Basic Trope: A character/ability/item that starts out powerful, but becomes less useful as the game goes on.
- Straight: At the beginning of the game, Bob is your strongest character, but your other characters start overpowering him later in the game.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob is a Game-Breaker... For the duration of the first dungeon. After that, his attacks hit for Scratch Damage and he dies in one hit.
- Bob is the only character in the game who gets weaker when he levels up.
- Downplayed:
- Bob can still slog through the rest of the game, but for maximum effectiveness it's best to switch to another character.
- Bob has good growths in some areas, subjecting him to Crippling Overspecialization as the game progresses.
- Justified:
- Bob is a grizzled old fighter who can defeat weaker enemies with ease, but can't catch up with the newer fighting styles that the other characters and tougher enemies use.
- In an RPG, Bob is a latecomer to the group, and in order to avoid a large imbalance between his level and the others (so that he is not ignored by all who play), he has an item which gives him a nice power boost. This boost is proportional to the difference between his level and the others, so that he is not useless at first but the item becomes less and less powerful as Bob catches up.
- Bob is actually hiding his true strength. In the first dungeon he easily defeats enemies because he uses just enough abilities to get over the weak enemies, but declines to show his true strength for some reason. He keeps acting weak after because he fears being caught more than holding back and having the party fail.
- Bob was an anti-slime warrior for the local village, and the first dungeon is full of slimes. After the first dungeon, Bob's over-specialization means that his talents don't work as well, and he only follows the heroes because he counts as a knight.
- Bob's abilities are all centered around fighting weaker, more common mooks. Cut to the mid/late game, and these enemies appear much less often. Cross this with the abundance of Demonic Spiders, and Bob's going to have a hard time.
- Bob is a much more powerful warrior than the other heroes, but leaves them after a short while to deal with his own business.
- Inverted: Magikarp Power.
- Subverted:
- While it seemed that Bob's character is becoming increasingly ineffective in battles, the party eventually travel to a strange land where only his attacks could damage the enemies, allowing him to regain his usefulness.
- Bob had to leave the party for a while, seemingly rendering the experience gained moot. However, he later returns: If you treated him like a normal party member early on, he'll be able to hold his own. If you kept him out of the party while you had him the first time, he'll be too weak to catch up.
- Bob remains capable of destroying everything in his path and can carry you clear through to the Final Boss single-handedly.
- Double Subverted:
- He becomes useless again once the party moves on to different locations.
- He stayed off the team too long and didn't gain any experience in the interim and, when he gets back on the team, is too weak to fight even if you level grinded him when you had him available before.
- While Bob is a great character in the main story, he's not very useful against the Superboss.
- Parodied:
- Bob is a Jerkass who is deliberately not giving 100% so he can enjoy watching Alice and Report Siht attempt to not die.
- Bob's class is "Goblin Slayer," and all of his skills and bonuses are focused on killing goblins, disarming goblin-made traps, and so on, while being absolutely pathetic against anything else. The first enemy you fight in the game is the last goblin in the entire world. Oh, and you can't flee from the encounter.
- Zig Zagged: Bob's usefulness fluctuates wildly throughout the game.
- Averted: No character starts out significantly stronger than the others early on.
- Enforced:
- "The game testers said the game is way too hard in the beginning. Let's give players a powerful character to start with to make it easier".
- Alternately: "Let's give players A Taste of Power".
- It's the side effect of Bob being the only Linear Warrior in a party of Quadratic Wizards
- Lampshaded: "Bob is a strong guy, but don't rely on his power too much; if the others don't get some fighting experience, you'll be in trouble later on".
- Invoked: Bob purposely lets the others get stronger than he is so he can retire.
- Exploited: Aware that the plucky, inexperienced heroes are bound to come after her, Evil Overlord Alice sends her powerful henchman Bob to "help" them, depriving them of needed experience so when they do face Alice they're hopelessly outmatched.
- Defied: To avoid being left behind, Bob continues to train himself to remain one of the strongest in the party.
- Discussed: "You know, Bob, if you don't keep up with your training, we're all going to become more powerful than you later on!"
- Conversed: "Are you close to the final boss?" "Yeah. Why do you ask?" "Don't pick Bob. Just don't."
- Deconstructed:
- Possibly due to "So Long, and Thanks for all the Experience", Bob becomes a character that no serious player would use, to the point where players wonder why he's even in the game.
- Bob becomes aware as the story progresses that the rookies he used to look out for are out-pacing him and he Can't Catch Up, leading him to doubt his ability and role within the team.
- The party becomes so dependent on Bob that, when it comes time for him to leave the group, they are left completely helpless.
- Reconstructed:
- Bob is still recognized as "a good character for beginners to use" to adjust to an otherwise-difficult early learning curve.
- Instead of getting frustrated, Bob takes pride in watching the former rookies blossom and grow more powerful, and eventually retires after becoming certain that they won't need him holding their hands and protecting them any longer.
- Bob even offers to train his eventual replacement, Charlie, so that his experience doesn't go to waste.
- The party is made well aware of Bob's limited potential, so they make a contingency plan for when the time comes for him to drop out.
- Played For Laughs: When setting up for The Very Definitely Final Dungeon, if you add Bob to your party, everyone else in the party groans and starts complaining about how pathetically weak he is now.
Back to Crutch Character. It's not a very good page the further down you get, though...
