I don't see why scythes are being written off as 'lol, useless' by most people. I mean, the scythes in RPG's used to follow these kinds of standards:
-They are wielded by either non-combat heavy characters and used in coordination with magic or as a sort of 'crowd control' item in which they can strike multiple enemies 'surrounding' the wielder
-They are USUALLY not the regular kinds of farming scythes people are not used to, they either have a movement functionality (Like having a saw on it in the .hack//G.U. series), massively oversized (Agarest War and others) and again, would have some 'magical' element to it
-In terms of how one uses a scythe effectively in an RPG, the most common excuse is that the user has quick reflexes and a good deal of strength to 'flip' the scythe on a dime, let's say they were doing an air combo in some action combat RPG, the swing the scythe upward and then upon ending that swing, they let go of the scythe, twist it around and swing the blade back down to cut up an enemy
-ANOTHER way to effectively use the scythe is to attach a 'ball bearing' type handle that's in the side of the scythe's pole, thus allowing the user to 'spin' the scythe on this 'rolling' handle and either protect himself/herself from non-projective attacks and enemies charging harming them
And so on. So so so so many people seem to be COMPLETELY ignoring the concept of FANTASY when discussing scythes as weapons. When discussing ROLE PLAYING GAMES that usually have an element of sci-fi or fantasy in them, ASSUME IMPOSSIBLE THINGS CAN HAPPEN.
My thoughts? I'd like to see the scythe a little more properly acknowledged as a weapon 'alternative', maybe in future Dragon Quest games? You know, the 'class switching' heavy titles like the recent iteration DQIX. Maybe Sages or... Um... Okay, maybe the DQ series isn't the best to suggest using scythes in but you get the idea. People just writing off scythes as a 'tool' in this thread are clearly not thinking outside the box.