Playing With / Power Copying

Mega Man-type

Basic Trope: Gaining new abilities by defeating the opponents that have them.

• Straight: Whenever Nikki defeats an opponent in battle, she gains her foe's best skill.
• Exaggerated: Nikki can use every skill and talent, from Reality Warping and Time Stopping, down to bending her tongue by defeating an enemy who possesses said ability.
• Downplayed: Nikki can use any weapon, and most equipment pieces dropped by a defeated enemy.
• Justified:
  • Nikki has methods to copy enemies' abilities, like ripping a page from a wizard's spellbook and adding it to her own, removing a robot's plasma cannon arm and use it to upgrade her BFG, and being a master martial artist, which allows her to copy any move after seeing it a few times.
  • Nikki is an AI, and she is capable of analyzing the code of enemy AI and integrating it into herself.
• Inverted: Whenever Nikki defeats an opponent, she 'loses'' the ability that was used to defeat that opponent.
• Subverted: Nikki knocks out a star swordsman after an epic fight, and gains... The ability to communicate with plants.
• Double Subverted: Confused, Nikki questions the swordsman after he comes to, and he admits he used to be an earth mage with that exact ability.
• Parodied:
  • Whilst driving home, Nikki accidentally runs over a possum in the road. She subsequently discovers she now has the power to play dead. (Later on, she uses this ability to fake defeat and set up a cruel Kaizo Trap for a particularly tough foe.)
  • Nikki eats a BLT sandwich, and gains the ability to squeal loudly, photosynthesise, and become bright red, respectively. This proves unrealistically useful.
  • Nikki has this power... except she’s too weak to actually defeat anything and take advantage of it.
• Zig Zagged: Sometimes the character gains skills from battles and sometimes not.
• Averted:
  • All of Nikki's powers are her own.
  • They learn new abilities as they gain levels and advance through the game.
• Enforced: "Why would we bother creating separate set of abilities for the heroes and for their enemies? Just make the heroes capable of copying their enemies!"
• Lampshaded: "Now I've got your power!"
• Invoked: A genie offers Nikki the choice of any power she wants; she picks Power Copying, reasoning that she can use it to obtain any other power she wants.
• Exploited:
  • The Big Bad sends out a slew of opponents with the ability to self-destruct. When Nikki defeats them and habitually steals and tries out their powers, the results aren't pretty... only it turns out that our hero had gotten the ability to duplicate herself earlier on, and the Nikki that just self-destructed was one such clone. Nikki uses this "Clone Bomb" technique to take down many enemies.
  • Nikki goes on a rampage defeating as much opponents as she can to get their powers.
• Defied: Emperor Evulz sends out Badass Normal minions with no powers.
• Discussed: "Alright! A new enemy! Now I'll get a new skill!"
• Conversed:
  Alice: How do Nikki and Mike learn skills by killing and being hurt? Couldn't they just pick up a How-To book?
  Bob: Well, isn't the fastest way to learn something is by doing it?

• Implied: Nikki is shown to have Nigh-Invulnerability. A flashback shows her without this ability as she gets into a fight with someone who has it.
• Deconstructed:
  • Nikki may be able to copy the ability, but it may never have been meant to be used by a person like her due to lacking the Required Secondary Powers. If Bizarre Alien Biology is involved, the ability can be anything from useless to dangerous.
  • Nikki's new power happens to require extreme physical requirements that exceed her own limits, turning it into a Dangerous Forbidden Technique that can leave her severely crippled if used.
  • Nikki's growing inventory of powers is eating up her other physiological and cognitive functions.
  • Nikki gains the powers, but has to figure out how to use them on her own. This can be anything from hilarious to tragic.
• Nikki's Power Level and/or Mana Meter is insufficient enough to use her newly acquired power on the same scope as the person or creature she copied it from.
• Reconstructed:
  • Nikki finds a shapeshifter, defeats them, and gains access to otherwise unusable abilities by changing her body parts to the kind necessary to use them.
  • Nikki has limitless physiological and cognitive functions because one of her acquired powers is Super-Intelligence.
  • Nikki compensates for her initial inability to use her copied powers through Ability Mixing, mitigating their risks by pairing them with appropriate defensive abilities. For example, utilizing Super-Toughness, Super-Reflexes, and Bullet Time to eliminate the risk of damage from friction, g-forces, and lack of perception from utilizing Super-Speed.
  • Nikki only has to train as hard as the original owners of the abilities, and is susceptible to exactly the same risks. Though she lags behind people who've already mastered those powers, her diverse arsenal allows her to fight effectively while she uses her spare time for training.

• Played For Laughs:
  • Nikki is so focused on looking for abilities to acquire she reaches Memetic Molester status.
  • Nikki basically ignores the powers she picks up this way, because if she didn't need them to stomp all over the person who had them and she took them from, they can't be that powerful in the first place, right?

Final Fantasy-type

Basic Trope: Gaining new abilities by being hit by them, and learning them in the process.

• Straight: Whenever Mike is hurt by an opponent's signature attack, he learns the attack and can use it in any opportunity.
• Exaggerated: Whenever an enemy hurts Mike, he copies every skill they have ever accquired.
• Downplayed: Mike is Awesome by Analysis, and can usually imitate an opponent's moves - but he still needs to practice if he wants to get any good at a given technique.
• Justified: Mike's Congruent Memory allows him to learn skills by seeing a demonstration.
  • Mike's species has hyper-rapid adaption due to an Unstable Genetic Code.
• Inverted: Whenever he's hit by an enemy's ability, Mikes develops a power that counters it, like a water attack to beat a fire-based enemy.
  • Mike knows every power possible, but if he's hit by a similar ability, he loses access to that power.
• Subverted: It looks like Mike gains the spell "Giga Drain" after being hit by it, but he actually learned the spell long beforehand.
• Double Subverted: However, it's not the first time Mike's been hit by Giga Drain...
• Parodied: Mike is napping when a possum plays dead on his stomach. Everyone else thinks he's playing dead too.
  • Mike gets hit by a powerful knight, and learns... How to attack.
  • Mike studies for a test by slapping his head against a textbook for an hour.
• Zig Zagged: Sometimes the character gains skills from battles and sometimes not.
• Averted:
  • All of Mike's powers are his own.
  • They learn new abilities as they gain levels and advance through the game.
• Enforced: "Why would we bother creating separate set of abilities for the heroes and for their enemies? Just make the heroes capable of copying their enemies!"
• Lampshaded:
  • "Now I've got your power!"
  • "Why does learning hurt so much?"
• Invoked: Mike trains to become a Blue Mage.
• Exploited:
  • Mike saves the self-destructing minion's power to take out the Big Bad in a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Mike and Nikki hurt each other with each other's powers on a regular basis.
• Defied: A particular spell is hardwired to target Mike and Mike alone. When Mikes learns that spell, he learns a spell to hurt ''Mike''.
• Discussed: "Alright! A new enemy! Now I'll get a new skill!"
• Conversed: "How do Nikki and Mike learn skills by killing and being hurt? Couldn't they just pick up a How-To book?"

• Implied: Mike's power set is evaluated twice in the story. Though the actual fights happen offscreen, an astute observer can note that some or all of the moves he learns between each of these points were used by opponents he is known to have fought between these two evaluations.
• Deconstructed:
  • Mike can only learn so much, so when he knows too many skills he forgets how to use abilities.
  • Mike gets gravely injured taking the signature move, to the point where he can't even repeat that same move since the limbs needed to pull it off were injured in the attack.
  • Mike can only learn attacks, and only if those attacks were the specific results of powers.
• Reconstructed:
  • Mike contains the skills in a form of external memory and slots them in as necessary. This way his internal memory is never maxed out.
  • Mike's partner is a White Magician Girl who can heal any injuries he takes after battle. As long as he's still alive after battle (and even if he's not) she can restore him to fighting condition.
  • He chooses opponents whose signature attacks have properties useful in other situations. For instance, Conflagration can be used to help in forging items and Torrent can be used to clean large surfaces.

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