They just have really low average stats compared to other classes. Also, they explodes when thrown and can't lift throw themselves (but that goes for all monster classes).

It doesn't mean they're unusable tho, if you like 'em they're fine.

you can make anything in this game work if you're strong willed enough. that being said, there are indeed units better suited for certain tasks than others, but don't let that stop you

They aren't exactly bad, but designed to be expendable. They always cost only 1 HL to fully heal/revive (doesn't count towards hospital rewards) and explode when thrown, so they're expected to die.

The explosion can't be evaded and always does its full damage regardless of enemy defense and abilities, so it can be useful. But it also means they can't have their movement assisted by throwing.

In Disgaea 2, monster units have the advantage of being able to have their stats buffed by placing a Beastmaster next to them, and for Prinnies specifically there's also Etna. But all their skills that hit multiple panels will hit all the panels that the buffing unit could stand on, so this is much harder to take advantage of for Prinnies.

Their aptitudes make them as good at attacking as other attack based monsters (= red monster weapon), but unlike most other monsters they don't have any additional abilities that improve their power or survivability.

Originally posted by killerwolf202:

I'm not a super devout fan and I want to 100% despite not really knowing much of anything about the series, but I understand that prinnies are meant to be terrible...to me they feel better than any main or other created characters (other than tink specifically for the item world). Can someone explain plz?

Whether prinny's are bad and to what extent they are bad depends on the game. In the first two games, prinny's suffer from generally bad stats, less reliable abilities, and a lack of many of the mechanics that ended up buffing them a bit such as evilities and magichange. In this game they can be kind of alright due to stacking several other character's passive buffs on them though, but it takes a bit of setup.

In Disgaea 1 they are terrible. Monsters in general are terrible and prinny's don't have the high stats other monsters have in order to compete, with noticably bad SP in particular. However they have standard monster 100% aptitudes, so on paper they might actually have better stats than in later games even if it doesn't functionally work out as well since you have fewer options to take advantage of them. On top of everything, they suffer from the same tier unlock problem as other monsters, but the UI doesn't even tell you how many prinny's of each tier you've killed like with other monsters, and you need to grind the prinny world in order to unlock later tiers of prinny's, and even with all that effort you can't make a tier 6 prinny, so they are functionally the game's only 5 tier class.

By Disgaea 5, prinny's are alright. A combination of the evility system, monsters passively learning some support spells, reworking some prinny abilities, better synergies and the fact that the game gives you 10 overpowered helper prinny's helps.

In every Disgaea game prinny's obviously have uses for the exploding feature and the 1 hl revives though.

In game's other than Disgaea, prinny's are very much NOT bad. In Phantom Brave they are kind of a secret monster type, are decent, and explode both on confinement with an object, and upon removal. Phantom Brave also doesn't restrict monster equips so Prinny's can use any weapon in that game. They also learn some secret attacks upon equipping certain items like bombs.

In Makai Kingdom, prinny's are arguably one of the best overall tec classes, with the highest tec stat and 2 more equipment slots than average, although you might need to reincarnate a character into them in order to give them better weapon proficiency's and passives. Right out of the box they are proficient with daggers, bombs, shovels, and wrenches, and since they don't have the stats for daggers to work, you'll likely give them bombs unless you've reincarnated to give them something like gatling gun proficiency. They also make good vehicle pilots.

In La Pucelle, prinny's are a re-release exclusive class. There's both regular prinny's, and the hero prinny. Not sure if they are good there as La Pucelle makes it a bit harder to see how characters stack up compared to other characters.

I have not really used them in La Pucelle, but fodder characters can be good to kill off and enter the demon world, which is a bit of a complicated process. The demon world is like an item world in this game, but its strength depends entirely on the corruption level of the map where the portal appears. Defeating a party member increases it by 10 I think. The max is either 200 or 300. The only other way to do it took me a while to figure out but I think it increases it by 50. A leap of 10 can already be really hard to deal with if your characters were strong enough to beat most of what came from 10 levels lower.

Anyway, I think Prinny is treated as a non monster which actually may be negative because monsters can be trained in a sort of minigame to maximize their potential. At the same time, that minigame is tied to affection and if affection gets too low, the monster runs away. Because the Prinny is not treated like that, it once again is a good choice for corrupting a map.