Your power will be maximum, but your defenses will not.
Games with RPG Elements usually involve characters with numerical values, a.k.a statistics. Since Most Writers Are Human and clothing is very human, such that Appropriate Animal Attire is a way to mark anthropomorphic animals, such RPG-esque games usually have clothing as equipment.
While such equipment could just be in a simple Tier System of each level being better than the previous one, the creator could introduce a level of strategy beyond just getting the newest thing all the time. Equipment that increases a stat while also decreasing another below what it would've been if nothing were worn, makes the player need to choose between multiple options for equipment. That kind of equipment is this trope.
It's like a more permanent version of Double-Edged Buff, where instead of choosing when to make it happen, the player only can choose between changing it to something else or possibly removing the effect entirely.
Most examples assume that the player either starts with no equipment or can choose to unequip their Starter Equipment. But if it's impossible to remove the Starter Equipment, then the values with Starter Equipment is the base value to be measured from.
Point Buy System might involve other kinds of tradeoffs, giving a boost in exchange for a deficiency elsewhere, set into a created character and unable to be altered by choice after that.
While this is typically a Necessary Drawback for balancing, these items can reward Min-Maxing a more important stat. Depending on the drawback, instances of this trope could range from a Poison Mushroom Joke Item to Purposely Overpowered.
For another video-game-equipment-based trope, there's Equipment-Based Progression, for when equipment is the only way to get stronger. Cursed Item is when there are highly detrimental effects, and Improbable Accessory Effect is when the effect can't be explained on how it comes from the item. See also Armor and Magic Don't Mix, for when armor imposes a penalty on a spellcaster's ability to use magic.
A child of Power at a Price, this trope will occur with its siblings if the price is extracted upon wearing some piece of equipment.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Fan Works
- A Game of Cat and Cat: Equipping / installing Magatama tend to give one elemental resistance but take another away:
He'd had the Wadatsumi Magatama in him since October. The Misama Magatama had the drawback of making him languish in the warm dorms and steamy baths, and while the Masakados Magatama protected him from ice magic, it didn't do a thing about mundane cold. The only thing he had to worry about with Wadatsumi was sticking his fingers in a socket or being struck by lightning, and even then it just hurt like hell.
Tabletop Games
- Dungeons & Dragons:
- Basic Dungeons & Dragons: Two-handed weapons tend to have a slightly larger damage die, but cause the player character using them to lose initiative.
- Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition: Medium and Heavy armors reduces a character's speed (except for dwarves). All armors heavier than leather also impose an "armor check penalty" on Balance, Climb, Escape Artist, Hide, Jump, Move Silently, Sleight of Hand, and Tumble checks, and a double penalty on Swim checks. This penalty gets worse for characters who aren't properly proficient with the type of armor worn, even applying to attack rolls.
- Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition: Medium and heavy armors provide a greater bonus to a character's armor class than light armor, but often impose a disadvantage penalty on stealth checks (the player rolls the dice twice and takes the worse result).
Video Games
- Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night: The "Risk Ring" increases the attack damage calculation stats while reducing the defensive ones including elemental resistances.
- Brotato: Most items in the shop boost some stats, but lower others. Generally, the common items will provide small stat boosts with little to no drawbacks, while the rarer and more expensive items will provide both greater boosts and harsher penalties. These items typically help to define a build, like Mastery giving +6 melee damage in exchange for -3 ranged damage.
- In Cthulhu Saves the World, the Zombie Tunic for Cthulhu gives him Vit +150, Will -9999, resulting in his Will being 0 if he wears it.
- Deltarune: As the primary party's White Mage, Ralsei naturally has the highest Magic stat and the lowest Attack stat (not counting Noelle, who has even higher Magic and even poorer Attack). He can equip two scarves, the Ragger2 and Puppet Scarf, which both serve to greatly raise his Attack but also decrease his Magic. The latter in particular raises his Attack by 10, but decreases his Magic by 6, its description even explicitly stating that it's "for those that abandon healing".
- Disco Elysium: Many clothing items and other items you can equip boost one or more stat while lowering another. The first pair of pants you can find, for example, provide +1 Electrochemistry, but -1 Savoir Faire, with the Flavor Text noting that the tightness in the crotch area explains the effects. The most common way to play is changing your outfit to boost a specific skill every time you attempt to pass a skill check.
- In Dragon Age: Origins, Aodh is an ax that grants improved melee chance and fire resistance and damage to the wielder but decreases the wielder's resistance to cold.
- The Dragon Ball franchise:
- In Dragon Ball Xenoverse, the various outfits obtained throughout the game give players various stat boosts with some giving debuffs.
- Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2: The QQ Bang capsules, which override the clothing boosts in favor of all-around boosts with at least one stat either having a negligible gains or even a debuff.
- EarthBound: Ness' officially strongest weapon is the Casey Bat, which boosts his attack by 125 points but also only hits 25% of the time, the lowest hit rate in the game, and therefore a reduction from anything that can be called the "base" hit rate, along with being a Cursed Item because it's less likely to hit than it is to not hit, so trying to attack with it is betting against the odds.
- Elden Ring: Glintstone Crowns raise one or more stats (typically intelligence, arcane, or both) but lower health, stamina, or focus (a semi-hidden stat affecting resistance to sleep and madness) by anywhere from ten to eighteen percent, depending on the crown.
- The Elder Scrolls:
- The Necromancer's Amulet is a recurring magical artifact throughout the series. While the exact details vary by entry, it typically massively boosts spellcasting power while reducing physical resistance, making Squishy Wizards even squishier. (The exception is Morrowind, where it lacks a drawback entirely.)
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind:
- The Boots of Blinding Speed are a pair of boots whose power is exactly as it sounds — they give a massive speed boost to the wearer, but also severely impair their vision. Using a Resist Magicka spell or drinking a potion that does likewise right before equipping the boots can prevent the latter effect, however.
- Fury is a unique enchanted claymore that massively boosts attack power, but drains all of the wielder's armor skills by 20 points, essentially making them into a Glass Cannon. In the unpatched game, it instead damages these skills, and since there is no way to restore damaged skills, it essentially results in permanent reductions.
- The Tribunal and Bloodmoon expansions each add robes with various tradeoffs. The Robe of the Lich, designed to be worn by the namesake creature, drains 600 points of health from the wearer but increases Magicka by 300. Under normal circumstances, the player character cannot wear it without dying instantly. The Mantle of Woe is similar, massively draining Personality, increasing weakness to "normal" weapons, and adding "sun damage" like a vampire in exchange for huge boosts to Intelligence (and thus spellcasting power) as well as the Conjuration skill.
- The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
- "Ahzidal's" equipment, a helmet and set of gauntlets, increase the range of your spells but cause them to use more magicka and reduce the effectiveness of your wards but increase your chance of absorbing incoming spells, respectively.
- The Ring of Bloodlust allows werewolves to deal 50% more damage, but also take 50% more damage as well.
- Epic Battle Fantasy: The Soul Eater turns Matt into a Glass Cannon. Starting from the third game, other equipment also reduces other stats.
- The Final Fantasy franchise:
- Final Fantasy II: Your characters can use a physical attack, or if a scroll is used to train them, a magical attack. Their equipment usually boosts their stats, but some of them may boost one stat while penalizing another:
- Swords increase attack at the cost of magic damage.
- Wearing Heavy Armor boosts defense at the cost of evasion, compared to wearing nothing at all.
- Final Fantasy IV:
- The Avenger is a sword equippable by both Cecil and Kain that boosts its wielder's Strength, Agility and Stamina by 10 but also lowers their Intelligence and Spirit by the same amount, in addition to automatically inflicting Berserk on the wielder when equipped.
- The Minerva Bustier/Heroine armor offers a great boost to physical attack and defense but utterly cripples magic. It can only be equipped by women, and wouldn't you know it, all the playable women in the game are mages.
- Final Fantasy V: The game features a trio of items that when equipped, provide great bonuses but at the same time provide great drawbacks.
- The Bone Mail is the strongest armor in the game by defense value and makes the wearer immune to poison-elemental damage, halves ice-elemental damage, and provides immunity to several status effects. However, it essentially treats the wearer as undead, giving them weaknesses to fire- and holy-elemental damage, and prevents them from being revived in battle.
- The Thornlet is the strongest headgear in the game by defense value and makes the wearer immune to Sleep, but inflicts the Sap status effect on them, causing their HP to wither away rather quickly.
- The Cursed Ring provides hefty boosts to defense and magic defense, but inflicts Doom on the wearer, putting them on a timer before they automatically die.
- Final Fantasy II: Your characters can use a physical attack, or if a scroll is used to train them, a magical attack. Their equipment usually boosts their stats, but some of them may boost one stat while penalizing another:
- Fire Emblem Fates: Due to weapons being unbreakable, the weapons are given drawbacks to balance them out. As a general example, generic E-rank weapons grants +10 critical avoid at a cost of preventing the unit from dealing critical hits or activating skills, C-rank weapons lowering the unit's offensive speed (meaning that the unit have to have at least 8 speed to deal a follow-up attack), and B-rank weapons inflicting a -2 debuff to strength and skill for each unit's attack.
- In Genshin Impact, Rust is a 4★ Bow that increases Normal Attack DMG by 40%note but decreases Charged Attack DMG by 10%.
- Granblue Fantasy: Weapons with the "Tyranny" skill provide an attack boost to characters with the same element as that weapon, but also a 10% cut to their maximum HP.
- Heroes of Might and Magic III: A series of Relic-class artifacts increase one of your hero's stats by a massive amount but lowers another stat. The tradeoff is that each lower the stat that best compliments the one they raise (the one that boosts your Mana Meter also lowers your Spell Power, for example), making them not totally outclass standard stat boosts.
- Hob features special garments the player character can create and then don to receive a boost with a corresponding penalty: The Sprite Cloak increases speed but reduces health capacity and energy regeneration, Dynamo Gear increases energy but reduces health capacity, and Ancient Garb conversely increases health capacity at the cost of energy regeneration.
- A few of the Story Items in Kirby Fighters 2 give a massive buff to your characters' stats in addition to some kind of caveat that persists until the end of the given Story Mode chapter when selected.
- The Cursed Anti-Ghost Ring prevents all characters from becoming ghosts should they get KO'd, including the player characters.
- The Cursed Attack Ring multiplies the players' attack power by 2 in addition to cutting their maximum health by 66%.
- The Cursed Auto-Heal Ring multiplies auto-healing after battle by 3 in exchange for forcing all food items to not spawn during battles.
- The Cursed Lv. 5 Attack, Ghost, Health, Quick-Charge and Recovery Stones all boost the relevant attributes immensely but also damages the player characters for 50% of their maximum health.
- League of Legends: Guinsoo's Rageblade is an item specializing in hybrid damage and attack speed that in its 2021-2023 incarnation came with a unique bonus effect that eliminates any Critical Hit chance the player builds and instead converts a fraction of it into a flat damage buff. Critical hits in League are potentially very powerful, but unreliable thanks to RNG unless you build a lot of it, and the point of this feature was to supplement champions who rely on high DPS and on-hit effects (not necessarily crits) and allow them to dish out more consistent damage. Due to major overhauls at the start of the 2024 season regarding crit and on-hit itemization, this specific element has since been removed.
- Legend of Legaia: The Astral Sword provides a huge attack boost, second only to the Infinity +1 Sword, but in exchange it enlarges the "Arms" Art Block. It means that left-hand strikes take up more space in Vahn's combo string, thus locking him out of certain combos, including the Miracle Art. Since the game is very stingy with money, and you get this one for free, you'll probably stick with it for a while.
- In the The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games, some of the rings you can find and equip have this effect on damage values:
- Affecting both damage dealt and taken:
- The Power Ring (which comes in levels 1-3) increases your sword damage and the damage you take by the amount indicated.
- The Armor Ring reduces damage taken and sword damage by the same amount and comes in increasing levels.
- The Whimsical Ring lowers sword damage a little but has a random change to deal major damage.
- The protection ring makes all damage deal one heart, which means a lot more damage from weak enemies, but much less from some stronger ones.
- Affecting both damage dealt and taken:
- MARDEK: Fire, water, air and earth pendants give resistance to their element but make the one who equips it vulnerable to another one. The cursed blade and cursed beret curse the character and, in the blade's case, makes them bleed. The bonemail also makes its wearer vulnerable to light.
- Mega Man Battle Network 1: The initial release had elemental armors that halved the damage from all sources except their elemental weakness, which has the damage doubled instead.
- Might and Magic: Many top-tier items provide massive boosts to one stat while reducing others.
- Monsters Den gives a quickness penalty for characters using heavy armor, which mostly affects initiative order. In Monsters' Den Chronicles, quickness is more important as it affects activation speed.
- The Monster Hunter series is built around hunting large monsters and then using their body parts to make new weapons and armor. This gear is based on the specific monster hunted, which means it reflects their inherent strengths and weaknesses. Some armor gives you raised defense against one type of elemental damage while making you more vulnerable to another, while some weapons raise your attack strength while reducing your affinity, making your weapon more likely to harmlessly bounce off a target.
- No More Heroes III: Some of the Death Glove Chips give a stat increase, but slightly decrease another stat. One chip, for example, increases damage dealt but also increases damage taken.
- Octopath Traveler: Starting with about the second ring of towns, Shields lower the wielder's evasion.
- Octopath Traveler II: A lot of equipment imposes penalties on things like Accuracy, Evasion, and Critical. There's even a Cursed Item called the "Rosary of Redemption" which only reduces your Physical Attack and Critical stats... and a secret item, the "Blessing In Disguise," which turns all equipped stat negatives into positives. There are entire builds focusing on equipping a character with the Warmaster job class (so they can equip all weapons), Lost Tribe equipment (very strong end-game stuff that reduces other stats) and then Blessing In Disguise to result in a Physical God.
- Path of Exile:
- Unique items often have a downside to counter their unique benefit, most frequently lowering the wearer's resistance against one or more elemental damage types. A particularly extreme example is the axe Actum, which on top of lacking the three gem sockets typical to a one-handed weapon, outright sets the wielder's intelligence to 0.
- Players will sometimes encounter reflecting mist in maps, which offers amulets or rings that randomly have some of their modifiers boosted and others inverted, so a ring might offer a greater boost to life regeneration and fire resistance than would be possible on any regular ring, but decrease their life and have an inverted cold damage modifier that makes enemy attacks inflict additional cold damage against them. Sometimes they're well worth the upside, and occasionally the inverted mod can even be made useful, but as Randomly Generated Loot many of them are worse than useless.
- Rogue Legacy 2: All equipment pieces from the White Wood and Black Root armor sets reduce your Vitality and Armor stats. In exchange, these sets provide significant boosts to your Focus or Dexterity stats, respectively. When upgraded, they reduce even more Vitality and Armor.
- Ruphand: An Apothecary's Adventure: The Dark Iron Shield gives 31 Block Strength while subtracting 3 Attack.
- Splatoon: Some clothing abilities give enhancements to the player in exchange to giving drawbacks:
- Respawn Punisher extends the opponent's respawn time if they're splatted by the player but also extends the player's respawn time if they get splatted.
- Ninja Squid makes the player less visible when swimming in ink but lowers their swim speed.
- The Super Mario Bros. franchise:
- The Game Boy Color version of Mario Golf will eventually allow players to equip tennis rackets and shoes that alter the player's stats. Most equipment increases some stats at the cost of lowering others, but the Iron Racket and Iron Shoes work as an Experience Booster at the cost of lowering all stats.
- Super Mario RPG: The Lazy Shell armor greatly raises the wearer’s defense stats, but in exchange, lowers their attack, magic, and speed.
- The Paper Mario series: The badges "P-Up, D-Down" and "P-Down, D-Up" badges, which respectively raise attack/lower defense and lower attack/raise defense by 1 each.
- Paper Mario 64 has both of those badges.
- Both of these badges return in The Thousand Year Door, along with newer ones that apply the same effect to your partners.
- In Shovel Knight campaign Shovel of Hope, the Conjurer's Cloak makes Shovel Knight receive extra damage from hits but makes mana potions drop more frequently from enemies, facilitating a Squishy Wizard gameplay.
- Team Fortress 2: Each one of the nine classes has a standard loadout of weapons featuring their primary, a side-arm, and a melee weapon. The base weapons are fairly standard. Shotguns, minigun, flame-thrower, etc. But as new weapons were released, to keep the starting weapons viable, all replacement weapons increase stats in some capacity while decreasing them in others, sometimes adding additional effects. For example, Scout's default Scattergun shoots 10 pellets in 6 shots per reload. The "Force-A-Nature", however, only has 2 shots per reload ("33% clip size"), the pellets do less damage ("10% less damage per pellet"), and reloading without using a second shot loses that shot from ammo ("If one shot is unused before reloading, it is lost"), but in return, Scout fires faster ("50% faster firing speed"), there are 12 pellets instead of 10 ("20% more pellets per shot), and the gun causes a major knockback effect ("On hit: applies a knockback effect that propels enemies backwards and the user in the opposite direction (if airborne). This allows the user to perform a Force Jump and to horizontally prolong any other jumping technique."). Players can find the right weapons which work best for them, and which weapons work for the different game modes, like Capture the Flag and Control versus Mann vs. Machine, can be wildly different.
- Temtem:
- The Fat Burner reduces the holder's attack and special attack by 15% and increases its attack by 10%.
- The Heavy Armor reduces the holder's speed by 15%, and damage taken by 10%.
- Unicorn Overlord: Dragonbone, Thorn, Icefall, and Wingcrest equipments grant the character one extra PP at the cost of a stat specific to the equipment. Dragonbone equipments reduce the character's initiative, Thorn equipments reduce the character's HP, Icefall equipments reduce the character's guard rate, and Wingcrest equipment reduce the character's critical rate. Each of these equipments are sold in shops in Drakenhold, Elheim, Bastorias, and Albion, respectively.
- A Very Long Rope to the Top of the Sky:
- The Gravity Suit reduces the wearer's Agility stat by 500, in exchange for boosting Attack and Spirit by 50, and Defense by 100. Such a large Agility drop can only be countered by the Really, Really Fast Ring, which gives the wearer 500 Agility, exactly countering the reduction.
- The Mechanical Girl armor set trades 5 AGI a piece for more defense.
- The Steam-Powered Suit trades 20 AGI for 40 DEF.
- Warframe
- Corrupted Mods are special mods found in Orokin vaults that provide a bonus to one stat and a penalty to another. Fleeting Expertise for example reduces ability energy cost at the cost of ability duration, while Critical Delay reduces a primary weapon's fire rate but increases its chance of landing a Critical Hit.
- Several mods exclusive to the Player Versus Player Conclave are less straight upgrades and more sidegrades. Maximum Capacity for example increases a rifle's magazine size but also its reload time, Comet Rounds convert a fraction of its damage composition into Impact damage, and Adrenaline Boost increases your warframe's energy capacity at the cost of hit points.
- Workshop In The Ironwood Grove: Nell's Elemental Forms skills are just her personal way of changing her Body Armor, and each Form is associated with an Element's clothing that changes her stats from her "natural state". Fire Form equips her with a Fire Cloak that gives an ATK boost of 45, PDEF (physical defense) reduction of 21, MDEF (magical defense) reduction of 20, STR boost of 113, and INT increase of 214, making her a bit of a Glass Cannon.
- Xenoblade Chronicles X:
- The Ramjet Rifle has the best base TP gain in the game, boasting 300 TP every 10 seconds. The tradeoff is that it also has the lowest attack of any weapon, at a measly 1.
- Heavy armor in general provides the highest boosts to defense of all the armor classes, but in exchange it grants a significant vulnerability to Gravity damage.
- Yo-kai Watch: Most equipment gives a stat boost in one aspect, but in exchange, slightly decreases another stat.
