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On topic: Haggling is quite often a dump skill. Especially skills can be developed. Early on, with not much points to put in haggling, it's benefits often aren't enough to let you buy all the nice stuff - haggling or not. And in late game your'e swimming in money anyhow and those skill-points are better used somewhere else.

Detect or 'Remove curse' can be quite useless too, if it is only designed to counter cursed items. When I put on an item that turns out to be cursed, I just load the last save and don't put the item on. Of course there are games where there are good magical items that just happen to be cursed and where it pays to remove the curse from said top-tier item, so that one is able to use it afterwards. But there are also games where cursed items are useless after dispelling the curse. In which case removing the curse is pointless.

And then, of course, there are lots of spells that are designed to have no use. 'Fireworks' in Ultima 7 makes colorful sparks and your companions say 'Ohh, pretty!', but it doesn't do anything useful. It is supposed to scare away low powered enemies but it doesn't really do that. That's what Thunder is for. But that only works on enemies that are so weak that they pose no threat anyhow.

I can distinguish between spells that just happen to be useless due to the way the game is balanced and spells that are clearly designed as jokes (like the Armageddon spell in Ultima 6 and 7, which makes the game unwinnable if you cast it).;

Also, I think such useless spells aren't particularly relevant to the topic unless you can put points in individual spells (like in Etrian Odyssey and Lords of Xulima) or can improve individual spells through use (Final Fantasy 2).

One useless skill I just remembered: Combat Shooting in Wasteland 1. It's only in the DOS version and the Remaster, you can *only* take it at character creation, and it doesn't actually do anything. (In the Remaster, if you're playing on a platform that has achievements, apparently there's an achievement for learning this skill.)

Wasteland also has that Toaster Repair skill, but that skill actually has a use, and is one way to get certain quest items (but not the only way).

There's also situations where the game gets re-balanced in a patch, or bugs are created or removed, which can drastically change the value of certain skills (like if a patch introduces a bug that makes a skill not work at all).

I'm pretty sure there's some game out there with a skill that would be useless if it weren't for a bug, but because of a bug can be used to break the game wide open. (Perhaps something like SaGa 1 where a bug makes the saw, in the hands of a strong character, only work on 2 enemies; one of them is an enemy you're not supposed to be able to kill, the other is the final boss.)

But but, i love low int dialouge. :D

First spell in the temporal college, and the later ones are very useful (e.g. the 4th temporal spell "Stasis" immobilizes an enemy, the 5th temporal spell "Tempus fugit" hastes your party while slowing all enemies), so any mage character is likely to pick it.

In any game with specific weapon skills and where there weapons aren't well balanced:
* Any weapon skill that corresponds to a weaker weapon type.

In SaGa 2 DS:
* For humans, pretty much any STR based weapon skill, except maybe the skill that includes Excalibur, as a character with high STR and low AGI isn't going to hit at all later in the game. (This was a problem in the original Game Boy version as well, but humans didn't have individual weapon skills.)

Yeah, this is starting to remind me of the skilltrees in Tome 4, where typically the second or third skill is some nugatory you'd totally skip if you weren't required to invest one point to advance to the next. This is in addition to already having a stat barrier.

Arcanum has a stat barrier too, you need a certain level of "willpower" for each level in a spell college (e.g. 15 willpower for 4th level spells, 18 willpower for 5th level spells).

I'm starting to sense overlap; TOME has the stat barriers not only by level, but according to a stat that (typically) makes sense. Like how arrow skills require you to pump dexterity.

What about skills that you are actually worse off having than not having?

Etrian Odyssey 3 has a passive skill called Overheat that increases the character's damage output, but will damage the user each turn (though it can't lower HP below 1, fortunately). The damage is minor at first, but at level 10, the character is taking 127 damage each turn (in a game where your HP is hard capped at 999). Furthermore, there's a skill that requires Overheat 10 to learn (it does more damage at low HP, and making it hard to access is probably a result of how game-breaking a skill like that was in EO2).

I really like it when skills directly upgrade; Fire becomes Firebolt, which becomes Fireball. No wasted slots.

hmmm... Maybe. Gaining new skills/abilties, but it upgrades everything in it makes more sense.

As long as you can choose the weaker spell to conserve MP, the upgrade is nice.

I don't like it when you're forced to pay the higher cost after upgrading, however.

I remembered another game: Secret of Evermore.

Spells improve as you use them, but later game attack spells are stronger than early game ones, making them become obsolete later. Also, while your weapon skill levels up, the skill doesn't carry over to other weapons of the same type, so maxing out your skill in the first spear will not help with the other spears, for example. (Spears are the best choice because they can be thrown at max level, giving you a nice ranged attack.)

There's also the issue that all spells require alchemy ingredients to use, and there are cases where an ingredient that's easily available at one point might not be readily available later, and the game doesn't let you backtrack between worlds until the very end.

(I think the system would have worked better in a game that didn't limit backtracking so much.)

The game also suffers from being rushed near the end, giving you not enough time to level up your endgame weapons and spells.

Sounds fair. Rotate the spell with R/L?