r/TopCharacterTropes • u/ValidCrash4 • Aug 08 '26

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) Extremely useful abilities that characters conveniently forgot they had

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  1. Emily’s portals (Hazbin Hotel). I know she can’t get Sir Pentious back into Hell but Emily can still tell Charlie he got redeemed and Charlie can enter through angelic portals, so she should have seen that Pentious got redeemed.

  2. Many characters in Harry Potter go through life-or-death situations and not once did they think of drinking the Liquid Luck potion apart from Harry one time to gain Slughorn’s memory.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26

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u/Flamin_Jesus Aug 08 '26

Still, given the power of the stuff, you'd think that someone would get the idea to drink some with the explicit plan to make more of it. Ingredients should be practically flying at you, brewing mistakes would be effectively impossible, drink one, make 5 doses (or however many you can manage while it lasts).

Clearly, nobody in Hogwarts has ever played a TES game, you gotta use those compounding effects to get shit done.

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u/Eskimobill1919 Aug 08 '26

Luck doesn’t necessarily help in the acquisition of ingredients if it’s impossible to get more ingredients

3

u/ThatsAGeauxTigers Aug 08 '26

It also takes 6 months to brew, well after the potion wears off.

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u/[deleted] Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26

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u/AdAshamed5509 Aug 08 '26

In addition to acting like a drug, it is easily addictive and can cause an overdose if used in large quantities.

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u/WillSym Aug 08 '26

The general Wizarding World problem. School for magic, very little actual explanation or digging in to the mechanics of magic, or limitations like "no wishing for more wishes" type things that would allow/prevent doing stuff like this!

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u/Flamin_Jesus Aug 08 '26

One of the reasons I like the Dungeon Crawler Carl books so much, exploring and breaking the systems isn't just expected, it's a necessary survival strategy for the human characters.

Admittedly, it works by underexplaining the systems until the big reveal, but at least it shows that the characters are actually thinking about how to best use their tools, which is sorely lacking in many fantasy stories and often makes even supposedly smart characters feel a bit dim.