degeneration: Having superpowers will accelerate your aging and kill you.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: It requires an ethically repulsive component to function.
- Powerful, but Inaccurate: Hits hard, when you can land it.
- Power Incontinence: Limited control over destructive or inconvenient powers.
- Power Loss Makes You Strong: The flip side. By losing a superpower, you gain something. Namely, extreme badassery.
- Power Source: They may need to be refilled frequently.
- Power-Strain Blackout: You faint after using your powers.
- Power-Upgrading Deformation: You get loads of power, but it's because you got ugly add-ons.
- Pride: A high opinion of your abilities blinds you to your limits until you fall.
- Psychic Nosebleed: Overuse or misuse of psychic powers results in physical injury.
- Psycho Serum: The same potion that gives you power takes away your sanity.
- Quantity vs. Quality: The two are always inversely proportional.
- Reality Warping Is Not a Toy: When Reality Warping proves hard to control.
- The Red Mage: Can use all kinds of magic, but isn't the best at any of them.
- Required Secondary Powers: You need more powers just to deal with your "main" power.
- Royal Favorite: Being a monarch's favorite definitely has its perks, but it also tends to paint a target on one's back.
- Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: You learn powerful, badass abilities at the expense of practical, everyday ones.
- Sacrificial Revival Spell: This spell can bring someone back to life, but it will kill you.
- Self-Harm–Induced Superpower: A superpower that's triggered only by causing damage to oneself.
- Sensory Overload: The drawback to certain Super-Senses.
- Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Inability to regain one's normal form.
- Shed Armor, Gain Speed: Trading armor for speed.
- Shoot the Mage First: High offense and low defense means you're going to get targeted more than anyone.
- Shoot the Medic First: The ability to heal allies means the savvy will take you out first.
- Situational Damage Attack: This attack's damage will vary depending on how you set it up.
- Situational Sword: You can't always use it when you need to.
- Soul-Powered Engine: A living soul or Life Energy is used as fuel to power some sort of machine.
- Squishy Wizard: Magical mojo but physical fragility.
- Stone Wall: Can take it, but can't dish it out.
- Straight for the Commander: You will be targeted early in the hope that your army will fall into chaos without you.
- Superpower Disability: A character with superpowers is given a disability as a result.
- Superpowered Evil Side: Your power comes with an alternate, nasty side.
- Super-Power Meltdown: Losing control of superpowers results in mass destruction.
- Superpowers For A Day: Powers for the price of time. Powers may never be gained again.
- Teleportation with Drawbacks: Limitations on the ability to teleport.
- Teleporter's Visualization Clause: A teleporter must be able to clearly visualize their target.
- These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Knowledge is power, but With Great Power Comes Great Insanity.
- Time Dissonance: You aren't in sync with the rest of causality.
- Too Awesome to Use: Power in very limited supplies.
- Too Fast to Stop: For when you have Super-Speed without Super Brakes...
- Too Powerful to Live: You get offed because nothing can stand up to your powers.
- Transferred Transformation: To get a particular transformation, you need to receive it or steal it from someone else.
- Transforming Conforming: A shapeshifter or other transforming character shares the weaknesses of their chosen form.
- Unexpectedly Real Magic: The artifact you found does more than just look magical.
- Unhappy Medium: You're powerful but really unhappy.
- Unholy Holy Sword: It's The Mole of artefacts.
- Virgin Power: You must remain a virgin to use your powers. Better hope no one finds out about that...
- Weak to Magic: When your power comes with a weakness to magical attacks and effects.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Competitive Balance taken to extremes to offset for winning the Superpower Lottery.
- Weapon Wields You: To gain the weapon's (usually superior) fighting skills you have to give it control of your body.
- White Magic: Not as powerful as Black Magic, but less noxious.
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Power causes madness.
- With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: You'll feel morally compelled to use power to help others.
- Won the War, Lost the Peace: The battle is over, but now you're trapped.
