Sandbox / Useless Useful Class

Competitive Balance is a difficult goal in any situation. However, when it comes to a gimmicky character, it gets to be even messier. These characters are defined by being strange in terms of the game's rules already, as such balancing them becomes a nightmare. Developers cannot simply remove their defense to up their speed to change the character, instead they have to manipulate much less concrete aspects of the character. And more often then not, attempts to prevent them from being overpowered leads to them being near useless in practical situations.

Basically a class-based version of Useless Useful Spell. It may look useful on paper, but it's instead dragged down by the game's mechanics. A subtrope of Mechanically Unusual Class. May result in a Low-Tier Letdown. Master of None could be considered a subtrope where the "gimmick" is being well-balanced.

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Examples

Tabletop Games

• Magic: The Gathering gave us kobolds, a tribe as weak as physically possible without going straight to the graveyard, but cost nothing to play. They can be upgraded with other kobolds, but these tend to come out on turn three or later, and the bonus isn't that much. And they're all in red, a color known for winning fast, or not at all.
• Dungeons & Dragons has the Bard base class, of which mainly is a versatile jack of all trades, often played as a support class. In most editions, the bard was not often seen as good as other options because of their tendency to be decent at multiple roles at once instead of good at one. However, 3.5 edition's Bard splatbook support really helped it grow in power into a jack of all trades, master of a few, being able to take up a few roles to extremely high power (adding huge bonuses like 10d6 damage per hit to become a very strong support, or dual wielding rapiers and then going Snowflake Wardance to be a melee monster, or a good caster with powerful battlefield control and debuff spells). Plus, at the end of the day, Bards were still spellcasters in the edition that codified Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards; even with only the core rulebook, they can still prove far more potent than more mundane classes. That said, they'd never rival an equally well played wizard.

Video Games

• In the Dungeons & Dragons based game Baldur's Gate, bards tend to be bad fighters and bad magic users, but get more bonuses toward identifying items through the "Lore" statistic than any other class. If your party loadout includes a specialist wizard who can't cast the Identify spell on an item, having a bard can help avert spending large amounts of money identifying the magic items you frequently encounter, but their utility usually stopped there.
• The Final Fantasy series has several examples:
  • Final Fantasy III has a nice variety of classes, but there are several that are either only useful once in the game or are so useless that they can be totally overlooked. Its version of the Bard class is even worse than FFIV's Edward, with little attack power or defense and only one command ("Cheer") that has any use whatsoever. The Scholar, similarly, has little attack or defensive power, but has the "Scan" command which is vital in exactly one battle in the game, against Hyne. The DS remake, however, did make the Bard at least marginally useful. If you got Bard's Job levels high enough and equipped them with correct harp, they could restore at least 1000 HP to everyone instantly. Note that a number of the more useless jobs in III had their status almost completely reversed in the DS remake, turning into Lethal Joke Characters if you get enough job levels in them.
  • Prince Edward Chris von Muir from Final Fantasy IV is singularly useless, employing a harp as a weapon and possessing the special ability of "singing" at enemies — a skill that's supposed to inflict status ailments but which frequently does nothing at all. Edward's other special ability, unsurprisingly, is to run away and hide for a turn. As Game Informer so aptly summarized, "His special command is Hide, which allows him to run away and leave a twelve year old girl to take his lumps for him. Classy, Edward." In "hard-type" he's slightly more useful because he can also spread potions amongst the whole party. Slightly.
  • Seems like poor Edward just can't seem to catch a break. While the GBA and DS remakes of IV buff him considerably, After Years brings him back down. He's shown to be less wimpy storywise and he still retains his Salve ability in After Years, his Bardsong is again randomized. At the very least you can still choose whether you want to target your party or enemies with it, including being able to choose from a single/all party members/enemies and the negative statuses it can cause have potential to at least be useful this time around since the game follows the DS version trend of making Useless Useful Spells less useless. While he's not the Glass Cannon he was in the GBA version anymore, his damage output isn't that far behind from the other characters, he's still decently fast, the aforementioned Salve can be even more useful than the White Mages' healing spells both because of the buyable X-Potions and Elixirs and an item that doubles the effectiveness of items in battle and his ability to hide can still be useful against enemies who telegraph their Total Party Kill attacks. And seeing how Edward is still moping over his beloved Anna 17 years after her death, such that his kingdom is without an heir, he apparently still fits the literal definition as well. That said, he's much more confident and assertive now, and is one of the only heroes to get the better of the villains, if temporarily, so far.
  • Final Fantasy X-2 has the Songstress dressphere (class), which, despite being plot-important, is almost completely useless. There are some redeeming features to the Songstress, such as the MP Mambo (which causes all spells to have 0 MP cost) and Magical Masque (which causes all magical attacks to your party to be 0). Though, both dances can only be gotten late in the game, and neither one can come even close to touching the Cat Nip.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics has two characters, a brother and sister named Rafa and Malak. Their unique ability hits 2-5 random squares in a 5 square, cross shaped area, making their attacks frequently do nothing at all. And while Rafa's spells does a fixed damage depending on her stats (as opposed to the usual Faith-based magic system of the game), Malak's functions better if he has a very low Faith; Rafa is almost useful if you train her as a white mage due to her high Faith, or as a move-find-item holder due to her low Brave (a must for getting the rare items in the Deep Dungeon), Malak can do excellent magic damage while being almost immune to magic himself, making him an excellent faith-based magic counter if used right.
  • Final Fantasy Tactics A2 has an actual bard as a unique character ... but unlike Final Fantasy Tactics unique characters, FFTA2 has absolutely terrible stat growth in unique classes. His bard songs aren't of much help, since only his MP boosting power offers something another class can't already do with a better range of alternate actions, and dedicating a unit to boosting MP would only be of use if you had multiple mages trading out Halve MP or Blood Price for Geomancy or Magic UP while staying in formation. Fortunately, he can learn from other classes, like Juggler or Time Mage, but depending on what level you were when you recruited him, his low stats will ensure he never can quite compete with a generic specifically leveled for certain stats.
  • In Final Fantasy Dimensions, the Bard and Dancer classes initially fit this. However, Bard and Dancer skills are needed to learn some of the more powerful Fusion Abilities, and both classes can learn unique abilities in optional events that make them more effective. A Mastered Bard can learn a powerful song that grants multiple buffs at once, and the Dancer can learn two optional dances, one that grants Image to everyone in the party at once and another that is a powerful attack.
• The Bard/Clown/Minstrel (for Males) and Dancer/Gypsy/Wanderer (for Females) Classes from Ragnarok Online. While they come from the Archer Class tree and can use bows and all their Archer Skills, they're more often equipped with a Musical Instrument or Whip (depending on the character's gender) in order to allow them to preform songs or dances to buff allies or debuff enemies. They also work best when paired with the opposite gender equivalent as this allows them to preform Duets with improved abilities. Their songs/dances are near useless without a party to protect them as well.
• Accordion Thieves are probably the weakest class in Kingdom of Loathing. They have the fewest number of combat skills, meaning you mostly just hit them with music, where a muscle class does a better job of basic weapon attacks. They mainly rely on buffing themselves with some marginally useful songs. As a plus, they can sneak into the League of Chef-Magi and the Brotherhood of the Smackdown, letting you shop at all 3 guild shops and, if you have permed the skill, let you use the Wok of Ages and Malus of Forethought. Ironically, once you've permanently learned most of the other classes' skills, Accordion Thieves become the best class for speed-ascending. They're the only class that can use all the guild shops and special guild tools, many of which are extremely useful, on top of being able to pickpocket and having other handy advantages associated with Moxie classes.

• Many, many, many Pokémon fall into this category, having gimmicks that showcase unique game mechanics. Because any player can choose from all of them, many tend to get ignored completely. This tends to lead to Magikarp Power when you realize that damn near any Pokémon can be used effectively if you raise them right and throw on some TMs...Okay, ASIDE from Magikarp.
  • Speaking of, Magikarp is one of the original gimmick Pokémon; its shtick being that it's utterly useless until it evolves into Gyarados, at which point it's a force to be reckoned with.
  • Ditto is the other major one from the original game, as its only move was to turn into a copy of the opponent. Once breeding was introduced in Gold and Silver, it also had a non-battle use in being able to breed with anything. Black and White eventually made it a viable battle choice by giving it the Imposter ability, letting it copy the opponent immediately without having to use a turn.
  • In Gold and Silver, Unown is particularly noted for its gimmickry. They mimic letters, and there's one for each from A to Z (plus ? and ! in later games) for you to collect - but in battle they only have one move, Hidden Power, and its stats are different for each individual user but none of them are good.
  • Wobbuffet learns no offensive moves of its own, it can only cause damage by counterattacking. In the hands of the right trainer, it could be Difficult, but Awesome but normally it's just.
  • Smeargle only learns one move, Sketch, over and over - but Sketch lets it copy any one move used against it permanently, allowing Smeargle to potentially know any move in the game. Of course, to counter this ability, Smeargle's stats aren't that great.
  • Delibird also has only one move called Present, and the amount of damage it does is random - it can even go negative and heal the target.
  • Ruby and Sapphire introduced several of these Pokémon, as it gave them passive effects called Abilites thereby opening up a new way to add quirks:
    • Slaking has the Truant ability, meaning it is extremely lazy and only attacks every other turn, but to make up for that its stats are through the roof for the times when it does act. Savvy players can figure out ways to nullify the ability and get a real powerhouse.
    • Shedinja is a One-Hit-Point Wonder, able to go down with a single hit but its Wonder Guard ability blocks all direct damage from non-super-effective attacks. Too bad it has so many weaknesses. And there are ways abilities can be nullified. And indirect damage (like from poison or confusion) also works. The way to get one is pretty quirky, too, as you need an open slot when Nincada evolves because it becomes two Pokémon; Shedinja being the cast-off shell of its other evolution, Ninjask.
    • Plusle and Minun were used to highlight the new Double Battles. They have an ability that increases their special attack when they battle together... but their movepool sucks, their stats suck, no sane man would ever use them both in one team. In short, they are a bit less useless in double battles. A bit.
    • Feebas is like Magikarp in that it's a useless little fish that evolves into something much more formidable. The thing is that Feebas is insanely hard to find, and that evolving it involved raising a stat for Contests that was completely unrelated to battling. Later games starting with Black and White stripped the quirks from it, making it more common (still rare but not ridiculously so) and providing much easier ways to evolve it.
    • Castform would change it's typing and the typing of its Weather Ball attack depending on the newly introduced weather conditions. The problem is that, no matter what type Castform currently is, it's type and move arsenal are pretty much useless.
    • Kecleon is a Hollywood Chameleon whose type changes to that of whatever attack hit it last. Its stats are respectable, but its ability is a bit too easily abused by clever opponents. However, it later got the Hidden Ability Protean, which instead changes its type according to the attacks it uses, which means Kecleon gets STAB on any move and can additionally choose its own typing - the only other Pokémon which currently have access to Protean are the borderline Game-Breaker Greninja and its pre-evolutions.
    • Finally for Gen III, Deoxys has multiple forms and movesets that depend on which game version it's currently played on (for instance Attack Forme in FireRed and Defense Forme in LeafGreen). Later games gave players access to meteorites so they could change its forms manually.
  • Diamond and Pearl has almost as many:
    • Burmy can take different forms based on where it battled last (grassy, rocky, or urban), but this doesn't have a gameplay effect until it evolves into Wormadam, where the form is locked and affects its secondary typing and moveset - unless it's male; then it evolves into Mothim instead with its own typing and moveset.
    • Cherrim changes form and gives its entire team a stat boost when it's in strong sunlight. This ability is best used for Double Battles, but it does give itself a boost too, and additionally learns several other moves that are boosted by sunlight as well.
    • Chatot basically exists for its one unique move, Chatter, which is a recorded message that has a chance to confuse which is higher the louder the message. It's also only catchable near the end of the games it debuted in, never evolves, and is generally useless. (Unless the player is into using RNG for catching/breeding, where it's practically a requirement to use Chatot pitches to find the right stuff.)
    • Spiritomb has a particularly weird condition to catch it; requiring players to interact with 32 other players over local wireless first. The reward is a fairly strong Pokémon with no elemental weaknesses (until the Fairy type was added in X and Y).
    • Rotom is based around Haunted Technology and can possess appliances, with each one providing a unique move and, as of Black and White, also affecting its type.
    • Regigigas, like Slaking, has massive stats offset by a bad ability; in this case those stats are halved for its first five turns. Again, if you can manage to nullify the ability, you're golden. The poor golem has it even worse than Slaking - at least the sloth has the excuse of not being legendary, which explains why its enormous stats need to be balanced out with a detrimental Ability. Regigigas, meanwhile, is widely considered to be one of the worst legendary Pokémon ever, since most of them are Purposely Overpowered.
    • And Arceus is Normal-type by default, but it and its Signature Move Judgment can be changed to any other type by equipping it with a "Plate" item.
  • Unlike the last few generations, Black and White only introduces a couple quirky Pokémon. The first is Darmanitan, as certain ones (not all of them) have an ability called Zen Mode where they turn from a Glass Cannon into a Mighty Glacier at half health. Awesome, but Impractical, as preparing it for one form leaves it underequipped for the other, and Zen Mode's defenses don't help so much when Darmanitan has to be badly hurt to begin with.
  • Black and White's other major one is Zorua and Zoroark, who are Masters of Illusion and enter battle disguised as another Pokémon in your party. A lot of factors go into determining how long other players will be fooled, as Zoroark's type and attacks don't change and an opponent behaving oddly could tip players off to the ruse.
  • X and Y don't have as many as the others, probably due to not having as many Pokemon to begin with, but it does have:
    • Vivillon have one of 20 different wing patterns; 18 depending on the physical geographical location of the player when caught and 2 promotional. This coincides with the introduction of Wonder Trade, enabling players to trade Pokémon with a random person without knowing what you will get in return. Vivillon collecting has become quite a thing among players.
    • Hawlucha is a Masked Luchador bird whose signature attack, Flying Press, is the only attack in the game with two types: it counts as both Flying and Fighting, enabling it to do double damage to pokemon weak to either type. However, Flying Press is usually seen as Awesome, but Impractical and other attacks are used instead.
    • Pumpkaboo and its evolution Gourgeist come in four different sizes, with the larger ones having larger Health and Attack stats but lower Speed.
  • As far as types go, for a while, the Grass and Poison types shared this niche. Neither type has many Pokémon designed to score huge amounts of direct damage the way types like Fighting and Normal would, nor do they have a lot of moves for such a purpose. Instead, the Grass-type is more designed to inflict a variety of status effects, and the Poison-type is meant to erode away the opponents' HP, at the expense of the Grass-type having a lot of types that can deal super-effective damage against it and the Poison-type not having many options to deal super-effective damage itself. This was undermined by how Grass Pokémon, being based on plants, tend to have low Speed and would often get knocked out by said super-effective attacks before they can do much, as well as the inability to stack most conditions; and Pokémon battling progressing too quickly for the Poison Pokémon to effectively use their strategy. ^note One particularly damning drawback being the fact that Steel-types, already one of the most useful defensive types as it is, being outright immune to Poison-type attacks The Grass-type situation has been slowly getting remedied with each generation, however, with fast Pokémon like Shaymin-S, pairing it with types that negate its super-effective weaknesses like with Ferrothorn^note except for Fire damage, which is super-effective against Grass *and* Steel, making Fire damage quadrupled against it, and increased accuracy for status moves, most notably Spore, a guaranteed Sleep move. The Poison-type, on the other hand, climbed out of the pit all at once in Generation 6 when another type weak to Poison attacks was introduced.
• These types of characters have appeared in various Dragon Quest games.
  • Dragon Quest III featured the Gadabout/Goof-off/Jester, who is either a clown (male) or a bunnygirl (female). An NPC will outright tell you that they're useless. Their stats are below average all across the board (except luck), and they will often waste a turn doing something silly rather than attacking. On the other hand, Gadabouts are the only class that could become a Sage without the use of a special item.
    The SNES and GBC remake made them a little better, giving them the Whistle ability that calls a random battle, saving some time when level grinding.
  • Dragon Quest IV had Torneko. Once you got him in Chapter 5, he started goofing off just like the Gadabouts in III. He's something of a subversion, though, because while he's an underwhelming fighter, he isn't useless, and unlike the Gadabouts of III, his goofing off will almost always result in something useful. He's still more useful for what he can do outside your party rather than in, though.
  • Gadabouts made a return in Dragon Quest VI, and are given a few more abilities to make them more useful, but remain below average. There are also Dancers, who can use a variety of dances to do bad things to the enemy for no MP, up to and including instant death, although you don't get the good abilities until you've mastered the class. Both of these classes, however, must be mastered in order to get the much more useful Luminary class which does not follow this trope, as it gains very useful abilities, including Hustle Dance which can heal the entire party for no MP!
  • In addition to Gadabouts and Dancers, Dragon Quest VII includes an actual Minstrel/Bard class that, while not totally useless, deals mostly in status and curing songs, and is an underwhelming fighter. As before, you need to master this class (as well as the Gadabout and Dancer classes) in order to get the Luminary/TeenIdol class.
  • Averted in Dragon Quest IX, as the Minstrel plays more along the lines of the Jack of All Stats and is a decent fighter and spellcaster all around, which is a good thing, because you start out as one!
    And then played straight with the Luminary (Dancer). Not only is it a pain to unlock (the quest requires finding a random dungeon with a specific Mook in it, which is a pain if you do not even know what type and what level dungeons they're even found in), which can take hours or even days if you're particularly unlucky with the random dungeons. Upon finally unlocking the Luminary, you are treated to a class with terrible stats(baring speed and charm, they're among the worst of all the available classes in the game), useless abilities, and awful equip options. And if that weren't enough, you don't even get to unlock the class until you beat the main story and start doing postgame content; making the effort put into getting the class that much more obnoxious.
• The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: The Bard's College is also rather odd compared to the other factions you can join, like the Companions, the College of Winterhold, or the Thieves Guild. They only have one trainer (for Speech) and three quests other than the initial quest to join up. In exchange, however, each quest gives you a substantial increase in skill points, so it's not entirely pointless to join up.
• Lucia in Shadow Hearts: Covenant substitutes songs for aromatherapy. However, her aromatherapy requires a lot of experimentation to find which mixes have any effect, let alone a useful one. When you do, or head to GameFAQs, it turns out that some of her higher level perfumes have completely game-breaking effects, like duplicating the effect of a Third Key (a rare item that triples the number of physical attacks a character gets) on all party members for one turn.

• Fire Emblem plays this straight with the two bards Elffin and Nils, neither of whom can attack. However, they can give other units another turn.
• In the TurboGrafx-16 game Dungeon Explorer, the Bard has weak stats and even worse spells. His white magic teleported you back to the castle, and his black magic just changed the background music.

Webcomics

• Elan from The Order of the Stick is as Cloud Cuckoo Lander as they come. His bard songs are pretty much useless, his motivational speeches have a tendency to horribly backfire, and the only weapons he can use can be Sundered by someone cursing too loud. However, his real talent is a result of his bardic training: he's as Genre Savvy as they come, and sees damn near everything coming. Whenever he works close enough with the smart leader Roy, he exploits it too. And that training perfectly synergizes with the Dashing Swordsman Prestige Class he literally took a level in — which turns entertaining quips and drama into badassery. His leveling up hasn't drowned out the endearing aspects of his character: optimism, extraordinary loyalty to his friends, and a certain bumbling charm that makes him what he is. Elan's progression from a simple Bard to Dashing Swordsman isn't just about getting more/useful class powers, but him developing the chops to be a genuine hero. As part of this growth he also is slowly shown to be learning how to properly use his regular bardic spells. It's also worth nothing that Elan is the only member of the party who has a smart class build. Everyone else in the party made some of the worst possible character class choices.
• Julie, the protagonist of Our Little Adventure. She's good with a bow and she's the only group member with any sort of healing powers but seldom ever kicks ass and takes names. Julie's dislike of fighting might play into it, but she's got no problem with boosting her groupmates' killing skills using silly musical numbers.
• Prince Sid of FeyWinds gets double classed after revealing this to the gang.

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