"Christ, why [can't I] have a simple superpower like Hank's PK superboy deal, instead of something that required years of training and a user manual the size of the New York City phone books?"
— Phasenote , Whateley Universe, "Ayla and the Birthday Brawl part 13"
You got a New Super Power or two? Great! Can you use them? While the standard hero seems to instinctively know their way around every possible ability they can obtain throughout the story, some people have to flail and struggle, with everybody laughing at them. Hey, there's all those Required Secondary Powers that you have to master that nobody tells you about!
Also applies when a character attempts to mimic or steal the abilities of a hero (like stealing their Empathic Weapon) and ultimately fails. When he is successful, the newly acquired power is too unpredictable or costly in his opinion to use in the long run, since he may lack the time or experience to perfect it. It's doubly humiliating if he's defeated by the hero anyway. This is sometimes An Aesop that a hero's strength is his character or ingenuity/skill, not his powers.
Nonetheless some are too stubborn to give them up, and may become a kind of Evil Counterpart.
One would expect this to be a natural co-trope for a Puberty Superpower, which makes it strange that this is rarely the case — most teen heroes seem to know how their powers work instinctively. When it does happen, the empowered teen is likely to enroll at a Superhero School or find a special Mentor (preferably with similar powers) rather than try to learn on their own.
The name comes from Something Awful's randomly renamed and incredibly nonsensical "FYAD" subforum, where it originated as a quotable quote from somebody playing the Half-Life mod Natural Selection and trying to figure out the alien faction's special abilities (shooting webs). In his frustration, he posted "how do i shot web" repeatedly. It got quickly transposed to Spider-Man because it's funnier when he says it. It has since spread wide across the Internet, as such things are wont to do.
Often follows up Powers in the First Episode. Sometimes followed by Power-Strain Blackout. Traumatic Superpower Awakening can either put an end to this or cause it. Limb-Sensation Fascination can be a variant without superpowers. May be accompanied by Power Incontinence if they're that inept at controlling their powers. Does Not Know His Own Strength is the Super-Strength version of this trope. See also Inept Mage, when someone does understand how to use the powers, but lacks finesse, and New Ability Addiction, when someone, upon recently acquiring powers, will try to use them at every opportunity, usually clumsily. See also Testing Range Mishap if someone attempts to test out the new powers, only to end up failing, and Assimilation Backfire. See also Training the Gift of Magic, especially if there's an established system of teaching how to shot web. Compare with Stumbling in the New Form, which is about characters struggling to move properly after getting transformed — there can be overlap with this trope if a transformation comes with new powers or vice versa.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Animation
- BoBoiBoy: In episode 2, BoBoiBoy initially can't figure out how to use the lightning power he was given in the previous episode, going for a normal lightning bolt but making a lightning umbrella and a lightning broom instead.
Blogs
- Discussed in How to Hero's entry on mind-swaps
.
Comic Strips
- This is a recurring theme in The Adventures of D & A, as the titular duo find their way around using the SWSC's gadgets and are forced to figure them out on the fly. Especially egregious in the third story, where they're given gadgets like an electro-wrench and a transgravitational umbrella, with absolutely no training on how to use either.
- In a Calvin and Hobbes strip, Calvin tries to get his butt to light up like a firefly, and attributes his lack of success to "not even knowing what muscle to flex".
Films — Animation
- The Pirate Fairy: Zarina douses Tinker Bell and her friends with rainbow-colored pixie dust, swapping their talents. They all have a little trouble controlling their new talents at first... except for Tinker Bell's foil Vidia, who is mortified to find that she instinctively thinks like a Tinker.
- The Flight of Dragons: With Peter merged into Gorbash's body, he has no idea how to use a dragon's skills, leading Smrgol to join the quest as a mentor. An afternoon is spent training him how to breathe fire and to fly.
Ommadon: [over fits of mocking laughter] A dragon... that doesn't know how to be... a dragon!
- The Incredibles 1: Even though Violet has had her powers of invisibility and force field creation her whole life, she's very inexperienced and anxious when it comes to using her powers throughout the majority of the film. This comes to a violent head when she is unable to summon a sufficiently large enough force field to shield the plane she is in from Syndrome's heat-seeking missiles and nearly dies in an explosion along with Elastigirl and Dash. After a pep talk from her mother about it, she is seen practicing intently on the campfire.
- My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Legend of Everfree: As the Equestria Girls gain magical abilities, they're unsure of how to use them at first. This leads to several instances of them hurting themselves (and almost each other), like Dash's Super-Speed causing her to run face-first into a wall, or Rarity's gem barriers pushing Applejack into the lake. Sunset helps them out with a song called "Embrace the Magic", where the girls get their powers under control.
- My Little Pony: The Movie (2017): The Storm King wants to steal and use the power of the alicorn princesses for himself with his Magic Staff to become a One-Man Army... but once he actually does manage it at the climax of the film, he has no idea how to use their powers, especially since he never bothered to do his research on what exactly the Princesses could do and thus having to figure them out. While he's a quick learner, this lack of skill is partially why the Mane Six are even able to defeat him by separating him from his staff and the power in question before he can get a handle on them.
- Spider-Man: Spider-Verse:
- In Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Miles Morales starts out unable to effectively use any of his powers (although he doesn't need to figure out how to shot web at first, until he gets his hands on an actual web-shooter): he sticks to things when he's stressed, goes invisible when he's scared, and his venom strike just kind of activates a couple of times... leading to a scene where he has to run along the wall of a school building without his shirt on and with a live pigeon stuck to each hand. He does figure it out, though. Eventually.
- The sequel has a rare villainous example with the Spot, who begins the movie as a bumbling supervillain who can't even rob an ATM because he can't control his new portal-making powers.
- Transformers One: With the T-Cogs of the deceased Prime granted by Alpha Trion, Orion Pax and company first gained the ability to transform into vehicles… and struggling with it. Pax gets his head stuck in his body and B-127 doesn't get his wheels until he's already crashed. Elita and D-16 fare slightly better, if only because they are a bit more level-headed than their other companions.
- Turning Red: Played for Drama. After Meilin Lee wakes up one morning as a gigantic red panda, she soon figures out that she'll transform into the panda whenever she gets excited or upset, and has to calm down in order to transform back into her normal form. However, she also finds that having that knowledge and being able to use it are two different things. Because the transformation is caused by Mei feeling any sort of strong emotion, she keeps changing when she doesn't want to change, and the more she fights it the more often she transforms. Showing no emotion at all doesn't work either; she just can't keep it up for very long. It's only when she learns how to use her friends for inner support that she gets it partially under control. After the ritual where she chooses to keep the red panda instead of getting rid of it, Mei gains full control of her panda form, allowing her to transform at will.
Films — Live-Action
- Abigail (2024): The more complex vampire powers like flight and the ability to control people they've bitten take a really long time to learn, which is Frank's undoing when he assumes Joey is under his control, when she's just faking it to get the opportunity to stake him. Frank appears to have even misunderstood the core mechanism and assumed it worked by mental domination rather than direct control and gives her commands.
- Batman Begins shows Bruce Wayne experimenting with the technology that would eventually become part of his iconic identity, learning from his mistakes (bouncing off that fire escape had to hurt!) and upgrading accordingly.
- Black Lightning (2009): Dima miraculously lands in an abandoned factory when he first activates the Black Lightning. When he locates its creators, they give him a handy manual.
- Chronicle features a lot of this when the three teenagers discover their telekinesis, starting off with fairly basic experiments with redirecting thrown baseballs and assembling lego sets (Matt having great difficulty getting the bricks to stay together), to testing forcefields by stabbing each other in the hands with forks. Even after they think they've managed to master their powers, more of this trope crops up when Steve learns how to fly; while Andrew gets the hang of it very quickly, Matt's first three attempts result in him crashing to the ground.
- Danger Diva: At first, Devi isn't sure how to use her cybernetically-altered voice, which can shatter glass and mind-control people. She learns to control it with the vocal coach Adrian.
- DC Extended Universe:
- In Man of Steel, it took Clark a few tries to figure out how to fly, and some time to get a handle on his Super-Senses. He uses this against the villainous Kryptonians, who need special helmets to prevent Sensory Overload. Zod, unfortunately, is disciplined enough to adapt pretty quickly.
- Played for laughs in SHAZAM! (2019), in which the wizard Shazam declares Billy Batson The Chosen One, hands him godlike powers, and lets him and his Muggle Best Friend Freddie figure out the rest from there.
- Bill Cage in Edge of Tomorrow initially has no idea how to fight in a powered exoskeleton or how to even remove the safety off of its mounted guns when he is dropped on a beach to fight in a failed invasion against invading aliens with Save Scumming powers. But when Cage gains their powers, he slowly but surely learns how to use his foreknowledge of the day's events to his advantage and learns more about how to fight in his suit.
- In The Fly (1986), upon unknowingly becoming a Half-Human Hybrid Seth feels different. Hours after his first self-teleportation, he startles himself out of sleep when he manages to catch a buzzing fly in his hand. From there, he quietly begins testing his new, mild Super-Strength and reflexes by lifting himself by his arms out of a sitting position in a chair, and even manages to perform a gymnastics routine on a hanging pipe. A few days later he challenges a barfly to an arm-wrestling match; it turns out to be so one-sided that he rips the man's arm open, and the expression on Seth's face suggests he wasn't expecting that. The changes get much uglier from there, and because no one has ever undergone an experience like this he has to feel his way through them; he notes that he had to figure out "the hard and painful way" how to eat upon realizing he couldn't digest solid food anymore, and when Veronica is startled to see him Wall Crawling he simply notes "Got pretty good at it, haven't I?"
- Green Lantern milks the humor from Hal Jordan's attempts to activate his power ring for the first time, which include calling out "To infinity and beyond!" and "By the power of Greyskull!"
- Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Captain America: The First Avenger: After Steve comes out of the tank with super-strength and speed, he spends the next minute or so running into store fronts and cars while trying to turn. Also apologizing. A lot.
- Iron Man (2008):
- Tony goes through a few iterations of flight testing with repulsor thrusters. His first attempt is just boots (and at 10% thrust capacity)... causing him to shoot up like a cannonball, faceplant on the ceiling, then crash down to the ground. Then he gets doused with fire extinguisher. With his second test he gets smart and adds flight stabilizers on his hands (and only used 1% and then 2.5% thrust capacity), but hasn't entirely figured out how to steer his flight yet, causing him to drift beyond the testing area and in places he really shouldn't be. And he nearly gets doused in fire extinguisher. His full flight-ready Mark 2 suit also takes some time getting used to before he has flight control. He nearly dies when he goes up so high that his suit freezes over and shuts down, leaving him plummeting to the ground. When he regains control and flies back home he tries to land on the roof, only to fall through the roof, a piano, and a floor, before smashing one of his cars by landing on it. He then gets doused with fire extinguisher.
- He doesn't even intentionally create his iconic hand beams; he just accidentally finds out that having his hand stabilizers go off at full power while not in flight fires a blast of energy. He discovers this by launching himself into a wall.
- Ironically subverted by Obadiah Stane, the film's villain, who is able to match Iron Man blow for blow when he gets his own suit of armor, despite having never been shown to have any training of his own. However, he relies heavily on a targeting computer; when Iron Man disables that, he quickly proves unable to hit him with missiles from about ten feet away. Nor does Stane know about the dangers of his armor freezing up if he flies too high, a problem Iron Man had already dealt with earlier in the film and that he now exploits when Stane makes the same mistake he did. His proficiency is somewhat justified in that the Iron Monger suit was designed as a mass produced weapon that Stane could later sell to the military; it's implied that it's designed to be very easy to use as opposed to the specifically calibrated Iron Man suit Stark has.
- Stark didn't have much trouble operating his original "escape" suit either, despite not having much — or any — practice with it (but he designed and programmed it, so he knew how it was supposed to respond). Since Stane's suit is just a bigger and beefier copy of Stark's original plans, presumably there was something about the original design that made it fairly idiot-proof. That said, the entirety of the Mk. 1 suit's armaments were a flamethrower, a manually-fired missile, fists and a manual start rocket boost. The flamethrower requires next-to-no aiming capacity and the missile missed... thank goodness for Splash Damage. Meanwhile Stark couldn't stop himself from constantly adding upgrades and modifications that certainly would have made his own suit more complex and fiddly. (Not to mention Perpetual Beta.)
- Hilariously played straight in Iron Man 2 where the various corporations and countries (including North Korea) tries to replicate the Iron Man suit, only to be met with disaster each time. Justin Hammer's own demonstration even shows that, without proper knowledge, simply turning to the left can potentially snap your spine in two due to the hydraulics turning the torso too far. Subverted with Rhodey though, who not only managed to steal one of Tony's suits, but thoroughly beat Tony into the ground with it. Granted, Tony was piss drunk, but that's still rather impressive. It's implied that Rhodey only ever saw the suit, but never actually wore it before then.
- In Iron Man 3, Tony puts Pepper Potts in the Iron Man suit to protect her from flying debris. She tries to fight their attackers, but can't figure out how to work the suit, so Tony remotely takes the suit back when she is at a safe distance. Savin steals the Iron Patriot suit and has no trouble operating it. Also, it is revealed that the so-called terrorist bombings were really people who took Extremis and blew themselves up because they couldn't regulate their powers. When Pepper is injected with Extremis, she manages to control her powers and defeat the Big Bad with them.
- In Avengers: Endgame, Pepper manages to operate the Rescue armor quite well.
- Spider-Man: Homecoming: Played With. While Peter knows the relative basics of his suit, he doesn't know some of the more advanced functions. But they were locked, and at one point in the film he is trapped in a warehouse, and so learns how to use them by methodically going over them in no particular order. Also, in a very literal example, he learns his webshooters have 576 different settings and it takes a fair amount of trial and error to find the ones that work for any specific purpose.
- Spider-Man: No Way Home: Despite having no training with the Mystic Arts, Ned figures out how to open a portal with Doctor Strange's sling ring. However, he doesn't know how to close it or even find the right Peter Parker.
- Basically the main plot of The Meteor Man, where much of the movie is spent on Jefferson Reed learning to use his new powers, including flight (despite being afraid of heights).
- During his first flight as The Rocketeer, Cliff Secord accidentally turns the rocketpack off as he's saluting passengers aboard a plane. In the comic, his first flight had him unable to control his speed, and ended with an intentional crash landing because he couldn't figure out how to stop.
- A similar thing happens to the title character in Sgt. Kabukiman N.Y.P.D.: The first time his powers manifest, he accidentally cartwheels into a light pole; later, he tries to become Kabukiman, but somehow turns into a clown; even later, he learns he can fly, but due to not being used to it, he throws up, and it lands on an asshole lawyer below him.
- Spider-Man Trilogy:
- This happens literally to Peter Parker in the first movie.
- In the second movie, he briefly loses the power to shoot web — usually at inopportune moments.
- Star Wars:
- Luke Skywalker spends much of the original trilogy learning to consciously use the Force, especially during his Training from Hell with Yoda.
- Whatever Rey's origins are, she's apparently heard of the Jedi and the Force, because when she meets Han Solo and he claims all of it to be true, she doesn't demand clarification. The rest of The Force Awakens has her try out a variety of moves, gradually mastering them as she goes. Notably, she's better after two days than Luke was after three years.
- X-Men (Film Series):
- X-Men: First Class shows more of this. Professor X hypothesizes that Banshee's sonic scream should enable him to fly (with a wing-suit), so he encourages him to jump out of a second story window. Three guesses what happens. Then, they decide that the main problem is that he didn't have long enough to generate lift, so they go to the top of a satellite dish. Banshee doesn't want to. Erik doesn't care.
- Even Wolverine isn't immune, at least when it involves his adamantium upgrade. His original bone claws tapered to points, whereas his adamantium claws have cutting edges. The first few hours after he got his metal in X-Men Origins: Wolverine were spent accidentally cutting things up, and X-Men: Days of Future Past has him trying to slash with the bone claws and failing.
Podcasts
- Yoshi from the Cool Kids Table game Here We Gooooo! doesn't know how to use his lighting powers, and accidentally attacks Dario on his first try.
Roleplay
- The main cast of Dawn of a New Age: Oldport Blues suddenly received their superpowers via a Mass Super-Empowering Event. As a result, some of them have a harder time adjusting to their new abilities than others. Of note:
- Jacob has to spend many hours practicing his time rewinding power to get a proper handle on its intricacies. Even then, he struggles to explain the minutiae of it to other people.
- Ivan and Mirielle both received powers that allow them to esoterically control fate — Mirielle by manipulating coloured strings that connect people together, and Ivan by manipulating media to influence a real-life event of his choosing. It takes both of them a lot of practise to understand what their powers even are, let alone how to use them.
- Ciro, being Genre Blind to superhero fiction and reluctant to engage with his newfound power, struggles to figure out what his force-field generation is, and how to use it in a way that isn't instinctual.
Tabletop Games
- Bliss Stage: It takes La Résistance around a year to figure out how to pilot an ANIMa without killing themselves. It's still very unintuitive even with proper Anchoring.
- Dungeons & Dragons: The Sorcerer class is based on innate spellcasting power. 1st-level Sorcerers can create light or perhaps burn something with a bit of acid, but get more powerful with time. However, they are greatly limited in the variety of spells they can cast, as they have to figure them out themselves instead of learning them from scrolls or, in the case of Wizards and certain other classes, spellbooks.
- GURPS Supers: For many powers, power level and power skill are bought separately (and it's even possible to completely neglect buying the latter, which generally results in defaulting to an effective skill level of either DX-5 or IQ-5). It doesn't matter how many points are sunk in the former; a low score in the latter will result in someone struggling to activate their powers at all, let alone effectively.
- Masks: A New Generation: Player characters are rookie superheroes who tend to have a shaky grasp of their powers; as such, even a successful usage of them tends to be unstable or temporary unless you roll an exceptional success.
- Ponyfinder:
- Sea horses can't actually breathe water unless they take the feat "Return to the Sea".
- In-Universe, this is actually a problem that the ghost ponies have to deal with; they have adapted to live in the Ethereal Plane, but they have no innate magical ability to step between worlds and it's not safe for their foals to live or grow in the Ethereal. As such, they create magical items to allow them to walk between.
- Scion has the character channeling their divine power through Birthrights — gifts from their god-parents. If someone were to steal a Birthright, they could use all the real owner's powers that it channels — but the chance of failure, and the penalties, are significant though, meaning most characters who try this end up dying to this trope.
Theatre
- The stage version of The Little Mermaid has the musical number "Positoovity" in which Scuttle and his fellow seagulls instruct Human Ariel how to walk.
Theme Parks
- Étincelle: The Curse of the Black Opal 4D movie from Futuroscope: Alice has lots of trouble controlling the Étincelle suit's superpowers, some starting instinctively (like the Wall Crawl). Her and Teddy later try a training session, with variable results. Lifting a car with Super-Strength (early Superman-style) leads nowhere, and an attempt at flying results in a Face Plant. She does manage to unlock Étincelle's Shock and Awe powers after a few tries, though.
Toys
- Brought up infrequently in LEGO's BIONICLE franchise. The Toa Metru spend almost a year's worth of story not knowing how to activate their mask powers — they eventually discover them in the movie Legends of Metru Nui. Forming Toa Kaita fusions is another power of theirs they didn't know how to master. Universally, the much more powerful Toa Nui fusion is something that no Toa ever managed to achieve, and is as such seen as a mere fable. And in the canceled 5th movie, Kiina and Ackar would have struggled to keep their newly acquired Elemental Powers in check.
Video Games
- Astral Awakening: Although Franz takes a gun from a dead security guard, he has no idea how to use it beyond pointing and shooting, which means he can only spam the attack command. When he teams up with Veleth, she teaches him how to use the additional functions of the gun, allowing him to use some basic skills in battle.
- Bang Shishigami from BlazBlue was only told two things by Platinum; that he had a Nox Nyctores, which are insanely powerful, and that its ability could very well save several people. She didn't bother telling him though what it was and not even how to activate it.
- In Breath of Fire III, Ryu is born as a baby dragon, and his first few shapeshifts between human and dragon forms (which occur outside of actual combat) are completely uncontrolled. Although the player gains the ability to transform at will during battle, it is not until later, when he reaches adulthood, that he has full control over his transformations.
- Fate/Grand Order:
- Sir Galahad possesses Mash Kyrielight to save her life and turn her into Servant Shielder. But since he's a prick and thinks the heroes' struggles are not his problem, that's as far as his generosity goes. With a few exceptions, he refuses to communicate with Mash, teach her how to use his powers, or even tell her the name of their Noble Phantasm. She is forced to figure it out on her own. Fortunately, she manages to activate her Noble Phantasm on instinct to protect the player.
- The player character has Magic Circuits, but ZERO knowledge of magecraft or spells beyond what's written into their Mystic Code outfits. Kadoc mocks them for this during Part 2, because he can't believe an ignoramus like them saved the world in Part 1.
- Nergal gave Ereshkigal a spear that gives her The Power of the Sun, but since Ereshkigal is an Underworld goddess and hasn't even seen the sun, it takes a while for her to figure out how it works.
- The Pretender version of Abigail Williams wakes up as a Santa Servant after wandering into an Amplifier Artifact and has to figure out how her skills work.
- Final Fantasy:
- Much of Final Fantasy VI focuses on Terra's inability to control her powers as a half-Esper.
- Final Fantasy VII. After his defeat at Nibelheim, Sephiroth is inactive for 7 years, trapped in Mako until he returns with Jenova's powers. There's some debate on whether that comes down to Sephiroth learning how to control Jenova or the other way around, but Word of God has said that Jenova was not in control. Although that Word of God was released 10 years after the original game.
- A mundane example in Final Fantasy XVI. After Clive Rosfield slices off Hugo Kupka's hands in their first battle, Hugo is shown later on with prosthetic hands trying to relearn how to eat with utensils. He can barely even pick up a fork, pissing him off and making him smash the table.
- In .hack games, both Kite and Haseo needs to learn how to use their powers. Kite got off lightly, since his Twilight Bracelet can be used easily (with the catch that if he has too much viral infection, he'd, quite simply, die). No mishaps there (except player-induced). Haseo however, basically had to undergo a lot of training to obtain his Epitaph Power as Skeith. The first time he got it out, he nearly comatosed a group of people. Afterwards, he's inclined to pull this off to anyone that threatens him, comatose or no. Inevitably, he loses control of Skeith since he used it with such a reckless abandon. Were it not for Kuhn's special power, he would've permanently comatosed someone.
- Each time Delsin absorbs another conduits powers in inFAMOUS: Second Son he must learn everything from scratch. Invoked by Augustine, who allows Delsin to absorb her abilities knowing he will be left powerless.
- Kingdom Hearts has a couple cases of this.
- Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep: Mickey steals a magical item of Yen Sid's, which lets him teleport between worlds in lieu of using a Keyblade Glider like Terra, Ven, and Aqua.
Mickey: All I hafta do is think it, and this Star Shard will take me wherever I want to go... At least I thought it would. I haven't quite got the fine points down, like... when... or where. It kinda just goes off whenever it feels like it.
- Kingdom Hearts 3D [Dream Drop Distance]: Toward the end of the game Lea receives training to use a Keyblade, then pulls a Big Damn Heroes in the climax to save Sora... with Eternal Flames, the Rings of Death he used back when he was Axel. After Sora is woken up, Lea reveals that he couldn't get his Keyblade to materialize.
Lea: Must be in the snap of the wrist, or somethin'... [Keyblade suddenly appears in his hands] ...oh.
- Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep: Mickey steals a magical item of Yen Sid's, which lets him teleport between worlds in lieu of using a Keyblade Glider like Terra, Ven, and Aqua.
- The backstory to the NESTS saga character Nameless in The King of Fighters reveals that he had a number of problems controlling his pyrokinetic abilities. Most of his time after testing was spent in the infirmary recovering from severe burns, and on his first real assignment he killed somebody just by tapping them on the shoulder.
- In The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Zelda acquires an Amplifier Artifact that strengthens the time powers she never knew she had. These send her back to the past, saving her from falling to her death. Unfortunately, as the sage Mineru informs her, the artifact only strengthens her power but doesn't automatically grant mastery, meaning if she doesn't already know a way to use her power to return to the present then she's SOL. Indeed, Zelda never figures out a way to use her powers to return to the present and instead has to take The Slow Path by consuming the artifact outright, which turns her into a powerful but seemingly mindless dragon.
- Monster Hunter: World: The final boss of the base game, Xeno'jiiva, possesses incredible power but moves rather clumsily and overall doesn't make very good use of its abilities. This is justified because it's a newborn, and therefore doesn't really know how to use its giant energy beams, claws, and wings to best effect. Hell, it only seems to realize it even has wings halfway through the fight! In Iceborne, the player is introduced to Safi'jiiva, an adult of the same species, which has much greater control over itself and its abilities, and is a MUCH tougher fight as a result.
- The constant bane of MMORPG veterans is newbies who get levelled up too fast thanks to Min-Maxing friends, and end up being very high level with absolutely no idea how to use any of their equipment or abilities, or the basic features of the game. Even worse are those who simply buy high level characters, literally hitting the level cap without ever having fought an enemy.
- City of Heroes players suffer from this trope particularly due to the sidekick system. A low level hero can be temporarily promoted to a high level so they can join a high level instance, but they do not gain any new powers, nor does it miraculously turn a new, low-level player into an experienced veteran.
- World of Warcraft also has this apply to the ability to pay to change your talents, or buy an alternate set of talents. As such, players may be quite good at using their current talent tree, but may need some adjustment while switching to others, as a Warrior might be quite good at the DPS Arms tree, but not as good with Fury (which is also DPS), let alone tanking with Protection without quite a bit of practice.
- In Final Fantasy XIV:
- Level Grinding via the Palace of the Dead or Heaven on High can lead to this. Within these dungeons, the player starts at a given level and very rapidly levels up, which - for someone using a new class or job - can lead to gaining new actions faster than they can learn how to use them. Even once they get out, they do get Exp rewarded for use outside the dungeon, which will level up their jobs much more quickly than grinding via normal dungeons and quests.
- Exaggerated with the Tales of Adventure: One Hero's Journey items available from the Online Store. One Hero's Journey will boost a job to ten levels less thsn the current level cap, which is the entry level for the newest expansion. For someone using ToA items for a new job (as opposed to i.e. bestowing a job they've already trained in to an alt character), this skips through most of the levelling - and learning - process, giving them a full kit of abilties they have no idea how to use.
- Even for players who level the hard way, jobs introduced in later expansions start at increasingly higher levels, with a significant number of abilities already unlocked. Learning how Heavensward's Machinist job works from Level 30 can be difficult enough, to say nothing of trying to pick up Endwalker's Sage and unlocking a new job at Level 70. The first job quest after each unlock tries to teach you the basics, but many players find it easiest to just go back to Sastasha Seagrot, learn the Level 17 kit, and gradually work their way up through the loadout.
- When the Shadowbringers expansion came out, the developers redesigned how almost every class works. While the basics were still there, everyone who was reasonably invested in the game had to re-learn their classes in order to use them effectively.
- Another cause of this syndrome is a "Foundry" or similar system that lets players create their own content. Some will create easy "farming" missions that grant plenty of experience points with little "experience". This is especially prevalent in the aforementioned City of Heroes, with its Mission Architect system.
- The Pokémon Ditto has only one power — Being able to copy those that belong to its opponent. (It's also immune to being paralyzed, but that's beside the point.) However, Ditto cannot copy the opponent's HP and all the moves it copies come with only 5 PP, showing its inability to master techniques on the spot.
- Fairly well done in Second Sight, where John escapes a hospital with Laser-Guided Amnesia. He has a lot of psychic powers but doesn't know about them, until they manifest themselves by an appropriate challenge. For example, he finds himself tied to a cot and unable to get free. Suddenly, he realizes he can will the bonds to open and the door to unlock. He's also weak and hurt. He clutches his head... and suddenly feels better via psychic healing. A guard tries to stop him and threatens him with a gun. Once again, John gets a headache and fires a sphere of psychic energy at the guard that sends him flying across the room, breaking the guy's neck. This all culminates at the end when John realizes that most of the events of the game are the manifestation of his Precognition ability; i.e. the game events are a possible future.
- In Shadow of the Colossus, although he's a crack shot with his bow, Wander doesn't know much about how to use his sword except that it shines when he is getting near a colossus and "point stabby end at colossus; stab." The eventual backstory revelations imply that he stole the thing, which would explain why he's so awkward with it.
- Played with in Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. Samus always had the ability to walljump and shinespark, but learns to use it from the Zebes animals. When the SA-X appears in the latter title, while it never uses these techniques, it's explicitly stated the X parasites take knowledge from the host, so it stands to reason that it would know how to use them (by virtue of having infected Samus before). It may simply be that the Wall Jump and Shinespark are just impractical for the SA-X to use; the Wall Jump is rendered obsolete by its Space Jump ability, and the BSL station's tight quarters severely limits the usage of the Speed Booster/Shinespark.
- Touhou Project
- Rumia can generate a field of darkness to protect herself from light, which hurts her, but she can't see through her own field of darkness; she can often be seen bumping into trees midflight. Apparently, ZUN thought it would be funny to make a character's powerful-sounding ability (control of darkness) actually be useless.
- Keine can hide and "eat" history, as well as create entirely new history in her hakutaku form, which would make her one of the most powerful characters in a setting already overflowing with Story Breaker Powers if she had any idea how to use it. The only time she even attempted, hiding the Human Village during the Imperishable Night, the player characters found it easily anyway.
- It is occasionally assumed that Yukari Yakumo herself cannot fully grasp the potential of her abilities (them being the complete control of boundaries, both physical and metaphysical), or simply isn't willing to.
- In Vagrant Story, Grissom takes a few moments to notice he Came Back Wrong and now has cool undead powers:
"...Please, a moment. My body is not... cooperating."
Visual Novels
- Fate/stay night:
- Shirou not only doesn't know how to shot web, he doesn't even know it's web he's supposed to be shotting!! Ahem. At first, he thinks he's supposed to be using strengthening magic, which he sucks at. Eventually, he figures out that he is much better at projection (magic that involves creating temporary replicas of real objects) and, although it's immensely taxing, picks up on that and becomes very good at it. During Unlimited Blade Works Archer reveals to Shirou that it's not projection he's good at, it's visualizing the exact nature of an object and creating it from his mind alone, which Archer eventually developed into a Reality Marble that turns him into a pure badass. At the end of that route, this allows Shirou to tap directly into his full potential. In Heaven's Feel, Shirou gains a more instinctual knowledge of his true powers through a Dangerous Forbidden Technique and being coached by Ilya, but the aforementioned technique causes brain damage and eventually kills him because that's the "From Bad to Worse" route. (Though he recovers somehow in the True End.) Oh, and in all cases Shirou still has a hard time projecting things accurately, which means they break easily.
- This also happens with Sakura, who never received proper training as a magus and because of this has trouble controlling her magic. She does wind up being able to use it by instinct... when she goes crazy and gets access to Angra Mainyu's gamebreaking powers. Oh, Crap!, indeed.
Web Animation
- In the third episode of Ducktalez has this happen twice in quick succession, Vegeta uses the body-change technique against Scrooge, discovering that just as he suspected, Scrooge had amazing powers but didn't know how to use them. However, when Vegeta tries blowing up his old body, he discovers he can't control Scrooge's flatulence problem and ends up switching bodies out of desperation.
- In RWBY, everybody has a unique power known as a "Semblance". However, they don't know how to use it until they either experience a Traumatic Superpower Awakening (such as Lie Ren's power of masking emotions, which he discovered as his village was being destroyed by Grimm) or just discover it by accident (like Nora's power of absorbing electricity, which she claims she found out after being randomly struck by lightning one day). This is showcased with Jaune Arc, who only discovered his Semblance at the climax of Volume 5 and still didn't understand its true effects (amplifying the Auras of his allies) immediately.
- In SuperThings, Kid Kazoom, due to being gifted with a new body and some of the strongest abilities of all the SuperThings in order to save his life, takes a long while to adapt to his powers and master them, often because they either fizzle out on him or overpower him without precise control. This would prove the same for Kazoom Power, his Kazoom Kid double.
- In X-Ray & Vav, the titular duo obtain powers via Clothes Make the Superman. However, their (very reluctant) benefactor, Hilda, tossed them out in a hurry without telling them what things did, leading them to ravage their city trying to stop their first crime.
Webcomics
- Zig-Zagged in Ava's Demon. When Ava makes a Magically Binding Contract with the demon inside her, she gets Super Empowered with a whole grab bag of fire-and-magma-related powers, all without knowledge of how to use them or how many she has. This includes...
- Nigh-Invulnerability, which kind of is an easy power to master.
- Running a fever-level body temperature twenty-four seven.
- Barfing up lava.
- A completely-functional compartment drawer in her chest cavity.
- Burning with Anger... along with any other intense emotion.
Ava: WH- A SUN!? I LOOK LIKE A SUN!?
Odin: Your whole FACE is orange! C-can't you see it!?
Ava: I CAN'T SEE MY OWN FACE!!
- Even though she gained her alternate form some time ago, Mye from Charby the Vampirate doesn't know most of the forms abilities. While she did suddenly learn she could teleport during a fight, and apparently has much greater strength, she still hasn't gotten around to learning to fly and mentions the fact to herself every time she gets stuck in a situation where flight would get her to safety.
- In Chirault Bethan becomes intangible. It seems to give her a lot of sweet options, from going through objects and flying to dispelling magic by touch. However, she still has a problem with not falling through the ground: the gravity does not affect her, but she thinks that it should...
- Charo of Dame Daffodil fame, in her first fight, uses her powers and transforms on instinct. After that, however, she has no idea how to consciously transform back or use her powers. There are no mentors, no instruction manuals, and she got the daffodil hairpin for £3 at a regular store so she can't just up and ask the seller for advice. Fortunately, a bit of practice helps her overcome these flaws. This is rather common to all that get a flower accessory.
- Dungeons & Doodles: Tales from the Tables: Upon becoming a paladin, Angela in Episode 9 tries to figure out how the class' spells work, and summons a horse with 'Find Steed'. However, due to her casting the spell in a crowded tavern, the summoned horse ends up panicking and stirring up trouble, causing the patrons to bump into each other and culminate in an all-out Bar Brawl which she makes a futile attempt at stopping.
- Inverted in El Goonish Shive: When someone gains a new spell their spellbook grows several pages to comprehensively describe the details of how that spell works. Elliot goes over a week without reading it despite recently obtaining and using a new spell. It gets to the point where his sister knows more about his new spell than he does because she reads about it before he does, because she stole his spellbook as a prank. Susan turns out to be even worse; she assumed she'd "know" when she got a new spell, and would check the spellbook then. A later strip makes a point of the fact nobody checks their spellbooks as often as they should.
- A more straightforward example comes when Tedd suspects he finally has a power of his own. Grace encourages him to try, but after a pause, he simply asks, "How do people cast spells?"
- Later on in the story, the Masquerade is dropped and the Will Of Magic updates some things to accommodate being publicly known and used. Two effects of this are that the descriptions in the spellbooks were greatly simplified and that for many complex spells, the settings that used to be automatically controlled by the Will Of Magic must now be manually controlled by the caster.
- In FreakAngels, Cloudcuckoolander Arkady's apparent hobby is figuring out just what she and the other titular psychics can do with their powers. She's recently perfected teleportation. It's implied that all the FreakAngels doing this together is what caused The End of the World as We Know It.
- In one episode of Full Frontal Nerdity, Frank runs a superhero campaign in which, reasoning that "Superman was always Superman", he lets his players start with ludicrously overpowered supers... who don't really know how to control their powers. Multiple destroyed cities ensue.
- Agatha goes through a period of this early in Girl Genius, but for "sparks," this is normal. In fact, she would have finished going through the Shot Web phase years ago if she hadn't had a Power Limiter locket put on her for her own protection. Following the locket's removal, Gil remarks that she didn't break through so much as ease through.
- Grrl Power:
- Sydney has seven orbs that grant her superpowers when gripped in her hand, but since she didn't find a manual when she found the orbs, she had to do a lot of experimenting to figure out what the powers were, and has to do more whenever the orbs level up to figure out what new or upgraded abilities have been unlocked. It takes her until comic #541 to figure out even the most basic applications of what the green orb even does, and more than 1300 comics in she still has no idea what the red one does.
- Sciona uses blood injections to give herself superpowers, but lack of experience and Required Secondary Powers limits her effectiveness. For instance, when she blasts Maxima with Eye Beams she can barely see anything, and is caught off-guard when Sydney interposes herself and frees Maxima to hit her with a surprise attack.
- Happens frequently in Homestuck, as the kids try to figure out what powers they have and how to use them.
- John takes an especially long time to figure out his Heir of Breath powers but is ridiculously good at them once he learns the tricks; he also takes a while to master his Sylladex.
- Dave figures out his Knight of Time powers relatively quickly, though he still Can't Catch Up with John in terms of raw power; his abilities are apparently more complicated, however, as he has to figure out how to navigate the game's massively screwed-up timeline.
- Rose hasn't put too much effort into figuring out her Seer of Light powers yet, preferring to hone her magical abilities. Jade isn't even sure what being Witch of Space means, beyond apparently having "breeding duties" involving frogs and something about stoking a forge.
- This trope is mostly averted when each of the kids reach God Tier. John, Rose, and Aradia all display instant mastery. On the other hand, Jade, who inherited both God Tier and First Guardian powers is still working her way through the latter abilities.
- Roxy at first hasn't know what her powers can do and naturally assumed, that power, that allows user to "steal nothing" is useless. However, even after she learned, that she can create whatever she wants from nothing by stealing nothingness from imaginary objects (thus making them real), she still had to train for hours and consult with multiple characters to get her powers to work properly.
- In Jupiter-Men, Quintin and Jackie spend their first day with superpowers suffering from Power Incontinence as they stick to and break everything they touch respectively. Quintin accidentally flings himself into a gun-toting mugger while trying to push him over and then jams the gun with slime while trying to stick his hands up. Following this, they practice using their powers enough to get a proper hold of them and use them at will.
- Happens frequently in Kagerou, one of the more notable examples being Kano learning how to use the magic sword he's given. He still hasn't quite gotten then hang of it despite ongoing training and having had to use it a few times to avoid being killed.
Kano: Um, Cho, how am I supposed to hold it? It seems to have a number of... teeth.
- Kill Six Billion Demons: Allison is an ordinary twentysomething from modern-day LA who gets the Master Key to Creation, an artifact that grants her nigh-godlike powers, shoved into her forehead one day with no explanation or tutoring included. Needless to say it takes her a long time to begin using it in ways that aren't completely accidental.
Allison: Get me — out of here — you stupid pain in the ass piece of shit key! Come on! I'm being extremely resolute!
Maya: Tch! You must not ask. You must simply do. You won't get anywhere with that. Five feet perhaps. Though in fairness to you — many powerful men and women spent lifetimes mastering how to cut space-time. I'm guessing so far you've managed to teleport only out of sheer luck. But don't stop trying! - The first several chapters of Knowledge Is Power deal with these kinds of difficulties — such as when the gravity-manipulator tried to use his powers to move a water heater...
- League of Super Redundant Heroes:
- Lazer Pony, who discovered that he can shoot lazer beams from his eyes, but doing so permanently blinds him the first time he does it. Having a sight-based power while blind is extremely impractical, but LP has been seen trying to learn to better use his powers, particularly with the help of someone "aiming" him. He also has a panic reflex, which fires the beams uncontrollably if he thinks there are spiders nearby..
- Played with by Buckaress, who lately, and for no apparent reason, has developed the "superpower" of setting anything she cooks, alight — even a sandwich..
- In Little Robot, Big Scary World, BIP has to learn his functions through experience, as his creator died before he could tell him how to use them.
- The girls instinctively learn how to command their powers in M9 Girls! Later on, they train to fine-tune them.
- How the first few chapters of morphE play out. The five seedlings have awakened as mages and have to learn to use their magical abilities. Their teacher, Amical, throws them into lessons which become increasingly difficult to rush their learning curve.
- The full capabilities of the Monster in the Darkness from The Order of the Stick have never been revealed. The in-comic reason is speculated to be that he's too... childlike to know his full potential. Xykon implies once or twice that he actually knows the exact limitations and capabilities of the Monster in the Darkness, even if the Monster doesn't; he's repeatedly stated that the Monster is his trump card, and he has no intentions of bringing it out until its planned debut, or until things go completely out the window, whichever comes first.
- At the beginning of Volume 2, the Adventurer of Penny Blackfeather has been trying to learn some magic, but it's still work in progress. Also, when turned into a parrot, he doesn't automatically aquire the ability to fly.
- In the Kings War arc of Roommates the injured Monster Roommate Jareth gives all his power (and kingdom, and resposibilities, etc.) to his best friend (and Token Good Teammate) James with literally no explanation; cue this trope ensuing on a grand scale and at the worst time.
- In The Sanity Circus, Attley has to figure out how to use her Scarecrow abilities after she discovers she is one of them.
- In Sluggy Freelance, Gwynn has never really mastered her magical ability, partly because, more often than not, she bungles the spells badly and Hilarity Ensues, partly because the source of her powers is the Book of E-Ville.
- In Sparkling Generation Valkyrie Yuuki, the main character Yuuki is selected to be the next Valkyrie, and is flung into several fights with no idea how to use her new powers. She's forced to more or less play it by ear early on. That's not the least of her problems, though...
- After the title character of Spinnerette acquires spider powers from a gene-splicing ray, she gets to literally figure out how to shoot web. Like movie-verse Spidey, she eventually learns how to do it; unlike movie-verse Spidey, though, it doesn't come from her wrists... Sahira, a biology major, almost dies laughing at this:
Sahira: (laughing) Yeah, I guess it'd make sense for the web to come out of your ass!
Heather/Spinnerette: It does not come out of my ass! It comes out of a gland at the base of my spine! - Two Guys and Guy dips into this trope at Wayne's expense, as usual.
Web Videos
- Omega Zell changes his character at the beginning of Noob: Le Conseil des Trois Factions and spends the rest of the movie figuring out his new interface. This culminates near the end when he wants to launch a powerful attack on an enemy... and ends up dancing.
- In Sword Art Online Abridged, Asuna suffers from this in her debut episode. She's still a natural fighter, and a damn good one at that, but she's a total novice to MMOs who thinks DPS is "some kind of sex thing", worries that she's contracted a disease when a pop-up tells her she's got "expees", and in a game that is now literally life or death, doesn't even know how to open the interface's menu.
Kirito: How have you survived all month?
[flashback to Asuna staring at a piece of bread]
Past Asuna: ...HOW DO I EAT YOU?!
[back to the present]
Asuna: It's been a challenge.
Real Life
- Learning to use a gun is often very much like this. Sure, there's the obvious parts such as pointing the barrel at what you want to kill and pulling the trigger. However, mastering a gun, especially a complex modern assault rifle, is difficult. You have to learn about sighting, trigger pull technique, the fire control group, loading, dropping magazines, changing magazines, aiming, disassembly, reassembly, and cleaning. Also, contrary to what one might think (due to a pistol being "simpler"), it's actually harder to learn to shoot accurately, because the lack of a stock makes them inherently less stable in the hand and harder to aim. The only reason pistols exist at all is that they're much smaller and thus much easier to carry around (and if necessary, conceal) than rifles.
- Originally part of the attraction of firearms was that any idiot could be taught to use one in a couple of months or less, while mastering a longbow would take far longer (traditional longbows actually demands a lifetime of training, because you NEED to have started using one regularly in your youth to develop the muscles necessary to draw it). Firearms, in their infancy, were wildly inaccurate due to being little more than tubes containing blackpowder, an ignition source, and a metal ball for which the blackpowder would propel into an enemy, so back then "mastering a gun" did boil down to "point, shoot, and hope you kill someone else" (misfires and accidental explosion of the weapon being a big problem with early firearms). Longbows were still considered deadlier than the musket because they were accurate AND could definitively kill in the hands of a skilled archer. (The reason for all that necessary muscle? A high draw strength means a lot of force sent into the arrow, meaning the arrow having much more penetrative power than a metal ball tumbling through the air.) A skilled archer could also reload much faster than a gunman with a muzzle-loading musket.note With the development of rifles (meaning the bullet now spins through the air and flies much straighter and retains much more force upon impact) guns managed to reach and surpass the killing power of bows, even with all the added infrastructure and costs that necessary to manufacture such weapons. While manufacturing, maintaining, and training to use firearms now is much more expensive and difficult than ever before, it is still far cheaper and more efficient than a bow. A well-made crossbow is a middle ground between the bow and modern firearms (from about the mid-19th century since). Its mechanisms are trickier to handle than a gun, but they also provide the mechanical advantages that allow a less-husky individual to still fire an arrow with lethal effectiveness. Modern bow designs like compound bows also employ mechanical advantage to reduce the necessary effort: less straining, more aiming.
- Many martial arts are good examples. Throwing a punch? Simple, right? Wrong. Each martial art has a technique, and it takes time to learn how to punch properly. Same applies to strikes, kicks, throws, stances, et cetera. To wit, one of the most common injuries in martial arts (but mostly boxing) is known as the boxer's fracture and is caused by poor punching technique. One of the first lessons taught in martial arts classes is how to make a fist, as untrained novices tend to tuck their thumbs inside their fists instead of placing it outside, which means they might break their thumb upon punching someone or something.
- Somewhat inverted with building a PC. The actual building of a PC itself is pretty straight forward as the interconnects and mounting points are designed to fit one way. Or if there is more than one way, it usually doesn't matter which way they're used. The hard part is making sure beforehand what you're buying is compatible, e.g., making sure to get the right motherboard for your CPU, the right RAM for that motherboard, etc. and troubleshooting afterwards if something goes wrong. The software side is where the real "fun" begins. Software has become so user-friendly that the average user might think that loading up a computer is as easy as installing an "app". However, if the computer does nothing but beep at you when you power it on, you had better know what "beep codes" are.note And while modern OSes have simplified the process of installing any drivers you need, your initial capabilities are still limited to whatever the OS disk has built-in support for.note
- Lucid dreaming can be like this sometimes: you know that (at least in your dream) you're a Reality Warper, but you can't figure out how to actually do anything with that. It also takes a degree of control to think of anything to do (imagination being largely tied up running the dream).
- Walking. Of all animals, humans are the most inept at moving around immediately after being born. Of course, there are many reasons for this.
- Having a bipedal gait limits the size of the mother's hips, meaning that only a small enough (and therefore weak) baby can be born.
- A proportionally sized brain wouldn't fit on the way out, so infants sacrifice developing the neurological control of their bodies until after they are born in order to reduce their skull size.
- A bipedal gait also means that each of a baby's lower limbs has to be twice as strong as those of a quadruped of the same mass in order to lift his/her weight.
- Even after a human has walked for many years, if one takes an injury that prevents them from walking for a period of time, the person has to relearn how to walk on top of their legs needing time to regain their strength to do so.
- Software development. You may have a mastery of the basics and knowledge of algorithms and such, but if you have to change from one programming language to another, you have to learn the nuances of that language. Then, you have to figure out how the software source code was structured and organized. If a project gets complicated enough, you can step away for a few weeks and forget most of what you discovered about it. This is why it's important to structure and code in a way that makes it easy as possible to pick up later.