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Drawback-Mitigating Mechanic - TV Tropes

  • ️Sun Jan 19 2025

One of the most important mantras in gaming: "risk and reward". In general, successfully using a dangerous technique is one of the most satisfying and victorious feelings any player can experience, so much so that it has also extended out of gaming, and became a recurring concept in fiction.

But, sometimes, you don't want strategies, you don't want gambling, you don't want experiences; you only want to win, and you want your opponent to lose. You want something that minimizes risk, while maximizing reward, whether it's an item, ability or perk; something that removes the "price" in Power at a Price and leaves the "Power"; something that removes the "Death" in Death or Glory Attack, and leaves the "Glory"; something that removes the "Impractical" in Awesome, but Impractical and leaves the "Awesome"; something that removes the "Suck" in Blessed with Suck, and leaves the "Blessed"; something that removes the edge in Double-Edged Buff that hurts you, while leaving the one that hurts your opponent; something that removes the inaccuracy in Powerful, but Inaccurate and guarantees a powerful hit.

For people like you, there's the Drawback-Mitigating Mechanic. It can appear as an item, or an ability, active or passive, that can bypass, or at least lessen, the drawbacks of something else, while not altering what positives they might have.

However, going against the "risk and reward" mentality means that you'd be going against the even more important rule of Competitive Balance. Especially in games that allow Player Versus Player matches, a Drawback-Mitigating Mechanic is likely to come with its own drawbacks, although they're usually less severe than the drawbacks of what they're supposed to upgrade. Most commonly, the Drawback-Mitigating Mechanic has limitations: it may have a fixed amount of uses before it's lost, it may have a Cooldown after use, it may be available to only some characters, or usable only in some game modes. It also tends to be the mechanic's only effect in battle, unless the drawback is a common penalty with easy counters. If the Drawback-Mitigating Mechanic's limitations are severe enough, and its advantages minor enough, it can end up as a Useless Useful Spell, trailing behind the more Boring, but Practical strategies.

Even single-player games may not give you such a mechanic without at least some balance: the player may access it only very late in the game, either as an 11th-Hour Superpower to even the odds against a very powerful Boss Fight, or when there's no point anymore with using it.

A less common form this trope can take is when a certain risky action, item, or ability has a built-in Drawback-Mitigating Mechanic to bypass that risk altogether. In these cases, it's either very situational or requires a very skilled player to pull off.

To count as a Drawback-Lowering Mechanic, it has to specifically target the negative effects of a "risky" attack or item, and at least lessen its effects. It's not an example if it only improves the positive effects, without mitigating the negatives. Also, examples should explain how something starts out as "risk-and-reward", and how the drawback is then nullified.

Can turn useless things Not Completely Useless. Sub-Trope of Anti-Frustration Features, and Super-Trope to Bad Luck Mitigation Mechanic, Exploited Immunity, and Luck Manipulation Mechanic. Sister Trope to Infinite Use Upgrade, Retro Upgrade, and Ability Rewrite. If a character stands out in the narrative for this trait, see One Hero, Hold the Weaksauce.

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Examples:

Game Examples:

Tabletop Games 

  • Ars Magica: If a skill test doesn't involve any inherently risky actions and isn't made in a stressful situation, it can be made with a "simple die" — unlike a "stress die", the result is bounded from 0 to 9 with no option to "explode" to a higher total, but it can't roll a botch.
  • BattleTech: The Campaign Operations rulebook has some optional Pilot Ability options that can be learned, many of which lower or remove drawbacks. For example, normally there's a penalty for a unit to make an indirect fire attack on a target and it requires a spotter. The Oblique Attacker special ability removes both, so as long as you know where the target is you can use any indirect fire-capable weapon you have against them. Sniper halves the penalties for firing at targets that are at medium or long range. And Animal Mimicry reduces the movement penalty inflicted by moving through wooded hexes.
  • Dungeons & Dragons is a game where luck and dice rolls play a major part of the experience, so even what are meant to be the easiest challenges have some risks involved. As such, there are many skills or traits that lessen the chance of Critical Failures, at the cost of subpar rewards:
    • 3rd Edition:
      • Characters attempting a safe action at their leisure may sometimes "take 10", foregoing the dice roll and proceeding as if they'd rolled a 10 on the d20. It is usually not possible to do so when when threatened or distracted, i.e. in the middle of a fight. However, some special abilities, whether racial or from class features, expand on this by allowing to take 10 at all times for some specific skills. For example, aquatic creatures in 3rd Edition may always take 10 on Swim tests; Rogues can take the "Skill Mastery" special ability, and chose a number of skills they can use whatever the situation; etc.
      • Using poison has a 5% chance of affecting the user when applying it to the blade. The Poison Use ability, which negates this penalty, is available through a number of options, notably the Ninja class, a couple of alternate class features for Rogues, and a number of Prestige Classes (such as Alchemist Savant, Assassin, Blackguard, Ninja Spy, Zhentarim Spy and a few more, especially prestige classes for drows).
      • A few class features (essentially the Barbarian's Rage or similar abilities) and feats (like "Cumbrous Dodge") have the drawback of leaving the user fatigued afterward (which is a debilitating condition in the game). There are, however, a lot of spells or effects that can remove fatigue, and even ways to become entirely immune to the condition (one level of the Horizon Walker prestige class can do the trick, by picking the desert terrain mastery).
    • 4th Edition: Once-per-encounter or once-per-day powers with the trait "Reliable" aren't expended when they miss, allowing the character to try again later in the fight.
    • 5th Edition:
      • Unlike previous editions, The Paladin's "Smite" ability is declared after a successful attack roll rather than before, so the power isn't wasted on a missed attack.
      • 11th Level Rogues get the Reliable Talent feature — if they make a check with a skill or tool they're proficient with, they can treat any roll of 9 or lower (on a 20-sided die) as though it were a 10.
      • Bards who choose to follow the College of Eloquence gain several abilities to reduce the chance of failure, or prevent resources being expended on a failed roll:
      • Silver Tongue: The bard can treat a roll of 9 or less as though it were a 10 when making a Persuasion or Deception check.
      • Unsettling Words: The bard targets 1 enemy and rolls one of their Bardic Inspiration dice. The enemy takes the result of the die roll as a penalty to their next saving throw, meaning they're more likely to suffer a negative effect from one of the bard's allies.
      • Unfailing Inspiration: If a creature rolls a Bardic Inspiration die to improve one of their checks but still fails to succeed, the die isn't wasted and the Inspiration persists until they've used it to push a roll to a success.
  • GURPS's Technology levels: Just having access to higher TL tools makes a massive difference, especially in low TL games. Should the character have proper skills and be from proper (or higher) TL, it's very easy to make TL4 (early-modern period) tools with access to TL2 (Iron Age) resources, providing an absurd +4 bonus to their users and negating the -10 penalty when trying to build or make other TL4 things
  • Mage: The Awakening: Mages can reduce their chance of a dangerous Magic Misfire by casting rote spells instead of improvising, using dedicated magical tools, and/or spending extra Mana when casting.
  • Shadows over Camelot: When fighting siege engines, knights normally play whichever combat cards they want and then roll a die to determine the enemy's strength. Sir Owain's Combat Clairvoyance lets him roll the die beforehand so he needn't waste cards.
  • Splittermond let you roll normally with 2d10 and get the sum of these dices. But you critically botch if you roll a sum of 2 or 3. To prevent this you can claim to make a safety roll before your roll. Then you get only the highest dice, but you cannot critically botch.

Video Games 

  • .hack R1 Games: Using the Data Drain ability on creatures can reward you with better items, but it increases the risk of Kite being killed instantly by corruption. The way to decrease the risk is to simply defeat enemies with your normal attacks, but the storyline eventually introduces enemies that cannot even be attacked without using a data drain on them to remove a barrier. In the final game, "Quarantine", there's a Bonus Dungeon that becomes a Luck-Based Mission deeper in because your chance of being overtaken by the bracelet becomes almost 100%.
  • Arcanum: Some of the benefits of skill training reduce the chance of failure or penalty for failing in specific ways:
    • Bow Master, Throwing Master & Firearms Master: The character does not suffer a penalty when attacking with a ranged weapon outside that weapon's optimum range.
    • Melee Expert, Spot Trap Apprentice, Pick Lock Expert & Disarm Traps Apprentice: The character does not take a penalty for melee fighting, searching for traps, picking a lock, or disarming a trap in darkness.
    • Melee Master: The character cannot suffer a critical failure with a melee weapon.
    • Pickpocket Apprentice: The character can only be caught while pickpocketing if they critically fail.
    • Pickpocket Master: The character cannot be caught while planting an item on another character.
    • Spot Trap Master & Disarm Trap Master: If a character fails to detect or disarm a trap (but does not critically fail), they have a 2nd chance to succeed.
    • Heal Expert: Critical failures are treated as regular failures and do not consume extra bandages.
  • Balatro: In each Ante, the player must go against a Small Blind, a Big Blind, and a Boss Blind in order to reach the next Ante. The Boss Blind is required; however, the player can skip the other rounds. While this skips the round's cash reward and shop, the player is given a tag that upgrades their deck.
  • Breath of Death VII: Sara's "Flow" passive, available at Level 20, removes the "Combo Break" downside of her Heal spells, so healing in the middle of battle doesn't lower the damage of combo-based attacks.
  • Breath of Fire III:
    • Using the Infinity gene by itself turns Ryu into a powerful, but berserk dragon that attacks friend and foe alike. Pairing it with the Failure gene makes it weaker, but controllable, while pairing it with the Trance and Radiance genes unlocks its true power yet keeps it controllable, albeit at the cost of a much higher AP cost upfront and per turn.
    • Rei's Weretiger form is also a berserker, yet it can be controlled by using the Influence ability (which the player can acquire very early in the game) to have it exclusively target enemies.
  • Cookie Clicker: The spells found in the Grimoire all have a chance of a Magic Misfire, giving debuffs rather than buffs. The "Diminish Ineptitude" allows spells to decrease the chance of misfiring by 10, though if the spell fails, it instead increases the chance of misfires by 5 — in theory. In practice, whether a spell succeeds or misfires is always determined before casting it. If you reload to the state just before casting the misfired spell, any spell you cast will 100% misfire.
  • In Cosmic Star Heroine, the robotic party member Clarke has a skillset revolving around using his "Save/Quit" skill to prepare for using powerful moves that would otherwise take him out of battle.
  • Fallout 4: Many high-level perks can nullify some of the game's challenges.
    • Strong Back lets the Sole Survivor fast-travel even when over-encumbered with extra items, after a few upgrades.
    • A fully upgraded Locksmith prevents lockpicks from breaking, when looking for goodies in locked containers or rooms.
    • A fully upgraded Lead Belly renders the Sole Survivor immune to radiation from eating and drinking, in a world where irradiated consumables are very plentiful.
    • A fully upgraded Chem Resistant renders the Sole Survivor immune to chem addiction.
    • Alcoholic beverages give some Status Buffs and make diplomacy easier, at the risk of getting addicted, but the first level of Party Boy/Girl makes the Sole Survivor immune to addiction.
    • A fully upgraded Hacker prevents the Sole Survivor from getting locked out from terminals.
    • A fully upgraded Sneak lets the Sole Survivor run while sneaking, without increasing the chance of being discovered.
    • An upgraded Quick Hands makes reloading guns during V.A.T.S. cost no APs.
  • Final Fantasy VI: Quake and Meltdown are powerful spells that hit all targets with earth and fire/wind damage respectively. The player can exploit this by either using Float in Quake's case, allowing the party to avoid damage while hitting enemies for massive damage, or wearing elemental-absorbing gear so that the party gets healed while dealing damage with their powerful spells.
  • For the King: A major gameplay mechanic. Each skill test rolls one or more virtual dice against the character's ability score, but the player may spend Focus points before the roll for automatic successes on some or all of the dice.
  • HoloCure: The equipment item Kusogaki Shackles reduces/negates the negative effects of some Power at a Price items while keeping the potent benefits. This includes stat reductions on Breastplate (-10% speed), Energy Drink (-20% Max Health), and Gorilla's Paw (-20% critical hit), the gradual health loss of Injection Type Asacoco, and the Holocoin consumption of Membership.
  • Iji: The Max-Level Bonus for the Crack skill grants "Electronic Mastery", increasing cracking time, but importantly for this trope, stopping blue nodes from flickering, and prevents backfire from failing to crack a target.
  • Legend of Grimrock: In Grimrock 2, guns normally have a chance of backfiring and hurting the user, but with a maximum-level skill in Firearms, this chance is removed.
  • Mass Effect: Adrenaline Rush resets the Cooldown of any of Shepard's abilities. The only ability not restored is Adrenaline Rush itself, making it an emergency ability for when you really need a certain power. The Shock Trooper Prestige Class reduces the cooldown on Adrenaline Rush by twenty-five percent.
  • Minecraft: Tools are essential for gameplay, but once they break — including the best, and hardest ones to craft — new ones have to be crafted again. Once players get access to an enchanting table, however, they have access to two enchantments that mitigate this: Unbreaking lowers the change of a unit of durability being used up, up to 75% of not being worn at its highest level, while Mending consumes experience orbs to repair damaged tools and armor. Gear with Unbreaking III and Mending is functionally indestructible, with the caveat that the repair function will consume large quantities of experience that could otherwise be spent on enchanting or fusing new items.
  • Octopath Traveler II: A majority of the equippable items lower the user's stats, usually with some accompanying buffs to compensate, but occasionally it's all the equipment does. Until the player finds the Blessing In Disguise, which turns negative effects from equipments into positive effects.
  • One Step From Eden: Removing the downsides of the "Jam" Deck Clogger takes at least 2 Artifacts:
    • The "Gelatin" artifact gives Deflector Shields to the player if they play "Jam", which locks them in place, usually making them vulnerable.
    • "XD-40" stops "Jam"-s from being an Anchored Attack Stance spell, so by itself, it just makes it a card that does nothing.
  • In Outward, many enchantment recipes enhance items in ways that can be used to make a specialized item more suited for conventional, well-rounded use. For example, light armors that are specialized for speed or status effect resistance can be granted greater protective ability; likewise, some strongly defensive but cumbersome armors can be made lighter. One of the most prominent examples is the enchantment Unsuspected Strength, which applies to iron weapons; these are ubiquitous, but deal moderately low damage and have low durability, so they tend to be sold off or used to craft other, stronger items. The enchantment increases their physical damage by 150% and makes them indestructible, potentially turning these weapons into effective parts of one's main loadout on par with endgame-level gear.
  • Pokémon: There are various items and abilities designed around this, with varying success in the meta:
    • Some consumable held items are used to counter the drawbacks of some Awesome, but Impractical moves:
      • The Power Herb removes the charging turn of some moves so they fire in the same turn they are selected.
      • The White Herb can reset any Status Debuff given to the user, which can include self-inflicted ones through specific moves: Gym Leader Flannery uses this strategy, combining the White Herb with Overheat, a powerful Fire-type move that cuts the user's Special Attack by half after use.
    • A handful of Abilities grant this advantage:
      • Rock Head is an Ability that completely nullifies recoil damage for the user. Since recoil moves are usually very strong and effective, aside from recoil, it can be a potent strategy: Hisuian Arcanine, for example, has a good Attack, Rock Head, and Flare Blitz, a recoil STAB move with great base power, 100% accuracy, a decent amount of PP, and can even burn the opponent.
      • Own Tempo makes the user immune to confusion; while a confused mon can be disruptive, it was seen as a situational Ability for a long time. However, Own Tempo also protects the user from self-inflicted confusion, which some pretty powerful moves do: Lilligant is a decent special attacker with Own Tempo and Petal Dance, a STAB move that not only has great base power, but also strikes for 3 turns in a row, while normally self-inflicting confusion. While it temporarily prevents the user for choosing a different move, Lilligant is never confused, and can restart all over again.
      • Magic Guard makes the user completely immune to any indirect damage (from Status Effects, Geo Effects, Abilities, or Items). While already an exceptional Ability, it also nullifies recoil damage — not just from moves, like Rock Head, but from the Life Orb as well. As such, Pokémon with Magic Guard are given this item to gain a permanent 30% boost to any attack they use, without any drawbacks.
      • Contrary reverses the effects of status buffs and debuffs: it's a very hit-or-miss Ability, but among its hits, it can be very powerful. Some powerful moves lower the user's stats after use as a drawback, like Leaf Storm with Special Attack, Superpower with Attack and Defense, or Hammer Arm with Speed. With Contrary, those already hard-hitting Moves now increase stats as well.
      • While Status Effects like poison are meant to hinder the afflicted Pokémon, it's impossible to override or stack two non-volatile status conditions; so Pokémon can hold a Toxic Orb (whose only effect is badly poisoning the holder) to prevent catching another condition. Unless the Pokémon has Poison Heal, which causes poison to restore Hit Points instead of eroding them: now you have a Pokémon with a permanent Healing Factor that cannot be inflicted with any other status condition.
      • Many attacks have beneficial guaranteed secondary traits such as guaranteed hits, increasing stats, removing entry hazards etc., at the drawback of having a pretty weak base power. However, with the ability Technician, weaker attacks (up to a base power of 60) are boosted by 50%. Stack this with a potential Same Type Attack Bonus (STAB) of another 50%, and you'll have menacing attacks with fantastic secondary effects.
    • Some moves have a built-in Risk-Lowering Mechanic that can activate in specific circumstances:
      • Solar Beam and Solar Blade are normally Charged Attacks, but they need only one turn, instead of two, to deal damage if under harsh sunlight; Electro Shot has the same mechanic, but under rain instead.
      • Thunder and Blizzard are very powerful Electric and Ice attacks respectively, but with a rather pathetic 70% accuracy rate for both. However, under rain and hail/snow respectively, they are guaranteed to hit since Generation II.
      • In the first generation games only, Hyper Beam would skip the recharge turn if the user knocked out an opponent with it.
    • Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon has Looplets, held items that offer different benefits, some of which function like the Risk-Lowering Mechanics in mainline games. The Persim Looplet allows the use of Outrage or Petal Dance without the danger of self-inflicted confusion (like Own Tempo), while the Wind Looplet allows the use of Overheat or Close Combat without the danger of self-inflicted debuffs (like the White Herb).
    • Pokémon Rumble: The Snappy special trait reduces the charge-up time on moves, making the powerful, but slow-charging ones less risky to use.
    • Pokémon GO: The Shadow Pokemon that you rescue from Team Go Rocket have a Shadow Bonus giving them 20% higher attack at the cost of 20% lower defense, but this is well worth the trade-off. However, Shadow Pokemon are stuck with the weak charged attack Frustration, which you can't normally TM away; upon Purifying the Pokemon it is replaced with the somewhat better but still poor Return, which you can TM away. Although Purification lets you change the move and increases each of the Pokemon's stats by 2, it isn't worth sacrificing the Shadow Bonus. However, Team Go Rocket Takeover events mitigate this drawback with a literal Anti-Frustration Feature, allowing you to TM away Frustration without Purifying the Pokemon, maintaining their Shadow Bonus without the drawback of a weak move. Once Frustration is gone, you can freely swap its moves even after the event ends.
  • Rebuild: Survivor skills help determine the outcome of a mission:
    • Scouting out a tile makes all further missions there safer (and in the second game, no longer carries any risk of death).
    • Exactly how dangerous any mission will be is expressed as a percentage on the mission screen, which is reduced by sending more survivors (and further reduced the higher the Combat skill of those survivors), which must be balanced against the risk of zombies breaking past the fort's defenses which increases with every active survivor (unless the fort has a lot of guards and defenses).
    • The chance of finding useful items / recruiting additional survivors is also expressed as a percentage that increases with Scavenger/Leadership skills, although it can't go above 95%.
  • Reverie - Touhou Combinations: Seija's gimmick is to take The Binding of Isaac's item quality system (where items are categorized under 0-4 tiers of power) and flip it on its head, making the normally weak or detrimental Quality 0 items (plus some Quality 1 items) and buff them to the point of being extremely viable, while also making the normally powerful Quality 4 items (plus some Quality 3 items) and Nerf them to make them risky or impractical. If Seija obtains the item Birthright, then the negative effects of the higher quality items get negated, allowing for the player to get the best of both worlds.
  • Slay the Spire:
    • The Ironclad has quite a few cards that give you Status cards as a drawback.note  However, the Medical Kit relic allows you to play these cards to get rid of them so they won't keep clogging your deck. (This also saves you the end-of-turn damage from Burns.) The Ironclad also has access to the card Evolve, whose effect draws you an additional card whenever you draw a Status. This prevents wasted draws, which is in most cases the worst thing about Statuses. Even better, the upgraded Evolve draws you two cards per Status, making them draw-positive. He also has the card Fire Breathing, if you play it every subsequent Curse or Status you draw has an enemy take 6 or 10 damage per card (it is not an attack, so it doesn't activate defensive abilities like Thorns) which can end up causing enemies like the Sentries, Slimes and Chosen to destroy themselves by dumping Status cards into your deck.
    • Some powerful effects, most notably the Silent's Wraith Form (two [three] turns of near-invincibility at the cost of being nearly defenseless once it runs out) and the Defect's Biased Cognition (a bunch of Focus right now, but your Focus will keep draining for the rest of the fight) use a debuff to track their drawback. This means that their drawback can be removed with Orange Pellets, or blocked with Artifact from Panacea, Clockwork Souvenir, or the Defect's Core Surge.
    • The Watcher's Blasphemy is a Death or Glory Attack that gives you a lot of power on this turn... and a "buff" that kills you next turn. Yes, a buff — it's coded as a buff to prevent you from circumventing it with Artifact or Orange Pellets. However, there's still a way: it kills you by dealing a massive amount of damage, so you can survive if you manage to make yourself intangible on the turn you would die.
    • Curses, Deck Cloggers that often have additional nasty effects like dealing damage to you whenever you play a card or limiting you to only 3 cards in a turn, are often used as a drawback to helpful effects. The Blue Candle lets you play Curses to get rid of them for the rest of the fight at the cost of 1 HP per curse.
    • The starting Strikes and Defends are usually considered Deck Cloggers due to their deliberately underwhelming effects. However, the Ancient Writing event lets you upgrade all of them for free, which makes keeping them less painful.
  • Downfall (Slay the Spire):
    • While much of the Hermit's kit is built around gaining advantage from disadvantages instead of mitigating them directly, he still has a few drawback-mitigating effects:
      • Virtue is an uncommon card that lets you reduce all of your debuffs by 1 (2 if upgraded), which is helpful when a bunch of his cards give him debuffs.
      • Covet provides a Card Cycling effect that not only lets him replace a drawn Curse, but specifically exhausts cards of that type. Similarly, Malice is an attack with a targeted exhaust effect. It even rewards you by becoming an Area of Effect attack if you use it to exhaust a Curse.
    • The Slime Boss's "Tackle" cards are efficient attacks with the drawback of also dealing damage to you. However, his kit also features the card Roll Through, which prevents the self-damage caused by the next two (three if upgraded) Tackle cards. He also gives you access to the Protective Gear shop relic, which reduces the self-damage from Tackles by 3 — enough to remove their drawback unless you're also using Recklessness (which boosts their damage output at the cost of also increasing the self-damage).
    • The Guardian has several "reduce all your debuffs by 1" effects, which can reduce or remove the drawback of Overload ("Draw 4 cards. Next turn, draw 2 fewer cards.") and Giga Beam (a big attack that skips your next turn).
    • The Hexaghost's Incorporeal has the odd effect of mitigating its own drawback if you play multiple copies on the same turn. It's a Cast from Hit Points card that gives you Intangible, which reduces every instance of HP loss to 1. This includes the HP cost of additional Incorporeals. (For similar reasons, Incorporeal works well with other sources of Intangible.)
    • The Automaton has a lot of cards that give you Status cards. However, it also has access to effects that mitigate the drawback of gaining a bunch of Deck Cloggers: Cleanse gets rid of a Status, Mutator lets you remove Statuses by turning them into Strength boosts, Bug Barrage lets you cycle Statuses while dealing damage, Repulsor exhausts a Status and replaces the wasted draw every turn (and also works on Curses), Refactor can eliminate Statuses before they're even drawn (and in fact rewards you for doing so), and Burn Out exhausts all your Statuses while dealing damage for every Status you had.

Non-Game Examples

Literature