< Blessed with Suck

Blessed with Suck/Web Comics

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  • In Haru-Sari, elves can use magic better than humans, but are considerably less sane and die when they're about 30.
  • Black Mage from 8-Bit Theater gains the ability to learn any spell used against him. However, all the spells he learns with it were cast by Sarda, and therefore were invented on the spot specifically to harm Black Mage.
    • For example, Sarda casts a spell targeting Black Mage that makes BM puke his intestines out. Black Mage then uses that spell while targeting Sarda, which thus causes BM to puke out his own intestines.
  • Several characters from Gunnerkrigg Court.
    • Zimmy has reality-altering powers. And she has terrifying hallucinations--not a good combination. The only way she knows of to control either is to hang out with Gamma, who acts as a living Power Nullifier.
      • When it manifests on a rooftop and drags Antimony (and, they later learn, one of the boys they're with) along for the ride, Antimony suggests the possibility of learning to control it... at which point Zimmy explodes at her. Later, though, Zimmy reassures Annie that "it's only as real as you let it be"-implying that, for once, denial is an effective coping mechanism.
      • And Gamma's ability to nullify Zimmy's power is no better. It doesn't work as well when she's asleep, but she can't bear to make Zimmy suffer, so she tries to stay awake as long as possible and that takes its toll on her.
    • Coyote gave Reynardine the ability to possess others' bodies, then return to his own. Coyote himself could use this ability harmlessly, but for reasons that Coyote implies he doesn't know, Reynardine invariably and unintentionally kills his host upon leaving their body.
    • Coyote gave Ysengrin powerful arms made of wood, and with them, the power to manipulate trees. The downside is that they're apparently arthritic. Coyote freely admits that he screwed up, but Ysengrin insists that he has no complaints. (Note that Ysengrin is fanatically devoted to Coyote, so it's possible that he does have complaints, but he either keeps them to himself or is in denial of them.)
    • Andrew "Smitty" Smith has the power to subconsciously create order in chaotic situations; he can, for example, throw a deck of shuffled cards in the air and have them all land in a neat sorted pile. The first major display of his power, however, comes in chapter 23... where he manages, in the space of about an hour, to ruin a VR simulation game that his friends were looking forward to by causing the objective treasure to spawn at his feet, and then causes the girl he likes (who has teleportation powers of which she is unaware and who also likes him) to subconsciously teleport the two of them onto her bed, along with the teacher and two friends they were with at the time. Hilarity, of course, ensues.
    • Fire elemental ancestry. The good thing: a lot of magical power, transferring down the generations fully -- no dilution or genetic lottery. Packaged with very lively spirit and general attractiveness. The bad thing: the life starts with witnessing your predecessor waste and die just when things start to get really interesting, and ends early, in exactly the same fashion. No variants. If there are ways to cheat the system without making things even worse, several generations of experts in magic and Etheric Sciences failed to find any, despite access to vast variety of very cooperative magic creatures up to and including at least one Physical God.
  • The titular character of Dominic Deegan started out as a mere seer, but as the story got deeper and darker, his powers seem to have made him Blessed with Suck. He keeps constantly getting into conflicts that he wanted nothing to do with, all because he's the only one with the visions that can save everyone. This recently led to a nervous breakdown, proving his powers now seem to be more of a curse than a blessing.
    • An even better example would be the Resistants. A Resistant is a person who is born with complete immunity to any and all magics. This initially sounds like an incredible blessing (given how most of the Dominic Deegan world revolves around magic), but remember that this means that healing magic is just as useless to a Resistant as offensive magic, meaning that if they're seriously injured, the normally live-saving White Magic won't help them at all. In addition, most people who use magic to attack will find a way to attack a Resistant indirectly, such as in the Snowsong arc, where the titular villain, upon finding that her ice magic wouldn't work against Dex Garrit, simply froze the ground he was standing on, causing him to slip and reducing his usefulness. Failing that, a magic user can just hit a resistant with something very very sharp...
  • Quentyn, the main character from Tales of the Questor, is (while drunk) accidentally "bonded" to a magic sword. While this normally conveys some few advantages (noone but he can use the sword, he can normally locate it wherever it is by "feel" and even, under the right circumstances, summon it to himself), it is outweighed by the considerable number of drawbacks: first, it is implied that in the wrong hands the sword could become a magical conduit back to himself, second, noone else can use the sword 'even if he wants them to;' third, separation from the sword beyond a certain distance causes him chronic and growing discomfort and anxiety; and as a final kicker, the sword itself, while being quite magically potent, is something of a flawed design -- its magical effects, when drawn, are 'entirely random....' varying from incredibly deadly to wildly uncontrolled to comically useless.
    • For the Duke he helps, this tropes happens to him when Quentyn's defeat of a Fae Princeling leads to the villain's entire treasure trove being literally poured into the Duke's castle. Though one might welcome having their place literally flooded with money, the Duke anticipates correctly that this will be the cause of considerable trouble in the future.
  • Possible example from the Order of the Stick prequel book, Start of Darkness. Xykon was... slightly less Ax Crazy as a human, before discovering that becoming a lich cost him his sense of taste. Apparently, killing minions is the only pleasure that compares to a good (or really bad) cup of coffee.
    • Another example: when the party drew straws for choosing magical items, Roy went last and got the Bag of Tricks. It holds balls of fuzz that, when thrown, turn into any of a number of small animals "as long as they are completely useless in battle." One exception is when his target deflects the ball of fuzz into the air. Naturally, it turns into a rhinoceros and lands on Roy.
    • Earlier in that quest, however, he does find a couple of uses for the bag. One is to make the team's cantankerous loudmouth shut up by flinging a badger into his face. Another is to sneak up on sentries one by one, then summon a kitten to distract the sentry long enough for Roy to knock him out.
  • One of Aylee's many forms in Sluggy Freelance had the ability to give off an electromagnetic pulse, disabling any electronic device in the area. However, she couldn't stop herself from give off these EMP burst, and when one of them erased Bun-Bun's Baywatch tapes, it almost got the entire cast killed.
    • Surely Oasis is the more prominent example of this trope? Immortal(comes back to life quickly after dying, but ages and takes damage normally, though any injuries are repaired upon revival), pyrokinetic(Hulk-variety Power Incontinence on that one), and a trained killing machine, but due to an evil mastermind's plot, she is forced to obey any command he speaks into his wristwatch. Said mastermind dies, but any standing orders remain functional, including a compulsion to brutally murder anyone with even the slightest association with Hereti-Corp (she slaughters patrons of a chain of pizza restaurants that uses their logo) and a compulsion to harbor an undying love for the comic's main character, going as far to hunt down his love interest. All of this turns her into a Death Seeker, and in the midst of this she realizes that she is, in fact, immortal and will come back no matter how many times she dies.
    • How about the AWESOME power that Zoe gains when Torg gives her a magical necklace? The true power of suck just radiates out of that thing whenever the magic words are spoken by anyone who knows them and turns her into a camel. She does finally get rid of it but at a horrific cost.
  • Elliot and Ellen of El Goonish Shive are developing magic powers. The downside is pretty severe Power Incontinence, which is especially bad for Elliot, as he has to transform into a girl multiple times per day - a prospect he is not happy about. Said Power Incontinence will eventually wear off, and there have been debates as to how bad they have it anyway, but Word of God states that the suck outweighs the blessing for now.
    • And Elliot's transformations have an effect on his personality as well; he develops a superhero form, which is awesome, except the whole "turning into a girl" part. Comes with a few alter-ego forms. One is a "party form" that works well as a disguise, but causes him to kiss his girlfriend's sister on live TV. This can be averted by Elliot not transforming into that particularly form, but it's implied that he actually enjoyed the form (apart from the kissing thing). Another has existential angst built in. The third is emotionally and mentally awkward and prone to feeling embarrassed or otherwise inconvenienced and needs glasses.
  • Darren Danforth of Penny and Aggie makes every girl (or at least every heterosexual girl) see in him her dream of the ideal lover. Since he's really a dim good-natured klutz this sets them both up for disappointment.
  • Sore Thumbs recently went through a Continuity Reboot after Jimmy Peterford fixed the world. So far, most of the characters that have been reintroduced since then have had their problems fixed in a decidedly "Blessed With Suck" manner. Cecania is finally a horror show host... but it's on the notoriously stupid G 4 TV, and they cancelled her show for no immediately obvious reason just as the comic restarts. Harmony is once again an immensely talented brain surgeon and now has the respect and admiration of her peers... which would be good, except she hates being a doctor. Sawyer is now recognized as a war hero, and his mother is alive and penis still attached... but his mother turns out to be a shrill, nagging, controlling shrew, and without losing his penis, he doesn't even have the terrible "video game distributor" job he had at the start of the original run -- judging by what we've seen, he's spent his days laying around being nagged to get a job and having any potential girlfriends scared off by Coleman or his mother. It's still better than the alternative (being dead), but...
  • Drowtales: Faen has the power to feel the emotions of others... which is quite possibly the worst power for a Friend to All Living Things to have in a Crapsack World. She also has the ability to control those emotions... involuntarily and sometimes to the point of causing death, making her a walking time bomb.
    • Tainting also counts. By infusing their aura/souls with "demons", Drow are inoculated against forceful Demonic Possession and, depending on the strength of the spirits, gain a significant power boost. Diva'ratrika's daughters curb stomped their own mother thanks to said power boost. Of course, attaching an Eldritch Abomination to your own soul isn't entirely free of risk. Even worse, according to Sha'sana, the one who came up with the practice of Tainting in the first place, Snadhya'rune's brand of Tainting which apparently uses more powerful demons is dangerously unstable and her Tainted Drow will have at most fifty years before their demons overwhelm them.
  • Pictures for Sad Children: One surprise birthday party is fun. Two surprise birthday parties are kind of kooky. Five surprise birthday parties, in five days, is just misery.
  • Vlad in Chess Piece did a Deal with the Devil and got his dying son healthy, armored skin, magic and high heat tolerance (he can walk around in an active volcano!)-the downside? He can't swim, he's supersensitive to cold, demons will eventually try dragging him to hell (the operative word being try) and he now looks like a demon for the rest of his life. He takes this all in stride, still being a Wide-Eyed Idealist.
  • The virtues Fast, Modesty, and Sharing from Sins. This could probably apply to every virtue but Content really.
  • Shrinking Violent in Everyday Heroes: She hulks out when ever struck on the nose. She has a fairly easy off-button (large dose of sugar). Unfortunately, she's also a Type I Diabetic, meaning a day or two in a hospital bed every time she transforms, at best.
  • Omnipresent Man from Basic Instructions. He's everywhere! at once! Including places he'd really rather not be!
  • PS238 has Lyle. He is able to "see patterns in things", and so is able to tell you pretty much everything about anything or anyone he looks at, making him effectively omniscient. The catch is that he can't turn it off, and can see these patterns everywhere. He spends most of his time in a featureless white room to keep his brain from overloading.
  • The Snow Queen from Oglaf. Extreme control ice and snow. Can't turn it off, and can't get laid. Poor girl.
  • Most. Embarrassing. Superpower. Ever.
  • Union of Heroes: Lynn's super-power is to die in the place of other people (and then to come back to life herself). Sure, useful for rescuing people in lethal situations - but dying over and over again, and often quite violently, certainly hurts...
  • Bug shows us that receiving a time machine would really be an example of this trope.
  • Val of Sidekick Girl is a Type VI Immortal - she can't be killed, but she doesn't heal any faster or resist injury any better than normal people. As a sidekick to none-too-bright superheroine, such grievous bodily harm is frequently part of the job.
  • Yrek's situation in Interstellar Tea House looks to be this. He's some kind of constructed shapeshifter that can take the forms of two (or more?) different sentient species. But he's being hunted, probably as a result, and once you're a homeless fugitive being a homeless fugitive that isn't quite the same species as anyone else doesn't help things.
  • Jack Noir of Homestuck. When Bequerel, Jade's omnipotent dog, prototypes himself to save her, this inadvertently causes the creation of Bec Noir. He's inherited all the traits of Bec now. All of them. That includes teleportation, near-invulnerability, extra-sensitive sense of smell...and the inability to kill Jade out of forced love and loyalty.
  • Sal from Dubious Company is literally Blessed with Suck. As the Future High Priestess of Phred, she has access to unbelievable good luck. However, its at the price of equally incredible bad luck. What good is winning every hand of poker, when you spend every Tuesday in a new evil wizard's dungeon?
  • In The Adventures of Shan Shan, Shan Shan can see and hear things others can't. This is a formula for being massively misinterpreted.
  • Kuroraki from Deverish Also has magic armor gives him a Healing Factor, allowing him to instantly recover from lethal wounds...but the reason he gets wounded is because people keep trying to mug him and steal his super-valuable Unobtainium armor.
  • Abductees in the Walkyverse. Each of them was kidnapped by aliens as a child and had martian DNA grafted onto their own. This gives a variety of superpowers, most commonly super strength and endurance, but occasionally something more exotic like super speed or spinning like the Tasmanian Devil. The downsides are that A) You are susceptible to alien Mind Control, and they plan to use you as an army to take over the world, B) you were abducted multiple times during your life so the aliens could check on your progress, had you memories erased, and now contain a subconscious trigger that makes watching The Sound of Music excruciatingly painful, and C) as soon as the secret government agency SEMME finds out about you, they will force you into their ranks to hunt aliens whether you like it or not.
  • In Wapsi Square, Justin has the power of regeneration. Unfortunately, he has none of the Badassery that usually accompanies this power, and he is a total magnet for supernatural women. Because of this, several of his exes did some rather nasty things to him on the grounds that "You'll recover in a minute anyway."
  • Parodied in xkcd: The magic shoes enable the wearer to outrun death itself and make them immortal... but they have those creepy individual toes.
  • In Tales of the Questor, the young duke is nevertheless aware that a dragon's hoard, dumped in your castle, will lead to problems.
  • Schlock Mercenary, had Kevyn grumpy over his "runt supersoldier" transformation. This being the reason of the second "fixed" joke in the comic didn't help either.

Kevyn (soliloquy): The cheating had a price. My body is no longer my own, and when I look into the eyes of my friends, they look into the barrel of a gun.

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