A Joke Attack is an attack, technique, spell, or some other action that simply puts the user at a disadvantage, usually because of a prank by the creators. They are best seen in either tabletop or video games, where they might be severely underpowered, have no effect, or even harm the user more than helping them (if at all). This is a Sister Trope to Joke Character and Joke Item.
Joke Attacks are usually reserved for Cherry Tapping; however, there can be some situations where a Joke Attack performs better than conventionally good skills: they might confer some trait uniquely useful in an unusually hard challenge, they might synergize with a Double-Edged Buff, or there might be an error that turns them more useful, upgrading them to Not Completely Useless. In some cases, the developers intentionally sneak in very good effects to an obfuscatingly weak attack, and is best categorized as a Lethal Joke Attack. Other times, they might appear completely, positively useless, and they actually are.
Notice that this trope does not include actions that are as bad as they're expected to be. A very weak attack from a single button press in a Fighting Game is meant to be just a basic action, and the main attacks should be combos. A weak starting spell in an RPG is also meant to be not as efficient as stronger spells learned later. Some other functions, such as the Taunt Button, or the Emote Command, do not affect gameplay in normal circumstances, and they are not intended to. They can count as Joke Attacks only if their drawbacks to the user are notable, even by the standards of basic actions or taunts/emotes.
This trope is different from Useless Useful Spell and Power Up Letdown, in that those are intended to be, well, useful, but the circumstances turn it impractical. The first two are more context-sensitive, which means that an action that's useless in one game or version can become genuinely useful in another, whereas a Joke Attack is usually made deliberately bad thanks to some intrinsic property, and cannot be made useful without severe retooling. Long story short:
- A spell that inflicts the Poisoned Status Effect, in a game where enemies either have Contractual Boss Immunity or are goblins with 1 HP that go down in 1 hit regardless of status conditions, is an Useless Useful Spell.
- A spell that inflicts the Poisoned Status Effects on the user, for a 1% chance of lowering a random enemy's attack to 99% of its maximum value, is a Joke Attack.
Contrast Death or Glory Attack (has a very powerful effect balanced by a severe penalty if it doesn't land), Awesome, but Impractical (is intended to be a viable choice, but is bogged down by its drawbacks) and Cool, but Inefficient (doesn't do anything, but makes the player feel cool instead of being the butt of a joke). Compare Negative Ability, which is usually a passive effect instead of an action, and is more likely to be found in overpowered units for Competitive Balance. Fake Special Attack is a Sub-Trope. The Magic and Powers-equivalent Sister Trope is What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?, and its Lethal variant Heart Is an Awesome Power.
Examples:
Tabletop Games
- Magic: The Gathering:
- "One With Nothing"'s only effect is discarding the user's whole hand. "When nothing remains, everything is equally possible" indeed.
- "Mudhole" returns all land cards from the graveyard back to your deck. Except there are cards that restore all the cards from the graveyard, and some even do it for free, unlike Mudhole!
- Yu-Gi-Oh!:
- "The Humble Sentry" makes the user show their hand to the opponent, and returns a card to their deck.
- "Pot Of Generosity" makes the user return 2 cards from their hand to the deck.
- "Cold Feet" prevents the user from activating, setting, or using the effects of spell and trap cards until the end of the turn.
- "Gift" restores 3000 LP... to your opponent.
- "Heavy Slump" works if the opponent has at least 8 cards in their hand. The maximum number of cards usually allowed in one's hand in Yu-Gi-Oh! is 6.
Video Games
- Breath of Fire IV: A few skills such as Distracted and Feign Swing do absolutely nothing, and cause the user to waste their turn. They are normally restricted to monsters that are inflicted with the confused status effect, but they still can be passed down to your party members using the Power Copying mechanic. Which is even worse, since the player must go out of their way to copy useless skills.
- Cassette Beasts:
- A very literal example is the "Bad Joke" move. When used in battle, the user tells one of several possible bad jokes... and that's it. It doesn't deal damage or have any other battle effects.
- When a monster is put to sleep, its moves are replaced by Sleep Walk (a melee attack), Sleep Talk (a ranged attack), and Summon Tulpa (which summons backup). The first two have good damage ratings, and the backup summoned by the third will have the Ghostly status, making it immune to most attacks. The catch? All three moves have an accuracy of 1%, meaning that 99% of the time, they will do absolutely nothing, and they still use up a turn. Since Sleep Cures are a free action, there's no reason to pass up the option of waking your monster up and using a more reliable, and potentially stronger, move, in favor of turning your monster into a sleeping punching bag.
- Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2: one attack that can be used is the "Bluff Kamehameha", where the player appears to charge up a Kamehameha, only to shoot out confetti. The opponent is staggered, but the player is slow to recover. This is based on the same trick Super Saiyan 4 Gogeta does to Omega Shenron in Dragon Ball GT.
- Deltarune: In the second chapter, after Susie learns healing magic from Ralsei, she gains the Ultimate Heal ability. It heals one ally and costs the max amount of TP to use, but since she's only a beginner at healing, it only heals a small amount of HP depending on Susie's Magic stat, paling in comparison to Ralsei's healing ability. It's lampshaded if you use this attack with Ambyu-Lances as the current enemy.
Ambyu-Lance 1: That's the worst healing I've seen
Ambyu-Lance 2: Is she charging for that? - Dink Smallwood: In Mystery Island, Dink can learn "Duck Magic", but when used all it does is just summon ducks. The in-game explaination is that it's supposed to defeat opponents by turning them into ducks, but it doesn't work if they have footwear on. There is only ONE enemy in the game that goes around barefoot, and that is the Final Boss.
- The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind: The Icarian Flight spell, available through three scrolls that can be looted from Tahriel. They increase the Acrobatics skill to ludicrous levels... but for a very short period of time, which means that by the time the Nerevarine lands, they will experience fall damage from several hundred meters in the air. There are several loopholes to use the scrolls of Icarian Flight completely safely, but since there are only 3 copies of the scroll in the game, it's not really worth the effort.
- Epic Battle Fantasy 5: Like most other foes, Water Slimes can be captured, and all it does is a pathetically weak water attack. NoLegs can be made into surrendering with it during his fight, which would count as a downplayed example if not for one little thing... you already have a water attack in your moveset. Meaning you can make NoLegs surrender on your own anyway, and there's no reason to get that move, or the Water Slime that gets it.
- Kirby:
- Sleep is a recurring Copy Ability that functions more as a Poison Mushroom than a Power-Up: if Kirby obtains this Ability, all it does is put Kirby asleep, completely halting whatever the player was doing until that moment for a few seconds, leaving Kirby vulnerable to other enemies, and potentially removing any other Copy Ability that Kirby previously had. This is averted by the Sleep-inspired Kirby in Kirby Battle Royale, which is a simple Fighting Clown.
- The Light Copy Ability from Kirby's Adventure and its remake Kirby: Nightmare in Dream Land. Its only effect is lighting up one dark area, to expose one hidden door, that can still be entered even when the room is still dark. Its not as detrimental to Kirby as much as Sleep, but it's still something of a joke.
- An example of a Lethal Joke Attack is in Kirby Super Star and its remake Kirby Super Star Ultra: The Copy Copy Ability. As a Copy Ability, the effect is good on paper (it replaces itself with a new Copy Ability after scanning certain enemies), except it's a complete WASTE OF TIME since Kirby's gimmick already is Power Copying. Its real usefulness is not as a Copy Ability, but to summon Tac, one of the best Assist Character in the game.
- Magicka allows self-casting spells, which is useful when healing or stopping a status effect. Not so much when casting an earth spell to hit oneself with a boulder.
- Mega Man:
- Mega Man: The Super Arm is the only Robot Master attack that requires to pick up other projectiles on the field (boulders), on top of consuming weapon energy. This alone greatly limits its versatility compared to the other weapons, but it's particularly evident in boss battles since the boulders do not respawn unless you lose all lives and restart the level. So it's much more practical to keep using your Mega Buster than attempt to exploit a boss' weakness against the Super Arm but fail.note On the other hand, the Super Arm is also presented as a Utility Weapon, as the boulders it uses as ammo are also blocking your way... but in that case it's also made superfluous by the Thunder Beam, which also gets rid of boulders and is a much better weapon on top of it. The Super Arm reaches 100% Joke Attack status in the Tower mode, since in that game mode there is only 1 Mega Man 1 boulder that can be broken. Which weapon would you carry to break it: a very powerful three-way piercing lightning bolt? Or an attack that can only throw boulders? Newer games tried to make it much more useful: in Mega Man: The Power Battle the Super Arm skips the "pick up and throw boulders" gimmick and makes it directly shoot rocks, while in the first game remake Guts Man's version of the Super Arm not only does not use up Weapon Energy, but it can also create the boulders it needs out of nowhere (up to 4 on-screen), and they don't have to be thrown, they can also be used as platforms.
- Mega Man 2: The Time Stopper can completely freeze any in-game action in its place, which can be useful, but it has two quirks: first, when it's active, Mega Man can only move, and attacking and even opening your menu is disabled, which means that you cannot in any way attack enemies during stopped time. Second, once activated the first time, it keeps going on until all weapon energy is consumed. And since you can't even open the menu when it's active, this makes the Time Stopper functionally a one-use weapon, which greatly limits its usefulness unless you grind for the Random Drops to slowly refill its weapon energy. It can One-Hit Kill Quick Man in the American-exclusive easy mode, but in all other modes it only halves his health, which means it's not even particularly useful against the boss it's supposed to be weak against. In later games, the Time Stopper automatically turns off when moving to a new screen, which makes managing its weapon energy easier.
- Mega Man 3:
- The Top Spin in the original version has the reputation of being the worst Scrappy Weapon in the series, and it's not hard to see why. Being the first attempt at a melee weapon in a Run-and-Gun platformer series didn't do any favornote , but its application in game is even worse: the Top Spin is meant to turn Mega Man invulnerable for a few frames, during which any enemy is damaged, and its ammo depletion is proportional to how many frames Mega Man makes contact with an enemy. This timing is very easy to mess up, and if (or rather, when) you do, Mega Man takes Collision Damage, the Top Spin has lost all of its Weapon Energy, and the enemy only got barely hurt. Furthermore, the Top Spin does nothing unless you use it when jumping, which further makes it more impractical to use. The Top Spin is genuinely useful to defeat the Final Boss in one hit, but otherwise few players intentionally use it, and is hailed as the worst weapon in Classic Mega Man. The remake in Mega Man: The Wily Wars fixes the Top Spin, mostly by giving it a predetermined ammo consumption, making it last longer.
- While the Spark Shot was not particularly bad in the original version, in the Tower mode it's now a worse version of the Ice Slasher. Both weapons are attacks that do not damage enemies, but rather freeze them in place. But they have one important difference: with the Ice Slasher, you can open up the menu and switch to a new weapon, possibly to finish the still-frozen enemy. With the Spark Shot, all actions bar moving are disabled until all enemies unfreeze.
- Pokémon:
- Splash is the archetypal Joke Attack. It used to be Magikarp's Secret Art, and it makes the user jump... and nothing else. It cannot be used under the effects of Gravity, preventing a Move that does nothing to... do nothing. It becomes much better in Pokémon Sun and Moon, where using Splash with a Normalium-Z raises the user's Attack by 3 stages at once... but considering what kinds of Pokémon get Splash in the first place, it merely turns it into an Useless Useful Spell.
- Constrict is the absolute weakest damaging Move ever put in Pokémon. Its Base Power is just 10, whereas most Pokemon start out with moves (e.g. the ubiquitous Tackle) with a Base Power of 30-50. This is particularly jarring, as there are some gimmicky Moves that still start out stronger than Constrictnote . Its only secondary effect is a measly 10% chance of lowering the target's Speed by 1 stage. Even worse, it's Normal-type, which means that it can never hit for supereffective damage and is walled by Ghost-Type Pokémon, while none of Constrict's users are Normal themselves, so they don't even gain STAB from it.
- Present has a randomly-determined Base Power, and occasionally it reaches 120. It wouldn't be so bad, except that it also has a chance of healing the target instead, undoing all of your efforts. Like Constrict above, it's also Normal-type, so even in the best-case scenario it would give subpar damage. It's learned naturally only by Delibird (and for a long time it also was the only Move Delibird naturally learned), which also lacks the Normal Type and a usable Attack stat. But one could also breed an Happiny that knows Present, in case one thought its movepool didn't have enough bad Moves.note
- False Swipe, at first glance, looks like a fairly unimpressive and mediocre Normal-type Move, but it has the gimmick that it's the only Move incapable of knocking out an opponent. That's right, no matter how many times you use it, even if it makes a Critical Hit at maximum Attack at level 100 against the weakest possible opponent, it will always leave the target with at least 1 HP. However, even if it's completely worthless in a competitive environment, the developers always push False Swipe as a tool to help trainers catch Pokémon without the risk of having them faint.
- Celebrate and Hold Hands do absolutely nothing when selected in battle. They're clones of Splash, except they are event-exclusive. The former triggers a short animation and a congratulatory message; the latter can only be used during Double or Triple Battles and again triggers a short animation, which is just as useful as its Single Battle use. However, they also count as Lethal Joke Actions in the Generation VII games (and those only), as using them while holding a Normalium Z causes all the user's stats to be raised by 1 (and unlike Splash, some of the event Pokémon that knew these moves could be quite powerful). Another event-exclusive Move that's very similar to an existing one is Hold Back, this time a clone of False Swipe.
- Project M: One of Snake's taunts is smoking a cigarette, which will deal 1% damage to himself. What makes it a Practical Taunt is that he will then flick it downward, which will do a minuscule amount of burn damage to an enemy... on the off-chance they make contact with it. Making it slightly more useful is that he can jump to cancel the animation, which will keep the cigarette in his mouth until he taunts again, after which he'll flick it immediately.
- Shantae: Half-Genie Hero: The Blobfish Dance, which transforms Shantae into a blobfish, whose attack and movement are the same action of bouncing around, slowly, unlike her normal form which has an attack range that's not her body which is vulnerable to Collision Damage, and moves faster. How do you obtain this dance? You pay 300 Gems and give up the Obliterate Dance. The latter of which is an attack that damages every enemy on screen.
- Undertale: During the battle against the Reaper Bird while they travels through the depths of Alphys' laboratory, if Frisk performs Clean or Hum, they will get nowhere. This also occurs if they perform Call, Scream, or Cry when fighting the Lemon Bread.
